In a former article upon this subject, we attempted a faint and rapid sketch of two or three interesting lineaments in the female society of the English residents in India; and amongst these, the constancy of wedded attachments held a conspicuous place. Our task would have been but imperfectly executed, had we neglected to give due emphasis to one of the most honourable among the moral causes which have stamped a bright and distinguishing colour upon the domestic life of our country women in those distant regions. We traced also that splendid peculiarity in the social intercourse of the East to the very singular circumstances by which it was impressed. We have not, however, done with the theme (its fertility is inexhaustible); for the most potent influences that shape and fashion all the societies of the earth are female influences, and they are incessantly at work to pro duce the most striking modifications of character which can interest the student of our common nature in his researches. It was observed also, or rather hinted, that in our Anglo-Indian communities, there was no coterie of virginity which had passed the matrimonial Rubicon. The absence of this moral cause, which at home is in active and hourly operation, is itself a most important peculiarity, and must have a pretty perceptible effect upon the temper, and manners, and feelings of the Anglo-Indians. What a world of acerbities, of bickerings, of satirical reflections, of petty strifes and emulations, is superseded by this single circumstance! Yet, although no reasoning can be accurate or philosophical without general propositions, all general propositions are limited by sundry exceptions, perhaps not occurring sofrequently as to destroy the value of the proposition. For, in our English societies in India, are occasionally to be seen about half a dozen spinsters, pale as the ghosts on the shores of that fabled stream, whose surly ferry-man has refused to carry them over, and wearing in their complexions the livery of "the hope deferred, that maketh the heart sick:" not, indeed, to be called "old maids" without the grossest perversion of language; faded rather than withered ;-for those eyes, with their languid and bedimmed brightness, tell us most intelligibly, that they were not long since the lamps of joy, and were intended to be the lamps of love, had not the wayward perverseness of fortune thwarted the kind destinations of nature. It is not that time has yet begun to revel amidst the wrecks of their beauty. No such thing. Not one of them has yet seen her ten lustres; but the work of Time, in the devastations he so much delights in, has been taken off his hands by an artist quite as expert, and in that climate much more expeditious; by sorrow,not loud but deep,-not breathing itself out into friendly ears, nor easing its load by confidential ommunications ;-but cherished, silent sorrow, indulged in secrecy and solitude, finding no communion but with the midnight gloom, or the pale moonlight shadows, which throw over the earth a congenial sadness. Then arise the images of departed years;-the familiar groupes of childhood; thoughts, feelings, passions, come rushing around their couch, as with the sound of innumerous wings. And to be the subject of scorn to those who have played with better cards-scorn, indeed, more in apprehension than reality, for, bad as our nature is, we seldom cast aside our respect for misfortune. Yes, it is misfortune, the disappointment of hopes "too fondly nursed, too rudely crossed," and there is none incident to humanity which has a better title to commiseration, and would meet with it more, were not these instances in which it is indelicate and cruel to commiserate. It is, however, natural for persons thus self-humbled, to take every smile or whisper for the complacent commentary of selfishness and contempt, even where no scornful feeling existed, and where the hearts of those who were thus unjustly suspected were much too pure and generous to triumph for a moment over those whom they had distanced in the race. I knew one neglected beauty, for she certainly was beautiful, who felt-not her matrimonial disappointment, but the destitution to which the circumstance of not being married had consigned herwith peculiar intensity. The nerve was waked in this interesting creature, where "agony is born." Her meditations upon her almost insulated condition, in a society to which she was allied by no natural ties beyond those of gratitude for kindness and hospitality, cast as it were the shroud of death over every scene and object; and she sometimes sate as motionless and insensate in the lighted ball-room, amid the glare of lamps and the revelry of music, as if she had already reached the stillness of that sepulchral abode, where her sorrows not long afterwards found repose. But the error was not her's alas! the miseries of that error were her's, and her's exclusively. She had been sent out to take her chance, in common with other accomplished and amiable creatures, of meeting with a respectable husband, and a comfortable establishment ;-but it was an injudicious step on the part of those who over-ruled her own instinctive reluctance to the adventure. They had not penetration enough to see a something in her character, her affections, her habitual turn of thought, her high-toned romantic sense of all that is right and dignified, which boded little success to the speculation. Poor Isabel W! No persons gave themselves the trouble of inquiring whether on this orb, which you hardly seemed to tread, there are not some spirits so refined above every gross and earthly ambition-thine, dear girl, was eminently so-so dedicated to the love of all that is good or beautiful, whether in nature or in virtue, and so entranced in those mysterious but hallowed musings of the soul in which that love is fed and cherished,-as to have as little leisure as aptitude for the day-dreams and speculations, in which the greater part of the sex are immersed from morn to night. Yet such spirits there are rare, indeed, and twinkling like solitary stars on the extreme boundary of the horizon, whose wanderings no eye can follow, or note when they |