Miss Sparkes, condescending at length to break a silence which she had maintained with evident uneasiness, said, "All these plodding employments cramp the genius, degrade the intellect, depress the spirits, debase the taste, and clip the wings of imagination. And this poor, cramped, degraded, stinted, depressed, debased creature is the very being whom men, men of reputed sense too, commonly prefer to the mind of large dimensions, soaring fancy, and aspiring tastes."
"Imagination," replied Mr. Stanley, "well directed, is the charm of life; it gilds every object, and embellishes every scene; but allow me to say, that where a woman abandons herself to the dominion of this vagrant faculty it may lead to something worse than a disorderly table; and the husband may find that the badness of his dinner is not the only ill consequence of her super-lunary vagaries."
"True enough," said Mr. Flam, who had never been known to be so silent, or so attentive; "true enough, I have not heard so much sense for a long time. I am sure 'tis sense, because 'tis exactly my own way of thinking. There is my Bell now. I have spent seven hundred pounds, and more money, for her to learn music and whimwhams, which all put together are not worth sixpence. I would give them all up to see her make such a tansy pudding as that which the widow in the Spectator helped Sir Roger to at dinner; why I don't believe Bell knows whether pie-crust is made with butter or cheese; or whether a venison pastry should be baked or boiled. I can tell her, that when her husband, if she ever gets one, comes in sharp set from hunting, he won't like to be put off with a tune instead of a dinner. To marry a singing girl, and complain she does not keep you a good table, is like eating nightingales, and finding fault that they are not good tasted. They sing, but they are of no further use—to eat them, instead of listening to them, is applying to one sense, the gratification which belongs to another."
In the course of conversation, Miss Sparkes a little shocked the delicate feelings of the ladies, of Lucilla especially, by throwing out some expressions of envy at the superior advantages which men possess for distinguishing themselves. "Women," she said, "with talents not inferior were allowed no stage for display, while men had such a reach for their exertions, such a compass for exercising their genius, such a range for obtaining distinction that they were at once the objects of her envy for the means they possessed, and of her pity for turning them to no better account. There were indeed," she added, "a few men who redeemed the credit of the rest, and for their sakes she gloried, since she could not be of their sex, that she was at least of their species."
"I know, madam," said Mr. Stanley, "your admiration of heroic qualities and manly virtues: courage for instance. But there are still nobler ways of exercising courage than even in the field of battle. There are more exalted means of showing spirit than by sending or accepting a challenge. To sustain a fit of sickness may exhibit as true heroism as to lead an army. To bear a deep affliction well calls for as high exertion of soul as to storm a town; and to meet death with Christian resolution is an act of courage in which many a woman has triumphed, and many a philosopher, and even some generals, have failed."
I thought I saw in Miss Sparkes's countenance a kind of civil contempt, as if she would be glad to exchange the patient sickness and heroic death-bed for the renown of victory and the glory of a battle; and I suspected that she envied the fame of the challenge, and the spirit of the duel, more than those meek and passive virtues which we all agreed were peculiarly Christian, and peculiarly feminine.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
In the afternoon, when the company were assembled in the drawing-room, the conversation turned on various subjects. Mr. Flam, feeling as if he had not sufficiently produced himself at dinner now took the lead. He was never solicitous to show what he called his learning, but when Miss Sparkes was present, whom it was his grand delight to set down as he called it. Then he never failed to give broad hints that if he was now no great student, it was not from ignorance, but from the pressure of more indispensable avocations.
He first rambled into some desultory remarks on the absurdity of the world, and the preposterousness of modern usages, which perverted the ends of education, and exalted things which were of least use into most importance.