and one Adèle; the latter of whom, by way of summing up her qualifications, declared that she was of a disposition altogether sweet and amiable, knew how to touch the piano a little, and could sing songs for the amusement of children. The French of all ranks, and under all circumstances, are just as fond of grandiloquence and altisonant phrases as they were in the time of Sterne. Boileau's maxim, that "one would rather tolerate, generally speaking, a low or common thought, expressed in noble words, than a noble thought expressed in mean language," has not been lost upon them; for it was exactly adapted to the pride of a people who could more easily obtain the command of a thousand sounding words than of a single fine idea. SATIRISTS OF WOMEN. CHANCES OF FEMALE HAPPINESS. "But what so pure which envious tongues will spare? POPE. SWIFT. "On me when dunces are satiric, ANACREON being asked why he addressed all his hymns to women and none to the gods, answered,— "Because women are my deities;" and the ladies were, no doubt, mightily indebted to him and similar voluptuaries, who set them up in their houses, as certain barbarous nations did their Lares and Lemures, for playthings and ornaments, to be deified when their owners were in good luck and good humour, and vilipended and trodden under foot in every access of passion or reverse of fortune. Little flattering as is such praise, it is still observable that the ancient writers seldom abused the sex "in good set terms," or carried their vituperation beyond the excusable limits of raillery and a joke. Socrates vented only witticisms against Xantippe: Xenarchus, the comic poet, in noticing that none but the male grasshoppers sing, exclaims, "How happy are they in having dumb wives!" and Eubulus, another old Grecian jester, after mentioning the atrocities of Medea, Clytemnestra, and Phædra, says it is but fair that he should proceed to enumerate the virtuous heroines, when he suddenly stops short, wickedly pretending that he cannot recollect a single one. Among the Romans we know that Juvenal dedicated his sixth Satire to the abuse of the fair sex, but his worst charge only accuses them of being as bad as the men; and if we are to infer that the licentiousness of his own life was at all equal to the grossness of his language, we may safely presume that his female acquaintance were not among the most favourable specimens of the race. The unnatural state of Monachism has been the bitter fountain whence has flowed most of the still more unnatural abuse of women; the dark ages have supplied all the great luminaries of Misogyny, who have ransacked their imaginations to supply reasons for per verted religion, and excuses for violated humanity. Valerius's Letters to Rufinus, the Golden Book of Theophrastus, and St. Jerome's Exhortations to Celibacy, have furnished all authors, from the Romance of the Rose downwards, with materials for this unmanly warfare-so narrow is the basis on which are grounded all the sorry jests, shallow arguments, and pitiful scandals of ribalds and lampooners; and so easy is it to obtain a reputation for that species of wit which, as Johnson says of Scriptural parody, "a good man detests for its immorality, and a clever one despises for its facility." Chaucer's Wife of Bath, Merchant's Tale, &c. all borrowed from the above-mentioned sources, were little more than good-humoured, though gross caricatures; Boileau, whose tenth Satire is a more bitter denunciation, should have recollected, that he was naturally as well as professionally compelled to celibacy, and might have consulted his friend Fontenelle upon the fable of the Fox and the Grapes: it was perhaps to be expected that the melancholy Dr. Young, who undervalued human nature and happiness, should have levelled his shafts against the masterpiece of one and the dispenser of the other-Woman!--but what shall we say of the contemporary satirists, Pope and Swift, each of whom, after trifling with and inveigling the affections of two accomplished ladies, who sacrificed every thing to the promotion of their happiness, slunk back from marriage, or, if married, were not only mean and cowardly enough to conceal it, but ungrateful enough to publish heartless libels against the whole sex? Let this be always recollected when any one ventures the hackneyed quotations from Pope, "Every woman is at heart a rake" Most women have no characters at all"-" The love of pleasure and the love of sway:" with other citations equally just and novel. As to Swift, he can luckily be seldom quoted in decent company; yet even he could confess that the grossness and degeneracy of conversation observable in his time were mainly attributed to the exclusion of women from society. Conscious that this self-spotting calumny is somewhat like spitting against the wind, modern writers have generally had the good sense to avoid putting themselves in the way of its recoil; and if a late noble author delighted to vent his spleen against the sex in general, and his wife in particular, he might plead in his defence that which I believe might be adduced by all similar libellers 66 'Forgiveness to the injured doth belong; They never pardon who commit the wrong." Nor be it forgotten that such men may be only exemplifying the fable of the Painter and the Lion, for it is easier to traduce fifty women than practise one virtue. "Women want the ways To praise their deeds, but men want deeds to praise.” I do not merely admire women as the most beautiful objects of creation, or love them as the sole sources of happiness, but I reverence them as the redeeming glories of humanity, the sanctuaries of the virtues, the pledges and antepast of those perfect qualities of the head and heart, combined with attractive external charms, which, by their union, almost exalt the human into the angelic character. Taxation and luxury, and struggles for existence, have made us such a cold, selfish, plodding nation, that we should be base indeed, were it not for the disinterestedness and enthusiasm of our females, whose romance is necessary to qualify the painful reality of our existence. And yet, from the first moment when I began to reflect, I have always thanked God that I was not born a woman, deeming them the bestowers rather than enjoyers of happiness-the flower-crowned victims offered up to the human lord of the Creation. Passing over the early period of her life, which, however, is one of perpetual restraint and unvaried subjection to the most self-denying forms and observances, we will suppose a female to have attained a fitting age for that great and paramount end of her being-marriage. Men have a thousand objects in life-the professions, glory, ambition, the arts, authorship, advancement, and money-getting, in all their ramifications, each sufficient to absorb their minds and supply substitutes in case of primary failure; but if a woman succeed not in the one sole hope of her hazardous career, she is utterly lost to all the purposes of exertion or happiness; the past has been all thrown away, and the future presents little but cheerless desolation. Love is only a luxury to men, but it may be termed a necessary to women, both by the constitution of society and the decrees of nature; for she has D |