Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843

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[25 - This does not apply to Louis XV. personally.] 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!"

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."