I had occasionally visited two or three families in our own county, who
were said to make a very genteel appearance on narrow fortunes. As I was
known not to consider money as a principal consideration, it had often
been intimated to me what excellent wives the daughters of these
families would make, because on a very slender allowance their
appearance was as elegant as that of women of ten times their
expectations. I translated this respectable appearance into a language
not the most favorable, as I instantly inferred, and afterward was
convinced, that this personal figure was made by the sacrifice of their
whole time to those decorations which procured them credit, by putting
their outward figure on a par with the most affluent. If a girl with a
thousand pounds rivals in her dress one with ten thousand, is it not
obvious, that not only all her time must be employed, but all her money
devoted to this one object? Nothing but the clippings and parings from
her personal adornments could enable her to supply the demands of
charity; and these sacrifices, it is evident she is not disposed to
make.
Another inducement suggested to me was, that these young ladies would
make the better wives, because they had never been corrupted by the
expensive pleasures of London, and had not been spoiled by the gay
scenes of dissipation which it afforded. This argument would have
weighed powerfully with me, had I not observed, that they never
abstained from any amusement in the country that came within their
reach.
I naturally inferred, that she who eagerly grasped at every petty
provincial dissipation, would with increased alacrity have plunged into
the more alluring gayeties of the metropolis had it been in her power. I
thought she had even less apology to plead than the town lady; the fault
was equal, while the temptation was less: and she who was as dissipated
as her limited bounds permitted, where there was little to attract,
would, I feared, be as dissipated as she possibly could be, when her
temptations were multiplied, and her facilities increased.
I had met with several young ladies of a higher description, daughters
of our country gentlemen, a class which furnishes a number of valuable
and elegant women. Some of these, whom I knew, seemed unexceptional in
manner and in mind. They had seen something of the world, without having
been spoiled by it; had read with advantage; and acquitted themselves
well in the duties which they had been called to practice. But I was
withheld from cultivating that degree of intimacy which would have
enabled me to take an exact measure of their minds, by the injunction of
my father, that I would never attach myself to any woman till I had seen
and consulted Mr. Stanley. This direction, which, like all his wishes,
was a law to me, operated as a sort of sedative in the slight
intercourse I had with ladies; and resolving to postpone all such
intimacy as might have led to attachment, I did not allow myself to
come near enough to feel with interest, or to judge with decision.
As soon as I got to town I visited some of my father's friends. I was
kindly received for his sake, and at their houses soon enlarged the
sphere of my acquaintance. I was concerned to remark that two or three
gentlemen, whom I had observed to be very regular in their attendance on
public worship in the country, seldom went to church in London; in the
afternoon never. "Religion," they said, by way of apology, "was entirely
a thing of example; it was of great political importance; society was
held together by the restraints it imposed on the lower orders. When
they were in the country it was highly proper that their tenants and
workmen should have the benefit of their example, but in London the case
was different. Where there were so many churches, no one knew whether
you went or not, and where no scandal was given, no harm was done." As
this was a logic which had not found its way into my father's religion,
I was not convinced by it. I remember Mr. Burke, speaking of the
English, who were so humane at home, and whom he unjustly accused of
wanting humanity in India, says, "that the humanity of Britain is a
humanity of points and parallels." Surely the religion of the gentlemen
in question is not a less geographical distinction.
This error, I conceive, arises from religion being too much considered
as a mere institution of decorum, of convention, of society; and not as
an institution founded on the condition of human nature, a covenant of
mercy for repairing the evils which sin has produced. It springs from
the want of a conviction that Christianity is an individual as well as
general concern; that religion is a personal thing, previous to its
being a matter of example; that a man is not infallibly saved or lost as
a portion of any family, or any church, or any community; but that, as
he is individually responsible, he must be individually brought to a
deep and humbling sense of his own personal wants, without taking any
refuge in the piety he may see around him, of which he will have no
benefit, if he be no partaker.
I regretted, even for inferior reasons, the little distinction which was
paid to this sacred day. To say nothing of the elevating views which the
soul acquires from devoting itself to its proper object; the man of
business, methinks, should rejoice in its return; the politician should
welcome its appearance, not only as a rest from anxiety and labor, but
as an occasion of cooling and quieting the mind, of softening its
irritation, of allaying its ferment, and thus restoring the repaired
faculties and invigorated spirits to the demands of the succeeding week,
in a frame of increased aptitude for meeting its difficulties and
encountering its duties.
The first person whom I visited was a good-natured, friendly man, whom I
had occasionally seen in the North. As I had no reason to believe that
he was religious, in the true sense of the word, I had no intention of
looking for a wife in his family. I, however, thought it not amiss to
associate a little with persons of different descriptions, that by a
wider range I might learn to correct my general judgment, as well as to
guide my particular pursuit. Nothing, it is true, would tempt me to
select a woman on whose pious dispositions I could not form a reasonable
dependence: yet to come at the reality of those dispositions was no easy
matter.
I had heard my father remark, that he had, more than once, known a
right-minded girl, who seemed to have been first taught of heaven, and
afterward supported in her Christian course under almost every human
disadvantage; who boldly, but meekly, maintained her own principles,
under all the hourly temptations and oppositions of a worldly and
irreligious family, and who had given the best evidence of her piety
toward God, by her patient forbearance toward her erring friends. Such
women had made admirable wives when they were afterward transplanted
into families where their virtues were understood, and their piety
cherished. While, on the other hand, he had known others, who,
accustomed from childhood to the sober habits of family religion, under
pious but injudicious parents, had fallen in mechanically with the
domestic practices, without having ever been instructed in Christian
principles, or having ever manifested any religious tendencies. The
implantation of a new principle never having been inculcated, the
religious habit has degenerated into a mere form, the parents acting as
if they thought that religion must come by nature or infection in a
religious family. These girls, having never had their own hearts
impressed, nor their own characters distinctly considered, nor
individually cultivated, but being taken out as a portion from the mass,
have afterward taken the cast and color of any society into which they
have happened to be thrown; and they who before had lived religiously
with the religious, have afterward assimilated with the gay and
dissipated, when thus thrown into their company, as cordially as if they
had never been habituated to better things.
At dinner there appeared two pretty-looking young ladies, daughters of
my friend, who had been some time a widower. I placed myself between
them for the purpose of prying a little into their minds, while the rest
of the company were conversing on indifferent subjects. Having formerly
heard this gentleman's deceased wife extolled as the mirror of managers,
and the arrangements of his table highly commended, I was surprised to
see it so ill-appointed, and every thing wearing marks of palpable
inelegance. Though no epicure, I could not forbear observing that many
of the dishes were out of season, ill-chosen, and ill-dressed.
While I was puzzling my head for a solution, I recollected that I had
lately read in a most respectable periodical work, a paper (composed, I
believe, however, by a raw recruit of that well-disciplined corps) which
insisted that nothing tended to make ladies so useless and inefficient
in the _menage_ as the study of the dead languages. I jumped to the
conclusion, and was in an instant persuaded that my young hostesses must
not only be perfect mistresses of Latin, but the _tout ensemble_ was so
ill arranged as to induce me to give them full credit for Greek also.
Finding, therefore, that my appetite was balked, I took comfort in the
certainty that my understanding would be well regaled; and after
secretly regretting that learning should so effectually destroy
usefulness, I was resolved to derive intellectual comfort from this too
classical repast. Turning suddenly to the eldest lady, I asked her at
once if she did not think Virgil the finest poet in the world. She
blushed, and thus confirmed me in the opinion that her modesty was equal
to her erudition. I repeated my question with a little circumlocution.
She stared, and said she had never heard of the person I mentioned, but
that she had read Tears of Sensibility, and Rosa Matilda, and Sympathy
of Souls, and Too Civil by Half, and the Sorrows of Werter, and the
Stranger, and the Orphans of Snowdon.
"Yes, sir," joined in the younger sister, who did not rise to so high a
pitch of literature, "and we have read Perfidy Punished, and Jemmy and
Jenny Jessamy, and the Fortunate Footman, and the Illustrious
Chambermaid." I blushed and stared in my turn; and here the
conversation, through the difficulty of our being intelligible to each
other, dropped; and I am persuaded that I sunk much lower in their
esteem for not being acquainted with their favorite authors, than they
did in mine for having never heard of Virgil.
I arose from the table with a full conviction that it is very possible
for a woman to be totally ignorant of the ordinary but indispensable,
duties of common life without knowing one word of Latin; and that her
being a bad companion is no infallible proof of her being a good
economist.
I am afraid the poor father saw something of my disappointment in my
countenance, for when we were alone in the evening, he observed, that a
heavy addition to his other causes of regret for the loss of his wife,
was her excellent management of his family. I found afterward that,
though she had brought him a great fortune, she had had a very low
education. Her father, a coarse country esquire, to whom the pleasures
of the table were the only pleasures for which he had any relish, had no
other ambition for his daughter but that she should be the most famous
housewife in the country. He gloried in her culinary perfections, which
he understood; of the deficiencies of her mind he had not the least
perception. Money and good eating, he owned, were the only things in
life which had a real intrinsic value; the value of all other things, he
declared, existed in the imagination only.
The poor lady, when she became a mother, and was brought out into the
world, felt keenly the deficiencies of her own education. The dread of
Scylla, as is usual, wrecked her on Charybdis. Her first resolution, as
soon as she had daughters, was, that they should _learn every thing_.
All the masters who teach things of little intrinsic use were
extravagantly paid for supernumerary attendance; and as no one in the
family was capable of judging of their improvements, their progress was
but slow. Though they were taught much, they learned but little, even of
these unnecessary things; and of things necessary they learned nothing.
Their well-intentioned mother was not aware that her daughters'
education was almost as much calculated to gratify the senses, though in
a different way, and with more apparent refinement, as her own had been;
and that _mind_ is left nearly as much out of the question in making an
ordinary artist as in making a good cook.