"One of our (French) most distinguished painters of sea-subjects,

Gudin, has married a rich young English lady, belonging to a family of

high rank, and related to the Duke of Wellington. M. Gudin was lately

at Berlin at the same time with K----, inspector of pictures to the

King of Holland. The King of Prussia desired that both artists should

be presented to him, and received Gudin in a very flattering manner;

his genius being his only letter of recommendation.

"Monsieur K---- has not the same advantage; but, to make up for it, he

has a wife who enjoys in Holland a great reputation for her beauty.

The King of Prussia is a cavalier, who cares more for pretty ladies

than for genius. So Monsieur and Madame K---- were invited to the

royal table--an honor which was not accorded to Monsieur and Madame

Gudin.

"Humble representations were made to the monarch, advising him not to

make such a marked distinction between the French artist and the Dutch

amateur. These failing, the wise counsellors went to Madame Gudin,

and, intimating that they did so with the good-will of the king, said

that she might be received as cousin to the Duke of Wellington, as

daughter of an English general, and of a family which dates back to

the thirteenth century. She could, if she wished, avail herself of her

rights of birth to obtain the same honors with Madame K----. To sit at

the table of the king, she need only cease for a moment to be Madame

Gudin, and become once more Lady L----."

Does not all this sound like a history of the seventeenth century?

Surely etiquette was never maintained in a more arrogant manner at the

court of Louis XIV.

But Madame Gudin replied that her highest pride lay in the celebrated

name which she bears at present; that she did not wish to rely on any

other to obtain so futile a distinction, and that, in her eyes, the

most noble escutcheon was the palette of her husband.

I need not say that this dignified feeling was not comprehended.

Madame Gudin was not received at the table, but she had shown the

nobleness of her character. For the rest, Madame K----, on arriving at

Paris, had the bad taste to boast of having been distinguished above

Madame Gudin, and the story reaching the Tuileries, where Monsieur and

Madame Gudin are highly favored, excited no little mirth in the circle

there.

"ELLEN: OR, FORGIVE AND FORGET."

We notice this coarsely-written little fiction because it is one of a

class which we see growing with pleasure. We see it with pleasure,

because, in its way, it is genuine. It is a transcript of the crimes,

calumnies, excitements, half-blind love of right, and honest

indignation at the sort of wrong which it can discern, to be found in

the class from which it emanates.

That class is a large one in our country villages, and these books

reflect its thoughts and manners as half-penny ballads do the life of

the streets of London. The ballads are not more true to the facts; but

they give us, in a coarser form, far more of the spirit than we get

from the same facts reflected in the intellect of a Dickens, for

instance, or of any writer far enough above the scene to be properly

its artist.

So, in this book, we find what Cooper, Miss Sedgwick and Mrs.

Kirkland, might see, as the writer did, but could hardly believe in

enough to speak of it with such fidelity.

It is a current superstition that country people are more pure and

healthy in mind and body than those who live in cities. It may be so

in countries of old-established habits, where a genuine peasantry have

inherited some of the practical wisdom and loyalty of the past, with

most of its errors. We have our doubts, though, from the stamp upon

literature, always the nearest evidence of truth we can get, whether,

even there, the difference between town and country life is as much in

favor of the latter as is generally supposed. But in our land, where

the country is at present filled with a mixed population, who come

seeking to be purified by a better life and culture from all the ills

and diseases of the worst forms of civilization, things often

_look_ worse than in the city; perhaps because men have more time

and room to let their faults grow and offend the light of day.

There are exceptions, and not a few; but, in a very great proportion

of country villages, the habits of the people, as to food, air, and

even exercise, are ignorant and unhealthy to the last degree. Their

want of all pure faith, and appetite for coarse excitement, is shown

by continued intrigues, calumnies, and crimes.

We have lived in a beautiful village, where, more favorably placed

than any other person in it, both as to withdrawal from bad

associations and nearness to good, we heard inevitably, from

domestics, work-people, and school-children, more ill of human nature

than we could possibly sift were we to elect such a task from all the

newspapers of this city, in the same space of time.

We believe the amount of ill circulated by means of anonymous letters,

as described in this book, to be as great as can be imported in all

the French novels (and that is a bold word). We know ourselves of two

or three cases of morbid wickedness, displayed by means of anonymous

letters, that may vie with what puzzled the best wits of France in a

famous law-suit not long since. It is true, there is, to balance all

this, a healthy rebound,--a surprise and a shame; and there are

heartily good people, such as are described in this book, who, having

taken a direction upward, keep it, and cannot be bent downward nor

aside. But, then, the reverse of the picture is of a blackness that

would appall one who came to it with any idyllic ideas of the purity

and peaceful loveliness of agricultural life.

But what does this prove? Only the need of a dissemination of all that

is best, intellectually and morally, through the whole people. Our

groves and fields have no good fairies or genii who teach, by legend

or gentle apparition, the truths, the principles, that can alone

preserve the village, as the city, from the possession of the fiend.

Their place must be taken by the school-master, and he must be one who

knows not only "readin', writin', and 'rithmetic," but the service of

God and the destiny of man. Our people require a thoroughly-diffused

intellectual life, a religious aim, such as no people at large ever

possessed before; else they must sink till they become dregs, rather

than rise to become the cream of creation, which they are too apt to

flatter themselves with the fancy of being already.

The most interesting fiction we have ever read in this coarse, homely,

but genuine class, is one called "Metallek." It may be in circulation

in this city; but we bought it in a country nook, and from a pedlar;

and it seemed to belong to the country. Had we met with it in any

other way, it would probably have been to throw it aside again

directly, for the author does not know how to write English, and the

first chapters give no idea of his power of apprehending the poetry of

life. But happening to read on, we became fixed and charmed, and have

retained from its perusal the sweetest picture of life lived in this

land, ever afforded us, out of the pale of personal observation. That

such things are, private observation has made us sure; but the writers

of books rarely seem to have seen them; rarely to have walked alone in

an untrodden path long enough to hold commune with the spirit of the

scene.

In this book you find the very life; the most vulgar prose, and the

most exquisite poetry. You follow the hunter in his path, walking

through the noblest and fairest scenes only to shoot the poor animals

that were happy there, winning from the pure atmosphere little benefit

except to good appetite, sleeping at night in the dirty hovels, with

people who burrow in them to lead a life but little above that of the

squirrels end foxes. There is throughout that air of room enough, and

free if low forms of human nature, which, at such times, makes

bearable all that would otherwise be so repulsive.

But when we come to the girl who is the presiding deity, or rather the

tutelary angel of the scene, how are all discords harmonized; how all

its latent music poured forth! It is a portrait from the life--it has

the mystic charm of fulfilled reality, how far beyond the fairest

ideals ever born of thought! Pure, and brilliantly blooming as the

flower of the wilderness, she, in like manner, shares while she

sublimes its nature. She plays round the most vulgar and rude beings,

gentle and caressing, yet unsullied; in her wildness there is nothing

cold or savage; her elevation is soft and warm. Never have we seen

natural religion more beautifully expressed; never so well discerned

the influence of the natural nun, who needs no veil or cloister to

guard from profanation the beauty she has dedicated to God, and which

only attracts human love to hallow it into the divine.

The lonely life of the girl after the death of her parents,--her

fearlessness, her gay and sweet enjoyment of nature, her intercourse

with the old people of the neighborhood, her sisterly conduct towards

her "suitors,"--all seem painted from the life; but the death-bed

scene seems borrowed from some sermon, and is not in harmony with the

rest.

In this connection we must try to make amends for the stupidity of an

earlier notice of the novel, called "Margaret, or the Real and Ideal,"

&c. At the time of that notice we had only looked into it here and

there, and did no justice to a work full of genius, profound in its

meaning, and of admirable fidelity to nature in its details. Since

then we have really read it, and appreciated the sight and

representation of soul-realities; and we have lamented the long delay

of so true a pleasure.

A fine critic said, "This is a Yankee novel; or rather let it be

called _the_ Yankee novel, as nowhere else are the thought and

dialect of our villages really represented." Another discovered that

it must have been written in Maine, by the perfection with which

peculiar features of scenery there are described.

A young girl could not sufficiently express her delight at the simple

nature with which scenes of childhood are given, and especially at

Margaret's first going to meeting. She had never elsewhere found

written down what she had felt.

A mature reader, one of the most spiritualized and harmonious minds we

have ever met, admires the depth and fulness in which the workings of

the spirit through the maiden's life are seen by the author, and shown

to us; but laments the great apparatus with which the consummation of

the whole is brought about, and the formation of a new church and

state, before the time is yet ripe, under the banner of Mons. Christi.

But all these voices, among those most worthy to be heard, find in the

book a _real presence_, and draw from it auspicious omens that an

American literature is possible even in our day, because there are

already in the mind here existent developments worthy to see the

light, gold-fishes amid the moss in the still waters.

For ourselves, we have been most charmed with the way the Real and

Ideal are made to weave and shoot rays through one another, in which

Margaret bestows on external nature what she receives through books,

and wins back like gifts in turn, till the pond and the mythology are

alternate sections of the same chapter. We delight in the teachings

she receives through Chilion and his violin, till on the grave of "one

who tried to love his fellow-men" grows up the full white rose-flower

of her life. The ease with which she assimilates the city life when in

it, making it a part of her imaginative tapestry, is a sign of the

power to which she has grown.

We have much more to think and to say of the book, as a whole, and in

parts; and should the mood and summer leisure ever permit a familiar

and intimate acquaintance with it, we trust they will be both thought

and said. For the present, we will only add that it exhibits the same

state of things, and strives to point out such remedies as we have

hinted at in speaking of the little book which heads this notice;

itself a rude charcoal sketch, but if read as hieroglyphics are,

pointing to important meanings and results.

"COURRIER DES ETATS UNIS."

No other nation can hope to vie with the French in the talent of

communicating information with ease, vivacity and consciousness. They

must always be the best narrators and the best interpreters, so far as

presenting a clear statement of outlines goes. Thus they are excellent

in conversation, lectures, and journalizing.

After we know all the news of the day, it is still pleasant to read

the bulletin of the _"Courrier des Etats Unis."_ We rarely agree

with the view taken; but as a summary it is so excellently well done,

every topic put in its best place, with such a light and vigorous

hand, that we have the same pleasure we have felt in fairy tales, when

some person under trial is helped by a kind fairy to sort the silks

and feathers to their different places, till the glittering confusion

assumes the order,--of a kaleidoscope.

Then, what excellent correspondents they have in Paris! What a

humorous and yet clear account we have before us, now, of the Thiers

game! We have traced Guizot through every day with the utmost

distinctness, and see him perfectly in the sick-room. Now, here is

Thiers, playing with his chess-men, Jesuits, &c. A hundred clumsy

English or American papers could not make the present crisis in Paris

so clear as we see it in the glass of these nimble Frenchmen.

Certainly it is with newspaper-writing as with food; the English and

Americans have as good appetites, but do not, and never will, know so

well how to cook as the French. The Parisian correspondent of the

_"Schnellpost"_ also makes himself merry with the play of M.

Thiers. Both speak with some feeling of the impressive utterance of

Lamartine in the late debates. The Jesuits stand their ground, but

there is a wave advancing which will not fail to wash away what ought

to go,--nor are its roarings, however much in advance of the wave

itself, to be misinterpreted by intelligent ears. The world is raising

its sleepy lids, and soon no organization can exist which from its

very nature interferes in any way with the good of the whole.

In Germany the terrors of the authorities are more and more directed

against the communists. They are very anxious to know what communism

really is, or means. They have almost forgotten, says the

correspondent, the repression of the Jews, and like objects, in this

new terror. Meanwhile, the Russian Emperor has issued an edict,

commanding the Polish Jews, both men and women, to lay aside their

national garb. He hopes thus to mingle them with the rest of the mass

he moves. It will be seen whether such work can be done by beginning

upon the outward man.

The Paris correspondent of the _"Courrier,"_ who gives an account

of amusements, has always many sprightly passages illustrative of the

temper of the times. Horse-races are now the fashion, in which he

rejoices, as being likely to give to France good horses of her own. A

famous lottery is on the point of coming off,--to give an organ to the

Church of St. Eustache,--on which it does not require a very high tone

of morals to be severe. A public exhibition has been made of the

splendid array of prizes, including every article of luxury, from

jewels and cashmere shawls down to artificial flowers.

A nobleman, president of the Horticultural Society, had given an

entertainment, in which the part of the different flowers was acted by

beautiful women, that of fruit and vegetables by distinguished men.

Such an amusement would admit of much light grace and wit, which may

still be found in France, if anywhere in the world.

There is also an amusing story of the stir caused among the French

political leaders by the visit of a nobleman of one of the great

English families, to Paris. "He had had several audiences, previous to

his departure from London, of Queen Victoria; he received a despatch

daily from the English court. But in reply to all overtures made to

induce him to open his mission, he preserved a gloomy silence. All

attentions, all signs of willing confidence, are lavished on him in

vain. France is troubled. 'Has England,' thought she, 'a secret from

us, while we have none from her?' She was on the point of inventing

one, when, lo! the secret mission turns out to be the preparation of a

ball-dress, with whose elegance, fresh from Parisian genius, her

Britannic majesty wished to dazzle and surprise her native realm."

'T is a pity Americans cannot learn the grace which decks these

trifling jests with so much prettiness. Till we can import something

of that, we have no right to rejoice in French fashions and French

wines. Such a nervous, driving nation as we are, ought to learn to fly

along gracefully, on the light, fantastic toe. Can we not learn

something of the English beside the knife and fork conventionalities

which, with them, express a certain solidity of fortune and resolve?

Can we not get from the French something beside their worst novels?

"COURRIER DES ETATS UNIS."

OUR PROTEGEE, QUEEN VICTORIA.

The _Courrier_ laughs, though with features somewhat too

disturbed for a graceful laugh, at a notice, published a few days

since in the _Tribune_, of one of its jests which scandalized the

American editor. It does not content itself with a slight notice, but

puts forth a manifesto, in formidably large type, in reply.

With regard to the jest itself, we must remark that Mr. Greeley saw

this only in a translation, where it had lost whatever of light and

graceful in its manner excused a piece of raillery very coarse in its

substance. We will admit that, had he seen it as it originally stood,

connected with other items in the playful chronicle of Pierre Durand,

it would have impressed him differently.

But the cause of irritation in the _Courrier_, and of the sharp

repartees of its manifesto, is, probably, what was said of the

influence among us of "French literature and French morals," to which

the "organ of the French-American population" felt called on to make a

spirited reply, and has done so with less of wit and courtesy than

could have been expected from the organ of a people who, whatever may

be their faults, are at least acknowledged in wit and courtesy

preeminent. We hope that the French who come to us will not become, in

these respects, Americanized, and substitute the easy sneer, and use

of such terms as "ridiculous," "virtuous misanthropy," &c., for the

graceful and poignant raillery of their native land, which tickles

even where it wounds.

We may say, in reply to the _Courrier_, that if Fourierism

"recoils towards a state of nature," it arises largely from the fact

that its author lived in a country where the natural relations are, if

not more cruelly, at least more lightly violated, than in any other of

the civilized world. The marriage of convention has done its natural

office in sapping the morals of France, till breach of the marriage

vow has become one of the chief topics of its daily wit, one of the

acknowledged traits of its manners, and a favorite--in these modern

times we might say the favorite--subject of its works of fiction. From

the time of Moliere, himself an agonized sufferer behind his comic

mask from the infidelities of a wife he was not able to cease to love,

through memoirs, novels, dramas, and the volleyed squibs of the press,

one fact stares us in the face as one of so common occurrence, that

men, if they have not ceased to suffer in heart and morals from its

poisonous action, have yet learned to bear with a shrug and a careless

laugh that marks its frequency. Understand, we do not say that the

French are the most deeply stained with vice of all nations. We do not

think them so. There are others where there is as much, but there is

none where it is so openly acknowledged in literature, and therefore

there is none whose literature alone is so likely to deprave

inexperienced minds, by familiarizing them with wickedness before they

have known the lure and the shock of passion. And we believe that this

is the very worst way for youth to be misled, since the miasma thus

pervades the whole man, and he is corrupted in head and heart at once,

without one strengthening effort at resistance.

Were it necessary, we might substantiate what we say by quoting from

the _Courrier_ within the last fortnight, jokes and stories such

as are not to be found so _frequently_ in the prints of any

other nation. There is the story of the girl Adelaide, which, at

another time, we mean to quote, for its terrible pathos. There is a

man on trial for the murder of his wife, of whom the witnesses say,

"he was so fond of her you would never have known she was his wife!"

Here is one, only yesterday, where a man kills a woman to whom he was

married by his relatives at eighteen, she being much older, and

disagreeable to him, but their properties matching. After twelve

years' marriage, he can no longer support the yoke, and kills both her

and her father, and "his only regret is that he cannot kill all who

had anything to do with the match."

Either infidelity or such crimes are the natural result of marriages

made as they are in France, by agreement between the friends, without

choice of the parties. It is this horrible system, and not a native

incapacity for pure and permanent relations, that leads to such

results.

We must observe, _en passant_, that this man was the father of

five children by this hated woman--a wickedness not peculiar to France

or any nation, and which cannot foil to do its work of filling the

world with sickly, weak, or depraved beings, who have reason to curse

their brutal father that he does not murder them as well as their

wretched mother,--who, more unhappy than the victim of seduction, is

made the slave of sense in the name of religion and law.

The last steamer brings us news of the disgrace of Victor Hugo, one of

the most celebrated of the literary men of France, and but lately

created one of her peers. The affair, however, is to be publicly

"hushed up."

But we need not cite many instances to prove, what is known to the

whole world, that these wrongs are, if not more frequent, at least

more lightly treated by the French, in literature and discourse, than

by any nation of Europe. This being the case, can an American, anxious

that his country should receive, as her only safeguard from endless

temptations, good moral instruction and mental food, be otherwise than

grieved at the promiscuous introduction among us of their writings?

We know that there are in France good men, pure books, true wit. But

there is an immensity that is bad, and more hurtful to our farmers,

clerks and country milliners, than to those to whose tastes it was

originally addressed,--as the small-pox is most fatal among the wild

men of the woods,--and this, from the unprincipled cupidity of

publishers, is broad-cast recklessly over all the land we had hoped

would become a healthy asylum for those before crippled and tainted by

hereditary abuses. This cannot be prevented; we can only make head

against it, and show that there is really another way of thinking and

living,--ay, and another voice for it in the world. We are naturally

on the alert, and if we sometimes start too quickly, that is better

than to play "_Le noir Faineant_"--(The Black Sluggard).

We are displeased at the unfeeling manner in which the _Courrier_

speaks of those whom he calls _our models_. He did not misunderstand

us, and some things he says on this subject deserve and suggest a retort

that would be bitter. But we forbear, because it would injure the

innocent with the guilty. The _Courrier_ ranks the editor of

the _Tribune_ among "the men who have undertaken an ineffectual

struggle against the perversities of this lower world." By _ineffectual_

we presume he means that it has never succeeded in exiling evil from

this lower world. We are proud to be ranked among the band of those

who at least, in the ever-memorable words of Scripture, have "done what

they could" for this purpose. To this band belong all good men of all

countries, and France has contributed no small contingent of those whose

purpose was noble, whose lives were healthy, and whose minds, even in

their lightest moods, pure. We are better pleased to act as sutler or

pursuivant of this band, whose strife the _Courrier_ thinks so

_impuissante_, than to reap the rewards of efficiency on the other

side. There is not too much of this salt, in proportion to the whole

mass that needs to be salted, nor are "occasional accesses of virtuous

misanthropy" the worst of maladies in a world that affords such abundant

occasion for it.

In fine, we disclaim all prejudice against the French nation. We feel

assured that all, or almost all, impartial minds will acquiese in what

we say as to the tone of lax morality, in reference to marriage, so

common in their literature. We do not like it, in joke or in earnest;

neither are we of those to whom vice "loses most of its deformity by

losing all its grossness." If there be a deep and ulcerated wound, we

think the more "the richly-embroidered veil" is torn away the better.

Such a deep social wound exists in France; we wish its cure, as we

wish the health of all nations and of all men; so far indeed would we

"recoil towards a state of nature." We believe that nature wills

marriage and parentage to be kept sacred. The fact of their not being

so is to us not a pleasant subject of jest; and we should really pity

the first lady of England for injury here, though she be a queen;

while the ladies of the French court, or of Parisian society, if they

willingly lend themselves to be the subject of this style of jest, or

find it agreeable when made, must be to us the cause both of pity, and

disgust. We are not unaware of the great and beautiful qualities

native to the French--of their chivalry, their sweetness of temper,

their rapid, brilliant and abundant genius. We would wish to see these

qualities restored to their native lustre, and not receive the base

alloy which has long stained the virginity of the gold.

ON BOOKS OF TRAVEL.

[Footnote: It need not be said, probably, that

Margaret Fuller did not think the fact that books of travel by women

have generally been piquant and lively rather than discriminating and

instructive, a result of their nature, and therefore unavoidable; on

the contrary, she regarded woman as naturally more penetrating than

man, and the fact that in journeying she would see more of home-life

than he, would give her a great advantage,--but she did believe woman

needed a wider culture, and then she would not fail to _excel_ in

writing books of travels. The merits now in such works she considered

striking and due to woman's natural quickness and availing herself of

all her facilities, and any deficiencies simply proved the need of a

broader education.--[EDIT.]]

Among those we have, the best, as to observation of particulars and

lively expression, are by women. They are generally ill prepared as

regards previous culture, and their scope is necessarily narrower than

that of men, but their tact and quickness help them a great deal. You

can see their minds grow by what they feed on, when they travel. There

are many books of travel, by women, that are, at least, entertaining,

and contain some penetrating and just observations. There has, however,

been none since Lady Mary Wortley Montague, with as much talent,

liveliness, and preparation to observe in various ways, as she had.

A good article appeared lately in one of the English periodicals,

headed by a long list of travels by women. It was easy to observe that

the personality of the writer was the most obvious thing in each and

all of these books, and that, even in the best of them, you travelled

with the writer as a charming or amusing companion, rather than as an

accomplished or instructed guide.

REVIEW OF "MEMOIRS AND ESSAYS, BY MRS. JAMESON."

Mrs. Jameson appears to be growing more and more desperately modest,

if we may judge from the motto:

"What if the little rain should say,

'So small a drop as I

Can ne'er refresh the thirsty plain,--

I'll tarry in the sky'"

and other superstitious doubts and disclaimers proffered in the course

of the volume. We thought the time had gone by when it was necessary

to plead "request of friends" for printing, and that it was understood

now-a-days that, from the facility of getting thoughts into print,

literature has become not merely an archive for the preservation of

great thoughts, but a means of general communication between all

classes of minds, and all grades of culture.

If writers write much that is good, and write it well, they are read

much and long; if the reverse, people simply pass them by, and go in

search of what is more interesting. There needs be no great fuss about

publishing or not publishing. Those who forbear may rather be

considered the vain ones, who wish to be distinguished among the

crowd. Especially this extreme modesty looks superfluous in a person

who knows her thoughts have been received with interest for ten or

twelve years back. We do not like this from Mrs. Jameson, because we

think she would be amazed if others spoke of her as this little humble

flower, doubtful whether it ought to raise its head to the light. She

should leave such affectations to her aunts; they were the fashion in

their day.

It is very true, however, that she should _not_ have published

the very first paragraph in her book, which presents an inaccuracy and

shallowness of thought quite amazing in a person of her fine

perceptions, talent and culture. We allude to the contrast she

attempts to establish between Raphael and Titian, in placing mind in

contradistinction to beauty, as if beauty were merely physical. Of

course she means no such thing; but the passage means this or nothing,

and, as an opening to a paper on art, is indeed reprehensible and

fallacious.

The rest of this paper, called the House of Titian, is full of

pleasant chat, though some of the judgments--that passed on

Canaletti's pictures, for instance--are opposed to those of persons of

the purest taste; and in other respects, such as in speaking of the

railroad to Venice, Mrs. Jameson is much less wise than those over

whom she assumes superiority. The railroad will destroy Venice; the

two things cannot coexist; and those who do not look upon that

wondrous dream in this age, will, probably, find only vestiges of its

existence.

The picture of Adelaide Kemble is very pretty, though there is an

attempt of a sort too common with Mrs. Jameson to make more of the

subject than it deserves. Adelaide Kemble was not the true artist, or

she could not so soon or so lightly have stept into another sphere.

It is enough to paint her as a lovely woman, and a woman-genius. The

true artist cannot forswear his vocation; Heaven does not permit it;

the attempt makes him too unhappy, nor will he form ties with those

who can consent to such sacrilege. Adelaide Kemble loved art, but was

not truly an artist.

The "Xanthian Marbles," and "Washington Allston," are very pleasing

papers. The most interesting part, however, are the sentences copied

from Mr. Allston. These have his chaste, superior tone. We copy some

of them.

"What _light_ is in the natural world, such is _fame_ in the

intellectual,--both requiring an _atmosphere_ in order to become

perceptible. Hence the fame of Michel Angelo is to some minds a

nonentity; even as the Sun itself would be invisible _in vacuo_"

(A very pregnant statement, containing the true reason why "no man is

a hero to his valet de chambre.")

"Fame does not depend on the will of any man; but reputation may be

given and taken away; for fame is the sympathy of kindred intellects,

and sympathy is not a subject of _willing_; while reputation,

having its source in the popular voice, is a sentence which may be

altered or suppressed at pleasure. Reputation, being essentially

contemporaneous, is always at the mercy of the envious and ignorant.

But Fame, whose very birth is posthumous, and which is only known to

exist by the echoes of its footsteps through congenial minds, can

neither be increased nor diminished by any degree of wilfulness."

"An original mind is rarely understood until it has been

_reflected_ from some half-dozen congenial with it; so averse are

men to admitting the true in an unusual form; while any novelty,

however fantastic, however false, is greedily swallowed. Nor is this

to be wondered at, for all truth demands a response, and few people

care to _think_, yet they must have something to supply the place

of thought. Every mind would appear original if every man had the

power of projecting his own into the minds of others."

"All effort at originality must end either in the quaint or monstrous;

for no man knows himself as on original; he can only believe it on the

report of others to whom he is made known, as he is by the projecting

power before spoken of."

"There is an essential meanness in wishing to get the better of any

one. The only competition worthy of a wise man is with himself."

"Reverence is an ennobling sentiment; it is felt to be degrading only

by the vulgar mind, which would escape the sense of its own littleness

by elevating itself into the antagonist of what is above it."

"He that has no pleasure in looking up is not fit to look down; of

such minds are the mannerists in art, and in the world--the tyrants of

all sorts."

"Make no man your idol; for the best man must have faults, and his

faults will naturally become yours, in addition to your own. This is

as true in art as in morals."

"The Devil's heartiest laugh is at a detracting witticism. Hence the

phrase 'devilish good' has sometimes a literal meaning."

"Woman's Mission and Woman's Position" is an excellent paper, in which

plain truths ere spoken with an honorable straight-forwardness, and a

great deal of good feeling. We despise the woman who, knowing such

facts, is afraid to speak of them; yet we honor one, too, who does the

plain right thing, for she exposes herself to the assaults of

vulgarity, in a way painful to a person who has not strength to find

shelter and repose in her motives. We recommend this paper to the

consideration of all those, the unthinking, wilfully unseeing million,

who are in the habit of talking of "Woman's sphere," as if it really

were, at present, for the majority, one of protection, and the gentle

offices of home. The rhetorical gentlemen and silken dames, who, quite

forgetting their washerwomen, their seamstresses, and the poor

hirelings for the sensual pleasures of Man, that jostle them daily in

the streets, talk as if women need be fitted for no other chance than

that of growing like cherished flowers in the garden of domestic love,

are requested to look at this paper, in which the state of women, both

in the manufacturing and agricultural districts of England, is exposed

with eloquence, and just inferences drawn.

"This, then, is what I mean when I speak of the anomalous condition of

women in these days. I would point out, as a primary source of

incalculable mischief, the contradiction between her assumed and her

real position; between what is called her proper sphere by the laws of

God and Nature, and what has become her real sphere by the laws of

necessity, and through the complex relations of artificial existence.

In the strong language of Carlyle, I would say that 'Here is a lie

standing up in the midst of society.' I would say 'Down with it, even

to the ground;' for while this perplexing and barbarous anomaly

exists, fretting like an ulcer at the very heart of society, all new

specifics and palliatives are in vain. The question must be settled

one way or another; either let the man in all the relations of life be

held the natural guardian of the woman, constrained to fulfil that

trust, responsible in society for her well-being and her maintenance;

or, if she be liable to be thrust from the sanctuary of home, to

provide for herself through the exercise of such faculties as God has

given her, let her at least have fair play; let it not be avowed, in

the same breath that protection is necessary to her, and that it is

refused her; and while we send her forth into the desert, and bind the

burthen on her back, and put the staff in her hand, let not her steps

be beset, her limbs fettered, and her eyes blindfolded." Amen.

The sixth and last of these papers, on the relative social position of

"mothers and governesses," exhibits in true and full colors a state of

things in England, beside which the custom in some parts of China of

drowning female infants looks mild, generous, and refined;--an

accursed state of things, beneath whose influence nothing can, and

nothing ought to thrive. Though this paper, of which we have not

patience to speak further at this moment, is valuable from putting the

facts into due relief, it is very inferior to the other, and shows the

want of thoroughness and depth in Mrs. Jameson's intellect. She has

taste, feeling and knowledge, but she cannot think out a subject

thoroughly, and is unconsciously tainted and hampered by

conventionalities. Her advice to the governesses reads like a piece of

irony, but we believe it was not meant as such. Advise them to be

burnt at the stake at once, rather than submit to this slow process of

petrifaction. She is as bad as the Reports of the "Society for the

relief of distressed and dilapidated Governesses." We have no more

patience. We must go to England ourselves, and see these victims under

the water torture. Till then, a Dieu!

WOMAN'S INFLUENCE OVER THE INSANE.

In reference to what is said of entrusting an infant to the insane, we

must relate a little tale which touched the heart in childhood from

the eloquent lips of the mother.

The minister of the village had a son of such uncommon powers that the

slender means on which the large family lived were strained to the

utmost to send him to college. The boy prized the means of study as

only those under such circumstances know how to prize them; indeed,

far beyond their real worth; since, by excessive study, prolonged

often at the expense of sleep, he made himself insane.

All may conceive the feelings of the family when their star returned

to them again, shorn of its beams; their pride, their hard-earned

hope, sunk to a thing so hopeless, so helpless, that there could be

none so poor to do him reverence. But they loved him, and did what the

ignorance of the time permitted. There was little provision then for

the treatment of such cases, and what there was was of a kind that

they shrunk from resorting to, if it could be avoided. They kept him

at home, giving him, during the first months, the freedom of the

house; but on his making an attempt to kill his father, and confessing

afterwards that his old veneration had, as is so often the case in

these affections, reacted morbidly to its opposite, so that he never

saw a once-loved parent turn his back without thinking how he could

rush upon him and do him an injury, they felt obliged to use harsher

measures, and chained him to a post in one room of the house.

There, so restrained, without exercise or proper medicine, the fever

of insanity came upon him in its wildest form. He raved, shrieked,

struck about him, and tore off all the raiment that was put upon him.

One of his sisters, named Lucy, whom he had most loved when well, had

now power to soothe him. He would listen to her voice, and give way to

a milder mood when she talked or sang. But this favorite sister

married, went to her new home, and the maniac became wilder, more

violent than ever.

After two or three years, she returned, bringing with her on infant.

She went into the room where the naked, blaspheming, raging object was

confined. He knew her instantly, and felt joy at seeing her.

"But, Lucy," said he, suddenly, "is that your baby you have in your

arms? Give it to me, I want to hold it!"

A pang of dread and suspicion shot through the young mother's

heart,--she turned pale and faint. Her brother was not at that moment

so mad that he could not understand her fears.

"Lucy," said he, "do you suppose I would hurt _your_ child?"

His sister had strength of mind and of heart; she could not resist the

appeal, and hastily placed the child in his arms. Poor fellow! he held

it awhile, stroked its little face, and melted into tears, the first

he had shed since his insanity.

For some time after that he was better, and probably, had he been

under such intelligent care as may be had at present, the crisis might

have been followed up, and a favorable direction given to his disease.

But the subject was not understood then, and, having once fallen mad,

he was doomed to live and die a madman.

FROM A CRITICISM ON BROWNING'S POEMS.

* * * * "The return of the Druses," a "Blot in the 'Scutcheon," and

"Colombo's Birthday," all have the same originality of conception,

delicate penetration into the mysteries of human feeling, atmospheric

individuality, and skill in picturesque detail. All three exhibit very

high and pure ideas of Woman, and a knowledge, very rare in man, of

the ways in which what is peculiar in her office and nature works. Her

loftiest elevation does not, in his eyes, lift her out of nature. She

becomes, not a mere saint, but the goddess-queen of nature. Her purity

is not cold, like marble, but the healthy, gentle energy of the

flower, instinctively rejecting what is not fit for it, with no need

of disdain to dig a gulf between it and the lower forms of creation.

Her office to man is that of the muse, inspiring him to all good

thoughts and deeds. The passions that sometimes agitate these maidens

of his verso are the surprises of noble hearts unprepared for evil;

and even their mistakes cannot cost bitter tears to their attendant

angels.

The girl in the "Return of the Druses" is the sort of nature Byron

tried to paint in Myrrha. But Byron could only paint women as they

were to him. Browning can show what they are in themselves. In "A Blot

in the 'Scutcheon," we see a lily, storm-struck, half-broken, but

still a lily. In "Colombe's Birthday," a queenly rose-bud, which

expands into the full-glowing rose before our eyes. It is marvellous

in this drama how the characters are unfolded to us by the crisis,

which not only exhibits, but calls to life, the higher passions and

the thoughts which were latent within them.

We bless the poet for these pictures of women, which, however the

common tone of society, by the grossness and levity of the remarks

bandied from tongue to tongue, would seem to say to the contrary,

declare there is still in the breasts of men a capacity for pure and

exalting passion,--for immortal tenderness.

Of Browning's delicate sheaths of meaning within meaning, which must

be opened slowly, petal by petal, as we seek the heart of a flower,

and the spirit-like, distant breathings of his lute, familiar with the

secrets of shores distant and enchanted, a sense can only be gained by

reading him a great deal; and we wish "Bells and Pomegranates" might

be brought within the reach of all who have time and soul to wait and

listen for such!

CHRISTMAS.

Our festivals come rather too near together, since we have so few of

them;--Thanksgiving, Christmas-day, New-Years'-day, and then none

again till July. We know not but these four, with the addition of a

"day set apart for fasting and prayer," might answer the purposes of

rest and edification as well as a calendar full of saints' days, if

they were observed in a better spirit. But, Thanksgiving is devoted to

good dinners; Christmas and New-Years' days to making presents and

compliments; Fast-day to playing at cricket and other games, and the

Fourth of July to boasting of the past, rather than to plans how to

deserve its benefits and secure its fruits.

We value means of marking time by appointed days, because man, on one

side of his nature so ardent and aspiring, is on the other so indolent

and slippery a being, that he needs incessant admonitions to redeem

the time. Time flows on steadily, whether _he_ regards it or not;

yet, unless _he keep time_, there is no music in that flow. The

sands drop with inevitable speed; yet each waits long enough to

receive, if it be ready, the intellectual touch that should turn it to

a sand of gold.

Time, says the Grecian fable, is the parent of Power, Power is the

father of Genius and Wisdom. Time, then, is grandfather of the noblest

of the human family; and we must respect the aged sire whom we see on

the frontispiece of the almanacs, and believe his scythe was meant to

mow down harvests ripened for an immortal use.

Yet the best provision made by the mind of society at large for these

admonitions soon loses its efficacy, and requires that individual

earnestness, individual piety, should continually reinforce the most

beautiful form. The world has never seen arrangements which might more

naturally offer good suggestions than those of the Church of Rome. The

founders of that church stood very near a history radiant at every

page with divine light. All their rites and ceremonial days illustrate

facts of an universal interest. But the life with which piety first,

and afterwards the genius of great artists, invested these symbols,

waned at last, except to a thoughtful few. Reverence was forgotten in

the multitude of genuflexions; the rosary became a string of beads

rather than a series of religious meditations; and the "glorious

company of saints and martyrs" were not regarded so much as the

teachers of heavenly truth, as intercessors to obtain for their

votaries the temporal gifts they craved.

Yet we regret that some of those symbols had not been more reverenced

by Protestants, as the possible occasion of good thoughts, and, among

others, we regret that the day set apart to commemorate the birth of

Jesus should have been stript, even by those who observe it, of many

impressive and touching accessories.

If ever there was an occasion on which the arts could become all but

omnipotent in the service of a holy thought, it is this of the birth

of the child Jesus. In the palmy days of the Catholic religion they

may be said to have wrought miracles in its behalf; and in our colder

time, when we rather reflect that light from a different point of view

than transport ourselves into it, who, that has an eye and ear

faithful to the soul, is not conscious of inexhaustible benefits from

some of the works by which sublime geniuses have expressed their

ideas?--in the adorations of the Magi and the Shepherds, in the Virgin

with the infant Jesus, or that work which expresses what Christendom

at large has not begun to realize,--that work which makes us

conscious, as we listen, why the soul of man was thought worthy and

able to upbear a cross of such dreadful weight,--the Messiah of

Handel.

Christmas would seem to be the day peculiarly sacred to children; and

something of this feeling is beginning to show itself among us, though

rather from German influence than of native growth. The ever-green

tree is often reared for the children on Christmas evening, and its

branches cluster with little tokens that may, at least, give them a

sense that the world is rich, and that there are some in it who care

to bless them. It is a charming sight to see their glistening eyes,

and well worth much trouble in preparing the Christmas-tree.

Yet, on this occasion, as on all others, we should like to see

pleasure offered to them in a form less selfish than it is. When shall

we read of banquets prepared for the halt, the lame, and the blind, on

the day that is said to have brought _their_ friend into the

world? When will children be taught to ask all the cold and ragged

little ones whom they have seen during the day wistfully gazing at the

shop-windows, to share the joys of Christmas-eve?

We borrow the Christmas-tree from Germany; might we but borrow with it

that feeling which pervades all their stories, about the influence of

the Christ-child, and has, I doubt not (for the spirit of literature

is always, though refined, the essence of popular life), pervaded the

conduct of children there.

We will mention two of these as happily expressive of different sides

of the desirable character. One is a legend of the saint Hermann

Joseph. The legend runs that this saint, when a little boy, passed

daily by a niche where was an image of the Virgin and Child, and

delighted there to pay his devotions. His heart was so drawn towards

the holy child that one day, having received what seemed to him a gift

truly precious, a beautiful red and yellow apple, he ventured to offer

it, with his prayer. To his unspeakable delight the child put forth

his hand and took the apple. After that day, never was a gift bestowed

upon the little Hermann, that was not carried to the same place. He

needed nothing for himself, but dedicated all his childish goods to

the altar.

After a while he was in trouble. His father, who was a poor man, found

it necessary to take him from school, and bind him to a trade. He

communicated his woes to his friends of the niche, and the Virgin

comforted him like a mother, and bestowed on him money, by means of

which he rose to be a learned and tender Shepherd of men.

Another still more touching story is that of the holy Rupert. Rupert

was the only child of a princely house, and had something to give

besides apples. But his generosity and human love were such that, as a

child, he could never see poor children suffering without despoiling

himself of all he had with him in their behalf. His mother was, at

first, displeased with this; but when he replied, "They are thy

children too," her reproofs yielded to tears.

One time, when he had given away his coat to a poor child, he got

wearied and belated on his homeward way. He lay down a while and fell

asleep. Then he dreamed that he was on a river-shore, and saw a mild

and noble old man bathing many children. After he had plunged them

into the water, he would place them on a beautiful island, where they

looked white and glorious as little angels. Rupert was seized with a

strong desire to join them, and begged the old man to bathe him also

in the stream. But he was answered, "It is not yet time." Just then a

rainbow spanned the island, and in its arch was enthroned the child

Jesus, dressed in a coat that Rupert knew to be his own. And the child

said to the others, "See this coat; it is one which my brother Rupert

has just sent to me. He has given us many gifts from his love; shall

we not ask him to join us here?" And they shouted a musical "Yes!" and

Rupert started out of his dream. But he had lain too long on the damp

bank of the river without his coat, and cold and fever soon sent him

to join the band of his brothers in their home.

These are legends, superstitious, you will say. But, in casting aside

the shell, have we retained the kernel? The image of the child Jesus

is not seen in the open street. Does his heart find other means to

express itself there? Protestantism does not mean, we suppose, to

deaden the spirit in excluding the form.

The thought of Jesus, as a child, has great weight with children who

have learned to think of him at all. In thinking of him they form an

image of all that the morning of a pure and fervent life should be and

bring.

In former days I knew a boy-artist whose genius, at that time, showed

high promise. He was not more than fourteen years old--a pale, slight

boy, with a beaming eye. The hopes and sympathy of friends, gained by

his talent, had furnished him with a studio and orders for some

pictures. He had picked up from the streets a boy, still younger and

poorer than himself, to take care of the room and prepare his colors,

and the two boys were as content in their relation as Michael Angelo

with his Urbino. If you went there, you found exposed to view many

pretty pictures--"A Girl with a Dove," "The Guitar-player," and such

subjects as are commonly supposed to interest at his age. But, hid in

a corner, and never shown, unless to the beggar-page or some most

confidential friend, was the real object of his love and pride, the

slowly-growing work of secret hours. The subject of this picture was

Christ teaching the Doctors. And in those doctors he had expressed all

he had already observed of the pedantry and shallow conceit of those

in whom mature years have not unfolded the soul: and in the child, all

he felt that early youth should be and seek, though, alas! his own

feet failed him on the difficult road. This one record of the youth of

Jesus, had, at least, been much to his mind.

In earlier days the little saints thought they best imitated the

Emanuel by giving apples and cents; but we know not why, in our age,

that esteems itself so much enlightened, they should not become also

the givers of spiritual gifts. We see in them, continually, impulses

that only require a good direction to effect infinite good. See the

little girls at work for foreign missions; that is not useless; they

devote the time to a purpose that is not selfish; the horizon of their

thoughts is extended. But they are perfectly capable of becoming

home-missionaries as well. The principle of stewardship would make

them so.

I have seen a little girl of thirteen, who had much service, too, to

do for a hard-working mother, in the midst of a circle of poor

children whom she gathered daily to a morning school. She took them

from the door-steps and the gutters; she washed their faces and hands;

she taught them to read and sew, and told them stories that had

delighted her own infancy. In her face, though in feature and

complexion plain, was something already of a Madonna sweetness, and it

had no way eclipsed the gayety of childhood.

I have seen a boy, scarce older, brought up for some time with the

sons of laborers, who, so soon as he found himself possessed of

superior advantages, thought not of surpassing others, but of

excelling that he might be able to impart; and he was able to do it.

If the other boys had less leisure, and could pay for less

instruction, they did not suffer by it. He could not be happy unless

they also could enjoy Milton, and pass from nature to natural

philosophy. He performed, though in a childish way, and in no Grecian

garb, the part of Apollo amidst the herdsmen of Admetus.

The cause of education would be indefinitely furthered if, in addition

to formal means, there were but this principle awakened in the hearts

of the young, that what they have they must bestow. All are not

natural instructors, but a large proportion are; and those who do

possess such a talent are the best possible teachers to those a little

younger than themselves. Many have more patience with the difficulties

they have lately left behind, and enjoy their power of assisting more

than those further removed in age and knowledge do.

Then the intercourse may be far more congenial and profitable than

where the teacher receives for hire all sorts of pupils as they are

sent him by their guardians. Here be need only choose those who have a

predisposition for what he is best able to teach; and, as I would have

the so-called higher instruction as much diffused in this way as the

lower, there would be a chance of awakening all the power that now

lies latent.

If a girl, for instance, who has only a passable talent for music, but

who, from the advantage of social position, has been able to gain

thorough instruction, felt it her duty to teach whomsoever she know

that had a talent without money to cultivate it, the good is obvious.

Those who are learning, receive an immediate benefit by the effort to

rearrange and interpret what they learn; so the use of this justice

would be two-fold.

Some efforts are made here and there; nay, sometimes there are those

who can say they have returned usury for every gift of fate; and would

others make the same experiments, they might find Utopia not so far

off as the children of this world, wise in securing their own selfish

ease, would persuade us it must always be.

We have hinted what sort of Christmas-box we would wish for the

children; it must be one as full, as that of the Christ-child must be,

of the pieces of silver that were lost and are found. But Christmas

with its peculiar associations has deep interest for men and women no

less. At that time thus celebrated, a pure woman saw in her child what

the Son of man should be as a child of God. She anticipated fur him a

life of glory to God, peace and good-will towards men. In any young

mother's heart, who has any purity of heart, the same feelings arise.

But most of these mothers carelessly let them go without obeying their

instructions. If they did not, we should see other children, other men

than now throng our streets. The boy could not invariably disappoint

the mother, the man the wife, who steadily demanded of him such a

career.

And Man looks upon Woman, in this relation, always as he should. Does

he see in her a holy mother, worthy to guard the infancy of an

immortal soul? Then she assumes in his eyes those traits which the

Romish church loved to revere in Mary. Frivolity, base appetite,

contempt, are exorcised, and Man and Woman appear again, in unprofaned

connection, as brother and sister, children and servants of one Divine

Love, and pilgrims to a common aim.

Were all this right in the private sphere, the public would soon right

itself also, and the nations of Christendom might join in a

celebration such as "Kings and Prophets waited for," and so many

martyrs died to achieve, of Christ-mass.

CHILDREN'S BOOKS.

There is no branch of literature that better deserves cultivation, and

none that so little obtains it from worthy hands, as this of

Children's Books. It requires a peculiar development of the genius and

sympathies, rare among men of factitious life, who are not men enough

to revive with force and beauty the thoughts and scenes of childhood.

It is all idle to talk baby-talk, and give shallow accounts of deep

things, thinking thereby to interest the child. He does not like to be

too much puzzled; but it is simplicity be wants, not silliness. We

fancy their angels, who are always waiting in the courts of our

Father, smile somewhat sadly on the ignorance of those who would feed

them on milk and water too long, and think it would be quite as well

to give them a stone.

There is too much amongst us of the French way of palming off false

accounts of things on children, "to do them good," and showing nature

to them in a magic lantern "purified for the use of childhood," and

telling stories of sweet little girls and brave little boys,--O, all

so good, or so bad! and above all, so _little_, and everything

about them so little! Children accustomed to move in full-sized

apartments, and converse with full-grown men and women, do not need so

much of this baby-house style in their literature. They like, or would

like if they could get them, better things much more. They like the

_Arabian Nights_, and _Pilgrim's Progress_, and _Bunyan's

Emblems_, and _Shakspeare_, and the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_,--at least,

they used to like them; and if they do not now, it is because their

taste has been injured by so many sugar-plums. The books that were

written in the childhood of nations suit an uncorrupted childhood now.

They are simple, picturesque, robust. Their moral is not forced, nor

is the truth veiled with a well-meant but sure-to-fail hypocrisy.

Sometimes they are not moral at all,--only free plays of the fancy

and intellect. These, also, the child needs, just as the infant needs

to stretch its limbs, and grasp at objects it cannot hold. We have

become so fond of the moral, that we forget the nature in which it

must find its root; so fond of instruction, that we forget development.

Where ballads, legends, fairy-tales, are moral, the morality is

heart-felt; if instructive, it is from the healthy common sense of

mankind, and not for the convenience of nursery rule, nor the "peace

of schools and families."

O, that winter, freezing, snow-laden winter, which ushered in our

eighth birthday! There, in the lonely farm-house, the day's work done,

and the bright woodfire all in a glow, we were permitted to slide back

the panel of the cupboard in the wall,--most fascinating object still

in our eyes, with which no stateliest alcoved library can vie,--and

there saw, neatly ranged on its two shelves, not--praised be our natal

star!--_Peter Parley_, nor a History of the Good Little Boy who

never took anything that did not belong to him; but the

_Spectator_, _Telemachus_, _Goldsmith's Animated

Nature_, and the _Iliad_.

Forms of gods and heroes more distinctly seen, and with eyes of nearer

love then than now!--our true uncle, Sir Roger de Coverley, and ye,

fair realms of Nature's history, whose pictures we tormented all grown

persons to illustrate with more knowledge, still more,--how we bless

the chance that gave to us your great realities, which life has daily

helped us, helps us still, to interpret, instead of thin and baseless

fictions that would all this time have hampered us, though with only

cobwebs!

Children need some childish talk, some childish play, some childish

books. But they also need, and need more, difficulties to overcome,

and a sense of the vast mysteries which the progress of their

intelligence shall aid them to unravel. This sense is naturally their

delight, as it is their religion, and it must not be dulled by

premature explanations or subterfuges of any kind. There has been too

much of this lately.

Miss Edgeworth is an excellent writer for children. She is a child

herself, as she writes, nursed anew by her own genius. It is not by

imitating, but by reproducing childhood, that the writer becomes its

companion. Then, indeed, we have something especially good, for,

"Like wine, well-kept and long,

Heady, nor harsh, nor strong,

With each succeeding year is quaffed,

A richer, purer, mellower draught."

Miss Edgeworth's grown people live naturally with the children; they

do not talk to them continually about angels or flowers, but about the

things that interest themselves. They do not force them forward, nor

keep them back. The relations are simple and honorable; all ages in

the family seem at home under one roof and sheltered by one care.

The _Juvenile Miscellany_, formerly published by Mrs. Child, was

much and deservedly esteemed by children. It was a healthy, cheerful,

natural and entertaining companion to them.

We should censure too monotonously tender a manner in what is written

for children, and too constant an attention to moral influence. We

should prefer a larger proportion of the facts of natural or human

history, and that they should speak for themselves.

WOMAN IN POVERTY.

Woman, even less than Man, is what she should be as a whole. She is

not that self-centred being, full of profound intuitions, angelic

love, and flowing poesy, that she should be. Yet there are

circumstances in which the native force and purity of her being teach

her how to conquer where the restless impatience of Man brings defeat,

and leaves him crushed and bleeding on the field.

Images rise to mind of calm strength, of gentle wisdom learning from

every turn of adverse fate,--of youthful tenderness and faith undimmed

to the close of life, which redeem humanity and make the heart glow

with fresh courage as we write. They are mostly from obscure corners

and very private walks. There was nothing shining, nothing of an

obvious and sounding heroism to make their conduct doubtful, by

tainting their motives with vanity. Unknown they lived, untrumpeted

they died. Many hearts were warmed and fed by them, but perhaps no

mind but our own ever consciously took account of their virtues.

Had Art but the power adequately to tell their simple virtues, and to

cast upon them the light which, shining through those marked and faded

faces, foretold the glories of a second spring! The tears of holy

emotion which fell from those eyes have seemed to us pearls beyond all

price; or rather, whose price will be paid only when, beyond the

grave, they enter those better spheres in whose faith they felt and

acted here.

From this private gallery we will, for the present, bring forth but

one picture. That of a Black Nun was wont to fetter the eyes of

visitors in the royal galleries of France, and my Sister of Mercy,

too, is of that complexion. The old woman was recommended as a

laundress by my friend, who had long prized her. I was immediately

struck with the dignity and propriety of her manner. In the depth of

winter she brought herself the heavy baskets through the slippery

streets; and, when I asked her why she did not employ some younger

person to do what was so entirely disproportioned to her strength,

simply said, "she lived alone, and could not afford to hire an

errand-boy." "It was hard for her?" "No, she was fortunate in being

able to get work at her age, when others could do it better. Her

friends were very good to procure it for her." "Had she a comfortable

home?" "Tolerably so,--she should not need one long." "Was that a

thought of joy to her?" "Yes, for she hoped to see again the husband

and children from whom she had long been separated."

Thus much in answer to the questions, but at other times the little

she said was on general topics. It was not from her that I learnt how

the great idea of Duty had held her upright through a life of

incessant toil, sorrow, bereavement; and that not only she had

remained upright, but that her character had been constantly

progressive. Her latest act had been to take home a poor sick girl who

had no home of her own, and could not bear the idea of dying in a

hospital, and maintain and nurse her through the last weeks of her

life. "Her eye-sight was failing, and she should not be able to work

much longer,--but, then, God would provide. _Somebody_ ought to

see to the poor, motherless girl."

It was not merely the greatness of the act, for one in such

circumstances, but the quiet matter-of-course way in which it was

done, that showed the habitual tone of the mind, and made us feel that

life could hardly do more for a human being than to make him or her

the _somebody_ that is daily so deeply needed, to represent the

right, to do the plain right thing.

"God will provide." Yes, it is the poor who feel themselves near to

the God of love. Though he slay them, still do they trust him.

"I hope," said I to a poor apple-woman, who had been drawn on to

disclose a tale of distress that, almost in the mere hearing, made me

weary of life, "I hope I may yet see you in a happier condition."

"With God's help," she replied, with a smile that Raphael would have

delighted to transfer to his canvas; a Mozart, to strains of angelic

sweetness. All her life she had seemed an outcast child; still she

leaned upon a Father's love.

The dignity of a state like this may vary its form in, more or less

richness and beauty of detail, but here is the focus of what makes

life valuable. It is this spirit which makes poverty the best servant

to the ideal of human nature. I am content with this type, and will

only quote, in addition, a ballad I found in a foreign periodical,

translated from Chamisso, and which forcibly recalled my own laundress

as an equally admirable sample of the same class, the Ideal Poor,

which we need for our consolation, so long as there must be real

poverty.

"THE OLD WASHERWOMAN.

"Among yon lines her hands have laden,

A laundress with white hair appears,

Alert as many a youthful maiden,

Spite of her five-and-seventy years;

Bravely she won those white hairs, still

Eating the bread hard toll obtained her,

And laboring truly to fulfil

The duties to which God ordained her.

"Once she was young and full of gladness,

She loved and hoped,--was wooed and won;

Then came the matron's cares,--the sadness

No loving heart on earth may shun.

Three babes she bore her mate; she prayed

Beside his sick-bed,--he was taken;

She saw him in the church-yard laid,

Yet kept her faith and hope unshaken.

"The task her little ones of feeding

She met unfaltering from that hour;

She taught them thrift and honest breeding,

Her virtues were their worldly dower.

To seek employment, one by one,

Forth with her blessing they departed,

And she was in the world alone--

Alone and old, but still high-hearted.

"With frugal forethought; self-denying,

She gathered coin, and flax she bought,

And many a night her spindle plying,

Good store of fine-spun thread she wrought.

The thread was fashioned in the loom;

She brought it home, and calmly seated

To work, with not a thought of gloom,

Her decent grave-clothes she completed.

"She looks on them with fond elation;

They are her wealth, her treasure rare,

Her age's pride and consolation,

Hoarded with all a miser's care.

She dons the sark each Sabbath day,

To hear the Word that falleth never!

Well-pleased she lays it then away

Till she shall sleep in it forever!

"Would that my spirit witness bore me.

That, like this woman, I had done

The work my Master put before me

Duly from morn till set of sun!

Would that life's cup had been by me

Quaffed in such wise and happy measure,

And that I too might finally

Look on my shroud with such meek pleasure!"

Such are the noble of the earth. They do not repine, they do not

chafe, even in the inmost heart. They feel that, whatever else may be

denied or withdrawn, there remains the better part, which cannot be

taken from them. This line exactly expresses the woman I knew:--

"Alone and old, but still high-hearted."

Will any, poor or rich, fail to feel that the children of such a

parent were rich when

"Her virtues were their worldly dower"?

Will any fail to bow the heart in assent to the aspiration,

"Would that my spirit witness bore me

That, like this woman, I had done

The work my Maker put before me

Duly from morn till set of sun"?

May not that suffice to any man's ambition?

[Perhaps one of the most perplexing problems which beset Woman in her

domestic sphere relates to the proper care and influence which she

should exert over the domestic aids she employs. As these are, and

long must be, taken chiefly from one nation, the following pages

treating of the Irish Character, and the true relation between

Employer and Employed, can hardly fail to be of interest. They

contain, too, some considerations which Woman as well as Man is too

much in danger of overlooking, and which seem, even more than when

first urged, to be timely in this reactionary to-day.--ED.]

THE IRISH CHARACTER.

In one of the eloquent passages quoted in the "_Tribune_" of

Wednesday, under the head, "Spirit of the Irish Press," we find these

words:

"Domestic love, almost morbid from external suffering, prevents him

(the Irishman) from becoming a fanatic and a misanthrope, and

reconciles him to life."

This recalled to our mind the many touching instances known to us of

such traits among the Irish we have seen here. We have known instances

of morbidness like this. A girl sent "home," after she was well

established herself, for a young brother, of whom she was particularly

fond. He came, and shortly after died. She was so overcome by his loss

that she took poison. The great poet of serious England says, and we

believe it to be his serious thought though laughingly said, "Men have

died, and worms have eaten them, but not for love." Whether or not

death may follow from the loss of a lover or child, we believe that

among no people but the Irish would it be upon the loss of a young

brother.

Another poor young woman, in the flower of her youth, denied herself,

not only every pleasure, but almost the necessaries of life to save

the sum she thought ought to be hers before sending to Ireland for a

widowed mother. Just as she was on the point of doing so she heard

that her mother had died fifteen months before. The keenness and

persistence of her grief defy description. With a delicacy of feeling

which showed the native poetry of the Irish mind, she dwelt, most of

all, upon the thought that while she was working, and pinching, and

dreaming of happiness with her mother, it was indeed but a dream, and

that cherished parent lay still and cold beneath the ground. She felt

fully the cruel cheat of Fate. "Och! and she was dead all those times

I was thinking of her!" was the deepest note of her lament.

They are able, however, to make the sacrifice of even these intense

family affections in a worthy cause. We knew a woman who postponed

sending for her only child, whom she had left in Ireland, for years,

while she maintained a sick friend who had no one else to help her.

The poetry of which I have spoken shows itself even here, where they

are separated from old romantic associations, and begin the new life

in the New World by doing all its drudgery. We know flights of poetry

repeated to us by those present at their wakes,--passages of natural

eloquence, from the lamentations for the dead, more beautiful than

those recorded in the annals of Brittany or Roumelia.

It is the same genius, so exquisitely mournful, tender, and glowing,

too, with the finest enthusiasm, that makes their national music, in

these respects, the finest in the world. It is the music of the harp;

its tones are deep and thrilling. It is the harp so beautifully

described in "The Harp of Tara's Halls," a song whose simple pathos is

unsurpassed. A feeling was never more adequately embodied.

It is the genius which will enable Emmet's appeal to draw tears from

the remotest generations, however much they may be strangers to the

circumstances which called it forth, It is the genius which beamed in

chivalrous loveliness through each act of Lord Edward Fitzgerald,--the

genius which, ripened by English culture, favored by suitable

occasions, has shed such glory on the land which has done all it could

to quench it on the parent hearth.

When we consider all the fire which glows so untamably in Irish veins,

the character of her people, considering the circumstances, almost

miraculous in its goodness, we cannot forbear, notwithstanding all the

temporary ills they aid in here, to give them a welcome to our shores.

Those ills we need not enumerate; they are known to all, and we rank

among them, what others would not, that by their ready service to do

all the hard work, they make it easier for the rest of the population

to grow effeminate, and help the country to grow too fast. But that is

her destiny, to grow too fast: there is no use talking against it.

Their extreme ignorance, their blind devotion to their priesthood,

their pliancy in the hands of demagogues, threaten continuance of

these ills; yet, on the other hand, we must regard them as most

valuable elements in the new race. They are looked upon with contempt

for their wont of aptitude in learning new things; their ready and

ingenious lying; their eye-service. These are the faults of an

oppressed race, which must require the aid of better circumstances

through two or three generations to eradicate. Their virtues are their

own; they are many, genuine, and deeply-rooted. Can an impartial

observer fail to admire their truth to domestic ties, their power of

generous bounty, and more generous gratitude, their indefatigable

good-humor (for ages of wrong which have driven them to so many acts

of desperation, could never sour their blood at its source), their

ready wit, their elasticity of nature? They are fundamentally one of

the best nations of the world. Would they were welcomed here, not to

work merely, but to intelligent sympathy, and efforts, both patient

and ardent, for the education of their children! No sympathy could be

better deserved, no efforts wiselier timed. Future Burkes and Currans

would know how to give thanks for them, and Fitzgeralds rise upon the

soil--which boasts the magnolia with its kingly stature and majestical

white blossoms,--to the same lofty and pure beauty. Will you not

believe it, merely because that bog-bred youth you placed in the

mud-hole tells you lies, and drinks to cheer himself in those endless

diggings? You are short-sighted, my friend; you do not look to the

future; you will not turn your head to see what may have been the

influences of the past. You have not examined your own breast to see

whether the monitor there has not commanded you to do your part to

counteract these influences; and yet the Irishman appeals to you, eye

to eye. He is very personal himself,--he expects a personal interest

from you. Nothing has been able to destroy this hope, which was the

fruit of his nature. We were much touched by O'Connell's direct appeal

to the queen, as "Lady!" But she did not listen,--and we fear few

ladies and gentlemen will till the progress of Destiny compels them.

THE IRISH CHARACTER.

Since the publication of a short notice under this head in the

"_Tribune_," several persons have expressed to us that their

feelings were awakened on the subject, especially as to their

intercourse with the lower Irish. Most persons have an opportunity of

becoming acquainted, if they will, with the lower classes of Irish, as

they are so much employed among us in domestic service, and other

kinds of labor.

We feel, say these persons, the justice of what has been said as to

the duty and importance of improving these people. We have sometimes

tried; but the want of real gratitude which, in them, is associated

with such warm and wordy expressions of regard, with their

incorrigible habits of falsehood and evasion, have baffled and

discouraged us. You say their children ought to be educated; but how

can this be effected when the all but omnipotent sway of the Catholic

religion and the example of parents are both opposed to the formation

of such views and habits as we think desirable to the citizen of the

New World?

We answer first with regard to those who have grown up in another

land, and who, soon after arriving here, are engaged in our service.

First, as to ingratitude. We cannot but sadly smile on the remarks we

hear so often on this subject.

Just Heaven!--and to us how liberal! which has given those who speak

thus an unfettered existence, free from religious or political

oppression; which has given them the education of intellectual and

refined intercourse with men to develop those talents which make them

rich in thoughts and enjoyment, perhaps in money, too, certainly rich

in comparison with the poor immigrants they employ,--what is thought

in thy clear light of those who expect in exchange for a few shillings

spent in presents or medicines, a few kind words, a little casual

thought or care, such a mighty payment of gratitude? Gratitude! Under

the weight of old feudalism their minds were padlocked by habit

against the light; they might be grateful then, for they thought their

lords were as gods, of another frame and spirit than theirs, and that

they had no right to have the same hopes and wants, scarcely to suffer

from the same maladies, with those creatures of silk, and velvet, and

cloth of gold. Then, the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table

might be received with gratitude, and, if any but the dogs came to

tend the beggar's sores, such might be received as angels. But the

institutions which sustained such ideas have fallen to pieces. It is

understood, even In Europe, that

"The rank is but the guinea's stamp,

The man's the gowd for a' that,

A man's a man for a' that."

And being such, has a claim on this earth for something better than

the nettles of which the French peasantry made their soup, and with

which the persecuted Irish, "under hiding," turned to green the lips

white before with famine.

And if this begins to be understood in Europe, can you suppose it is

not by those who, hearing that America opens a mother's arms with the

cry, "All men are born free and equal," rush to her bosom to be

consoled for centuries of woe, for their ignorance, their hereditary

degradation, their long memories of black bread and stripes? However

little else they may understand, believe they understand well _this

much_. Such inequalities of privilege, among men all born of one

blood, should not exist. They darkly feel that those to whom much has

been given owe to the Master an account of stewardship. They know now

that your gift is but a small portion of their right.

And you, O giver! how did you give? With religious joy, as one who

knows that he who loves God cannot fail to love his neighbor as

himself? with joy and freedom, as one who feels that it is the highest

happiness of gift to us that we have something to give again? Didst

thou put thyself into the position of the poor man, and do for him

what thou wouldst have had one who was able to do for thee? Or, with

affability and condescending sweetness, made easy by internal delight

at thine own wondrous virtue, didst thou give five dollars to balance

five hundred spent on thyself? Did you say, "James, I shall expect you

to do right in everything, and to attend to my concerns as I should

myself; and, at the end of the quarter, I will give you my old clothes

and a new pocket-handkerchief, besides seeing that your mother is

provided with fuel against Christmas?"

Line upon line, and precept upon precept, the tender parent expects

from the teacher to whom he confides his child; vigilance unwearied,

day and night, through long years. But he expects the raw Irish girl

or boy to correct, at a single exhortation, the habit of deceiving

those above them, which the expectation of being tyrannized over has

rooted in their race for ages. If we look fairly into the history of

their people, and the circumstances under which their own youth was

trained, we cannot expect that anything short of the most steadfast

patience and love can enlighten them as to the beauty and value of

implicit truth, and, having done so, fortify and refine them in the

practice of it.

This we admit at the outset: First, You must be prepared for a

religious and patient treatment of these people, not merely

_un_educated, but _ill_-educated; a treatment far more religious

and patient than is demanded by your own children, if they were born

and bred under circumstances at all favorable.

Second, Dismiss from your minds all thought of gratitude. Do what you

do for them for God's sake, and as a debt to humanity--interest to the

common creditor upon principal left in your care. Then insensibility,

forgetfulness, or relapse, will not discourage you, and you will

welcome proofs of genuine attachment to yourself chiefly as tokens

that your charge has risen into a higher state of thought and feeling,

so as to be enabled to value the benefits conferred through you. Could

we begin so, there would be hope of our really becoming the

instructors and guardians of this swarm of souls which come from their

regions of torment to us, hoping, at least, the benefits of purgatory.

The influence of the Catholic priesthood must continue very great till

there is a complete transfusion of character in the minds of their

charge. But as the Irishman, or any other foreigner, becomes

Americanized, he will demand a new form of religion to suit his new

wants. The priest, too, will have to learn the duties of an American

citizen; he will live less and less for the church, and more for the

people, till at last, if there be Catholicism still, it will be under

Protestant influences, as begins to be the case in Germany. It will

be, not Roman, but American Catholicism; a form of worship which

relies much, perhaps, on external means and the authority of the

clergy,--for such will always be the case with religion while there

are crowds of men still living an external life, and who have not

learned to make full use of their own faculties,--but where a belief

in the benefits of confession and the power of the church, as church,

to bind and loose, atone for or decide upon sin, with similar

corruptions, must vanish in the free and searching air of a new era.

* * * * *

Between employer and employed there is not sufficient pains taken on

the part of the former to establish a mutual understanding. People

meet, in the relations of master and servant, who have lived in two

different worlds. In this respect we are much worse situated than the

same parties have been in Europe. There is less previous acquaintance

between the upper and lower classes. (We must, though unwillingly, use

these terms to designate the state of things as at present existing.)

Meals are taken separately; work is seldom shared; there is very

little to bring the parties together, except sometimes the farmer

works with his hired Irish laborer in the fields, or the mother keeps

the nurse-maid of her baby in the room with her.

In this state of things the chances for instruction, which come every

day of themselves where parties share a common life instead of its

results merely, do not occur. Neither is there opportunity to

administer instruction in the best manner, nor to understand when and

where it is needed.

The farmer who works with his men in the field, the farmer's wife who

attends with her women to the churn and the oven, may, with ease, be

true father and mother to all who are in their employ, and enjoy

health of conscience in the relation, secure that, if they find cause

for blame, it is not from faults induced by their own negligence. The

merchant who is from home all day, the lady receiving visitors or

working slippers in her nicely-furnished parlor, cannot be quite so

sure that their demands, or the duties involved in them, are clearly

understood, nor estimate the temptations to prevarication.

It is shocking to think to what falsehoods human beings like ourselves

will resort, to excuse a love of amusement, to hide ill-health, while

they see us indulging freely in the one, yielding lightly to the

other; and yet we have, or ought to have, far more resources in either

temptation than they. For us it is hard to resist, to give up going to

the places where we should meet our most interesting companions, or do

our work with an aching brow. But we have not people over us whose

careless, hasty anger drives us to seek excuses for our failures; if

so, perhaps,--perhaps; who knows?--we, the better-educated, rigidly,

immaculately true as we are at present, _might_ tell falsehoods.

Perhaps we might, if things were given us to do which we had never

seen done, if we were surrounded by new arrangements in the nature of

which no one instructed us. All this we must think of before we can be

of much use.

We have spoken of the nursery-maid as _the_ hired domestic with

whom her mistress, or even the master, is likely to become acquainted.

But, only a day or two since, we saw, what we see so often, a

nursery-maid with the family to which she belonged, in a public

conveyance. They were having a pleasant time; but in it she had no

part, except to hold a hot, heavy baby, and receive frequent

admonitions to keep _it_ comfortable. No inquiry was made as to

_her_ comfort; no entertaining remark, no information of interest

as to the places we passed, was addressed to her. Had she been in that

way with that family ten years she might have known _them_ well

enough, for their characters lay only too bare to a careless scrutiny;

but her joys, her sorrows, her few thoughts, her almost buried

capacities, would have been as unknown to them, and they as little

likely to benefit her, as the Emperor of China.

Let the employer place the employed first in good physical

circumstances, so as to promote the formation of different habits from

those of the Irish hovel, or illicit still-house. Having thus induced

feelings of self-respect, he has opened the door for a new set of

notions. Then let him become acquainted with the family circumstances

and history of his new pupil. He has now got some ground on which to

stand for intercourse. Let instruction follow for the mind, not merely

by having the youngest daughter set, now and then, copies in the

writing-book, or by hearing read aloud a few verses in the Bible, but

by putting good books in their way, if able to read, and by

intelligent conversation when there is a chance,--the master with the

man who is driving him, the lady with the woman who is making her bed.

Explain to them the relations of objects around them; teach them to

compare the old with the new life. If you show a better way than

theirs of doing work, teach them, too, _why_ it is better. Thus

will the mind be prepared by development for a moral reformation;

there will be some soil fitted to receive the seed.

When the time is come,--and will you think a poor, uneducated person,

in whose mind the sense of right and wrong is confused, the sense of

honor blunted, easier of access than one refined and thoughtful?

Surely you will not, if you yourself are refined and thoughtful, but

rather that the case requires far more care in the choice of a

favorable opportunity,--when, then, the good time is come, perhaps it

will be best to do what you do in a way that will make a permanent

impression. Show the Irishman that a vice not indigenous to his

nation--for the rich and noble who are not so tempted are chivalrous

to an uncommon degree in their openness, bold sincerity, and adherence

to their word--has crept over and become deeply rooted in the poorer

people from the long oppressions they have undergone. Show them what

efforts and care will be needed to wash out the taint. Offer your aid,

as a faithful friend, to watch their lapses, and refine their sense of

truth. You will not speak in vain. If they never mend, if habit is too

powerful, still, their nobler nature will not have been addressed in

vain. They will not forget the counsels they have not strength to

follow, and the benefits will be seen in their children or children's

children.

Many say, "Well, suppose we do all this; what then? They are so fond

of change, they will leave us." What then? Why, let them go and carry

the good seed elsewhere. Will you be as selfish and short-sighted as

those who never plant trees to shade a hired house, lest some one else

should be blest by their shade?

It is a simple duty we ask you to engage in; it is, also, a great

patriotic work. You are asked to engage in the great work of mutual

education, which must be for this country the system of mutual

insurance.

We have some hints upon this subject, drawn from the experience of the

wise and good, some encouragement to offer from that experience, that

the fruits of a wise planting sometimes ripen sooner than we could

dare to expect. But this must be for another day.

One word as to this love of change. We hear people blaming it in their

servants, who can and do go to Niagara, to the South, to the Springs,

to Europe, to the seaside; in short, who are always on the move

whenever they feel the need of variety to reanimate mind, health, or

spirits. Change of place, as to family employment, is the only way

domestics have of "seeing life"--the only way immigrants have of

getting thoroughly acquainted with the new society into which they

have entered. How natural that they should incline to it! Once more;

put yourself in their places, and then judge them gently from your

own, if you would be just to them, if you would be of any use.

EDUCATE MEN AND WOMEN AS SOULS.

Had Christendom but been true to its standard, while accommodating its

modes of operation to the calls of successive times, Woman would now

have not only equal _power_ with Man,--for of that omnipotent

nature will never suffer her to be defrauded,--but a _chartered_

power, too fully recognized to be abused. Indeed, all that is wanting

is, that Man should prove his own freedom by making her free. Let him

abandon conventional restriction, as a vestige of that Oriental

barbarity which confined Woman to a seraglio. Let him trust her

entirely, and give her every privilege already acquired for

himself,--elective franchise, tenure of property, liberty to speak in

public assemblies, &c.

Nature has pointed out her ordinary sphere by the circumstances of her

physical existence. She cannot wander far. If here and there the gods

send their missives through women as through men, let them speak

without remonstrance. In no age have men been able wholly to hinder

them. A Deborah must always be a spiritual mother in Israel. A Corinna

may be excluded from the Olympic games, yet all men will hear her

song, and a Pindar sit at her feet. It is Man's fault that there ever

were Aspasias and Ninons. These exquisite forms were intended for the

shrines of virtue.

Neither need men fear to lose their domestic deities. Woman is born

for love, and it is impossible to turn her from seeking it. Men should

deserve her love as an inheritance, rather than seize and guard it

like a prey. Were they noble, they would strive rather not to be loved

too much, and to turn her from idolatry to the true, the only Love.

Then, children of one Father, they could not err nor misconceive one

another.

Society is now so complex, that it is no longer possible to educate

Woman merely as Woman; the tasks which come to her hand are so

various, and so large a proportion of women are thrown entirely upon

their own resources. I admit that this is not their state of perfect

development; but it seems as if Heaven, having so long issued its

edict in poetry and religion without securing intelligent obedience,

now commanded the world in prose to take a high and rational view. The

lesson reads to me thus:--

Sex, like rank, wealth, beauty, or talent, is but an accident of

birth. As you would not educate a soul to be an aristocrat, so do not

to be a woman. A general regard to her usual sphere is dictated in the

economy of nature. You need never enforce these provisions rigorously.

Achilles had long plied the distaff as a princess; yet, at first sight

of a sword, he seized it. So with Woman; one hour of love would teach

her more of her proper relations than all your formulas and

conventions. Express your views, men, of what you _seek_ in

women; thus best do you give them laws. Learn, women, what you should

_demand_ of men; thus only can they become themselves. Turn both

from the contemplation of what is merely phenomenal in your existence,

to your permanent life as souls. Man, do not prescribe how the Divine

shall display itself in Woman. Woman, do not expect to see all of God

in Man. Fellow-pilgrims and helpmeets are ye, Apollo and Diana, twins

of one heavenly birth, both beneficent, and both armed. Man, fear not

to yield to Woman's hand both the quiver and the lyre; for if her urn

be filled with light, she will use both to the glory of God. There is

but one doctrine for ye both, and that is the doctrine of the SOUL.

PART III.

EXTRACTS FROM JOURNALS AND LETTERS.

[The following extract from Margaret's Journal will be read with a

degree of melancholy interest when connected with the eventful end of

her eventful life. It was written many years before her journey to

Europe, and rings in our ears now almost with the tones of

prophecy.--Ed.]

I like to listen to the soliloquies of a bright child. In this

microcosm the philosophical observer may trace the natural progression

of the mind of mankind. I often silently observe L---, with this view.

He is generally imitative and dramatic; the day-school, the singing-school

or the evening party, are acted out with admirable variety in the humors

of the scene, end great discrimination of character in its broader

features. What is chiefly remarkable is his unconsciousness of his

mental processes, and how thoughts it would be impossible for him

to recall spring up in his mind like flowers and weeds in the soil.

But to-night he was truly in a state of lyrical inspiration, his eyes

flashing, his face glowing, and his whole composition chanted out in

an almost metrical form. He began by mourning the death of a certain

Harriet whom he had let go to foreign parts, and who had died at sea.

He described her as having "blue, sparkling eyes, and a sweet smile,"

and lamented that he could never kiss her cold lips again. This part,

which he continued for some time, was in prolonged cadences, and a

low, mournful tone, with a frequently recurring burden of "O, my

Harriet, shall I never see thee more!"

* * * * *

EXTRACT FROM JOURNAL.

* * * * *

It is so true that a woman may be in love with a woman, and a man with

a man. It is pleasant to be sure of it, because it is undoubtedly the

same love that we shall feel when we are angels, when we ascend to the

only fit place for the Mignons, where

"Sie fragen nicht nach Mann und Welb."

It is regulated by the same law as that of love between persons of

different sexes, only it is purely intellectual and spiritual,

unprefaced by any mixture of lower instincts, undisturbed by any need

of consulting temporal interests; its law is the desire of the spirit

to realize a whole, which makes it seek in another being that which it

finds not in itself.

Thus the beautiful seek the strong; the mute seek the eloquent; the

butterfly settles on the dark flower. Why did Socrates so love

Alcibiades? Why did Korner so love Schneider? How natural is the love

of Wallenstein for Max, that of Madame de Stael for de Recamier, mine

for -----! I loved ---- for a time with as much passion as I was then

strong enough to feel. Her face was always gleaming before me; her

voice was echoing in my ear; all poetic thoughts clustered round the

dear image. This love was for me a key which unlocked many a treasure

which I still possess; it was the carbuncle (emblematic gem!) which

cast light into many of the darkest corners of human nature. She loved

me, too, though not so much, because her nature was "less high, less

grave, less large, less deep;" but she loved more tenderly, less

passionately. She loved me, for I well remember her suffering when she

first could feel my faults, and knew one part of the exquisite veil

rent away--how she wished to stay apart and weep the whole day.

These thoughts were suggested by a large engraving representing Madame

Recamier in her boudoir. I have so often thought over the intimacy

between her and Madame de Stael.

Madame Recamier is half-reclining on a sofa; she is clad in white

drapery, which clings very gracefully to her round, but

elegantly-slender form; her beautiful neck and arms are bare; her hair

knotted up so as to show the contour of her truly-feminine head to

great advantage. A book lies carelessly on her lap; one hand yet holds

it at the place where she left off reading; her lovely face is turned

towards us; she appears to muse on what she has been reading. When we

see a woman in a picture with a book, she seems to be doing precisely

that for which she was born; the book gives such an expression of

purity to the female figure. A large window, partially veiled by a

white curtain, gives a view of a city at some little distance. On one

side stand the harp and piano; there are just books enough for a

lady's boudoir. There is no picture, except one of De Recamier

herself, as Corinne. This is absurd; but the absurdity is interesting,

as recalling the connection. You imagine her to have been reading one

of De Stael's books, and to be now pondering what those brilliant

words of her gifted friend can mean.

Everything in the room is in keeping. Nothing appears to have been put

there because other people have it; but there is nothing which shows a

taste more noble and refined than you would expect from the fair

Frenchwoman. All is elegant, modern, in harmony with the delicate

habits and superficial culture which you would look for in its

occupant.

* * * * *

TO HER MOTHER.

_Sept_. 5, 1837.

* * * * * If I stay in Providence, and more money is wanting than can

otherwise be furnished, I will take a private class, which is ready for

me, and by which, even if I reduced my terms to suit the place, I can

earn the four hundred dollars that ---- will need. If I do not stay, I

will let her have my portion of our income, with her own, or even capital

which I have a right to take up, and come into this or some other

economical place, and live at the cheapest rate. It will not be even a

sacrifice to me to do so, for I am weary of society, and long for the

opportunity for solitary concentration of thought. I know what I say;

if I live, you may rely upon me.

God be with you, my dear mother! I am sure he will prosper the doings

of so excellent a woman if you will only keep your mind calm and be

firm. Trust your daughter too. I feel increasing trust in mine own

good mind. We will take good care of the children and of one another.

Never fear to trouble me with your perplexities. I can never be so

situated that I do not earnestly wish to know them. Besides, things do

not trouble me as they did, for I feel within myself the power to aid,

to serve.

Most affectionately,

Your daughter, M.

* * * * *

PART OF LETTER TO M.

_Providence_, Oct. 7, 1838.

* * * For yourself, dear ------, you have attained an important age.

No plan is desirable for you which is to be pursued with precision.

The world, the events of every day, which no one can predict, are to

be your teachers, and you must, in some degree, give yourself up, and

submit to be led captive, if you would learn from them. Principle must

be at the helm, but thought must shift its direction with the winds

and waves.

Happy as you are thus far in worthy friends, you are not in much

danger of rash intimacies or great errors. I think, upon the whole,

quite highly of your judgment about people and conduct; for, though

your first feelings are often extravagant, they are soon balanced.

I do not know other faults in you beside that want of retirement of

mind which I have before spoken of. If M------ and A------ want too

much seclusion, and are too severe in their views of life and man, I

think you are too little so. There is nothing so fatal to the finer

faculties as too ready or too extended a publicity. There is some

danger lest there be no real religion in the heart which craves too

much of daily sympathy. Through your mind the stream of life has

coursed with such rapidity that it has often swept away the seed or

loosened the roots of the young plants before they had ripened any

fruit.

I should think writing would be very good for you. A journal of your

life, and analyses of your thoughts, would teach you how to

generalize, and give firmness to your conclusions. Do not write down

merely that things are beautiful, or the reverse; but _what_ they

are, and _why_ they are beautiful or otherwise; and show these

papers, at least at present, to nobody. Be your own judge and your own

helper. Do not go too soon to any one with your difficulties, but try

to clear them up for yourself.

I think the course of reading you have fallen upon, of late, will be

better for you than such books as you formerly read, addressed rather

to the taste and imagination than the judgment. The love of beauty has

rather an undue development in your mind. See now what it is, and what

it has been. Leave for a time the Ideal, and return to the Real.

I should think two or three hours a day would be quite enough, at

present, for you to give to books. Now learn buying and selling,

keeping the house, directing the servants; all that will bring you

worlds of wisdom if you keep it subordinate to the one grand aim of

perfecting the whole being. And let your self-respect forbid you to do

imperfectly anything that you do at all.

I always feel ashamed when I write with this air of wisdom; but you

will see, by my hints, what I mean. Your mind wants depth and

precision; your character condensation. Keep your high aim steadily in

view; life will open the path to reach it. I think ----, even if she

be in excess, is an excellent friend for you; her character seems to

have what yours wants, whether she has or has not found the right way.

* * * * *

TO HER BROTHER, A. B. F.

_Providence, Feb_. 19, 1838

MY DEAR A.:

* * * * *

I wish you could see the journals of two dear little girls, eleven

years old, in my school. They love one another like Bessie Bell and

Mary Gray in the ballad. They are just of a size, both lively as

birds, affectionate, gentle, ambitious in good works and knowledge.

They encourage one another constantly to do right; they are rivals,

but never jealous of one another. One has the quicker intellect, the

other is the prettier. I have never had occasion to find fault with

either, and the forwardness of their minds has induced me to take both

into my reading-class, where they are associated with girls many years

their elders. Particular pains do they take with their journals. These

are written daily, in a beautiful, fair, round hand, well-composed,

showing attention, and memory well-trained, with many pleasing sallies

of playfulness, and some very interesting thoughts.

* * * * *

TO THE SAME.

_Jamaica Plain, Dec_. 20, 1840.

* * * * About your school I do not think I could give you much advice

which would be of value, unless I could know your position more in

detail. The most important rule is, in all relations with our

fellow-creatures, never forget that, if they are imperfect persons,

they are immortal souls, and treat them as you would wish to be

treated by the light of that thought.

As to the application of means, abstain from punishment as much as

possible, and use encouragement as far as you can _without

flattery_. But be even more careful as to strict truth in this

regard, towards children, than to persons of your own age; for, to the

child, the parent or teacher is the representative of _justice;_

and as that of life is severe, an education which, in any degree,

excites vanity, is the very worst preparation for that general and

crowded school.

I doubt not you will teach grammar well, as I saw you aimed at

principles in your practice.

In geography, try to make pictures of the scenes, that they may be

present to their imaginations, and the nobler faculties be brought

into action, as well as memory.

In history, try to study and paint the characters of _great men_;

they best interpret the leadings of events amid the nations.

I am pleased with your way of speaking of both people and pupils; your

view seems from the right point. Yet beware of over great pleasure in

being popular, or even beloved. As far as an amiable disposition and

powers of entertainment make you so, it is a happiness; but if there

is one grain of plausibility, it is poison.

But I will not play Mentor too much, lest I make you averse to write

to your very affectionate sister,

M.

* * * * *

TO HER BROTHER, R.

I entirely agree in what you say of _tuition_ and

_intuition;_ the two must act and react upon one another, to make

a man, to form a mind. Drudgery is as necessary, to call out the

treasures of the mind, as harrowing and planting those of the earth.

And besides, the growths of literature and art are as much nature as

the trees in Concord woods; but nature idealized and perfected.

* * * * *

TO THE SAME.

1841.

I take great pleasure in that feeling of the living presence of beauty

in nature which your letters show. But you, who have now lived long

enough to see some of my prophecies fulfilled, will not deny, though

you may not yet believe the truth of my words when I say you go to an

extreme in your denunciations of cities and the social institutions.

_These_ are a growth also, and, as well as the diseases which

come upon them, under the control of the one spirit as much as the

great tree on which the insects prey, and in whose bark the busy bird

has made many a wound.

When we get the proper perspective of these things we shall find man,

however artificial, still a part of nature. Meanwhile, let us trust;

and while it is the soul's duty ever to bear witness to the best it

knows, let us not be hasty to conclude that in what suits us not there

can be no good. Let us be sure there _must_ be eventual good,

could we but see far enough to discern it. In maintaining perfect

truth to ourselves and choosing that mode of being which suits us, we

had best leave others alone as much as may be. You prefer the country,

and I doubt not it is on the whole a better condition of life to live

there; but at the country party you have mentioned you saw that no

circumstances will keep people from being frivolous. One may be

gossipping, and vulgar, and idle in the country,--earnest, noble and

wise, in the city. Nature cannot be kept from us while there is a sky

above, with so much as one star to remind us of prayer in the silent

night.

As I walked home this evening at sunset, over the Mill-Dam, towards

the city, I saw very distinctly that the city also is a bed in God's

garden. More of this some other time.

* * * * *

TO A YOUNG FRIEND.

_Concord, May _2, 1837.

MY DEAR: I am passing happy here, except that I am not well,--so

unwell that I fear I must go home and ask my good mother to let me

rest and vegetate beneath her sunny kindness for a while. The

excitement of conversation prevents my sleeping. The drive here with

Mr. E------ was delightful. Dear Nature and Time, so often

calumniated, will take excellent care of us if we will let them. The

wisdom lies in schooling the heart not to expect too much. I did that

good thing when I came here, and I am rich. On Sunday I drove to

Watertown with the author of "Nature." The trees were still bare, but

the little birds care not for that; they revel, and carol, and wildly

tell their hopes, while the gentle, "voluble" south wind plays with

the dry leaves, and the pine-trees sigh with their soul-like sounds

for June. It was beauteous; and care and routine fled away, and I was

as if they had never been, except that I vaguely whispered to myself

that all had been well with me.

* * * * *

The baby here is beautiful. He looks like his father, and smiles so

sweetly on all hearty, good people. I play with him a good deal, and

he comes so _natural,_ after Dante and other poets.

Ever faithfully your friend.

* * * * *

TO THE SAME.

1837.

MY BELOVED CHILD: I was very glad to get your note. Do not think you

must only write to your friends when you can tell them you are happy;

they will not misunderstand you in the dark hour, nor think you

_forsaken_, if cast down. Though your letter of Wednesday was

very sweet to me, yet I knew it could not last as it was then. These

hours of heavenly, heroic strength leave us, but they come again:

their memory is with us amid after-trials, and gives us a foretaste of

that era when the steadfast soul shall be the only reality.

My dearest, you must suffer, but you will always be growing stronger,

and with every trial nobly met, you will feel a growing assurance that

nobleness is not a mere _sentiment_ with you. I sympathize deeply

in your anxiety about your mother; yet I cannot but remember the

bootless fear and agitation about my mother, and how strangely our

destinies were guided. Take refuge in prayer when you are most

troubled; the door of the sanctuary will never be shut against you. I

send you a paper which is very sacred to me. Bless Heaven that your

heart is awakened to sacred duties before any kind of gentle

ministering has become impossible, before any relation has been

broken. [Footnote: It has always been my desire to find appropriate

time and place to correct an erroneous impression which has gained

currency in regard to my father, and which does injustice to his

memory. That impression is that he was exceedingly stern and exacting

in the parental relation, and especially in regard to my sister; that

he forbid or frowned upon her sports;--excluded her from intercourse

with other children when she, a child, needed such companionship, and

required her to bend almost unceasingly over her books. This

impression has, certainly in part, arisen from an autobiographical

sketch, never written for publication nor intended for a literal or

complete statement of her father's educational method, or the relation

which existed between them, which was most loving and true on both

sides. While the narrative is true, it is not the all she would have

said, and, therefore, taken alone, conveys an impression which

misleads those who did not know our father well. Perhaps no better

opportunity or place than this may ever arise to correct this

impression so for us it is wrong. It is true that my father had a very

high standard of scholarship, and did expect conformity to it in his

children. He was not stern toward them.

It is doubtless true, also, that he did not perfectly comprehend the

rare mind of his daughter, or see for some years that she required no

stimulating to intellectual effort, as do most children, but rather

the reverse. But how many fathers are there who would have understood

at once such a child as Margaret Fuller was, or would have done even

as wisely as he? And how long is it since a wiser era has dawned upon

the world (its light not yet fully welcomed), in which attention first

to physical development to the exclusion of the mental, is an axiom in

education! Was it so deemed forty years ago? Nor has it been

considered that so gifted a child would naturally, as she did,

_seek_ the companionship of those older than herself, and not of

children who had little in unison with her. She needed, doubtless, to

be _urged_ into the usual sports of children, and the company of

those of her own age; if _not_ urged to enter these she was never

excluded from either. She needed to be kept from books for a period,

or to be led to those of a lighter cost than such as she read, and

which usually task the thoughts of mature men. This simply was not

done, and the error arose from no lack of tenderness, or

consideration, from no lack of the wisdom of those times, but from the

simple fact that the laws of physiology as connected with those of

mind were not understood then as now, nor was attention so much

directed to physical culture as of the primary importance it is now

regarded. Our father was indeed exact and strict with himself and

others; but none has ever been more devoted to his children than he,

or more painstaking with their education, nor more fondly loved them;

and in later life they have ever been more and more impressed with the

conviction of his fidelity and wisdom. That Margaret venerated her

father, and that his love was returned, is abundantly evidenced in her

poem which accompanies this letter. This, too, was not written for the

public eye, but it is too noble a tribute, too honorable both to

father and daughter, to be suppressed. I trust that none, passing from

one extreme to the other, will infer from the natural self-reproach

and upbraiding because of short-comings, felt by every true mind when

an honored and loved parent departs, that she lacked fidelity in the

relation of daughter. She agreed not always with his views and

methods, but this diversity of mind never affected their mutual

respect and love.--[Ed.]]

LINES WRITTEN IN MARCH, 1836.

"I will not leave you comfortless."

O, Friend divine! this promise dear

Falls sweetly on the weary ear!

Often, in hours of sickening pain,

It soothes me to thy rest again.

Might I a true disciple be,

Following thy footsteps faithfully,

Then should I still the succor prove

Of him who gave his life for love.

When this fond heart would vainly beat

For bliss that ne'er on earth we meet,

For perfect sympathy of soul,

From those such heavy laws control;

When, roused from passion's ecstasy,

I see the dreams that filled it fly,

Amid my bitter tears and sighs

Those gentle words before me rise.

With aching brows and feverish brain

The founts of intellect I drain,

And con with over-anxious thought

What poets sung and heroes wrought.

Enchanted with their deeds and lays,

I with like gems would deck my days;

No fires creative in me burn,

And, humbled, I to Thee return;

When blackest clouds around me rolled

Of scepticism drear and cold,

When love, and hope, and joy and pride,

Forsook a spirit deeply tried;

My reason wavered in that hour,

Prayer, too impatient, lost its power;

From thy benignity a ray,

I caught, and found the perfect day.

A head revered in dust was laid;

For the first time I watched my dead;

The widow's sobs were checked in vain,

And childhood's tears poured down like rain.

In awe I gaze on that dear face,

In sorrow, years gone by retrace,

When, nearest duties most forgot,

I might have blessed, and did it not!

Ignorant, his wisdom I reproved,

Heedless, passed by what most he loved,

Knew not a life like his to prize,

Of ceaseless toil and sacrifice.

No tears can now that hushed heart move,

No cares display a daughter's love,

The fair occasion lost, no more

Can thoughts more just to thee restore.

What can I do? And how atone

For all I've done, and left undone?

Tearful I search the parting words

Which the beloved John records.

"Not comfortless!" I dry my eyes,

My duties clear before me rise,--

Before thou think'st of taste or pride,

See home-affections satisfied!

Be not with generous _thoughts_ content,

But on well-doing constant bent;

When self seems dear, self-seeking fair;

Remember this sad hour in prayer!

Though all thou wishest fly thy touch,

Much can one do who loveth much.

More of thy spirit, Jesus give,

Not comfortless, though sad, to live.

And yet not sad, if I can know

To copy Him who here below

Sought but to do his Father's will,

Though from such sweet composure still

My heart be far. Wilt thou not aid

One whose best hopes on thee are stayed?

Breathe into me thy perfect love,

And guide me to thy rest above!

* * * * *

TO HER BROTHER, R----.

* * * Mr. Keats, Emma's father, is dead. To me this brings unusual

sorrow, though I have never yet seen him; but I thought of him as one

of the very few persons known to me by reputation, whose acquaintance

might enrich me. His character was a sufficient answer to the doubt,

whether a merchant can be a man of honor. He was, like your father,

a man all whose virtues had stood the test. He was no word-hero.

* * * * *

TO A YOUNG FRIEND.

_Providence, June 16,1837_.

MY DEAR ------: I pray you, amid all your duties, to keep some hours

to yourself. Do not let my example lead you into excessive exertions.

I pay dear for extravagance of this sort; five years ago I had no idea

of the languor and want of animal spirits which torment me now. Animal

spirits are not to be despised. An earnest mind and seeking heart will

not often be troubled by despondency; but unless the blood can dance

at proper times, the lighter passages of life lose all their

refreshment and suggestion.

I wish you and ------- had been here last Saturday. Our school-house

was dedicated, and Mr. Emerson made the address; it was a noble appeal

in behalf of the best interests of culture, and seemingly here was fit

occasion. The building was beautiful, and furnished with an even

elegant propriety.

I am at perfect liberty to do what I please, and there are apparently

the best dispositions, if not the best preparation, on the part of the

hundred and fifty young minds with whom I am to be brought in contact.

I sigh for the country; trees, birds and flowers, assure me that June

is here, but I must walk through streets many and long, to get sight

of any expanse of green. I had no fine weather while at home, though

the quiet and rest were delightful to me; the sun did not shine once

really warmly, nor did the apple-trees put on their blossoms until the

very day I came away.

* * * * *

SONNET.

TO THE SAME.

Although the sweet, still watches of the night

Find me all lonely now, yet the delight

Hath not quite gone, which from thy presence flows.

The love, the joy that in thy bosom glows,

Lingers to cheer thy friend. From thy fresh dawn

Some golden exhalations have I drawn

To make less dim my dusty noon. Thy tones

Are with me still; some plaintive as the moans

Of Dryads, when their native groves must fall,

Some wildly wailing, like the clarion-call

On battle-field, strewn with the noble dead.

Some in soft romance, like the echoes bred

In the most secret groves of Arcady;

Yet all, wild, sad, or soft, how steeped in poesy!

_Providence, April_, 1838.

* * * * *