THE MILD MAGNANIMITY OF WOMEN.
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A late eminent anatomist, in a professional discourse on the female frame, is said to have declared, that it almost appeared an act of cruelty in nature to produce such a being as woman. This remark may, indeed, be the natural [p78] exclamation of refined sensibility, in contemplating the various maladies to which a creature of such delicate organs is inevitably exposed; but, if we take a more enlarged survey of human existence, we shall be far from discovering any just reason to arraign the benevolence of its provident and gracious Author. If the delicacy of woman must render her familiar with pain and sickness, let us remember that her charms, her pleasures, and her happiness, arise also from the same attractive quality. She is a being, to use the forcible and elegant expression of a poet,
“Fine by defect, and admirably weak.”
There is, perhaps, no charm by which she more effectually secures the tender admiration and the lasting love, of the more hardy sex, than her superior endurance, her mild and graceful submission to the common evils of life.
Nor is this the sole advantage she derives from her gentle fortitude. It is the prerogative of this lovely virtue, to lighten the pressure of all those incorrigible evils which it cheerfully endures. The frame of man may be compared to the sturdy oak, which is often shattered by resisting the tempest. Woman is the pliant osier, which, in bending to the storm, eludes its violence.
The accurate observers of human nature will readily allow, that patience is most eminently the characteristic of woman. To what a sublime and astonishing height this virtue has been carried by beings of the most delicate texture, [p79] we have striking examples in the many female martyrs who were exposed, in the first ages of christianity, to the most barbarous and lingering torture.
Nor was it only from christian zeal that woman derived the power of defying the utmost rigors of persecution with invincible fortitude. Saint Ambrose, in his elaborate and pious treatise on this subject, records the resolution of a fair disciple of Pythagoras, who, being severely urged by a tyrant to reveal the secrets of her sex, to convince him that no torments should reduce her to so unworthy a breach of her vow, bit her own tongue asunder, and darted it in the face of her oppressor.
In consequence of those happy changes which have taken place in the world, from the progress of purified religion, the inexpressible spirit of the tender sex is no longer exposed to such inhuman trials. But if the earth is happily delivered from the demons of torture and superstition; if beauty and innocence are no more in danger of being dragged to perish at the stake—perhaps there are situations, in female life, that require as much patience and magnanimity, as were formerly exerted in the fiery torments of the virgin martyr. It is more difficult to support an accumulation of minute infelicities, than any single calamity of the most terrific magnitude.