"Oh! long-loved friend, I marvel much
Thy heart is so severe,
That it will yield not to the touch
Of love and sorrow's tear.
No, no! it cannot be, that thou
Should seek another's love;
Oh! think upon our early vow,
And thou wilt faithful prove.
"Thy virtues—pride, thy lofty fame,
Assures me thou art true,
Though fairer ones than I may claim
Thy hand, and deign to sue.
But think, beloved one, that, to bless
With perfect blessing, thou
Must seek for trusting tenderness:
Remember then our vow!"
"Collectively," says our author, "women might do much to remove the national stigma of leaving men of science and letters neglected. But their education is seldom such as enables them to know the great importance of science and literature to human improvement; and they are rarely brought up to regard it as any part of their duty to promote the interests of society. They would not, indeed, be able directly to reward men of talent by employment or honours, but they might make them acquainted with those who could; at all events, mere social distinction, the attention and approbation of our fellow creatures, is in itself an advantage to men who seldom possess that passport to English respect—wealth. Though learning is tacitly discouraged in women, yet the access to every species of knowledge requisite to direct their efforts wisely and well, is as open to them as to men. With this power of forming the mind of the rising generation, this influence over the opinions, the morals, and the tastes of society, this direct power in promoting objects both of private benevolence and national importance—with so many advantages, how is it that women are still exposed to so many sufferings, from dependence, oppression, mortification, and contempt? why are their opinions yet sneered at? why is their influence rather deprecated than sought? Is it not that they have never learnt even the selfish policy of connecting themselves with the spirit of moral and intellectual advancement? Is it not because their liberty, their privileges, their power, have proceeded in many respects, less from a spirit of justice in the other sex, or a sense of moral fitness, than from the love of pleasure and luxury, of which women are the best promoters?"
In England, these evils are peculiarly great; for in England they are without compensation. It is possible to imagine such brilliant conversation, such varied wit, such graceful manners, such apparent gentleness, that would stifle the complaints of the moralist, and cause the half-uttered expostulation to die away upon his lips. So we can conceive that Arnaud and Nicole may have listened to the enchanting discourse of Madame de Sevigne, and under an influence so irresistible, have forborne to scan with severity the faults, glaring as they were, of the system to which she belonged. But with us the case is different—compare the English lady in her country-house, hospitable to her guests, benevolent to her dependents, as a wife spotless, as a mother most devoted, caring for all around her, dispensing education, relieving distress, encouraging merit, the guard of innocence, the shame of guilt, active, contented, gracious, exemplary: and see the same person in London—her frame worn out with fatigue, her mind ulcerated with petty mortifications, her brow clouded, her look hardened, her eye averted from unprofitable friends, her tone harsh, her demeanour restless, her whole being changed: and were there no higher motive, were it a question of advantage and convenience only, were dignity, and the good opinion of others, and consideration in the world, alone at stake, can any one hesitate as to which situation a wife or daughter should prefer? We should, indeed, be sorry if our demeanour in those vast crowds where English people flock together, rather, as it would seem, to assert a right than to gratify an inclination, were to be taken as an index of our national character—the want of all ease and simplicity, those essential ingredients of agreeable society, which distinguish these dreary meetings, have been long unfortunately notorious. No nation is so careful of the great, or so indifferent to the lesser, moralities of life as the English; and in no country is society, indebted, perhaps, to polished idleness for its greatest charms, more completely misunderstood. Too busy to watch the feelings of others, and too earnest to moderate our own, that true politeness which pays respect to age, which strives to put the most insignificant person in company on a level with the most considerable—virtues which our neighbours possess in an eminent degree,—are, except in a few favoured instances, unknown among us; while affectation, in other countries the badge of ignorance and vulgarity, is in ours, even in its worst shape, when it borrows the mien of rudeness, and impertinence, and effrontery, the appanage of those whose station is most conspicuous, and whose dignity is best ascertained. There is more good breeding in the cottage of a French peasant than in all the boudoirs of Grosvenor Square.
But God forbid that a word should escape from us which should seem to place the amusements of society, or the charms of conversation, in competition with those stern virtues which are the guardians of an English hearth! The austere fanaticism of the Puritans, tainted with hypocrisy as it was, was preferable a thousand times to the orgies of the Regent and the Parc-aux-Cerfs. If purity and refined society be, indeed, incompatible—if the love of freedom and active enterprise necessarily exclude the grace and softness which lessen, or at least teach us to forget, the burden of existence, let us be what we are; and, indeed, it is the opinion of many, that the rant of social pleasure is the price we pay for the excellence of our political institutions. It is because before the law all men are equal, that in the world so much care is taken to show that they are different. If to this we add the mercantile habits of our countrymen, the enormous wealth which their pursuits enable them to accumulate—the great honours which are the reward of successful industry and ambition—the absurd value annexed to technical distinctions—the manner in which, in our as in all free countries, those distinctions are conferred—and a certain disposition to sneer at any chivalrous, or elevated feeling, from which few of our ladies are exempt—we shall find it easy to account for the cold, stiff, ungraceful, harsh, and mercenary habits which disfigure, to the astonishment of all foreigners, the patrician class of English society. Nothing, indeed, can be less graceful than the frivolity of an Englishman. Naturally grave, serious, contemplative, if his angry stars have endowed him with enormous wealth, he carries into the pursuit of trifles the same solemnity and perseverance which, had he been more fortunately situated, would have been employed in a professional career—he carries a certain degree of gravity into his follies and his vices; as Pope, no less keen an observer than finished a poet, observed, he
"Judicious sups, and greatly daring dines"—
devotes himself to an eternal round of puerile follies, with a pompous self-importance that would be ludicrous were it exhibited in the discharge of the noblest and most sacred duties. Plate and wine seem his religion, and a well-furnished room his morality—his dinners engross his thoughts—his field sports are a nation's care. He writes books on arm-chairs, hunts with the most ineffable self-sufficiency, and talks of his dogs and horses as Howard or Clarkson might speak of the jails they had visited, and the mourners they had set free. He commits errors with a stolid air of deliberation, which the reckless passions of boiling youth could hardly palliate, but which, when perpetrated as a title to fashion, and as a passport to society, no epithets that contempt can suggest are vehement enough to stigmatize. The Englishman's vice has a business-like air with it that is intolerable—there is no illusion, no refinement—it is coarse, direct, groveling brutality—it wears its own hideous aspect with no garnish or disguise; and how seldom, even among that sex which these volumes are intended to instruct, does the brow wreathed with roses, amid the haunts of dissipation, wear a gay, a serene, or even a contented aspect! Where all the treasures that inanimate nature can furnish are scattered in profusion—where the air is fragrant with perfume, and vocal with melody, how vainly do we look for the freshness and animation, and the simplicity and single-mindedness of buoyant and delighted youth! We feel inclined, amid this gloomy dissipation and depressing pleasure, to reverse the most beautiful passage in Euripides, and to say, that the banquet and the festival do require all the heightening of art, all the embellishments of luxury, all the illusions of song, to conceal the struggles of corroding interest, and the pangs of constant mortification.
"There" (but we quote one of the most remarkable passages in the book) "is a general aversion from the labour of thought, in all who have not had the faculties exercised while they were pliant, nor been supplied with a certain stock of elementary knowledge, essential alike to any subject of science that may be presented to their maturer years. By means of the press, many broken and ill-sustained rays pierce across the neglect or indifference of parents, to the minds of the young. Gleams of a rational spirit and enlarged feeling may often be found among the daughters of country gentlemen, whose sons are still solely devoted to sporting and party politics.
"When we think of those mighty resources we have just been adverting to, the strength all such tastes acquire by sympathy, and the observation of nature and of human life they tend to excite, we might expect they would furnish society with everlasting sources of excitement and mutual interest, that they would create a universal sympathy with genius and ability wherever it was found, and soften the repulsive austerity with which it is the nature of rank and wealth to look on humble fortunes.
"Little or nothing of all this takes place. Frivolity and insipidity are the prevailing characters of conversation; and nowhere in Europe, perhaps, does difference of fortune or station produce more unsocial and illiberal separation. Very few of those whom fortune has released from the necessity of following some laborious profession, are capable of passing their time agreeably without the assistance of company; not from a spirit of gaiety which calls on society for indulgence—not from any pleasure they take in conversation, where they are frequently languid and taciturn, but to rival each other in the luxury of the table, or, by a great variety of indescribable airs, to make others feel the pain of mortification. They meet as if 'to fight the boundaries' of their rank and fashion, and the less definite and perceptible is the line which divides them, the more punctilious is their pride. It is a great mistake to suppose that this low-minded folly is peculiar to people of rank: it is an English disease. But the higher we go in society, the wider the circle of the excluded becomes, consequently, the greater the range of human beings cast forth from the pale of sympathy; and the more contracted do the judgment, experience, and feelings of its inmates become. The lofty walls, the iron spikes that surround our villas, and the notices every where affixed 'that trespassers will be prosecuted with the utmost rigour of the law,' are meet emblems of the social spirit that connects the different orders of society in England. The effect of this is to produce narrow minds, or, what is worse, narrow hearts on one side, and a host of dissocial, irritable passions on the other. In each step of the scale, those beneath see chiefly the unamiable qualities of their superiors."