I was walking with some friends in a retired part of the country. It had
rained for fourteen days before, and I believed it rained then; but
there was a belief among the ladies of that country that it is better to
walk in all weather. The lane was wide enough to pass in file, with
chilly droppings from the boughs above, and rude re-action of the briers
beneath. The clay upon our shoes showed a troublesome affinity to the
clay upon the road. Umbrellas we could not hold up because of the wind.
But it was better to walk than stay at home, so at least my companions
assured me, for exercise and an appetite. After pursuing them, with
hopeless assiduity, for more than a mile, without sight of egress or
sign of termination, finding I had already enough of the one, and
doubting how far the other might be off, I lagged behind, and began to
think how I might amuse myself till their return.
By one of those fortunate incidents, which they tell me never happen to
any body but a listener, I heard the sound of voices over the hedge.
This was delightful. In this occupation I forgot both mud and rain,
exercise and appetite. The hedge was too thick to see through, and all
that appeared above it was a low chimney, from which I concluded it
concealed a cottage garden.
"What in the name of wonder, James, can you be doing?" said a voice,
significant of neither youth nor gentleness.
"I war'nt ye know what I am about," said another, more rudely than
unkindly.
"I'm not sure of that," rejoined the first; "you've been hacking and
hewing at them trees this four hours, and I do not see, for my part, as
you're like to mend them."
"Why, mother," said the lad, "you see we have but two trees in all the
garden, and I've been thinking they'd match better if they were alike;
so I've tied up to a pole the boughs of the gooseberry-bush, that used
to spread themselves about the ground, to make it look more like this
thorn; and now I'm going to cut down the thorn to make it look more like
the gooseberry-bush."
"And what's the good of that?" rejoined the mother; "has not the tree
sheltered us many a stormy night, when the wind would have beaten the
old casement about our ears? and many a scorching noon-tide, hasn't your
father eaten his dinner in its shade? And now, to be sure, because you
are the master, you think you can mend it!"
"We shall see," said the youth, renewing his strokes. "It's no use as it
is; I dare say you'd like to see it bear gooseberries."
"No use!" exclaimed the mother; "don't the birds go to roost on the
branches, and the poultry get shelter under it from the rain? and after
all your cutting, I don't see as you're likely to turn a thorn-tree into
a gooseberry-bush!"
"I don't see why I should not," replied the sage artificer, with a tone
of reflectiveness; "the leaf is near about the same, and there are
thorns on both; if I make that taller and this shorter, and they grow
the same shape, I don't suppose you know why one should bear
gooseberries any more than the other, as wise as you are."
"Why, to be sure, James," the old woman answered, in a moderate voice,
"I can't say that I do; but I have lived almost through my threescore
years and ten, and I have never heard of gooseberries growing on a
thorn."
"Haven't you, though?" said James; "but then I have, or something pretty
much like it; for I saw the gardener, over yonder, cutting off the head
of a young pear-tree, and he told me he was going to make it bear
apples."
"Well," said the mother, seemingly reconciled, "I know nothing of your
new-fangled ways. I only know it was the finest thorn in the parish;
but, to be sure, now they are more match-like and regular."
I left a story half told. This may seem to be another, but it is in fact
the same. James, in the Sussex-lane, and my friends in Montague-square,
were engaged in the same task, and the result of the one would pretty
fairly measure the successes of the other; both were contravening the
order of nature, and pursuing their own purpose, without consulting the
appointments of Providence.
Fanny was a girl of common understanding; such indeed as suitable
cultivation might have matured into simple good sense; but from which
her parents' scheme of education could produce nothing but pretension
that could not be supported, and an affectation of what could never be
attained. Conscious of the want of all perceptible talent in her child,
Mrs. A. from the first told the stories of talent opening late, and the
untimely blighting of premature intellect; and, to the last, maintained
the omnipotence of cultivation.
On every new proof of the smallness of her mind, another science was
added to enlarge it. Languages, dead and living, were to be to her the
keys of knowledge; but they unlocked nothing to Fanny but their own
grammars and vocabularies, which she learned assiduously, without so
much as wondering what they meant. The more dull she proved, the more
earnestly she was plied. She was sent to school to try the spur of
emulation; and brought home again for the advantage of more exclusive
attention. And, as still the progress lagged, all feminine employ and
childlike recreations were prohibited, to gain more time for study. It
cannot be said that Fannny's health was injured by the over action of
her mind; for, having none, it could not be easily acted upon; but, by
perpetual dronish application, and sacrifice of all external things for
the furtherance of this scheme of mental cultivation, her physical
energies were suppressed, and she became heavy, awkward, and inactive.
Fanny had no pleasure in reading, but she had a pride in having read;
and listened, with no small satisfaction, to her mother's detail of the
authors she was conversant with; beyond her age, and, as some untalented
ventured to suggest, not always suited to her years of innocence. The
arcana of their pages were safe, however, and quite guiltless of her
mind's corruption. Fanny never thought, whatever she might read; what
was in the book, was nothing to her; all her business was to _have_ read
it. Meantime, while the powers he had not were solicited in vain, the
talents she had were neglected and suppressed. Her good-humored
enjoyment of ordinary things, her real taste for domestic arrangement,
and open simplicity of heart, were derided as vulgar and unintellectual.
Her talent for music was thought not worth cultivating; time could not
be spared. Some little capacity she had for drawing, as an imitative
art, was baffled by the determination to teach it her scientifically,
thus rendering it as impossible as every thing else. In short--for why
need I prolong my sketch?--Fanny was prepared by nature to be the _beau
ideal_ of Mrs. W.'s amiable woman.
Constitutionally active and benevolent, judicious culture might have
made her sensible, and, in common life, intelligent, pleasing, useful,
happy. Nay, I need only refer to the picture of my former paper, to say
what Fanny, well educated, was calculated to become. But this was what
her parents were determined she should not be; and they spent twenty
years, and no small amount of cash, to make her a woman of superior mind
and distinguished literary attainments.
I saw the result; for I saw Fanny at twenty, the most unlovely, useless,
and unhappy being I ever met with. The very docility of a mind, not
strong enough to choose its own part, and resist the influence of
circumstances, hastened forward the catastrophe. She had learned to
think herself what she could not be, and to despise what in reality she
was; she could not otherwise than do so, for she had been imbued with it
from her cradle.
She was accustomed from her infancy to intellectual society; kept up to
listen, when she should have been in bed; she counted the spots on the
carpet, heard nothing that was said, and prided herself on being one of
such company. A little later, she was encouraged to talk to every body,
and give her opinion upon every thing, in order to improve and exercise
her mind. Her mind remained unexercised, because she talked without
thinking; but she learned to chatter, to repeat other people's opinions,
and fancy her own were of immense importance.
She was unlovely, because she sought only to please by means she had
not, and to please those who were quite beyond her reach; others she had
been accustomed to neglect as unfit for her companionship. She was
useless, because what she might have done well, she was unaccustomed to
do at all, and what she attempted, she was incapable of. And she was
unhappy, because all her natural tastes had been thwarted, and her
natural feelings suppressed; and of her acquired habits and
high-sounding pursuits she had no capacity for enjoyment. Her love of
classic and scientific lore, her delight in libraries, and museums, and
choice intellects, and literary circles, was a fiction; they gratified
nothing but her vanity. Her small, narrow, weak, and dependent mind, was
a reality, and placed her within reach of mortification and
disappointment, from the merest and meanest trifles.
Jemima--my little friend Jemima--I lived to see her a woman too. From
her infancy she had never evinced the tastes and feelings of a child.
Intense reflection, keen and impatient sensibility and an unlimited
desire to know, marked her from the earliest years as a very
extraordinary child; dislike to the plays and exercises of childhood
made her unpleasing to her companions, and, to superficial observers,
melancholy; but this was amply contradicted by the eager vivacity of her
intellect and feeling, when called forth by things beyond the usual
compass of her age. Every thing in Jemima gave promise of extraordinary
talent and distinguished character. This her parents saw, and were
determined to counteract. They had made up their minds what a woman
should be, and were determined Jemima should be nothing else. Every
thing calculated to call forth her powers was kept out of her way, and
childish occupations forced on her in their stead. The favorite maxim
was, to occupy her mind with common things; she was made to romp, and to
dance and to play; to read story books, and make dolls' clothes. Her
physical powers were thus occupied; but where was her mind the while?
Feeding itself with fancies, for want of truths; drawing false
conclusions, forming wrong judgments, and brooding over its own
mistakes, for want of a judicious occupation of its activities.
Another maxim was, to keep Jemima ignorant of her own capacity, lest she
should set up for a genius, and be undomesticated. She was told she had
none, and was left in ignorance of what she was capable, and for what
she was responsible. Made to believe that her fine feelings were
oddities, her expansive thoughts absurdities, and her love of knowledge
unfeminine and ungraceful, she kept them to herself, and became
reserved, timid, and artificial.
Nobody could prevent Jemima's acquiring knowledge; she saw every thing,
reflected upon every thing, and learned from every thing; but without
guide, and without discretion, she gathered the honey and the gall
together, and knew not which was which. She was sent to school that she
might learn to play, and fetched home that she might learn to be useful.
In the former place she was shunned as an oddity, because she preferred
to learn; and, finding herself disliked without deserving it,
encouraged herself to independence by disliking every body. In the
latter, she sewed her work awry, while she made a couplet to the moon,
and unpicked it while she made another; and being told she did every
thing ill, believed it, and became indolent and careless to do any
thing. Consumed, meanwhile, by the restless workings of her mind, and
tasked to exercise for which its delicate frame-work was unfit, her
person became faded, worn, and feeble.
To be brief, her parents succeeded in baffling nature's promise, but
failed of the fulfillment of their own. At twenty, Jemima was a puzzle
to every body, and a weariness to herself. Conscious of her powers, but
not knowing how to spend them, she gave in to every imaginable caprice.
Having made the discovery of her superiority, she despised the opinions
of others, while her own were too ill-formed to be her guide. Proud of
possessing talent, and yet ashamed to show it; unaccustomed to explain
herself; certain of being misunderstood, and least of all understanding
herself; ignorant, in the midst of knowledge, and incapable with
unlimited capacity; tasteless for every thing she did, and ignorant how
to do what she had a taste for, her mind was a luxuriant wilderness,
inaccessible to others, and utterly unproductive to its possessor.
Unpleasing and unfitted in the sphere she was in, and yet unfitted by
habit and timidity for any other, weariness and disgust were her daily
portion; her fine sensibilities, her deep feelings, her expansive
thoughts, remained; but only to be wounded, to irritate, to mislead her.
Where is the moral of my tale, and what the use of telling it? I have
told it because I see that God has his purposes in every thing that he
has done; and man has his own, and disregards them. And every day I hear
it disputed, with acrimony and much unkindness, what faculties and
characters it is better to have or not to have, without any
consideration of what God has given or withheld; and standards are set
up, by which all must be measured, though, alas! they cannot take from
or add one cubit to their statures. "There is one glory of the sun, and
another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star
differeth from another star in glory." Why do we not censure the sun for
outshining the stars, and the pale moon for having no light but what she
borrows?
Instead of settling for others what they ought to be, and choosing for
ourselves what we will be, would it not be better to examine the
condition in which we are actually placed, and the faculties actually
committed to us? and consider what was the purpose of Heaven in the
former, and what the demand of Heaven in the occupation of the latter?
If we have much, we are not at liberty to put it aside, and say we
should be better without it; if we have little, we are not at liberty to
be dissatisfied, and aspiring after more. And surely we are not at
liberty to say that another has too much, or too little, of what God has
given! We may have our preferences, but we must not mistake them for
standards of right.
Every character has beauties peculiar to itself, and dangers to which it
is peculiarly exposed; and there are duties, pertaining to each, apart
from the circumstances in which they may be placed. Nothing, therefore,
can be more contrary to the manifest order and disposition of
Providence, than to endeavor to be, or do, whatever we admire in
another, or to force ourselves to be and do whatever we admire in
ourselves. Which character, of the endless variety that surrounds us, is
the most happy, the most useful, and most deserving to be beloved, it
were impossible, I believe, to decide; and, if we could, we have gained
little by the decision; for we could neither give it to our children,
nor to ourselves. But of this we may be certain: that individual, of
whatever intellectual character, is the happiest, the most useful, and
the most beloved of God, if not of men, who has best subserved the
purposes of Heaven in her creation and endowment; who has most carefully
turned to good the faculties she has; most cautiously guarded against
the evils to which her propensities incline; most justly estimated, and
conscientiously fulfilled, the duties appropriate to her circumstance
and character.