After noting down my own reflections on this subject, I met with some observations upon it by an eminent female writer (the best writer, probably, that sex has produced), which one portion of my hearers, as least, will thank me for quoting: they are graphic, forcible, and suggestive: "The Clubs generate and cherish luxurious habits, from their perfect ease, undress, liberty, and inattention to the distinctions of rank; they promote a love of play, and, in short, every temper and spirit which tends to _undomesticate_; and what adds to the mischief is, all this is attained at a cheap rate compared with what may be procured at home in the same style. A young man in such an artificial state of society, accustomed to the voluptuous ease, refined luxuries, soft accommodations, obsequious attendance, and all the unrestrained indulgences of a fashionable Club, is not to be expected after marriage to take very cordially to a _home_, unless very extraordinary exertions are made to amuse, to attach, and to interest him; and he is not likely to lend a helping hand to the union, whose most laborious exertions have hitherto been little more than a selfish stratagem to reconcile health with pleasure. Excess of gratification has only served to make him irritable and exacting; it will, of course, be no part of his project to make sacrifices--he will expect to receive them; and, what would appear incredible to the _Paladins_ of gallant times, and the _Chevaliers Preux_ of more heroic days, even in the necessary business of establishing himself for life, he sometimes is more disposed to expect attentions than to make advances." "These indulgences, and this habit of mind, gratify so many passions, that a woman can never hope successfully to counteract the evil by supplying at home, gratifications which are of the same kind, or which gratify the same habits. Now a passion for gratifying vanity, and a spirit of dissipation, _is_ a passion of the same kind; and, therefore, though for a few weeks, a man who has chosen his wife in the public haunts of fashion, and this wife a woman made up of accomplishments, may, from the novelty of the connexion and of the scene, continue domestic; yet, in a little time she will find that those passions to which she has trusted for making pleasant the married life of her husband, will crave the still higher pleasures of the Club; and while these are pursued, she will be consigned over to solitary evenings at home, or driven back to the old dissipations."