There is a large class of excellent female characters who on account of that very excellence, are little known, because to be known is not their object. Their ambition has a better taste. They pass through life honored and respected in their own small, but not unimportant sphere, and approved by Him, "whose they are, and whom they serve," though their faces are hardly known in promiscuous society. If they occasion little sensation abroad, they produce much happiness at home. And when once a woman who has "all appliances and means to get it," can withstand the intoxication of the flatterer, and the adoration of the fashionable; can conquer the fondness for public distinction, can resist the temptations of that magic circle to which she is courted, and in which she is qualified to shine—this is indeed a trial of firmness; a trial in which those who have never been called to resist themselves, can hardly judge of the merit of resistance in others.
These are the women who bless, dignify, and truly adorn society. The painter indeed does not make his fortune by their sitting to him; the jeweler is neither brought into vogue by furnishing their diamonds, nor undone by not being paid for them; the prosperity of the milliner does not depend on affixing their name to a cap or a color; the poet does not celebrate them; the novelist does not dedicate to them; but they possess the affection of their husbands, the attachment of their children, the esteem of the wise and good, and above all they possess His favor, "whom to know is life eternal." Among these I doubt not I might have found objects highly deserving of my heart, but the injunction of my father was a sort of panoply which guarded it.
I am persuaded that such women compose a larger portion of the sex, than is generally allowed. It is not the number, but the noise which makes a sensation, and a set of fair dependent young creatures who are every night forced, some of them reluctantly, upon the public eye; and a bevy of faded matrons rouged and repaired for an ungrateful public, dead to their blandishments, do not compose the whole female world! I repeat it—a hundred amiable women, who are living in the quiet practice of their duties, and the modest exertion of their talents, do not fill the public eye, or reach the public ear, like one aspiring leader, who, hungering for observation, and disdaining censure, dreads not abuse but oblivion; who thinks it more glorious to head a little phalanx of fashionable followers, than to hold out, as from her commanding eminence, and imposing talents she might have done, a shining example of all that is great, and good, and dignified in woman. These self-appointed queens maintain an absolute but ephemeral empire over that little fantastic aristocracy which they call the world—admiration besets them, crowds attend them, conquests follow them, inferiors imitate them, rivals envy them, newspapers extol them, sonnets deify them. A few ostentatious charities are opposed as a large atonement for a few amiable weaknesses, while the unpaid tradesman is exposed to ruin by their vengeance if he refuses to trust them, and to a jail if he continue to do it.
CHAPTER XI.
The three days previous to my leaving London were passed with Sir John and Lady Belfield. Knowing I was on the wing for Hampshire, they promised to make their long intended visit to Stanley Grove during my stay there.
On the first of these days we were agreeably surprised at the appearance of Dr. Barlow, an old friend of Sir John, and the excellent rector of Mr. Stanley's parish. Being obliged to come to town on urgent business for a couple of days, he was charged to assure me of the cordial welcome which awaited me at the Grove. I was glad to make this early acquaintance with this highly respectable divine. I made a thousand inquiries about his neighbors, and expressed my impatience to know more of a family in whose characters I already felt a more than common interest.
"Sir," said he, "if you set me talking of Mr. Stanley, you must abide by the consequences of your indiscretion, and bear with the loquacity of which that subject never fails to make me guilty. He is a greater blessing to me as a friend, and to my parish as an example and a benefactor than I can describe." I assured him that he could not be too minute in speaking of a man whom I had been early taught to admire, by that exact judge of merit, my late father.
"Mr. Stanley," said the worthy doctor, "is about six-and-forty, his admirable wife is about six or seven years younger. He passed the early part of his life in London, in the best society. His commerce with the world was, to a mind like his, all pure gain; for he brought away from it all the good it had to give, without exchanging for it one particle of his own integrity. He acquired the air, manners, and sentiments of a gentleman, without any sacrifice of his sincerity. Indeed, he may be said to have turned his knowledge of the world to a religious account, for it has enabled him to recommend religion to those who do not like it well enough to forgive, for its sake, the least awkwardness of gesture, or inelegance of manner.
"When I became acquainted with the family," continued he, "I told Mrs. Stanley that I was afraid her husband hurt religion in one sense as much as he recommended it in another; for that some men who would forgive him his piety for the sake of his agreeableness, would be led to dislike religion more than ever in other men in whom the jewel was not so well set. 'We should like your religious men well enough,' will they say, 'if they all resembled Stanley.' Whereas the truth is, they do not so much like Mr. Stanley's religion, as bear with it for the pleasure which his other qualities afford them. She assured me that this was not altogether the case, for that his other qualities having pioneered his way, and hewed down the prejudices which the reputation of piety naturally raises, his endeavors to be useful to them were much facilitated, and he not only kept the ground he had gained, but was often able to turn this influence over his friends to a better account than they had intended. He converted their admiration of him into arms against their own errors.