BY A WOMAN.

"Chose étrange d'aimer, et que pour ces maitresses,

Les hommes soient sujets à de telles foiblesses--

Tout le monde connoit leur imperfection,

Ce n'est qu'extravagance et qu'indiscrétion.

Leur esprit est méchant, et leur âme fragile,

Il n'est rien de plus foible et de plus imbécille,

Rien de plus infidèle--et malgrè tout cela,

Dans le monde on fait tout pour ces animaux-là."

_Ecole des Femmes._

Such is the language of disappointment--but although a careful examination

of ancient and modern manners might lead to a different conclusion, (for

as the corruption of excessive refinement ends by placing her in the first

condition, so does the brutal assertion of physical superiority begin by

degrading her to the last,) woman is, we firmly believe, neither intended

for a tyrant nor a slave--Not a slave, for till she is raised above the

condition of a beast of burden, man, her companion, must continue

barbarous--Not a tyrant, for terrible as are the evils of irresponsible

authority, with whomsoever it may be vested, in her hands it becomes the

most tremendous instrument that Providence in its indignation can employ

to crush, degrade, and utterly to paralyze the nations within its reach.

The former position will readily be conceded; and the history of Rome

under the Emperors, or of France during the last century, affords but too

striking an exemplification of the second. It is, then, of the last

importance to society, that clear and accurate notions should prevail

among us concerning the education of a being on whom all its refinement,

and much of its prosperity, must depend. It is of the last importance, not

only that the absurd notions which half-a-century ago deprived English

ladies of education altogether, should be consigned to everlasting

oblivion and contempt--not only that the system to which France is

indebted for its Du Deffauds, Pompadours, and Du Barrys should be

extinguished, but that principles well adapted to the habits and

intelligence of man, in the most civilized state in which he has ever yet

existed, should prevail among us, should float upon the very atmosphere we

breathe, and be circulated in every vein that traverses the mighty fabric

of society. Therefore it is, because we are deeply impressed with this

conviction, that we hail with delight the appearance of a work so

profound, eloquent, and judicious; combining in so rare an union so many

kinds of excellence, as that which we now propose to the consideration of

our readers. Since the days of Smith and Montesquieu, no more valuable

addition has been made to moral science; and though the good taste and

modesty of its author, has induced her to put, in the least obtrusive

form, the wisdom and erudition--the least fragment of which would have

furnished forth a host of modern Sciolists with the most ostentatious

paragraphs--the deep thought and nervous eloquence by which almost every

page of the volume before us is illustrated, sufficiently establish her

title to rank among the most distinguished writers of this age and

country. If, indeed, we were ungrateful enough to quarrel with any part of

a work, the perusal of which has afforded us so much gratification, we

should be disposed (in deference, however, rather to the opinions of

others than our own) to alter the title that is prefixed to it. Many a

grave and pompous gentleman, who is "free to confess," and "does not

hesitate to utter" the dullest and most obvious commonplaces, would sit

down to the perusal of a work entitled, "On the Government of

Dependencies," or "Sermons on the Functions of Archdeacons and Rural

Deans," though never so deficient in learning, vigour, and originality,

who will reject with the supercilious ignorance of incurable stupidity,

these volumes, in which the habits, the interests, the inalienable rights,

the sacred duties of one half of the species, (and of that half to which,

at the most pliant and critical period of life, the health, the

disposition, the qualities, moral and intellectual, of the other half must

of necessity be confided,) are discussed with exemplary fairness, and

placed in the most luminous point of view. But we have detained our

readers too long from the admirable work which it is our object to make

known to them. It opens in the following manner:--

"It was once suggested by an eminent physiologist, that the

greatest enjoyments of our animal nature might be those which,

from their constancy, escape our notice altogether.

"His investigations had led him to think, that even the

involuntary motions carried on in our system, were productive of

pleasure; and that the act of respiration was probably attended

by a sensation as delightful as the gratifications of the palate.

It is certain that every sense is a source of unnoticed

pleasures. Sound and light are agreeable in themselves, before

their varied combinations have produced music to our ear, or

conveyed the perceptions of form to our mind. Innumerable are the

emotions of pleasure conveyed to the imagination and the senses,

by the endless diversities of form, colour, and sound; and the

unbought riches poured upon us from these sources, are more

prolific of enjoyment, than any of the far-sought distinctions

which stir the hopes and rivalries of men. Yet, on these and

other spontaneous blessings, no one reflects, or even enumerates

them among the sources of happiness, till some casual suspension

of them revives sensibility to the delight they afford.

"Such are the lamentations, though rarely so eloquently uttered,

which we daily hear on the loss of some possession, which, while

held, was scarcely noticed; and could preserve its owner, neither

from the gloom of apathy, nor the irritation of discontent.

"Were it not for this, the necessary effect of habit both in the

physical and moral world, women might be expected to live in

daily and hourly exultation, who have been born in a Christian

and civilized country. Whatever theorists may have thought

occasionally of the happiness of men in barbarous or savage

conditions, no doubt at all can be entertained as to that of

women. It is civilization which has taken the yoke from their

neck, the scourge from their back, and the burden from their

shoulders. It is Christianity chiefly which has raised them from

the state of slaves or menials to that of citizens, and compelled

their rough and unresisted tyrants to call up law in their

defence; that potent spirit which they, who have evoked it, must

ever after themselves submit to. Religion, which extends the

sanctity of the marriage vow to the husband as well as to the

wife, has rescued her from a condition in which her best and most

tender affections were the source of her bitterest misery; a

condition in which her only escape from a sense of suffering too

unremitting for nature to endure, was in that mental degradation

which produces insensibility to wrong. The instances of primitive

communities, in which such injustice has not prevailed, are too

few and far between, to form any solid objection to the truth of

this general picture. The mere increase of numbers infallibly

obliterates the fair but feeble virtues that originate in nothing

but ignorance of ill; and the first inroads of want or discord,

usually settle the doom of the weak and defenceless. In restoring

to women their domestic dignity, religion has done more than

every other cause towards shielding them from the consequences of

weakness and dependence. From the dignified affections of the

other sex, they have gradually acquired some social rights, and

some share of that freedom, without which virtue itself can

scarcely exist. Opinion, the offspring, not of resplendent

genius, whose earliest fires burned indignantly against the

tyrant and oppressor, but of a religion which preached the

equality of all before God, has given them a share of those

blessings, without which life is not worth possession. At length

it has opened to them the portals of knowledge and wisdom, the

gradual, but effective supports against degradation; and has

sanctified its gifts by withholding from them every license that

leads to vice, every knowledge that detracts from their purity,

and every profession that would expose them to insult."

Then follows a masterly sketch of the condition of woman in uncivilized

life, in which the subject is illustrated by the most apposite quotations

from the works of different travellers and historians. It is the writer's

opinion that in uncivilized life, the degradation of woman, though common,

is not universal. The celebrated passage in Tacitus is quoted in support

of this position; and among other less interesting extracts, is the

following account of Galway by Hardiman, a country which, so great is the

blessing of a paternal and judicious government, may furnish, in the

nineteenth century, illustrations of uncivilized life, equally picturesque

and striking with those which Tacitus has recorded in his day as familiar

among the inhabitants of Pagan Germany.

"This colony, from time immemorial, has been ruled by one of

their own body, periodically elected, who somewhat resembled the

Brughaid or head village of ancient times, when every clan

resided in its hereditary canton. This individual, who is

decorated with the title of mayor, in imitation of the city,

regulates the community according to their own peculiar customs

and laws, and settles all fishery disputes. His decisions are so

decisive, and so much respected, that the parties are seldom

known to carry their differences before a legal tribunal, or to

trouble the civil magistrate. They neither understand nor trouble

themselves about politics, consequently, in the most turbulent

times, their loyalty has never been questioned. Their mayor is no

way distinguished from other villagers, except that his boat is

decorated with a white sail, and may be seen when at sea, at

which time he acts as admiral, with colours flying at the

masthead, gliding through their fleet with some appearance of

authority.... When on shore, they employ themselves in repairing

their boats, sails, rigging, and cordage, in making, drying, and

repairing their nets and spillets, in which latter part they are

assisted by the women, who spin the hemp and yarn for their nets.

In consequence of their strict attention to these particulars,

very few accidents happen at sea, and lives are seldom lost.

Whatever time remains after these avocations, they spend in

regaling with whisky, and assembling in groups to discuss their

maritime affairs, on which occasions they arrange their fishing

excursions. When preparing for sea, hundreds of their women and

children for days before crowd the strand, seeking for worms to

bait the hooks. The men carry in their boats, potatoes, oaten

cakes, fuel, and water, but never admit any spirituous liquors.

Thus equipped, they depart for their fishing ground, and

sometimes remain away several days. Their return is joyfully

hailed by their wives and children, who meet them on the shore.

The fish instantly becomes the property of the women, (the men,

after landing, never troubling themselves further about it,) and

they dispose of it to a poorer class of fishwomen, who retail it

at market.

"The inhabitants of the Cloddagh are an unlettered race. They

rarely speak English, and even their Irish they pronounce in a

harsh, discordant tone, sometimes not intelligible to the

townspeople. They are a contented, happy race, satisfied with

their own society, and seldom ambitious of that of others.

Strangers (for whom they have an utter aversion) are never

suffered to reside among them. The women possess an unlimited

control over their husbands, the produce of whose labour they

exclusively manage, allowing the men little more money than

suffices to keep the boat and tackle in repair; but they keep

them plentifully supplied with whisky, brandy, and tobacco. The

women seldom speak English, but appear more shrewd and

intelligent in their dealings than the men; in their domestic

concerns the general appearance of cleanliness is deserving of

particular praise. The wooden ware, with which every dwelling is

well stored, rivals in colour the whitest delft.

"At an early age they generally marry amongst their own clan. A

marriage is commonly preceded by an elopement, but no

disappointment or disadvantage from that circumstance has ever

been known among them. The reconciliation with the friends

usually takes place the next morning, the clergyman is sent for,

and the marriage celebrated. The parents generally contrive to

supply the price of a boat, or a share in one, as a beginning."

The writer then proceeds, in a strain of generous yet chastened energy, to

comment on the false measure which people apply to the sufferings of

others. Insensibility to wretchedness, or, as in the vocabulary of

oppression it is called, content, is often a proof of nothing but that

stupefaction of the faculties which is the natural result of long and

blighting misery. A contented slave is a degraded man. His sorrow may be

gone, but so is his understanding.

In the course of her enquiries into the condition of women under the

Mahometan law, the author is led to make some reflections upon one by whom

Mahometan manners were first presented in an attractive shape to the

English public--a person celebrated for her friends, but still more

celebrated for her enemies--known for her love, but famous for her hate--a

girl without feeling, a woman without tenderness--a banished wife, a

careless mother--on whom extraordinary wit, masculine sense, a clear

judgment, and an ardent love of letters seem to have been lavished for no

other purpose than to show that, without a good heart, they serve only to

make their possessor the most contemptible of mankind. Lady Mary Wortley's

heart was the receptacle of all meanness and sensuality--the prey of a

selfishness as intense as rank, riches, a bad education, natural

malignity, and the extremes of good and bad fortune, ever engendered in

the breast of woman. The remarks on her character, in the volume before

us, are, as might be expected, excellent.

The condition of women among the more polished nations of antiquity, is a

subject which, if fully examined, would more than exhaust our narrow

limits. It does not appear from Homer, says our author, that the condition

of women was depressed. Achilles, in a very striking passage, declares

that every wise and good man loves and is careful for his wife, and

Hector, in the passage which Cicero is so fond of quoting, urges the

opinion of

"Troy's proud dames, whose garments sweep the ground,"

as a motive for his conduct. However this may be, certain it is, that the

feelings and affections of domestic life are portrayed by Homer with a

degree of purity, truth, and pathos, that casts every other writer, Virgil

not excepted, into the shade; and which, to carry the panegyric of human

composition as far as it will go, he himself, in his most glorious

passages, has never been able to surpass. It has been so long the fashion

to represent Virgil as the sole master of the pathetic, that this

assertion may appear to many paradoxical; and it is undoubtedly true, that

the fourth book of the Aeneid cannot he read by any one of common

sensibility without strong emotion; but how different is the lamentation

of Andromache over her living husband, uttered in all the glow and

consciousness of returned and "twice blest" love, from the raving of the

slighted woman, abandoned by the lover whom she has too rashly trusted,

and to whom she has too plainly become indifferent! How different is the

character of the patriot warrior, the prop and bulwark of his country,

sacrificing his life to delay that ruin which he knew it was beyond his

power to avert--snatching, amid the bloody scenes around him, a moment for

the indulgence of a father's pride and a husband's tenderness, from the

perfidious paramour flying from the vengeance of the woman he had wronged!

And how noble is the simplicity of Andromache, how affecting the appeal in

which, after reminding her husband that all else to which she was bound

had been swept away, she tells him that, while he remains, her other

losses are unfelt! Let us trace the episode. "She had not gone," the poet

tells us, "to the mansions of her brothers or of her sisters, with their

floating veils; neither had she gone to the shrine of Minerva, where the

Trojan women strove to appease the terrible wrath of the fair-haired

goddess. No. She had gone to the lofty tower of Ilium, for she had heard

that the Trojans were sore harassed, and that the force of the Greeks was

mighty; thither, like one bereft of reason, had she precipitated her

steps, and the nurse followed with her child." Then follows that

interview, which no one can read without passion, or think of without

delight--that exquisite scene, in which the wife and mother pours out all

her tenderness, her joy, her sadness, her pride, her terror, the memory of

the past, and the presage of future sorrow, in an irresistible torrent of

confiding love. Not less affecting is her husband's answer. Conscious of

his impending doom, he replies, that "not the future misery of his

countrymen, not that of Hecuba herself, and the royal Priam--not that of

all his valiant brethren slain by their enemies, and trampled in the dust,

give him such a pang as the thought of her distress." Then, as if to

relieve his thoughts, he stretches out his hand towards his child, but the

child shrinks backwards, scared at the brazen helm and waving crest--the

father and the mother exchange a smile--Hector lays aside the blazing

helmet, and, clasping his child in his arms, utters the noble prayer which

Dryden has rendered with uncommon spirit and fidelity:--

"Parent of gods and men, propitious Jove,

And you, bright synod of the powers above,

On this my son your precious gifts bestow;

Grant him to love, and great in arms to grow,

To reign in Troy, to govern with renown,

To shield the people, and assert the crown:

That when hereafter he from war shall come,

And bring his Trojans peace and triumph home,

Some aged man, who lives this act to see,

And who in former times remember'd me,

May say, 'The son in fortitude and fame,

Outgoes the mark, and drowns his father's name;'

That at these words his mother may rejoice,

And add her suffrage to the public voice."

"Thus having said, he placed the boy in the arms of his beloved wife, and

she received him on her fragrant breast, sailing amid her tears;" her

husband uttered a few words of melancholy consolation, "and Andromache

went homewards, weeping, and often turning as she went." There is but one

passage in any work, ancient or modern, which can bear comparison with

this, and that is one in the Odyssey, in which is described the meeting of

Ulysses and Penelope; and yet some unfortunate people, who write

commentaries on the classics, only to show how completely nature has

denied them the faculty of taste, affirm that these passages were written

by different people. It is curious to what a pitch pedantry and dulness

may be brought by diligent cultivation.

As the fanatics of the East, to prove their continence, frequented the

society of women under the most trying circumstances, so these gentlemen

seem to study the writers of antiquity with the view of showing that their

understandings are equally inaccessible. In one respect the analogy does

not hold good. History tells us that the fanatics sometimes sunk under the

temptations to which they exposed themselves; but these gentlemen have

never, in any one instance, yielded to the influence of taste or genius.

Zenophon, in a beautiful treatise, has given an account of the manner in

which an Athenian endeavoured to mould the character of his wife, and to

this we would refer such of our readers as wish for more ample knowledge

on the subject. There is one circumstance, however, which we the rather

mention, as it has not found its way into the work before us, and as it

furnishes the most conclusive and irresistible evidence of the value set

upon matrimonial happiness at Athens, and of the servile vassalage to

which women, in that most polished of all cities, were reduced. By the law

of Athens, a father without sons might bequeath his property away from his

daughter, but the person to whom the property was bequeathed was obliged

to marry her. This was reasonable enough; but the same principle, that of

keeping the inheritance in the stock to which it belonged, occasioned

another law--if the father left his estate to his daughter, and if the

daughter inherited his property after the father's death, her nearest male

relation in the descending line, the [Greek: agchioteus], might, though

she was married to a living husband, lay claim to her, institute a suit

for her recovery, force her from her husband's arms, and make her his

wife.

Such a law must, alone, have been fatal to that domestic purity which we

justly consider the basis of social happiness--the very word, [Greek:

hetairai], which the Athenians enjoyed to denote the most degraded of all

women, if it proves the exquisite refinement of that wonderful people,

serves also to show how different were the associations with which, among

them, that class was connected. Can we wonder at this? Under that glorious

heaven, such women might, when they chose, behold the statues of Phidias

and the pictures of Zeuxis; they could listen to the wisdom of Socrates,

or they might form part of the crowd, hushed in raptured silence, round

the rhapsodist, as he recited the immortal lines of Homer--or round

Demosthenes, as he poured upon a rival, worthy of himself, the burning

torrent of his more than human eloquence.

In their hearing the mightiest interests were discussed--the subtle

questions of the Academy propounded--the snares of the sophist

exposed--the sublime thoughts and actions of heroes and demigods,

embodied in the most glorious poetry, were daily exhibited to their view;

while the wife, occupied solely with petty cares and trifling objects,

without charms to win the love, or dignity to command the esteem, of her

husband, was condemned, within the narrow walls of the Gynaeceum, (of

which the drawings of Herculaneum and Pompeii may enable us to form some

notion,) to drag out the insipid round of her monotonous existence.

True the Hetairai were stigmatized by law--but, as opinion was on their

side, they might well submit to legal condemnation and formal censure,

when they saw every day the youth, the intellect, the eloquence, the

philosophy, and the dignity of Athens crowding round their feet. At Rome,

the wife was not subject to the same rigorous seclusion, she was not cut

off from all possibility of improvement; her influence was gradually felt,

her rights were tacitly extended, and long after the letter of the law

reduced her to the condition of a slave, she held and exercised the

privileges of a citizen. At Rome, domestic virtues were more considered,

domestic ties were held in great esteem. The family was the basis of the

state. The existence of the Roman was not altogether public, it was not

merely intellectual; in what Grecian poet after Homer shall we find lines

that convey such an idea of domestic happiness as these?--

"Præterea neque jam domus accipiet te læta, neque uxor

Optima, nec dulces occurrent oscula nati

Præripere--et tacitâ pectus dulcedinet tangent."

There is no event to which women are more indebted for the improved

situation they hold among us than the propagation of Christianity. It was

reserved for religion to urge the weakness of woman as a reason for

treating her, not with tenderness only, but with respect; it was reserved

for religion to bring the charities that are lovely in private life into

public service; to break down the barriers which had so long separated the

husband from the citizen, and to pour around the private hearth the light

which, up to the time of its revelation, had been reflected almost

exclusively from the school of the philosopher or the forum of the

republic, unless in a few rare and favoured instances when it had shed its

radiance over the cell of the captive and the deathbed of the patriot. It

was for religion to inculcate that purity of heart, without which mere

forbearance from sensuality is a virtue which may be prized in the

precincts of the seraglio, but to which true honour is almost indifferent.

Nothing less powerful than such an influence prescribing a new life, and

commanding its votaries to be new creatures, could have wrenched from

their holdings prejudices as old as the society in which they flourished.

Our limits will not allow us to descant at any length on the condition of

women during the early ages of Christianity; but we transcribe on this

subject, from a recent work, a passage which we are sure our readers will

peruse with pleasure.

"Ce qui rendit les moeurs des familles Chrétiennes si graves, ce

qui les conserva si chastes, c'est ce qui a toujours exercé sur

les moeurs en général l'influence la plus profonde, l'exemple des

femmes. Douées d'une delicatesse d'organes, qui rend, pour ainsi

dire, leur intelligence plus accessible à la voix d'un monde

supérieur, leur coeur plus sensible à toutes ces émotions qui

enfantent les vertus, et qui élèvent l'homme terrestre au-dessus

de la sphère étroite de la vie présente, les femmes, étrangères à

l'histoire des travaux speculatifs du genre humain, sont

toujours, dans les révolutions morales et religieuses, les

premières à saisir, et à propager ce qui est grand, beau, et

céleste. Avec une chaleur entrainante elles embrassèrent la cause

Chrétienne, et s'y dévouèrent en héroines, depuis l'annonciation

du Sauveur jusqu'à sa mort; en effet, elles furent les premières

aux pieds de sa croix, les premières à son sépulcre. Présentant

avec leur tact si prompt et si fin, tout ce que cette cause leur

déferait d'élévation morale et d'avantages sociaux, elles s'y

attachèrent avec un intérêt toujours croissant. Depuis les

saintes femmes de l'évangile et la marchande de pourpre de

Thyatire jusqu'à l'impératrice Hélène, elles furent les

protectrices les plus zélées des idées Chrétiennes. Leur zèle ne

fut point sans sacrifices, mais avec empressement elles

renoncèrent à leurs goûts les plus chers, à la parure et aux

élégances du luxe, pour rivaliser avec les hommes les plus sages

de la société Chrétienne. Quelques rares exceptions ne se font

remarquer que pour relever tant de mérite."--Matter, _Hist. du

Christianime_, Vol. I.

"The tendency of this creed," to use the words of our author, "is

to direct the aim and purposes of mankind to whatever can exalt

human nature and improve human happiness. It represents us as

gardeners in a vineyard, or servants entrusted with a variety of

means, who are not 'to keep their talent in a napkin,' but to

exert their skill and ingenuity to employ it to the best

advantage. The moral principles themselves are fixed and

unchangeable; but their application to the circumstances by which

we are surrounded, must depend very much on the degree in which

reason has been exercised. By no imaginable instruction could the

mind be so tutored, as to see through all the errors and

prejudices of its times at once, but the principles possess in

themselves a power of progression. The generosity of one time

will be but justice in another; the temperance that brings

respect and distinction in one age, will be but decorum in one

more civilized, yet the principles are at all times the same."

It is difficult to read without a smile some of the passages in which the

dress and manners of the first ages are described by the Fathers of the

Church; the fair hair, (our classical readers will recollect the

"Nigrum flavo crinem abscondente galero"

of the Roman satirist,) which the daughters of the South borrowed from

their Celtic and German neighbours, seems especially to have excited their

indignation. Tertullian, in his treatise "De Cultu Foeminarum," declaims

with his usual fiery rhetoric against this habit. "I see some women," says

the African, "who dye their hair with yellow; they are ashamed of their

very nation, that they are not the natives of Gaul or Germany. Evil and

most disastrous to them is the omen which their fiery head portends, while

they consider such abomination graceful." This charitable hint of future

reprobation, savage as it appears, seems to have been much admired by the

Fathers; it is repeated by St Jerome and St Cyprian with equal triumph.

Well, indeed, might Theophilus of Antioch, in his letter to Autolycus,

place the Christian opinions concerning women in startling contrast with

the revolting scheme proposed in relation to them by the most refined

philosopher of antiquity. Well might the matrons of Antioch refuse to

gratify Julian by a sacrifice to gods whose votaries had steeped their sex

in impurity and degradation. The death of Hypatia is indeed a blot in

Christian annals, but she fell the victim of an infuriated multitude; and

how often had the Proconsul and the Emperor beheld, unmoved, the arena wet

with the blood of Christian virgins, and the earth blackened with their

ashes! Indeed, the deference paid to weakness is the grand maxim, the

practical application of which, in spite of some fantastic notions, and

some most pernicious errors that accompanied it, entitles chivalry to our

veneration, and prevented the dark ages from being one scene of unmixed

violence and oppression. The flashes of generosity that gild with a

momentary splendour the dreadful scenes of feudal tyranny, were struck out

by the force of this principle acting upon the most rugged nature in the

most superstitious ages. While the fire that had consumed the surprised

city was slaked in the blood of its miserable inhabitants, the distress of

high-born beauty, or the remonstrances of the defenceless priest, often

arrested the career of the warrior, who viewed the slaughter of

unoffending peasants and of simple burghers with as much indifference as

that of the wild-boar or the red-deer which it was his pastime and his

privilege to destroy. Who does not remember the beautiful passage in

Tasso, where the crusaders burst into tears at the sight of the holy

sepulchre?--

"Nudo ciascuno il pie calca il sentiero,

Ch'l'esempio de duci ogn' altromuove

Serico fregio d'or, piuma e criniero

Superbo dal suo capo ognon rimuove,

_E d'insieme del cor l'abito altero

Depone, e calde e pie lagrime piove_."

We now enter into the main object of the work, the condition of women in

modern times; and the passage which introduces the subject is so luminous

and eloquent, that we cannot resist the pleasure of laying it before our

readers without mutilation.

"To pursue the history of woman through the ages of misrule and

violence that corrupted the spirit of chivalry, would be useless.

It is sufficiently evident, that in proportion as the vices of

barbarism renewed their dominion, the condition of women would be

more or less affected by their evils. But, on the whole, society

was improving: two great events were preparing to engage the

attention of Europe--the struggles for religious freedom and the

revival of learning. These produced effects on the human mind

very different from those of any revolutions that had taken place

during the age of barbarism.

"While the opinion reigned absolute, that war was the most

important affair of life and the most honourable pursuit, the

tendency of society was towards destruction. All the virtue

consistent with so false a principle was, perhaps, brought forth

by chivalry; but in the long run, the false principle overruled

the force of the generous spirit, and chivalry sank like a meteor

that owed its splendour to surrounding darkness. Its spirit gave

an impulse to opinion and sentiment, but its errors and ignorance

disabled it from supplying any corrective to the bad institutions

and mistaken policy which fostered barbarism. It was not every

mind that was capable of imbibing the generous sentiments of

chivalry, but ferocious passions could rarely fail to be

stimulated by the idolatry of war, and the contempt for civil

employments it produced. Among men, poor, restless, and to a

great degree irresponsible, the craving for distinction excited

by chivalry was a dangerous passion. No very general change over

the face of society could be reasonably expected, from the

attempts to engraft a spirit of gentleness and beneficence upon a

principle of war and destruction. The spirit was right, but the

principle was wrong. It was just the reverse in the next

enthusiasm which seized the minds of mankind. In the struggles

for religious freedom which followed, the principle was right,

but it was pursued in the horrible spirit of persecution. Men,

ready to die for the right of professing the truth, could not

divest themselves of that persecuting spirit towards others,

which was leading themselves to the stake. But there is a vigour

in a right principle which gradually clears men's eyes of their

prejudices. The dire and mistaken means by which successive

reformers defended each his own opinion, were abandoned, and men

began to perceive that civil and religious liberty were of more

use to society than martial feats or extended conquests; and that

it is still more important to learn how to reason than how to fight.

"The tendency of this principle was towards social improvement,

and civilization began to make progress.

"Before the extinction of chivalry, the airy throne on which

women had been raised was broken down; but the effects of her

elevation were never obliterated. There remained on the surface

of society a tone of gallantry which tended to preserve some

recollection of the station she had once held. As civilization

advanced, the idea that women might be disposed of like property,

seemed to be nearly abandoned all over Europe; but their

subsequent condition partook (as might be expected in the case of

dependent beings) of the character prevailing in each country.

The grave temper and morbid jealousy of the Spaniards, reduced

them almost to Eastern seclusion."

We entreat the attention of our readers to the following remark, which

explains, in some degree, the mediocrity that characterizes the present

day:--

"In the first ages after the rise of literature, the very want of

that multitude of second-rate books we now possess, had the

effect of compelling those who learned any thing to betake

themselves to studies of a solid nature; and there was

consequently less difference then, between the education of the

two sexes, than now. The reader will immediately recollect the

instances of Lady Jane Grey, Mrs Hutchinson, and others of the

same class, and will feel that it is quite fair to assume, that

many such existed when a few came to be known."

It was during the reign of the last princes of the House of Valois, that

the women of the French court began to exercise that malignant and almost

universal influence, which, for a while, poisoned the well-springs of

refinement and civility. Eclipsed for a while by the mighty luminaries

which, during the life of Louis XIII., and the early part of Louis

XIV.th's reign, were lords of the ascendant when they had sunk beneath

the horizon, their constellation again blazed forth with greater force

and more disastrous splendour. Hence the Dragonnades, the destruction of

Port-Royal, the persecution of the Jansenists, the death of Racine, the

disgrace of Fénélon. Hence, in the reign of Louis XV., orgies that

Messalina would have blushed to share; while cruelties[A] of which

Suwarrow would hardly have been the instrument, were employed to lash

into a momentary paroxysm nerves withered by debauchery. Here let us

pause for a moment, to remark upon the effect which false opinions may

produce upon the happiness and well-being of distant generations. Nothing

is so common as for trivial superficial men--the class to which the

management of empires is for the most part entrusted--to ridicule

theories, and, by a mode reasoning which would place any cabin boy far

above Sir Isaac Newton, to insist upon the mechanical parts of

government, and the routine of ordinary business, as the sole objects

entitled to notice and consideration--

"O curvæ in terris animæ, et coelestium inanes!"

[Footnote A: This does not apply to Louis XV. personally.]

We would fain ask these practical people--for such is the eminently

inappropriate metaphor by which they rejoice to be distinguished--we would

fain ask them (if it be consistent with their profound respect for

practice to pay some attention to experience) to cast their eyes upon the

proceedings and manners of the French court (wild and chimerical as such

an appeal will no doubt appear to them) during the dominion of Catharine

of Medicis and her offspring, those execrable deceivers, corrupters, and

executioners of their people. To what are the almost incredible

abominations, familiar as household words to the French court of that day,

to be ascribed? To what are the persecutions, perjuries, the massacres

that pollute the annals of France during that period, to be attributed? To

a false theory. Catharine of Medicis brought into France the practical

atheism of Machiavelli's prince--the Bible, as she blasphemously called

it, of her class. The maxims which, when confined to the petty courts of

Italy, did not undermine the prosperity of any considerable portion of the

human race, when disseminated among a valiant, politic, and powerful

nation, brought Iliads of desolation in their train. We subjoin Jeanne

d'Allrep's account of the private manners of the court of Charles IX:--

"J'ai trouvé votre lettre fort à mon gré--je la montrerai à

madame, si je puis; quant à la peinture, je l'enverrai querir à

Paris; elle est belle et bien avisée, et de bonne grâce, mais

nourrie en la plus maudite et corrompue compagnie qui fut jamais,

car je n'en vois point qui ne s'en sente. Votre cousine la

marquise (l'épouse du jeune Prince de Condé) en est tellement

changée qu'il n'y a apparence de religion en elle; si non

d'autant qu'elle ne va point à la messe; car au reste de sa façon

de vivre, hormis l'idolâtrie, elle fait comme les Papistes; et ma

soeur la Princesse (de Condé) encore pis. Je vous l'écris

privément, le porteur vous dira comme le roi s'émancipe--c'est

pitié; je ne voudrois pour chose du monde que vous y fussiez pour

y demeurer. Voilà pourquoi je désire vous marier, et que vous et

votre femme vous vous retiriez de cette corruption; car encore

que je la croyois bien grande, je la trouve encore davantage. Ce

ne sont pas les hommes ici qui prient les femmes--ce sont les

femmes qui prient les hommes; si vous y étiez, vous n'en

échapperiez jamais sans une grande grâce de Dieu."

Thus women were alternately tools and plotters, idols and slaves. The

ornaments of a court became the scourges of a nation; their influence was

an influence made up of falsehood, made up of cruelty, made up of

intrigue, of passions the most unbridled, and of vices the most

detestable, and it seems to the student of history, in this wild and

dreadful era as if all that was generous, upright, noble, and

benevolent--as if faith and honour, and humanity and justice, were

foreign and unnatural to the heart of man. But let us turn to our author.

"But the times were about to change. The great and stirring

contests in religion and politics, which had given such scope to

the deep fervour of the British character, subsided, as if the

actors were breathless from their past exertions. The struggle

for freedom sank into acquiescence in the dominion of the most

worthless of mankind; and zeal for religion fled before the

spirit of banter and sneer. The enthusiasm of 'fierce wars and

faithful loves,' of piety and of freedom, were succeeded by the

reign of profligacy and levity.

"During that disastrous period, the sordid and servile vices seem

to have kept pace with the wildest licentiousness; and the dark

and stern persecutions in Scotland form a fearful contrast with

the bacchanalian revels of the court. The effects on the

character and estimation of the female sex, sustain all that has

been said upon the connexion of their interests with the

elevation of morals. It became the habit to satirize and despise

them, and on this they have never entirely recovered. The

demoralization which led to it was, indeed, too much opposed to

the temper of the English to be permanent; but women, for a long

time after, ceased to keep pace with their age. Notwithstanding

the numerous exceptions which must always have existed in a free

and populous country like England, where literature had made

progress, it is certain, that in the days of Pope and Addison, the

women, in general, were grossly ignorant.

"The tone of gallantry and deference which had arisen from

chivalry, still remained on the surface, but its language was

that of cold, unmeaning flattery; and, from being the arbiters of

honour, they became the mere ministers of amusement. They were

again consigned to that frivolity, into which they _relapse as

easily as men_ do into ferocity. The respect they inspired, was

felt individually or occasionally, but not for their sex. Any

thing serious addressed to them, was introduced with an apology,

or in the manner we now address children whom we desire to

flatter. They were treated and considered as grown children. In

the writings addressed to them expressly for their instruction in

morals, or the conduct of life, though with the sincerest desire

for their welfare, nothing is proposed to them that can either

exalt their sentiments, invigorate their judgment, or give them

any desire to leave the world better than they found it. They

inculcated little beyond the views and the duties of a decent

servant. Views and duties, indeed, very commendable as far as

they go, but lamentable when offered as the standard of morals

and thought for half the human species; that half too, on whom

chiefly depends the first, the often unalterable, bent given to

the character of the whole."

The dignity of character which rivets our attention on the "high dames and

gartered knights" of the days of Elizabeth, the simplicity and earnestness

and lofty feeling, which lent grace to prejudice and chastened error into

virtue, were exchanged, in the days of Charles II., for undisguised

corruption and insatiable venality, for license without generosity,

persecution without faith, and luxury without refinement. Grammont's

animated _Mémoires_ are a complete, and, from the happy unconsciousness of

the writer to the vices he portrays, a faithful picture of the court, to

which the description Polydore Virgil gives of a particular family, "nec

vir fortis nec foemina casta," was almost literally applicable.

Various as are the beauties of style with which this work

abounds--beauties which, to borrow the phrase of Cicero, rise as

naturally from the subject as a flower from its stem--we doubt whether it

contains a more felicitous illustration than that which we are about to

quote. The reader must bear in mind that the object of the writer is to

establish the proposition, that there is an average inferiority of women

to men in certain qualities, which, slight as it may appear, or

altogether as it may vanish, in particular instances, is, on the whole,

incontestable, and according to which the transactions of daily life are

distributed.

"All inconvenience is avoided by a slight inferiority of strength

and abilities in one of the sexes. This gradually develops a

particular turn of character, a new class of affections and

sentiments that humanize and embellish the species more than any

others. These lead at once, without art or hesitation, to a

division of duties, needed alike in all situations, and produce

that order without which there can be no social progression. In

the treatise of _The Hand_, by Sir Charles Bell, we learn that

the left hand and foot are naturally a little weaker than the

right; the effect of this is, to make us more prompt and

dexterous than we should otherwise be. If there were no

difference at all between the right and left limbs, the slight

degree of hesitation which hand to use or which foot to put

forward, would create an awkwardness that would operate more or

less every moment of our lives, and the provision to prevent it

seems analogous to the difference nature has made between the

strength of the sexes."

The domain of woman is the horizon where heaven and earth meet--a sort of

land debatable between the confines where positive institutions end and

intellectual supremacy begins. It includes the whole region over which

politeness should extend, as well as a large portion of the territories

over which the fine arts hold their sway.

Those lighter and more shifting features which elude the grasp of the

moralist, and escape the pencil of the historian, though they impress upon

every age a countenance and expression of its own, it is her undoubted

province to survey. Consequently, if not for the

"Troublous storms that toss

The private state, and render life unsweet,"

yet for whatever of elegance or simplicity is wanting in the intercourse

of society, for all that is cumbrous in its proceedings, for any bad

taste, and much for any coarseness that it tolerates, woman, as European

manners are constituted, is exclusively responsible. The habits of daily

intercourse represent her faults and virtues as naturally as a shadow is

cast by the sun, or the image of the tree that overhangs the lake is

reflected from its undisturbed and silent waters. Where the desire of

wealth and respect for rank engross an excessive share of her thoughts,

conversation will be insipid; and instead of that, "nature _ondoyante_,"

that disposition to please and be pleased, which is the essence of good

nature and the foundation of good taste--instead of frankness and

urbanity, youth will engraft on its real ignorance the dulness of affected

stupidity--will assume an air of selfish calculation--of arrogance at one

time and servility at another--debased itself, and debasing all around it.

When, on the contrary, whatever may be their real sentiments, the external

demeanour of men to each other is such as benevolence, gratitude, and

equity would dictate--and we do mean this phrase to include Russian

manners--where, whatever may be the principles that ferment within, the

surface of society is brilliant and harmonious--where, if the better

politeness which dwells in the heart be wanting, the imitation of it which

springs from the head is habitual--women are entitled to the praise of

exact taste and skilful discrimination. There are women whom the world

elevates, only afterwards the more effectually to humble. For a time the

best and wisest submit to their caprices, study their humour, are governed

by their wishes--every one avoids as a crime the slightest appearance of

collision with any motive that, for the moment, it may suit their purpose

to entertain--a smile upon their face is hailed with rapture, any faint

proof that humanity is not dead within their breasts draws down the most

enthusiastic applause. During their hour of empire, people are grateful to

them for not being absolutely intolerable--when they deviate into the

least appearance of courtesy or good nature, they are angels. Their sun

sets, and they soon learn what it is to be a fallen tyrant. The woman who

pleases at first, and as your acquaintance advances gains the more in your

esteem, is the most charming of all companions; the countenance of such a

person is the most agreeable of all sights, and her voice the most

musical of all sounds. "Une belle femme qui a les qualités d'un honnête

homme est-ce qu'il y a au monde d'un commerce plus delicieux; l'on trouve

en elle tout le mérite des deux sexes."

"In the heart of the best woman," says a German writer, "there glows a

shovelful, at least, of infernal embers; in that of the worst, there is a

little corner of Paradise."

The real benefits which depend on the influence of the softer sex are thus

described:--

"One of the peculiar offices of women is to refine society. They

are very much shielded by their sex from the stern duties of men,

and from that intercourse with the basest part of mankind which

is opposed to the humanizing influence of mental cultivation. On

them, the improvement of society in these respects chiefly

depends; and they who consider the subject with the views here

offered, will become more and more convinced of the service they

might render. Manners are, in truth, of great importance. If real

refinement be a merit, it is surely desirable that it should show

itself in the general deportment. Real vulgarity is the

expression of something mean or coarse in sentiments or habits.

It betrays the want of fine moral perceptions. The peculiarities

in manner and deportment, which proceed from the selfishness of

the great world, when stripped of the illusory influence of their

apparent refinement, become grossly offensive. A cold repulsive

manner, such as is commonly assumed by persons in high life, is

sometimes a necessary shield against the pushing familiarity of

underbred persons. Their tasteless imitations of habits and

manners which do not belong to their station or character,

deserve the ridicule they meet with. The most offensive form

vulgarity can take, is an affectation of the follies and vices of

high life. It is true that the notion of vulgarity is affixed, in

the fine world, to many trifling modes of dress and deportment,

which in themselves have no demerit whatever, except that

something opposed to them has acquired an ephemeral propriety

from the fancy of the great. But in real good breeding there is

always a reason. It is far too little attended to in England in

any class, though, from acting as a continual corrective to

selfish and unsocial affections, it is peculiarly requisite in

all. Good manners consist in a constant maintenance of

self-respect, accompanied by attention and deference to others;

in correct language, gentle tones of voice, ease, and quietness

in movements and action. They repress no gaiety or animation

which keeps free of offence; they divest seriousness of an air of

severity or pride. In conversation, good manners restrain the

vehemence of personal or party feelings, and promote that

versatility which enables people to converse readily with

strangers, and take a passing interest in any subject that may be

addressed to them."

The writer takes occasion to regret the narrow spirit which prevents our

nobility, or, to speak more properly, our fashionable coteries, from

acquiring a healthier tone, by mixing with societies in which habits of

more vigorous thought predominate. In France, to whatever degree frivolity

may be carried, a French lady would be ashamed not to affect an interest

in the great writers by whom her country has been ennobled; and to betray

an ignorance of their works, or an indifference to their renown, would be

considered a proof not only of the greatest stupidity, but of bad taste

and unrefined habits. Here we are distinguished unfavourably from our

neighbours--exceptions, of course, there must always be--but in general to

betray an acquaintance with any literature beyond the last novel, or the

current trash and gossip of the day, might provoke the charge of pedantry,

but at any rate would fail in exciting the slightest sympathy. Hence men

of letters, and women of letters, form a caste by themselves much to their

own disadvantage, and still more to the injury of those to the improvement

of whom they might imperceptibly contribute; hence the statesman, or the

lawyer, or the writer, generally keeps aloof from the great world, which

he leaves to idle young men and aged coxcombs; or, if he enters it, takes

care to abstain from those topics on which his conversation would be most

natural, instructing, and entertaining. Instances, indeed, may be found,

where men, eminent for science and literature, or of high professional

reputation, inflamed with a distempered appetite for fashionable society,

"drag their slow lengths along" among the guardsmen and dowagers who

frequent such scenes; but they are rather tolerated than encouraged, and

the sacrifices by which they purchase their admission into the dullest

society of Europe are so numerous, their appearance is so mortifying, and

the effect produced upon themselves so pernicious, that hitherto such

instances have served not as models to imitate, but as bywords to deter.

Instead of improving others, they degrade themselves; instead of inspiring

the frivolous with nobler aims and better principles, they condescend to

be the echoes of imbecility; instead of raising the standard of

conversation, they yield implicitly to any signal, however corrupt,

worthless, or utterly unreasonable may be the quarter from which it

proceeds, that the most submissive votaries of fashion watch for and obey.

The system is denounced by our author in the following vigorous and

eloquent passage:--

"The assembly-room or dinner-table _is the very focus of care and

anxiety_, so that a funereal dulness often overhangs it; and

there, where there is the greatest amount of money, time, and

contrivance expended on pleasure--there is least animation of

spirits. For one who is pleased, a dozen are chewing the cud of

some petty annoyance, and _the flow of spirits excited and

animated by rapid interchange of ideas is scarcely known._ When

it occurs, it is seldom owing to those who live for dissipation,

but to men whom the duties of office compel to work very hard.

Notwithstanding their wealth, the pursuits of ambition compel

them to become men of business, and the elasticity of their minds

is preserved. That languid and depressed condition which cankers

the very heart of social enjoyment, loses its solemn character on

occasions of disappointment and vexation. Its pleasures are not

cheerful, but its distresses are ludicrous, and are felt to be

so. Each laughs at his neighbour's mortifications, and the

consciousness he is supplying the same malicious amusement in his

turn, does not take the sting from his own griefs when they

arise.

"Nor is it merely as destructive of social enjoyment, that the

habits of the great world are unfriendly to happiness. It is not

the place for those who have warm imaginations and tender hearts.

There is scarcely any circumstance in which that sphere differs

more from others, than in the deficiency of strong affections.

The chances are many against their existence; and if a woman be

born to move in the haunts of the worldly, it were almost cruel

to snatch her from that immersion in their follies which may

serve to stifle the pangs of disappointed affection. For after

all that can be said of the misery of its empty pursuits and

corrupted tastes, the disappointments that end its petty

passions, and the mortifications that cling to its apparent

splendours, sorrows like those bear no comparison with tears of

anguish shed by the grave of love. Surrounding pleasures, even

the tranquil and elevating beauty of external nature, seem but a

mockery when offered in place of the one thing needful--perfect

and overflowing affection. The exterior decorum and attention on

the part of an altered husband, which betrays to the world no

dereliction of morals but what its easy code passes over as a

right, is no substitute for love. Not unfrequently there is

something almost appalling in the sense of solitude, which on

occasions of sickness or retirement oppresses a young woman, who

to all appearance is overwhelmed with attendance. The hand is not

there that would render every other superfluous. A voice is

wanting, whose absence leaves the silence and horror of death.

The eyes are missed, whose glances first called forth the fervour

of her affections from their peaceful sleep; or, if looking on

her for a moment, they express nothing but indifference. These

are the occasions that dispel the laboured illusion, wherewith,

under the garb of business, or cares, or natural manner, she had

sought to disguise from herself the marks of an estranged heart.

In these sad and desolate hours her memory retraces her early

years, her mother's tender watchfulness, and the soft voices of

sisters contending for their place by her bedside. The contrast

with her present stately solitude bursts resistless through every

effort to repel it; and life and youth, with their long futurity,

present her with nothing but a frightful chasm."

"Alas! alas my song is sad;

How should it not be so,

When he, who used to make me glad,

Now leaves me in my woe?

With him my love, my graciousness,

My beauty, all are vain;

I feel as if some guiltiness

Had mark'd me with its stain.

"One sweet thought still has power o'er me,

In this my heart's great need;

'Tis, that I ne'er was false to thee,

Dear friend, in word or deed:

I own that nobler virtues fill

Thy heart, love only mine;

Yet why are all thy looks so chill

Till they on others shine?

"Oh! long-loved friend, I marvel much

Thy heart is so severe,

That it will yield not to the touch

Of love and sorrow's tear.

No, no! it cannot be, that thou

Should seek another's love;

Oh! think upon our early vow,

And thou wilt faithful prove.

"Thy virtues--pride, thy lofty fame,

Assures me thou art true,

Though fairer ones than I may claim

Thy hand, and deign to sue.

But think, beloved one, that, to bless

With perfect blessing, thou

Must seek for trusting tenderness:

Remember then our vow!"

"Collectively," says our author, "women might do much to remove

the national stigma of leaving men of science and letters

neglected. But their education is seldom such as enables them to

know the great importance of science and literature to human

improvement; and they are rarely brought up to regard it as any

part of their duty to promote the interests of society. They

would not, indeed, be able directly to reward men of talent by

employment or honours, but they might make them acquainted with

those who could; at all events, mere social distinction, the

attention and approbation of our fellow creatures, is in itself

an advantage to men who seldom possess that passport to English

respect--wealth. Though learning is tacitly discouraged in women,

yet the access to every species of knowledge requisite to direct

their efforts wisely and well, is as open to them as to men. With

this power of forming the mind of the rising generation, this

influence over the opinions, the morals, and the tastes of

society, this direct power in promoting objects both of private

benevolence and national importance--with so many advantages, how

is it that women are still exposed to so many sufferings, from

dependence, oppression, mortification, and contempt? why are

their opinions yet sneered at? why is their influence rather

deprecated than sought? Is it not that they have never learnt

even the selfish policy of connecting themselves with the spirit

of moral and intellectual advancement? Is it not because their

liberty, their privileges, their power, have proceeded in many

respects, less from a spirit of justice in the other sex, or a

sense of moral fitness, than from the love of pleasure and

luxury, of which women are the best promoters?"

In England, these evils are peculiarly great; for in England they are

without compensation. It is possible to imagine such brilliant

conversation, such varied wit, such graceful manners, such apparent

gentleness, that would stifle the complaints of the moralist, and cause

the half-uttered expostulation to die away upon his lips. So we can

conceive that Arnaud and Nicole may have listened to the enchanting

discourse of Madame de Sevigne, and under an influence so irresistible,

have forborne to scan with severity the faults, glaring as they were, of

the system to which she belonged. But with us the case is

different--compare the English lady in her country-house, hospitable to

her guests, benevolent to her dependents, as a wife spotless, as a mother

most devoted, caring for all around her, dispensing education, relieving

distress, encouraging merit, the guard of innocence, the shame of guilt,

active, contented, gracious, exemplary: and see the same person in

London--her frame worn out with fatigue, her mind ulcerated with petty

mortifications, her brow clouded, her look hardened, her eye averted from

unprofitable friends, her tone harsh, her demeanour restless, her whole

being changed: and were there no higher motive, were it a question of

advantage and convenience only, were dignity, and the good opinion of

others, and consideration in the world, alone at stake, can any one

hesitate as to which situation a wife or daughter should prefer? We

should, indeed, be sorry if our demeanour in those vast crowds where

English people flock together, rather, as it would seem, to assert a

right than to gratify an inclination, were to be taken as an index of our

national character--the want of all ease and simplicity, those essential

ingredients of agreeable society, which distinguish these dreary

meetings, have been long unfortunately notorious. No nation is so careful

of the great, or so indifferent to the lesser, moralities of life as the

English; and in no country is society, indebted, perhaps, to polished

idleness for its greatest charms, more completely misunderstood. Too busy

to watch the feelings of others, and too earnest to moderate our own,

that true politeness which pays respect to age, which strives to put the

most insignificant person in company on a level with the most

considerable--virtues which our neighbours possess in an eminent

degree,--are, except in a few favoured instances, unknown among us; while

affectation, in other countries the badge of ignorance and vulgarity, is

in ours, even in its worst shape, when it borrows the mien of rudeness,

and impertinence, and effrontery, the appanage of those whose station is

most conspicuous, and whose dignity is best ascertained. There is more

good breeding in the cottage of a French peasant than in all the boudoirs

of Grosvenor Square.

But God forbid that a word should escape from us which should

seem to place the amusements of society, or the charms of

conversation, in competition with those stern virtues which

are the guardians of an English hearth! The austere fanaticism of the

Puritans, tainted with hypocrisy as it was, was preferable a thousand

times to the orgies of the Regent and the _Parc-aux-Cerfs_. If purity and

refined society be, indeed, incompatible--if the love of freedom and

active enterprise necessarily exclude the grace and softness which lessen,

or at least teach us to forget, the burden of existence, let us be what we

are; and, indeed, it is the opinion of many, that the rant of social

pleasure is the price we pay for the excellence of our political

institutions. It is because before the law all men are equal, that in the

world so much care is taken to show that they are different. If to this we

add the mercantile habits of our countrymen, the enormous wealth which

their pursuits enable them to accumulate--the great honours which are the

reward of successful industry and ambition--the absurd value annexed to

technical distinctions--the manner in which, in our as in all free

countries, those distinctions are conferred--and a certain disposition to

sneer at any chivalrous, or elevated feeling, from which few of our ladies

are exempt--we shall find it easy to account for the cold, stiff,

ungraceful, harsh, and mercenary habits which disfigure, to the

astonishment of all foreigners, the patrician class of English society.

Nothing, indeed, can be less graceful than the frivolity of an Englishman.

Naturally grave, serious, contemplative, if his angry stars have endowed

him with enormous wealth, he carries into the pursuit of trifles the same

solemnity and perseverance which, had he been more fortunately situated,

would have been employed in a professional career--he carries a certain

degree of gravity into his follies and his vices; as Pope, no less keen an

observer than finished a poet, observed, he

"Judicious sups, and greatly daring dines"--

devotes himself to an eternal round of puerile follies, with a pompous

self-importance that would be ludicrous were it exhibited in the discharge

of the noblest and most sacred duties. Plate and wine seem his religion,

and a well-furnished room his morality--his dinners engross his

thoughts--his field sports are a nation's care. He writes books on

arm-chairs, hunts with the most ineffable self-sufficiency, and talks of

his dogs and horses as Howard or Clarkson might speak of the jails they

had visited, and the mourners they had set free. He commits errors with a

stolid air of deliberation, which the reckless passions of boiling youth

could hardly palliate, but which, when perpetrated as a title to fashion,

and as a passport to society, no epithets that contempt can suggest are

vehement enough to stigmatize. The Englishman's vice has a business-like

air with it that is intolerable--there is no illusion, no refinement--it

is coarse, direct, groveling brutality--it wears its own hideous aspect

with no garnish or disguise; and how seldom, even among that sex which

these volumes are intended to instruct, does the brow wreathed with

roses, amid the haunts of dissipation, wear a gay, a serene, or even a

contented aspect! Where all the treasures that inanimate nature can

furnish are scattered in profusion--where the air is fragrant with

perfume, and vocal with melody, how vainly do we look for the freshness

and animation, and the simplicity and single-mindedness of buoyant and

delighted youth! We feel inclined, amid this gloomy dissipation and

depressing pleasure, to reverse the most beautiful passage in Euripides,

and to say, that the banquet and the festival do require all the

heightening of art, all the embellishments of luxury, all the illusions

of song, to conceal the struggles of corroding interest, and the pangs of

constant mortification.

"There" (but we quote one of the most remarkable passages in the

book) "is a general aversion from the labour of thought, in all

who have not had the faculties exercised while they were pliant,

nor been supplied with a certain stock of elementary knowledge,

essential alike to any subject of science that may be presented

to their maturer years. By means of the press, many broken and

ill-sustained rays pierce across the neglect or indifference of

parents, to the minds of the young. Gleams of a rational spirit

and enlarged feeling may often be found among the daughters of

country gentlemen, whose sons are still solely devoted to

sporting and party politics.

"When we think of those mighty resources we have just been

adverting to, the strength all such tastes acquire by sympathy,

and the observation of nature and of human life they tend to

excite, we might expect they would furnish society with

everlasting sources of excitement and mutual interest, that they

would create a universal sympathy with genius and ability

wherever it was found, and soften the repulsive austerity with

which it is the nature of rank and wealth to look on humble

fortunes.

"Little or nothing of all this takes place. Frivolity and

insipidity are the prevailing characters of conversation; and

nowhere in Europe, perhaps, does difference of fortune or station

produce more unsocial and illiberal separation. Very few of those

whom fortune has released from the necessity of following some

laborious profession, are capable of passing their time agreeably

without the assistance of company; not from a spirit of gaiety

which calls on society for indulgence--not from any pleasure they

take in conversation, where they are frequently languid and

taciturn, but to rival each other in the luxury of the table, or,

by a great _variety of indescribable airs_, to make others _feel

the pain of mortification_. They meet as if _'to fight the

boundaries' of their rank and fashion_, and the less definite and

perceptible is the line which divides them, the more punctilious

is their pride. It is a great mistake to suppose that this

low-minded folly is peculiar to people of rank: it is an English

disease. But the higher we go in society, the wider the circle of

the excluded becomes, consequently, the greater the range of

human beings cast forth from the pale of sympathy; and the more

contracted do the judgment, experience, and feelings of its

inmates become. The lofty walls, the iron spikes that surround

our villas, and the notices every where affixed 'that trespassers

will be prosecuted with the utmost rigour of the law,' are meet

emblems of the social spirit that connects the different orders

of society in England. The effect of this is to produce narrow

minds, or, what is worse, narrow hearts on one side, and a host

of dissocial, irritable passions on the other. In each step of

the scale, those beneath see chiefly the unamiable qualities of

their superiors."

The disproportion of the happiness of society with its means, is a subject

which calls forth all the eloquence and sagacity of this writer. Nor is

this surprising; for it might startle the most sluggish indifference--the

most incurious stupidity. How does it come to pass, that with us misery is

the fruit of successful labour, that with us experience does not teach

caution, that with us the most munificent charity is unable to check the

accumulation of evil, moral and physical, with which it vainly endeavours

to contend? How is it, that while the wealth of England is a proverb among

nations, the distress of her labourers is a byword no less universal; that

while her commerce encircles the globe, while her colonies are spread

through both hemispheres, while regions hitherto unknown are but the

resting-place of her never-ceasing enterprise, the producers of all this

wealth, the causes of all this luxury, the instruments of all this

civilization, lie down in despair to perish by hundreds, amid the miracles

of triumphant industry by which they are surrounded? How happens it, that

as our empire extends abroad, security diminishes at home? that as our

reputation becomes more splendid, and our attitude more commanding, the

fabric of our strength decays, and our social bulwarks rock from their

foundations? Who can say that the skill and valour of the general who has

added a province to our Indian empire--who, triumphing over obstacles

hitherto insurmountable, has caused the tide of victory to flow from East

to West, and make the Sepoy invincible--may not erelong be called upon to

fulfil the thankless task of suppressing insurrection, and to control the

kindling fury of a mistaken, it is true, but of a kindred population?

Shall the day indeed come when in our streets there shall be solitude, and

in our harbours be heard no sound of oars, neither shall gallant ship pass

thereby? Is the vaunted splendour of this country to furnish a melancholy

lesson of the instability of earthly power, and its fate to conclude a

tale more glorious, to point a moral more affecting, than any which Tyre,

or Sidon, or Carthage have furnished, to curb the insolence of prosperity,

and to show the insignificance of man?

"Quamvis Pontica pinus,

Sylvae filia nobilis,

Jactes et genus et nomen inutile."

After dwelling on the supply of information which the present age enjoys,

and which is quite without parallel in any former period, and pointing out

the inconsistencies among us, of which, nevertheless, every day affords

perpetual examples, the writer asks--

"Do these evils proceed from some moral perversity in the people?

Is there some natural barrier in England against the effects of

capital, industry, science, and religion; or is it not that

ignorance of the laws that regulate and harmonize social

existence, and of those that govern the human mind, has hitherto

been extensively prevalent, and is still resisting the remedies

of riper experience?

"But the poor and ignorant cannot educate themselves; it must be

the upper classes who give them the means of improvement. In the

natural laws of society, the use of a class who are independent

of labour for subsistence, is, that a certain part of the

community should have leisure to acquire that general knowledge

which is the parent of wise institutions and pure morals. That

they should have such affluence as to give weight to their

example and authority, is also desirable. Government, as has

already been observed, cannot act effectively against a very

great preponderance of error and prejudice, but must legislate in

the spirit of truths that are generally known, and in the service

of interests that excite general sympathy.

"The object of this work is not to advocate particular measures,

nor even to assume that every thing that is wrong is so through

culpable neglect; but it is to call attention to the grievous

evils, that neither legislation nor zeal and charity can

counteract with effect, till the increased education of all

classes assists their efforts. Something must be wanting, when

such unrivalled knowledge and wealth are accompanied by such

various and wide-spread evils. It is not benevolence that is

deficient, for nowhere can we turn without meeting it in private,

struggling against miseries too great for its power, and in

public devoting abilities of the first order to the cause of

humanity.

"It is the wider diffusion of knowledge we require: more heads

and hands still are wanted, qualified for acting in concert, or

at least acting generally on right principles. Too many persons

capable of generous feeling are absorbed and corrupted by luxury

and frivolity; too many waste their efforts from shallow,

mistaken, and contradictory views."

Then follows a splendid description of scientific energy, the

gratification which it affords, and the noble objects to which it points

the way.

"In examining the prodigious resources at the command of the

upper classes of English society, it is finely remarked, that

'the fine arts are the materials by which our physical and animal

sensations are converted into moral perceptions.'

"Every thing in the form of matter, however coarse--the refuse

and dross of more valuable materials--is resolvable, by science,

into elements too subtle for our vision, and yet possessed of

such potency that they effect transmutations more surprising than

the fables of magic. The points that spangle the still blue

vault, and make night lovely to the untaught peasant, interpreted

by science, expand into worlds and systems of worlds: some so

remote, that even the character of light, in which their

existence is declared to us, can scarcely give full assurance of

their reality--some, kindred planets which science has measured,

and has told their movements, their seasons, and the length of

their days. Such resemblances to our own globe are ascertained in

their general laws, and such diversity in their peculiar ones,

that we are led irresistibly to believe they all teem with

beings, sentient and intelligent as we are, yet whose senses, and

powers, and modes of existence, must be very dissimilar, and

indefinitely varied. The regions of space, within the field of

our vision, present us with phenomena the most incomprehensibly

mysterious, and with knowledge the most accurate and

demonstrable. Light, motion, form, and magnitude--the animal,

vegetable, and mineral kingdoms--have their several sciences, and

each would exhaust a life to master it completely. No uneasy

passion follows him who engages in such speculations, where

continual pursuit is made happy by the sense of continual

progress. He leaves his cares at the threshold; for when his

attention is fixed, so great is the pleasure of contemplation,

that it seems good to have been born for this alone.

"If we turn to the moral world, where, strange as it seems, we

meet with less clearness and grandeur, yet there our deep

interest in its truths supplies a different, perhaps a more

powerful attraction. While we wonder and hope, the general laws

of sentient existence give us glimpses of their harmony with

those of inanimate nature. The latter seems assuredly made for

the use of the former. The identity of benevolence with wisdom

presents itself to our minds as a necessary truth, and,

notwithstanding our perplexities, brings peace to our hearts.

Social distinctions sink to insignificance when contemplating our

place in existence, and the privilege of reading the book of

nature, and sharing the thoughts and the sentiments of the

distinguished among men, atones for obscurity and neglect;

neither would the troubled power of a throne nor the flushing of

victory repay us for the sacrifice of those pleasures."

The second volume opens with a dissertation on luxury, in which the

subject is treated with the depth and perspicuity that the extracts we

have already made will have prepared our readers to anticipate. Luxury is

a word of relative, and therefore of ambiguous signification; it may be

the test of prosperity--it may be the harbinger of decay: according to the

state of society in which it prevails, its signification will, of course,

be different. The effect of civilization is to increase the number of our

wants. The same degree of education which, during the last century, was

considered, even by the upper classes, a superfluity, is now a necessary

for the middling class, and will soon become a necessary for the lowest,

or all but the lowest, members of society. Most of our readers are

acquainted with the story of the Highland chief who rebuked his son

indignantly for making a pillow of a snowball. Sumptuary laws have always

been inefficient, or efficient only for the purposes of oppression. Public

morality has been their pretext--the private gratification of jealousy

their aim. In republics they were intended to allay the envy of the

poor--in monarchies to flatter the arrogance of the great. The first of

these motives produced, as Say observes, the law Orchia at Rome, which

prohibited the invitation of more than a certain number of guests. The

second was the cause of an edict passed in the reign of Henry II. of

France, by which the use of silken shoes and garments was confined to

princes and bishops. States are ruined by the extravagance, not of their

subjects, but of their rulers.

Luxury is pernicious when it is purchased at an excessive price, or when

it stands in the way of advantages greater and more attainable. The worse

a government is, the more effect does it produce upon the manners and

habits of its subjects. The influence of a government of favourites and

minions over the community, is as prodigious as it is baneful. Every

innocent pleasure is a blessing. Luxury is innocent, nay, it is desirable,

as far as it can contribute to health and cleanliness--to rational

enjoyment; as far as it serves to prevent gross debauchery; and, as one of

our poets has expressed it,

"When sensual pleasures cloy,

To fill the languid pause with finer joy,"

it should be encouraged. It does not follow, because the materials for

luxury are wanted, that the bad passions and selfishness, which are its

usual companions, will be wanted also. A Greenlander may display as much

gluttony over his train oil and whale blubber as the most refined epicure

can exhibit with the _Physiologie du Goût_ in his hand, and with all

Monsieur Ude's science at his disposal. When the gratification of our

taste and senses interferes with our duty to our country, or our

neighbours, or our friends--when, for the sake of their indulgence, we

sacrifice our independence--or when, rather than abandon it, we neglect

our duties sacred and imperative as they may be--the most favourable

casuists on the side of luxury allow that it is criminal. But even when it

stops far short of this scandalous excess, the habit of immoderate

self-indulgence can hardly long associate in the same breast with

generous, manly, and enlightened sentiments: its inevitable effect is to

stifle all vigorous energy, as well as to eradicate every softer virtue.

It is the parent of that satiety which is the most unspeakable of all

miseries--a short satisfaction is purchased by long suffering, and the

result is an addition to our stock, not of pleasure, but of pain.

The next topic to which our attention is directed is the influence of

habit. Habit is thus defined:--

"Habit is the aptitude for any actions or impressions produced by

frequent repetition of them."

The word impressions is used to designate affections of mind and body that

are involuntary, in contradistinction to those which we can originate and

control. For instance, we may choose whether or not we will enter into any

particular enquiry; but when we have entered upon it, we cannot prevent

the result that the evidence concerning it will produce upon our minds. A

person conversant with mathematical studies can no more help believing

that the diagonal of a square is incommensurable with its side, than, if

his hand had been thrust in the fire, he could help feeling heat. The

remarks which follow are ingenious and profound:--

"The more amusements," continues the writer, "partake of an useful

character, the more lasting they are. This is never the case with

trifles; when the enjoyment is over, they leave little or nothing

in the mind. They are not steps to something else, they have no

connexion with other and further _results, to be brought out by

further endeavours. The attempt to make life a series of quickly

succeeding emotions, will ever prove a miserable failure;_

whereas, when the chief part of our time is spent in labour,

active power increases--the exertion of it becomes habit--the

mind gathers strength; and emotion being husbanded, retains its

freshness, and the spirits preserve their alacrity through life.

It follows that the most agreeable labours are those which

superadd to an object of important and lasting interest a due

mixture of intermediate and somewhat diversified results. To a

mechanic, making a set of chairs and tables, for example, is more

agreeable than working daily at a sawpit. But nothing can deprive

the industrious man (however undiversified his employment) of the

advantage of having a constant and important pursuit--viz.

earning the necessaries and comforts of life; and when we

consider the uneasiness of a life without any steady pursuit, and

how slight is the influence that such as one merely voluntary has

over most men, it seems certain that, as a general rule, we do

not err in representing the necessity of labour as a safeguard of

happiness."

Active habits are such as action gives: passive habits are such as our

condition qualifies us to receive. In emotion, however violent, we may be

passive, the forgiving and the vindictive man are for a time equally

passive in their emotions. It is when the vindictive man proceeds to

retaliation upon an adversary that he becomes a voluntary agent. It is

often difficult to analyse the ingredients of our thought, and to

determine how far they are involuntary and how far they are spontaneous.

Nor is this an enquiry the solution of which can ever affect the majority

of mankind: it is not with such subtleties that the practice of the

moralist is concerned. It is a psychological fact, which never can be

repeated too often, that habit deadens impression and fortifies activity.

It gives energy to that power which depends on the sanction of the

will--it renders the sensations which are nearly passive every day more

languid and insignificant.

"Mon sachet de fleurs," says Montaigne, "sert d'abord à mon nez; mais,

après que je m'en suis servi huit jours, il ne sert plus qu'au nez des

assistants." So the taste becomes accustomed to the most irritating

stimulants, and is finally palsied by their continued application, yet

the necessity of having recourse to these provocatives becomes daily more

imperious.

"Crescit indulgens sibi dirus hydrops

Nec sitim pellit."

The tanner who lives among his hides till he is insensible to their

exhalations--the surgeon who has conquered the disgust with which the

objects around him must fill an ordinary individual--the sensualist, on

whose jaded appetite all the resources of art and all the loveliness of

nature are employed in vain--may serve as common instances of the first

part of the proposition; and the astonishing facility acquired by

particular men in the business with which they are conversant, are proofs

no less irrefragable of the second. Can any argument be conceived which is

more decisive in favour of the moral economy to which even this lower

world is subject, than the undeniable fact, that virtue is fortified by

exercise, and pain conquered by endurance; while vice, like the bearer of

the sibyl's books, extorts every hour a greater sacrifice for less

enjoyment? The passage in Mammon's speech is no less philosophically

accurate than it is poetically beautiful--

"Out torments also may in length of time

Become our elements, these piercing fires

As soft as now severe, our temper changed

Into their temper, which must needs remove

The sensible of pain."

So does man pass on his way, from youth to manhood, from manhood till the

shadow of death falls upon him; and while his moral and physical structure

adapts itself to the incessant vicissitudes of his being, he imagines

himself the same. The same in sunshine and in tempest--in the temperate

and the torrid zone--in sickness and in health--in joy and sorrow--at

school and in the camp or senate--still, still he is the same. His

passions change, his pleasures alter; what once filled him with rapture,

is now indifferent, it may be loathsome. The friends of his youth are his

friends no longer--other faces are around him--other voices echo in his

ears. Still he is the same--the same, when chilling experience has taught

him its bitter lesson, and when life in all its glowing freshness first

dawned upon his view. The same, when "vanity of vanities" is graven upon

his heart--as when his youthful fancy revelled in scenes of love, of

friendship, and of renown. The same, when cold, cautious, interested,

suspicious, guilty--as when daring, reckless, frank, confiding, innocent.

Still the dream continues, still the vision lasts, until some warning yet

unknown--the tortures of disease, or the loss of the very object round

which his heartstrings were entwined, anguish within, and desolation

without--stir him into consciousness, and remind him of that fast

approaching change which no illusion can conceal. Such is the pliability

of our nature, so varied are the modes of our being; and thus, through the

benevolence of Him who made us, the cause which renders our keenest

pleasures transient, makes pain less acute, and death less terrible.

It follows from this, that in youth positive attainment is a matter of

little moment, compared with the habits which our instructors encourage us

to acquire. The fatal error which is casting a blight over our plans of

education, is to look merely to the immediate result, totally disregarding

the motive which has led to it, and the qualities of which it is the

indication; yet, would those to whom the delicate and most responsible

task of education is confided, but consider that habits of mind are formed

by inward principle, and not external action, they would adopt a more

rational system than that to which mediocrity owes its present triumph

over us; and which bids fair to wither up, during another generation, the

youth and hopes of England. Such infatuation is equal to that of the

husbandman who should wish to deprive the year of its spring, and the

plants of their blossoms, in hopes of a more nutritious and abundant

harvest.

"The inward principle required to give habits of industry,

temperance, good temper, and so forth, is the express intention

of being industrious, temperate, and gentle, and regulating one's

actions accordingly. But the inward principle exercised by a

routine of irksome restraints, submitted to passively on no other

grounds but the laws of authority, or the influence of fashion,

or imposed merely as the necessary condition of childhood, may be

only that of yielding to present impression. He who, in youth,

yields passively to fear or force, in after life may be found to

yield equally to pleasure or temper; the habit of yielding to

present impressions, in the first case, prepares the mind for

yielding to them in the second, without any attempt at

self-control.

"The necessity of reducing the young, in the first instance, to

implicit obedience, and the utility of a strict routine of

duties, is not hereby disputed. The impressions arising from

every species of restraint and coercion, whether from the command

of another or our own reason, being almost invariably unpleasant

at first, it is necessary (on the theory of habit) to weaken

their force by repetition, before the principle of

self-government can be expected to act. But the point insisted on

is, that weakening the pain of restraint and of submission to

rules, will not necessarily create an intention of adhering to

the rules, when coercion ceases. An intention is a mental action,

and even when excited, it is neither impossible nor uncommon that

the practice of forming intentions may be accompanied by the

practice of breaking them; and as the shame and remorse of so

doing wear out through frequency, a character of weakness is

formed."

Although we regret the omission of some observations on waste and

prodigality--remarks in which the most profound knowledge of the best

authorities on this subject is tempered with a strict attention to

practical interest, and a minute acquaintance with the affairs of ordinary

life--we proceed to the chapters on "Frivolity and Ignorance," with which,

and an admirable dissertation on the authority of reason, the volume

terminates. These chapters yield to none in this admirable work for

utility and importance; there are three subjects on which the influence of

frivolity, baneful as it always is, is most peculiarly dangerous and

destructive--education, politics, and religion. On all these great points,

inseparably connected as they are with human happiness and virtue, the

frivolity of women may give a bias to the character of the individual,

which will be traced in his career to the last moment of his existence.

The author well observes that frivolity and ignorance, rather than

deliberate guilt, are the causes of political error and tergiversation. If

there are few persons ready to devote themselves to the good of their

species, and carrying their attention beyond kindred and acquaintance, to

comprise the most distant posterity and regions the most remote within the

scope of their benevolence; so there are few of those monsters in

selfishness, who would pursue their own petty interests when the happiness

of millions is an obstacle to its gratification; but as a leaf before the

eye will hide a universe, self-love limits the intellectual horizon to a

compass inconceivably narrow; and the prosperity of nations, when placed

in the balance with a riband or a pension, has too often kicked the beam.

Professional business, and the love of detail, which is so deeply rooted

in most English natures, tends also to contract the thoughts, to erect a

false standard of merit, and to fill the mind with petty objects. As an

instance of this, it may be remarked that Lord Somers is the only great

man who, in England, has ever filled a judicial situation. So wide is the

difference between present success and future reputation--so weak on all

sides but one, are those who have limited themselves to one side only--so

technical and engrossing are the avocations of an English lawyer. The

best, if not the only remedy for this evil, is, in the words of our

author, the "study of well-chosen books."

"Life must often consist of acts or concerns which, taken

individually, are trivial; but the speculations of great minds

relate to important objects. By their eloquence they draw forth

the best emotions of which we are capable, they fill our minds

with the knowledge of great and general truths, which, if they

relate to the works of creation, exalt our nature and almost give

us a new existence; or if they unfold the conditions and duties

of human life, they kindle our desire for worthy ends, and teach

us how to promote them. We learn to consider ourselves not as

single and detached beings, with separate interests from others,

but as parts of that great class who are the support of society--

that is, the upright, the intelligent, and the industrious. Hence

we cease to be absorbed by one set of narrow ideas; and the least

duties are dignified by being viewed as parts of a general

system. The bulk of mankind must and ought to confine their

attention principally to their own immediate business. But if

they who belong to the higher orders, do not avail themselves of

their command of time, to enlarge their minds and acquire

knowledge, one of the great uses of an upper class will be lost."

The trite and ridiculous axiom, the common refuge of imbecility, that

women should take no interest in politics, is then sifted and exposed; it

would be as wise to say, that women should take no interest in the blood

that circulates through their bodies because they are not physicians, or

in the air they breathe because they are not chemists. The people who are

most fond of repeating this absurdity, are, it may be observed, the very

people who are most furious with women for not acquiescing at once in any

absurdity which they may think proper to promulgate as an incontrovertible

truth. Ill temper, and rash opinions, and crude notions, are always

mischievous; but it is not in politics alone that they are exhibited, and

the women most applauded for not _meddling_ with politics, (an expression

which, as our author properly observes, assumes the whole matter in

dispute,) are generally those who adhere to the most obsolete doctrines

with the greatest tenacity, and pursue those who differ with them in

opinion with the most unmitigated rancour. In short, it is not till

enquiry supersedes implicit belief, till violence gives place to

reflection, till the study of sound and useful writers takes the place of

sweeping and indiscriminate condemnation, that this aphorism is brought

forward by those who would have listened with delight to the wildest

effusions of bigotry and ignorance. But in the work before us, the author

(convincing as her reasons are) has furnished the most complete practical

refutation of this ridiculous error.

Infinitely worse, however, than any evil which can arise from this or any

other source, is that which the opinions and ideas of a frivolous woman

must entail upon those unhappy beings of whom she superintends the

education.

"Turpe est difficiles habere nugas

Et stultus labor est ineptiarum,"

is a text on which, even in this great and free country, many comments may

be found.

The pursuit of eminence in trifles, the common sign of a bad heart, is an

infallible proof of a feeble understanding. A man may dishonour his birth,

ruin his estate, lose his reputation, and destroy his health, for the sake

of being the first jockey or the favourite courtier of his day. And how

should it be otherwise, when from the lips whence other lessons should

have proceeded, selfishness has been inculcated as a duty, a desire for

vain distinctions and the love of pelf encouraged as virtues, and a

splendid equipage, or it may be some bodily advantage, pointed out as the

highest object of human ambition? To set the just value on every

enjoyment, to choose noble and becoming objects of pursuit, are the first

lessons a child should learn; and if he does not learn their rudiments on

his mother's knees, he will hardly acquire the knowledge of them

elsewhere. The least disparagement of virtue, the slightest admiration for

trifling and merely extrinsic objects, may produce an indelible effect on

the tender mind of youth; and the mother who has taught her son to bow

down to success, to pay homage to wealth and station, which virtue and

genius should alone appropriate, is the person to whom the meanness of the

crouching sycophant, the treachery of the trading politician, the

brutality of the selfish tyrant, and the avarice of the sordid miser, in

after life must be attributed.

This argument is closed by some very judicious remarks on the degree in

which the perusal of works of imagination is beneficial.

"It is not easy to explain to a person whose mind is trifling,

the consequences of the over-indulgence in passive impressions

produced by light reading, or to make them understand the

different effect produced by the highest order of works of

imagination, and the trivial compositions which inundate the

press, with no merit but some commonplace moral. Both are classed

together as works of amusement; but the first enrich the mind

with great and beautiful ideas, and, provided they be not

indulged in to an extravagant excess, refine the feelings to

generosity and tenderness. They counteract the sordid or the

petty turn, which we are liable to contract from being wholly

immersed in mere worldly business, or given up to the follies of

the great world; in either case confined too much to intercourse

with barren hearts and narrow minds. It is of great use to the

'dull, sullen prisoner in the body's cage' sometimes 'to peep

out,' and be made to feel that it has aspirations for somewhat

more excellent than it has ever known; and that its own ideas can

stretch forth into a grandeur beyond what this real existence

provides for it. It is good for us to feel that the vices into

which we are beguiled are hateful to our own minds in

contemplation, and that it is our unconquerable nature to love

and adore that virtue we do not, or cannot, attain to."

The remarks on the influence of frivolity on religion, on the mistaken

name and worldly spirit introduced amongst its most solemn ordinances, are

no less excellent. After pointing out the danger of mistaking excitement

for devotion, and of separating the duties of man from the will of God,

the sanctions of religion from the lessons of morality, the writer

observes--

"The weak and ignorant are peculiarly liable to be infected with

these doctrines, and to them they are peculiarly hurtful. Unable

to take a just view of their particular duties, or of the uses

and purposes of our natural faculties, creatures of impulse,

slaves of circumstances, the pleasures of this hour fill them

with vanity, the devotion of the next with enthusiasm, or perhaps

terror. Charmed by worldly follies because they are ignorant or

idle, and without resistance to vice because they have never

learned self-command, they seek to extirpate all the natural

emotions and desires which they do not know how to regulate, and

so give up the world. But they deceive themselves; their moral

defects are not lessened; they have only changed their objects.

The frivolity which formerly made trifles absorb them, now spends

itself on religion, which it degrades. Whatever the former

defects of their character, whether selfishness, vanity, pride,

ill-temper, indolence, or any other, it remains unconquered,

though the manner in which it exhibits itself is different. In

one respect they are much worse; formerly they were less blind to

their own imperfections; they sometimes suspected they were

wrong; now they are quite satisfied they are right; nor can they

easily be undeceived, because, when about to examine their hearts

and their conduct, the error in their views directs their efforts

to a false standard."

We think we cannot more appropriately close the faint outline, in which

we have endeavoured, however feebly, to shadow forth the merit of these

volumes, than by placing before our readers the tribute to departed

excellence, which this touching and finished picture is intended to

convey.

"Leaving the contemplation of feverish excitement, fantastic and

complicated subtleties, angry zeal, and dissocial passions, I

turn to the records of memory, where are graven for ever the

lineaments of one who was indeed a disciple of Christ, and whose

character seemed the earthly reflection of his. Wherever there

was existence her benevolence flowed forth, never enfeebled by

the distance of its object, yet flushing the least of daily

pleasures with its warmth. Her views rose to the most

comprehensive moral grandeur, while her calm, uncompromising

energy against sin, was combined with an ever-flowing sympathy

for weakness and woe. She spent her life in one continued system

of active beneficence, in which her business, her projects, her

pleasures, were but so many varied forms of serving her

fellow-creatures. Never for a moment did a reflection for herself

cross the current of her purposes for them. Her whole heart so

went with their distresses and their joys, that she scarcely

seemed to have an interest apart from theirs. The simplicity of

her character was peculiarly striking, in the unhesitating

readiness with which she received--I might even say, with which

she grasped at--the correction of her errors, and listened to the

suggestions of other persons. One undivided desire possessed her

mind--it was not to seem right, but to do right.

"What heightened the resemblance between her and the model she

followed, was, that her counsels came not from a bosom that had

never been shaken with the passions she admonished, or the

sorrows she endeavoured to soothe. Her character was one of deep

sensibility and passions strong even to violence; but they were

controlled and directed by such vivid faith as has never been

surpassed. Her long life had tried her with almost every pang

that attends the attachment of such beings to the mortal and the

suffering, the erring and perverse; and when those sorrows came,

that reached her heart through its deepest and most sacred

affections, the passion burst forth, that showed what the energy

of that principle must have been, that could have brought such a

mind to a tenor of habitual calmness and serenity. When every

element of anguish had been mingled together in one dreadful cup,

and reason for a week or two was tottering in its seat, she was

seen to resume the struggle against the passions that for a

moment had conquered. The bonds that attached her to life were

indeed broken for ever, but she recovered her heart-felt

submission to God, and she learned by degrees again to be happy

in the happiness she gave.

"It was this depth and strength of feeling that gave her a power

over others, seldom surpassed, I believe, by any other mortal. In

her the erring and the wretched found a sure refuge from

themselves. The weakness that shrunk from the censure or the

scorn of others, could be poured out to her as to one whose

mission upon earth was to pity and to heal; for she knew the

whole range of human infirmity, and that the wisest have the

roots of those frailties that conquer the weak. But in restoring

the fallen to their connexion with the honoured, she never held

out a hope that they might parley with their temptations, or

lower their standard of virtue: a confession to her cut off all

self-delusion as to culpable conduct or passions. While she

inspired the most uncompromising condemnation of the thing that

was wrong, she never advised what was too hard for the "bruised

reed;" she chose not the moment of excitement to rebuke the

misguidings of passion, nor of weakness to point out the rigour

of duty. But strength came in her presence: she seemed to bring

with her irresistible evidence that any thing could be done which

she said ought to be done. The truths of religion, stripped of

fantastic disguises, appeared at her call with a living reality,

and for a time, at least, the troubles of life sank down to their

just level. When our sorrows are too big for our own bosoms, if

others receive then with stoicism, it repels all desire to seek

relief at their hands; but the calmness with which she attended

to the effusions and perturbations of grief, seemed the earnest

of safety from one who had passed through the storm. The deep and

tender expression of her noble countenance suggested that feeling

with which a superior being might be supposed to look down from

heaven on the anguish of those who are still in the toils, but

know not the reward that awaits them.

"Every thing petty seemed to drop off from her mind, but she

imbibed the spirit of essentials so perfectly, she followed it

throughout with such singleness of heart, that its influence

affected her minutest actions, not by an effort of studied

attention, but with the steadiness of a natural law. Nature and

revelation she regarded as the two parts of one great connected

system; she always contemplated the one with reference to the

other; her views were therefore all practical and free from

confusion, and nothing that promoted the welfare of this world

could cease to be a part of her duty to God. It was her maxim

that the motive dignified the action, however trivial in itself;

and all the actions of her life were ennobled by the motive of

obedience to an all-powerful Being, because he is the pure

essence of wisdom and goodness. In the virtue of those who had

not the consoling belief of the Christian, she still saw the

handwriting of God, that cannot be effaced from a generous mind;

and she used to dwell with delight on the idea that the good man,

from whose eyes the light of faith was withheld in this life,

would arise with rapture in the next, to the knowledge that a

happiness was in store for him which he had not dared to believe.

"It was not the extent of her intellectual endowments that made

her the object of veneration to all who knew her; it was her

extraordinary moral energy. The clear and vigorous view she took

of every subject arose chiefly from her habit of looking directly

for its bearing on virtue or happiness; she saw the essential at

a glance, or could not be diverted from the truth by a passion or

a prejudice. Hence, also, her lofty undeviating justice; her

regard to the rights of others was so scrupulous, that every one

within reach of her influence reposed on her decisions with

unhesitating trust; nor would the certainty that the interests of

those she loved best were involved, have cast a shadow of doubt

over her stainless impartiality.

"She could be deceived, for she was too simple and lofty always

to conceive the objects of base minds:--

"'And oft, though wisdom wake, suspicion sleeps

At wisdom's gate, and to simplicity

Resigns her charge, while goodness thinks no ill,

Where no ill seems.'

_Paradise Lost._

"Nevertheless, she generally read the characters of artifice and

insincerity with intuitive quickness, though it was often

believed she was duped by those whom she saw through completely.

Of this she was aware, but she was so exempt from all desire to

prove her sagacity, that she never cared to correct the

misconception; and she held that it was neither useful nor quite

justifiable to expose all the pretences we may discover, till it

became necessary to set the unwary on their guard.

"She never renounced the innocent pleasures or pursuits of life,

nor the proprieties of a distinguished station, though she

partook so little of its luxuries, that she could pass from the

splendour of her own establishment to one the most confined,

apparently without sensibility to the change. Wherever she moved,

she inspired joy and cheerfulness; yet she was by no means

unreserved, except to those she tenderly loved, and it was

surprising how any manner so gentle, could at the same time

oppose a barrier so impassable to the advances of the unworthy.

She enjoyed the beauty of nature with passion. Her mind, at an

advanced age, had all the elasticity and animation of the prime

of life, and she could be led to forget half the night in the

excitement of conversation. Happy were the hours spent with her

in the discussion of every subject that could call forth her

opinions, and her wide knowledge of the eventful times in which

she had lived!--hours that exalted the feelings, informed the

understandings, and animated the playfulness of younger minds,

who found that forty years of difference between their age and

hers, took nothing from their sympathies, but added a new and

rare delight to their intercourse.

"But she is gone! To those who knew her, her counsels are silent

and her place void; but there remains the distinct consciousness,

that to them had been given a living evidence of the true

Christian spirit, for if hers were not true, than many errors be

more excellent than truth! Far distant, and with unequal steps,

they endeavour to follow her course and perhaps the distaste with

which they turn from the defective and ill-proportioned models

that are forced on their admiration, is scarcely consistent with

the charity she always taught."

Great, indeed, is the task assigned to woman. Who can elevate its dignity?

who can exaggerate its importance? Not to make laws, not to lead armies,

not to govern empires, but to form those by whom laws are made, and armies

led, and empires governed; to guard from the slightest taint of possible

infirmity the frail, and as yet spotless creature whose moral, no less

than his physical, being must be derived from her; to inspire those

principles, to inculcate those doctrines, to animate those sentiments,

which generations yet unborn, and nations yet uncivilized, shall learn to

bless; to soften firmness into mercy, to chasten honour into refinement,

to exalt generosity into virtue; by her soothing cares to allay the

anguish of the body, and the far worse anguish of the mind; by her

tenderness to disarm passion; by her purity to triumph over sense; to

cheer the scholar sinking under his toil; to console the statesman for the

ingratitude of a mistaken people; to be the compensation for hopes that

are blighted, for friends that are perfidious, for happiness that has

passed away. Such is her vocation--the couch of the tortured sufferer, the

prison of the deserted friend, the scaffold of the godlike patriot, the

cross of a rejected Saviour; these are the scenes of woman's excellence,

these are the theatres on which her greatest triumphs have been achieved.

Such is her destiny--to visit the forsaken, to attend to the neglected;

amid the forgetfulness of myriads to remember--amid the execrations of

multitudes to bless; when monarchs abandon, when counsellors betray, when

justice persecutes, when brethren and disciples fly, to remain unshaken

and unchanged; and to exhibit, on this lower world, a type of that

love--pure, constant, and ineffable--which in another world we are taught

to believe the best reward of virtue.

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