let such beings remember the nature and responsibility of their station, and manage well the talents which are committed to their charge. I shall for the present, pass over all consideration of the married state, with the sole remark, that in all ages and countries the women love more constantly and more devotedly in that state than the men, possessing a more exclusive and more engrossing affection, and that their errors and infidelity have generally been the result, not the cause, of those of the men. Hence, the more attentive, the more sedulously tender and kind the husband is, the more virtuous, affectionate and faithful the wife becomes. All over the world, the woman who marries from love, covets, beyond every thing else, the entire affections of her husband. He is all in all to her,—and it will be only his indifference and infidelity which will ever alienate her affections; then, in the spirit of chagrin and mortification, may she bewail her lot, in the language of Dryden:
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"Cursed vassalage, First idolized till love's hot fire be o'er, Then slaves to those who courted us before." |
For the Southern Literary Messenger.
DANCING, WALTZING, &c.
J'ai toujours cru que le bon n'etait que le beau mis en action.—Rousseau.
Amid the various changes in the customs and fashions of society, the abolition of old, and the introduction of new modes, which an age prolific in intelligent and important improvement has effected, it is matter of surprise, that some of the engines of reform, some of the batteries of satire, have never been unmasked upon the crude and barbarous fashion of dancing. Start not, gentle reader, when I say barbarous fashion, for such dancing unquestionably is. Its very origin is barbarous. In a rude state, when the untutored savage is agitated by any strong emotion, as joy, patriotism, admiration, &c., his first impulse is to caper and skip about like a grasshopper. Among the records of the customs and manners of the most polished and civilized nations of antiquity, we seek in vain for the importance and admiration which attaches to this miscalled accomplishment at the present day. The Romans, perhaps the most accomplished and polite of the ancients, held the art in very low esteem. Indeed we find Cicero striving with all the force of his matchless eloquence, to vindicate his friend Muræna from the charge of being a dancer, preferred against him by Cato. So conscious is he of the weight of the imputation, that he makes it the subject of one branch of his defence, and, in a digression, recounts the brilliant services and devoted patriotism of his client's ancestors, to discountenance a charge affecting so seriously, the value and dignity of his character.
| "Tempestivi convivii, amæni loci, Multarum deliciarum, comes est extrema saltatio." |
The Greeks, we are told, held the art of dancing in higher estimation, and it is said, considered graceful dancing one of the necessary constituents to the character of an accomplished gentleman; but the very word, and indeed the only one used by them to express the motion, [Greek: orchêsis], signified mimicry; plainly intimating its derivation from the buffoons and jesters of the stage, and consequently it never could have had much popularity in their more refined and elegant circles. As a religious rite it was in use, it seems, among the ancient Jews, and in celebration of the worship of the heathen deities of Greece and Rome, we find it only practised in the orgies of Bacchus, a fact of itself sufficient to mark it as a lewd, licentious and vulgar pastime. It was a favorite amusement of the ancient Scythians, the Chinese, the Goths, the Vandals, the Persians, and other barbarous nations of antiquity, and is yet in practice among the modern French and Italians, who, first introducing it in theatrical amusements, and then having carried the art to great perfection, have now transplanted it to the fashionable circles of domestic society. But it is rather in reference to its effects upon the present constitution of society, and its awkward adaptation to the chastened simplicity of the republican character, that I propose to consider dancing, than in regard to its estimation among the ancients.