The condition of woman is always a fair test of progress in civilization. Polygamy prevails, with the sanction of the Lamanesque religion, in Thibet and Tartary. But the first wife is always the mistress of the household, and the most respected in the family. MM. Gabet and Huc thought polygamy a real blessing to the people of those countries. Celibacy being imposed on the Lamas, and the class of those who shave the head and live in Lamaseries being so numerous, it is easy to conceive what disorders would arise from the multiplication of young women without support, and abandoned to themselves, if girls could not be placed in families in the quality of second wives. Divorce is frequent, and it takes place without any intervention of civil or ecclesiastical authorities. In Tartary, the women lead an independent life, coming and going at pleasure.
The Thibetian women submit, in their toilet, to a custom or law scarcely credible. Before going out of doors they always rub their faces over with a sort of black, glutinous varnish, the object being to render themselves as ugly and hideous as possible. This practice is said to be about two hundred years old, and tradition says that it originated with an austere Lama king, who desired to check licentiousness of manners. At present, the women who bedaub their faces the most hideously are esteemed the most pious. The women lead an active and laborious life. Besides fulfilling the various duties of the household, they concentrate in their own hands all the petty trade of the country, whether as hawkers, as stall-keepers in the streets or in the shops. Little or no restraint is imposed upon them. Their general character for morality is good—in fact, if compared with that of other Asiatic women, quite exemplary. They are strictly attentive to their devotions, and will even go beyond the men in deeds of penance and mortification of the body.
We hope we have given a sufficient idea of the recent revelations concerning Thibetian and Tartarian life to awaken an interest in further developments. The discoveries of the French missionaries have but opened the way for others of the highest importance to mankind. From what we have related, it will be inferred that the work of Christianizing Asia will not be so difficult as has hitherto been supposed; that reformed Buddhism is a good preparation of one hundred and seventy millions of people for the reception of those truths which Christians believe to be necessary to the salvation of man; and that we have not false idols to throw down, but to a belief essentially pure, spiritual, and godly, to add that definite knowledge of a new dispensation, the universal prevalence of which must banish strife from the face of the earth, and render it a realm of uninterrupted bliss.
REMEMBERED HAPPINESS.
MANKIND are always happier for having been happy; so that if you make them happy now, you make them happy twenty years hence, by the memory of it. A childhood passed with a due mixture of rational indulgence, under fond and wise parents, diffuses over the whole of life a feeling of calm pleasure, and in extreme old age is the very last remembrance which time can erase from the mind of man. How enjoyment, however inconsiderable, is confined to the present moment! A man is the happier for life from having made once an agreeable tour, or lived for any length of time with pleasant people, or enjoyed any considerable interval of innocent pleasure.
THE TRIALS OF A NEEDLEWOMAN.[A]
BY T. S. ARTHUR.