Materials. One ounce of double Berlin wool, shaded scarlet; ivory hook.

Make 3 chain stitches; unite the ends. First round-Single crochet, making 1 chain stitch between each single.

Second round.-3 chain into every second stitch in the last round.

Third round.-The same.

Fourth round.-4 treble into every loop of 3 chain. Fifth round.-Plain treble, taking every loop at the back of the chain.

Sixth round.-3 chain into every second stitch in the preceding round.

Seventh round.-4 treble into every loop of 3 chain.

Eighth round.-3 chain into every second stitch in the last round.

Ninth round.-2 treble into every loop of 3 chain. Border.-5 chain into every third stitch in the last round of the bottom

Second round.-1 treble into every loop of 5 chain, making 7 chain between each treble.

Third round.-4 chain into the centre of every second loop in the last round.

Fourth round.-1 treble into every third stitch in the last round, making 7 chain between each treble. Fifth round.-3 chain worked into every second loop, as in the third round.

Sixth round.-6 chain into every fourth stitch in the last round.

Seventh round.-6 chain into the centre of the loop in the last round.

Eighth round.-3 chain into the centre of the loops.

Ninth round.-6 chain, 1 treble in the space formed by the 3 chain in the last round.

The Vase-stand is now completed by working 7 chain stitches between every second loop where the border commences turning up, which makes a finish to the bottom.

A NEW KNITTED PELISSE

(WITH TRIMMING TO IMITATE CHINCHILLA;

SUITED

IN SIZE FOR A YOUNG LADY, FROM SEVEN TO NINE YEARS OF AGE).

Materials. Six ounces of crimson, four thread super fleecy. Two ounces each of three shades of stone color ditto; and No. 4 box wood pins; and No. 8 bone pins for the trimmings.

The pattern consists of two rows worked thus:First row-Make one, ‡ place the pin in the next stitch, as if going to knit it, pass the wool twice round the pin, and finish knitting it as usual, ‡ repeat until one is left, knit that plain.

Second row.-Knit the first stitch and half the next together; then the remaining half and the half of the Bext together, continue this to the end of the row. These two rows form a ridge, and to be continued throughout.

FOR THE BACK.

Cast on thirty-two stitches.

Repeat the two rows until you can count eight ridges on the right side of your work; then cast off three on each side. In the next ridge decrease one on each side Knit back as in the second row.

Kait three ridges without decreasing; then cast on three stitches at each end of the row, thus making half the arm-hole; then work seven ridges, decreasing one stitch every alternate row; cast off.

FOR THE FRONT.

Cast on sixteen stitches.

Knit eight ridges as in the back; then cast off three.

At the commencement of the next row, knit the back row, but decrease one at the end.

Knit three ridges without increase or decrease. In the beginning of the next row cast on three stitches, and work one ridge; then seven other ridges, decreasing every alternate row at the beginning, thus making the other half of the shoulder.

In working the other side, it will simply require the knitter to increase or decrease at the end of the row instead of the beginning to make both fronts alike.

FOR THE SLEEVE.

Cast on twenty-six stitches, beginning at the wrist. Knit six ridges; then increase each side every alternate row for twelve rows. Cast off in the next row three on each side; then decrease each side every alternate row three times more, and cast off.

FOR THE SKIRT.

Cast on one hundred and twenty stitches.

Increase every row on each side for ten ridges, knit two together in the next row, and cast off.

FOR THE TRIMMING ROUND THE SKIRT, ETC. Cast on with the darkest shade of stone color one hundred and eighty stitches. First row.-1

-Knit two, ‡ purl four, cast on six on your right hand pin, ‡ repeat, knit two. Second row.-Knit two, ‡ purl seven, knit three, ‡ repeat, knit two.

Third row.-Knit two, purl three, knit seven, ‡ repeat, knit two.

Fourth row.-Next shade.-Kuit two, purl seven, knit three, ‡ knit two.

Fifth row.-Knit two, ‡ purl three, knit two together, knit three, knit two together, knit two. Sixth row.-Knit two, purl five, knit three, knit two.

Seventh row.-Knit two, purl three, knit two together, knit one, knit two together, ‡ knit two. Eighth row.-Next shade.-Knit two, purl three, knit three, knit two.

Ninth row.-Knit two, ‡ purl three, knit two together, knit one, ‡ knit two.

Tenth row.-Knit two, purl two, knit three, ‡ knit two.

Eleventh row.-Knit two, ‡ purl three, knit two together, knit two.

Twelfth row-Plain. Join on the darkest shade, and work the pattern through again and cast off.

FOR THE COLLAR.

Cast on sixty-four stitches.

Knit the same as the border, but only going through

the rows once.

FOR THE CUFF.

Cast on twenty-four stitches.

Which will be six patterns, and the two stitches for each edge, and work as the Collar.

FOR THE FRONT.

Cast on eight stitches.

Which will be two patterns, and work four patterns in depth. A second piece must be knitted like this to go down the other front.

To make it up, the back and two fronts must be jomed; sixty stitches picked up round the waist, and a plain row knitted, and cast off.

The skirt to be sewn on to the body leaving a plain space on each side the front of a nail and half, sew the rest round to suit the figure. To be tied at the throat, and down the front of the body with ribbon to match. The cuffs also the same. The chin chilla trimming having been previously sewn on.

ABITORS'

THE New Year is a standing-point from which we should look backward as well as onward, noting chiefly those actions and influences that, beginning in the past, are to be carried out in their full results, or modified in their tendencies, by causes and events yet undeveloped. The most important, among these recent movements, is the attempt to take woman from her empire of home, and make her the rival of man for the mastery of the world. The ostensible plea for this innovation is that the female sex suffers oppression and wrong from men; and therefore women must learn to support and defend themselves, and be able to demand justice before they will obtain it.

That men should consider physical strength and mechanical skill superior to moral influence and spiritual purity is not strange, because the tendencies of their nature are earthward; but that women should be found in our country, where the sex is so highly respected and, tenderly cared for, willing to give up their heavenly privileges of acting with angels in the care of the young, and co-operating with the Divine influence in keeping alive the true faith of the Gospel in the heart of humanity, is astonishing. It seems impossible that those of the sex who are leading onward this movement can have considered its consequences. The industrial power of the world is now greatly in advance of its moral development; and shall woman, who is the appointed guardian of whatsoever is good, pure, and lovely in morals and manners, resign her mission, in order to add to the material wealth of the world? It

is as though a star should strive to come down from its place in the calm sky, and take the station of a gaslamp in a crowded city street.

Let us take an illustration from that Magna Charta of woman's rights, the BIBLE. The pyramids of Egypt show to this day the grand triumph of man's physical power and mechanical skill. No female mind would ever have planned the pyramids, and no female strength could have erected those mountain-like structures ascribed to the Pharaohs. But the daughter of a Pharaoh performed an act of womanly tenderness, which was of more importance to the cause of human improvement than all the material works of all the kings of Egypt. Which deed was the nobler, the disinterested kindness which saved the life of the Jewish Lawgiver, or the selfish pride which probably destroyed, or rendered miserable, a hundred thousand lives in building the great pyramid?

Men and women have different tendencies of nature, and different tasks to occupy and develop those tendencies; to bring them into the same field of employments would be as absurd as to make the value of porcelain consist in its power to do the work of iron. Woman has a higher pursuit than the industrial arts afford; a better inheritance than earth can offer is in her keeping to raise humanity towards the angelic is her office. The most important vocation on earth is that of the Christian mother in her nursery. The true wife has a ministry at home which may be more potent than that of the pulpit; for she, " by her chaste conversation, coupled with fear"-that is, piety, with gentle

TABLE.

ness and humility-may convert and save her husband when the preacher fails. The female teacher wields an influence more potent than the statesman; and, as the preserver, women, when made familiar with medical science, which belongs to their department of knowledge and practice, so far as their own sex and children are concerned, will excel in the preventive depart ment, and, by diffusing among mothers the knowledge of the laws of health and better modes of training children, they will bring about a renovation of the general health, and, doubtless, a prolongation of human life.

46

To fit her for these duties, and give her opportunities of performing them in the best manner, woman needs what the BIBLE, above all other books or codes, gives the sex, namely, the right to claim support, protection, education, and every needful facility which man can provide. Sons must provide for their mothers-such was the example of the blessed Saviour. He did not leave his mother to support herself by her own hands. One of the first cares of the early Christians was to provide for widows; husbands were commanded to love and cherish"-provide for-their wives the father was worse than an infidel who did not provide for his children. The churches were commanded to help those women who labored in the Lord." The female disciples were "to keep the house," "to teach the children," and to "teach the young women." If the doctrines of the Gospel were carried out, there would be no suffering, no oppression of the female sex. "Christ was made of a woman." Everywhere He has borne testimony to feminine excellence; the precepts of His doctrine harmonize with woman's nature; and, as the same standard of purity is required by the Gos pel for both sexes, it follows that, in the real improvement of society, men will, in their moral sentiments, become more like the gentle sex, and not that women are to affect the style and pretensions of the masculine character.

In a work of our own, which has been long in preparation, and will soon appear, these views are fully explained; and, we trust, the book will be of some service in settling the agitations about woman's sphere, which now perplex many minds, and threaten to disturb the happiness of home and the peace of society.

In order to show what woman becomes when compelled to do man's work," we give a description of rural life in France, from the pen of one of the best and most philanthropic of living French writers. Such pictures are common over continental Europe. Where millions of men are withdrawn from labor, and kept embodied as soldiers, much of the out-door work must be done by females; hence the low estimation placed on woman in those countries, and the degradation of the sex. As a contrast to this shocking portrait of "working women"-that is, those who are engaged in labors pertaining to "subduing the earth," which God imposed on men only-we give the views of an eminent

"Woman's Record; or Biographical Sketches of all Distinguished Women," &c.

American statesman respecting the true destiny of the sex. Is there an American woman who would not prefer this lot above any which earth can offer?

THE WORKING WOMEN OF FRANCE.

BY L. AIME-MARTIN.

The great misfortune of our villages is the degradation of the women through labors which belong to men. In their earliest years they tend the flocks and gather in the harvest. As young girls, an instinct of coquetry and the foresight of their mothers remove them from the rude fatigues of husbandry; but no sooner do they marry, than all is changed; they abandon the house, and follow their husbands into the fields. You see them bowed to earth, as laborers, or laden with enormous weights, like beasts of burden. There are distriets in France-I do not say in Africa-where they are harnessed to carts with the ox and the ass. From that time their skin becomes shriveled, their complexions like coal, their features coarse and homely, and they fall into a premature decrepitude, more hideous than that of old age. But, whilst thus performing the labor of men, their own labors, those labors which sweeten and refine all others, remain neglected or unknown. Nothing can be more filthy, nothing more unwholesome, than the interior of their cottages. Fowls, ducks, pigs, contending for a meal; the door opening into the mud; and the windows, where there are any, serving only as vent-holes to carry off the smoke. It is there, nevertheless, in a hole, miry as the hut of a savage, amidst the gruntings and fetid emanations of animals, that, every evening, two human beings, male and female, repose from the fatigues of the day. Nobody is there to receive them, nothing to flatter their regards, the table is empty, and the hearth cold as ice. There, lastly, other labors await the woman, and, before thinking of her husband's supper, or the care of her children, she must think of the stable and of supper for the beasts.

But how different would it be, if, leaving to her husband the hard labors of the field, and confining her attention to the interior of the house, the wife, in her delicate forethought, had prepared all for the hour of return! The fire would blaze on the hearth, and the evening's meal smoke on the polished board. The good housewife would present herself to her husband in the midst of plenty, and surrounded by the smiling faces of her children. Thus a sweet and easy life would be the natural life of the villager. But there is nothing to impress his mind with any image of this happiness; he knows not the word comfort; he is insensible to the charm of caresses, and even the power of love. His children tremble before him, his wife dreads the vigor of his arm. The adversary, not the protector, of these feeble beings, he knows of no law but force. The dernier argument of the peasant, in his cottage as in his field, is the weight of his fist.

If asked for examples of these things, we will cite whole provinces, the richest as well as the poorest, of France: Perigord, where the women live in a state of filth and abjectness which reacts on the whole family; Picardy and Limousin, where, degraded to the lowest rank, and as of an inferior race, they serve their husband at table, without ever daring to take a place at his side; Brescia, where they are mere laborers, mere beasts of burden; lastly, Lower Brittany, where husband, wife, and children, reduced to a state almost savage, live all, pell mell, in the same filthy chamber,

and eat black bread, in the same trough with their sheep and hogs. Everywhere is the degradation of the woman a sure proof of the brutishness of the man, and everywhere is the brutishness of the man a necessary consequence and reaction from the degradation of the woman. Do not offer them comfort or well-being; they would reject it as something useless or strange. To desire comfort, it is necessary for them to know what comfort is, and ages have passed over their cabins without leaving there any other thoughts than those of labor and wretchedness.

Such is the condition of whole districts in almost every country of civilized Europe. And what is sadder still, is the fact that these spectacles strike our eyes without wounding them, our souls without softening them.

Two modes, very simple, offer themselves, however, for ameliorating the lot of these poor rustics. The first is to establish a primary institution, sufficiently large, for young girls, where they may learn how to direct the interior economy of a house, and thus, hereafter, be themselves qualified to instruct their own children in the same. To establish, in a village, the intellectual superiority of the women over the men, however transiently, is to restore to the former their influence that vivifying influence which enriches cottages and civilizes nations.

Hitherto, all our laws of primary instruction have proved insufficient, because they did not establish-before all, and in preference to all-schools for the education of young girls. Never will instruction take deep root and spread in the rural districts, if it does not reach the children through their mothers, and the men through their wives. The public teacher is but a dry instrument, that teaches the alphabet; the mother of the family, on the contrary, is a moral power, which fertilizes the mind, while, at the same time, it opens the heart to love and the soul to charity.

The second method, a necessary sequel of the first, consists in restoring to the women of the village the occupations of their sex, and in bringing them back to the law of nature. This change, so simple, would operate as a complete revolution. In resuming her appropriate tasks, woman recovers her beauty; in recovering her beauty, she regains her just influence and power. Occupied with employments less gross, her i tastes become purified, her manners softened; she stu- t dies neatness, she comprehends comfort, and a day at length comes when all her thoughts, all her desires, penetrate even the heart of her husband. Delicacy in woman is the most powerful enemy to the barbarism of man.

It may be urged, perhaps, that, to withdraw women from the rude labor of the field, is to ruin the laborer. To this we reply that, far from ruining, it would enrich him. Surely the avocations of the cottage are neither less numerous nor of less importance than those of the field. If it require a vigorous arm to handle the spade or the plough, it requires not less careful hands to receive the crop, to gather in the fruits, to rear the poultry, to prepare butter and cheese, to card and spin the wool, and to maintain everywhere order and neatness. The earth does not bring forth but under the plough, which rends it asunder, and the house cannot prosper but under the wisdom which superintends it.

When Solomon would describe the prosperity of a house, it is not the labors of the man, but the sweet influences of the wife, that occur to his thoughts. To the woman he attributes all the favors of fortune, even