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.