A SCENE IN REAL LIFE. (continued 18)

Abstraction and Generalization.

We can now easily account for that great difference which we observe in the intellectual powers of the sexes, dependent on habits of abstraction and generalization. Undoubtedly one of the greatest and most useful powers of the human mind, is that by which we are enabled to classify and generalize our ideas—that power which enables us, from the observance of multitudes of facts and details, to seize on those which possess a resemblance, to arrange them together under genera and species, and thus to arrive at general principles or facts applicable to thousands of cases which may occur in our passage through life. It is this power of abstraction and generalization which may be truly said to give to our reasoning faculties the wings of the eagle. We are enabled thereby to soar to a height, and command an extension of prospect which cannot be reached by those who do not cultivate this power. It is the great labor saving machinery in the economy of the human mind, and belongs in all its perfection only to a few gifted and educated minds, capable of rising to an altitude far, very far beyond the common intellectual level. According to the degree in which this noble faculty is possessed, the metaphysicians have made a division of the human race, very unequal as to numbers, into men of general principles or philosophers, and men of detail. The former possessing minds inured to habits of abstraction and generalization, the latter more conversant with mere individuals and individual character, with the details and minutiæ of common life, and therefore better suited to the ordinary routine of every day duties in the common transactions of the world. But if I may borrow the sentiment of Mr. Burke, when the path is broken up, the high waters out, and the file affords no precedent, then men who possess minds of comprehension and generalization, are required to lead the way through the chaos of difficulties and dangers which surround them.

When we compare the sexes together in this particular, we see that man has generally, and necessarily must have, from the very nature and requisitions of that extended sphere in which he moves, a greater share of this power of abstraction and generalization than is commonly found developed in the female mind. The confined sphere in which woman moves, requires, as I have already observed, close attention to all the details and minutiæ of the little events daily and hourly transpiring around her. Instead of studying the general traits of character which belong alike to the whole human family, she studies most deeply the individual characters of those who compose her household, and her circle of friends and relatives. Her mind becomes one of detail and minute observation, rather than of abstraction and generalization. The intellectual eye of woman is like the pleasing microscope; it detects little objects, and movements, and motives, upon the theatre of life, which wholly escape the duller but more comprehensive vision of our sex. Man, in the wider sphere in which he moves, deals not so much with the individual as with masses of individuals. Take for example the statesman. Is he a legislator? Then he must make laws not only for the few individuals with whom he has been raised, but for the whole nation. In doing this he is obliged to discard the mere individual from his mind, and look to the population in the aggregate. He must abstract himself from the consideration of the minutiæ, the little details and peculiar circumstances which operate exclusively on his own little narrow neighborhood, and attend to those general circumstances which affect alike the condition of the whole body politic. His intellectual vision should not be too microscopic. He must look to generals rather than particulars. The minute vision of the fly would perhaps best survey the little specks and blemishes that may exist on the vast and mighty fabric of St. Peter's church, but it requires the more comprehensive vision of a man to survey the whole building at a glance. In like manner the honest, high minded, intellectual statesman looks to the good of the whole—discards the more petty consideration of self and friends. In contemplating the compound fabric of mind, law, and human rights, if he survey mere individual peculiarities with too intense a vision he will never be able to form in the mind one comprehensive, connected whole with the position and relation of all the prominent and distinct parts fully exhibited and well defined. Now there are few women who can wholly abstract themselves from the influence of those peculiar circumstances which operate exclusively on the circle in which they move. The circle they live in, conceals from them the rest of the world. The general remark made on this subject by Madame de Stael in her Corinne, is particularly applicable to woman. "The smallest body," says she, "placed near your eye, hides from it the body of the sun; and it is the same with the little coterie in which you live. Neither the voice of Europe nor of posterity can make you insensible to the noise of your neighbor's family; and therefore whoever would live happily, and give scope to his genius, must first of all choose carefully the atmosphere by which he is to be surrounded."

Politics and Patriotism.

We can now easily explain why woman has, in general, less patriotism, and is more unfitted for the field of politics than man. The very intensity of her domestic and social virtues makes her less patriotic than man. The ardor with which she loves her husband, her children, her intimate friends and associates, concentrates the mind within the little circle by which she is surrounded, and clips the wings of that more expanded but less ardent love which embraces whole states and nations. Her individuality is much too strong for the feeling of patriotism. She is, in this respect, like the knight of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, who coveted individual honor and glory alone. He lived only for his mistress, his God, and himself, and did not like to share his glories and his honors with an army, a nation, or mankind. Hallam, in his "Middle Ages," has pronounced the Achilles of Homer to be the most beautiful picture that ever was portrayed of this character (of chivalry). And strange as it may appear, the political character of woman in general, bears a very close and striking analogy to that of Achilles; who has been pronounced by competent judges, to be the most terrific human personage ever portrayed in prose or poetry. In search of individual glory and renown Achilles consents to join the allied army of Greece, with his myrmidons, in the siege of Troy. He receives an insult from Agamemnon, the chief of the Grecian forces, who determines to take from him a captive female slave. Instantly he resolves on revenge; his patriotism yields to his intense feeling of individuality, and he sullenly withdraws his troops from the field of battle, remains unmoved while the Trojans are gaining victory after victory, until they begin to burn the ships; then the security of himself and his particular friends required that he should drive back the Trojan army. Reluctantly he consents that Patroclus might lead forth the myrmidons to battle, but with strict injunction to retire from the field the moment the Trojans were beaten from the ships. Patroclus goes forth and is slain by Hector, the great rival of Achilles in war. Then is the wrath and jealousy of Achilles raised against the Trojan hero who has slain Patroclus, for whom his bosom throbbed with the intensest friendship. He now arms himself for the fight, and consents to go forth to battle; not for any love he has for Greece, not for any hatred which he bears to the Trojan state, but because he loved Patroclus and his own glory, and hated Hector, who had wreathed his brow with the laurel won by the death of his dearest friend.

Such is the patriotism of woman. Her husband and children are more to her than her country. You never hear of woman consenting to sacrifice her son for the country's welfare; the reverse is much apter to be the result. She would sooner sacrifice the welfare of the nation, for the promotion and happiness of her family. In the various political contests of our country, it has sometimes been my lot to be present when ladies have received intelligence of the defeat of brothers, husbands, &c. in their political aspirations. Such defeats I have generally found to disgust them at once with the whole subject of politics, and almost instantly to extinguish the little patriotism which their political hopes had kindled. It is well known that misfortune of all kinds has a most wonderful influence in darkening the picture which the imagination sketches of the future. Pope has admirably hit off this feature of the mind in his allusion to the pensioner who suddenly has his pension stopped.

"Ask men's opinions, Scoto now can tell How trade increases, and the world goes well; Strike off his pension, by the setting sun, And Britain, if not Europe, is undone."

So have I known ladies, from the defeat of their husbands at a county election, to predict more disaster and calamity to the nation, than if an army were on the frontier or a revolution threatened from within. I have known brother arrayed against brother, and father against son in politics, so decisively as to attempt to defeat each other's election; but I do not know that I have ever yet seen a mother, sister, or wife, whose politics were of that stern, unbending character which would lead her to vote, if allowed, against a son, brother, or husband opposed to her in political sentiments. Their affections and sympathies for those connected with them, are sure to triumph over the general feelings of patriotism and justice.

Woman therefore cannot make a good politician, because she has too much feeling, too much sympathy and kindness for her friends; her very virtues lead to injustice. Let us take, on this subject, the testimony of a lady who is well acquainted with the whole moral and mental constitution of her sex. "I never heard," says Mrs. Jameson, "a woman talk politics, as it is termed, that I could not discern at once the motive, the affection, the secret bias which swayed her opinions and inspired her arguments. If it appeared to the Grecian sage so 'difficult for a man not to love himself, nor the things that belong to him, but justice only,' how much more for a woman." Bulwer, too, tells us that women always make prejudiced politicians in England. "No one will assert," says he, "that these soft aspirants have any ardor for the public—any sympathy with measures that are pure and unselfish. No one will deny that they are first to laugh at principles which, it is but just to say, the education we have given precludes them from comprehending—and to excite the parental emotions of the husband, by reminding him that the advancement of his sons requires interest with the minister." Again, he says, "how often has the worldly tenderness of the mother been the secret cause of the tarnished character and venal vote of the husband; or to come to a pettier source of emotion, how often has a wound or an artful pampering to some feminine vanity, led to the renunciation of one party, advocating honest measures, or the adherence to another subsisting upon courtly intrigues." Doctor Johnson is reported by Boswell to have said, that in these matters no woman stops short of integrity.

Women, therefore, whose husbands are engaged in political life, ought ever to recollect their foibles in this respect, and beware of yielding too much to their sympathies and partialities, lest they ruin the political reputation of their husbands, or alienate their affections by too much tampering in matters which do not belong to them. Madame Junot thinks that the constant interference of Josephine in politics, her constant, ardent desire to serve her friends, weakened very much the attachment of Napoleon for her. Nothing so much tormented Charles II, as the constant intermeddling of his mistresses in politics; and one reason of his very sincere attachment to Nell Gwyn was, that she rarely gave herself any concern about the political squabbles of the day. She never interfered, except on behalf of her own children and one or two friends.

But although woman is much apter to err in politics than man, we must ever bear in mind, as some mitigation and justification of her errors, that they arise in a great measure from those kindly feelings, those strong sympathies, those family endearments and social ties which, whilst they mark her unfitness for the ruder arena of political life, demonstrate unequivocally the goodness of her heart.

Even women of corrupt hearts do sometimes manifest strongly the most amiable feelings and tender sympathies in their political intrigues; take, for example, the Duchess de Longueville, that bold, arbitrary, intriguing, profligate, vain, facetious heroine of the Fronde, who is described as making rebels by her smiles—or if that were not enough, she was not scrupulous; without principle and without shame, nothing was too much! Now "think of this same woman," says a modern writer, "protecting the virtuous philosopher Arnauld, when he was denounced and condemned; and from motives which her worst enemies could not malign, secreting him in her house, unknown even to her own servants; preparing his food herself, watching for his safety, and at length saving him. Her tenderness, her patience, her discretion, her disinterested benevolence, not only defied danger, (that were little to a woman of her temper) but endured a lengthened trial, all the ennui caused by the necessity of keeping her house, continual self-control, and the thousand small daily sacrifices which to a vain, dissipated, proud, impatient woman, must have been hard to bear."

Again, let us look to the celebrated Duchess de Pompadour—the corrupt, profligate, and intriguing mistress of that weak, effeminate, heartless monarch, King Lewis XV, whose abandoned, lewd court, is so well described as plunged in the sink of corruption and debauchery, and dead to all shame of decency and morality. Even she is represented by some of the wisest men of the day, as being exceedingly kind and beneficent to her friends, or tender and sympathetic in the highest degree towards misfortune of all kinds, when the parties concerned had not in any manner wounded her feminine vanity or prejudices. How interesting even does this woman become in that scene in which Marmontel, pleading the claims of Boissy to a pension, so works on her feelings by the recital of the galling poverty of Boissy, as to make her exclaim, "Good God! you make me shudder. I'll go and recommend him to the king." Marmontel was so much influenced by her kind attentions to her personal friends, of whom he was one, that he every where speaks of her in the most grateful terms as one not only willing to do a kindness, but to do it in the most flattering, affectionate and pleasing manner, frequently adding little injunctions or recommendations, which communicated the highest pleasure whilst they imposed no heavy obligation. For example, when he applied to the king, through Mad. de P. for a favor relative to a work of his entitled the "Poetique," he says, "I owe this testimony to the memory of this beneficent woman, that at this simple and easy method of publicly deciding the king in my favor, her beautiful countenance beamed with joy. 'Most willingly,' said she, 'will I ask for you this favor of the king, and it will be granted.' She obtained it without difficulty, and in announcing it to me, 'You must give,' said she, 'all possible solemnity to this presentation; and on the same day all the royal family and all the ministers, must receive your work from your own hand.'"

When, however, any prejudice exists in the mind of woman, from pique at the conduct of a particular individual, or from any cause which wounds her feminine vanity, you may in vain expect such kindness and sympathy. All a woman's benevolence is dried up the moment the object of it becomes disagreeable to her. Madame de Pompadour disliked the king of Prussia, and she could never be prevailed on to do anything for d'Alembert, because he was a great admirer eulogist of that celebrated monarch. Racine basked in the royal sunshine of courtly favor, while Madame de Maintenon was the ascendant at court. He happened one day, in presence of the king and Madame de M. in one of those fits of absence for which he was remarkable, to observe that the theatre had fallen into disrepute, because the managers selected plays of too inferior a character, such as those of Scarron, &c. Now Scarron had been the husband of Maintenon, and from that day poor Racine, the immortal tragedian of France, was never more invited into the royal presence, or loaded with the royal favors.

Not only, however, does woman's feelings, sympathies, prejudices, &c. make her an unsafe and most partial, and sometimes very unjust politician, but her mind is rarely of that order, from reasons already pointed out, which will enable her to take large, and comprehensive, and unbiassed views of political subjects. Woman's individuality is too strong for general principles and abstract considerations. She has too much pleasure in the particulars and details around her, to develope much of the higher and more comprehensive powers of generalization. She judges of the great characters who are moving forward the mighty drama of politics as she would judge of beaux in a ball room, or friends and relatives in a parlor. Henrietta, queen of Charles I, is an admirable specimen of female politicians. She viewed the characters of great men with all the sensations of a woman. "Describing the Earl of Strafford," says D'Israeli, in his Curiosities of Literature, "to a confidential friend, and having observed that he was a great man, she dwelt with far more interest on his person. 'Though not handsome,' said she, 'he was agreeable enough, and he had the finest hands of any man in the world.'" The same author tells us, that when "landing at Burlington Bay in Yorkshire, she lodged on the quay; the parliament's admiral barbarously pointed his cannon at the house; and several shot reaching it, her favorite Jermyn requested her to fly; she safely reached a cavern in the fields, but, recollecting that she had left a lapdog asleep in its bed, she flew back, and, amidst the cannon-shot returned with this other favorite." Well might this have been termed a complete woman's victory. With such feelings, and sympathies, and judgments as these, however amiable and pure they may be, you can never expect to meet with the comprehensive views and well arranged plans of the great statesman: a Jermyn or a lapdog may disarrange or defeat them.

The peculiarities and minuteness of woman's speculations may be observed on all subjects, even on the graver and more impressive topic of religion. Although the celebrated Eloisa was deeply learned in all the cumbrous learning of the schools and the fathers, yet when speaking of the apostles, she seems to forget their religious character in order that she might express her astonishment that "even in the company of their master, they were so rustic and ill-bred, that regardless of common decorum, as they passed through cornfields they plucked the ears and ate them like children. Nor did they wash their hands before they sat down to table." Pope, who in his Abelard and Eloisa, has followed with wonderful exactness, the real history of these two lovers, makes Eloisa, when speculating on the use of letters, think of no advantage but those furnished to lovers.

"Heaven first taught letters for some wretch's aid, Some banished lover, or some captive maid."

This is truly characteristic of the woman, and it manifests an order of mind admirably adapted to the circumscribed sphere in which nature seems to have destined her to move. But it does not suit the wide arena of the statesman. Go, for example, into the great deliberative body of this country, and listen to the polemical combats of the minds that are there brought together, and mark particularly the powerful effusions of that individual with the master mind of this country—I had like to have said of the age in which he lives—and you will be amazed at the vast power of generalization and consequent condensation which his capacious mind displays. Is it the complicate and difficult subject of the banking system which has fallen under his review, then observe how he passes by unheeded, the petty details and minute histories of the little institutions around him which engage the little minds of the body, and fixes his eagle gaze on the great and prominent points of the subject; shows you that the general nature of man, and the general nature of this institution, is the same at Amsterdam, at Venice, at London, as at Philadelphia, Washington, or Baltimore. He points out the great and general circumstances which lead on to the corruption and final destruction of the system, and shows you that the straining and breaking of our banks in by-gone times, was not the result of chance and accident, but of causes as fixed and unerring in their operation as the law of gravity or the force of elasticity. Or is he on the great subject of the dangers to be apprehended from irresponsible power in the hands of a dominant majority, then observe how his mind ranges over the history of the past, and culls from the page of Greece and Rome, and even from that more sacred one of Israel's people, the great lessons which they inculcate upon this point. He shows you that the contests of patricians and plebeians, the forcible establishment of the power of the tribunes in ancient Rome, and the division of a modern parliament into the lords and commons, or the fearful disputes between the tiers état and the nobles and clergy in France, all prove the same great truth and teach the same great lesson, that every great interest to be safe, must have the means of defending itself. Such a mind as this when it fails, fails (if I may use the language of the logician) from not attending to specific and individual differences in the application of general principles: it fails because while leaping from the Appenines to the Alps, and from the Alps to the Pyrennees, it does not perceive the rivulets, the flowers, the little hills and dales which lie beneath. Such a mind is the very opposite of that of woman.

But it may be said there are women who have reigned with glory and lustre, and merited well of their country and mankind. Christina, for example, in Sweden, Isabella in Castile, and Elizabeth in England, have merited the esteem of their age and posterity. The two Catharines in Russia, and Maria Theresa, during the long wars about the pragmatic sanction, have each manifested the abilities of statesmen. To this however, I would remark in the first place, that we are concerned here with general rules and not with particular exceptions. Now the general rule is what I have stated; women make bad politicians, unsafe depositaries of power, and most partial and unequal administrators of justice. In the second place, you will find that the weakness and errors of the good female sovereigns have almost always arisen from their feminine foibles or womanly judgments. Take, for example, Queen Elizabeth, whom Mr. Hume has pronounced to have been perhaps the greatest female sovereign who ever sat upon a throne. It was said of her that her inclinations and the coquetries of her sex, stole beneath the cares of her throne and the grandeur of her character. And it has been said, with perhaps too much truth, that if Mary Queen of Scotland had been less beautiful, Elizabeth had been less cruel; she always believed too readily, that the mere power of pleasing implied genius. The exaggerated but well-timed gallantries of Raleigh,⁴ and the personal beauty and accomplishments of the earl of Leicester, made the fortunes of those individuals.

⁴ Raleigh threw a new plush cloak into the mud over which the queen was passing; she stepped cautiously on it, and shot forth a smile upon the young captain. This cunning gallantry introduced him to the queen for the first time; his advancement was rapid, and the title of captain was soon changed for that of Sir Walter.

This celebrated queen has been described as passionately admiring handsome persons, and he was already far advanced in her favor who approached her with beauty and grace. It is said she had so unconquerable an aversion to ugly and ill-made men, that she could not endure their presence. Her aversion to boots was very marked, and highly characteristic of the woman. I think it is Sir Walter Scott who, in one of his romances, represents her as having had so much aversion to the boots of the Duke of Suffolk, who was brought forward by his party for the honor of knighthood, as to fly into a passion about it, and for some time to refuse to knight him in such a dress.⁵ She is well known to have been a great coquette, giving all her suitors some hopes of finally obtaining her hand. She had likewise a most ardent desire to be thought beautiful. Raleigh was well aware of this excessive vanity, and made it a means of securing her favor and continuing in her good graces. Mr. Hume tells us that Sir Walter, in a love-letter written to the queen when she was sixty years old, after exhausting his poetic talent in exalting her charms and his devotion, concludes by comparing her to Venus and Diana. D'Israeli says that Du Maurier, in his Memoirs, writes: "I heard from my father, that having been sent to her, at every audience he had with her Majesty, she pulled off her gloves more than a hundred times, to display her hands, which were indeed beautiful and very white." And he says, "She never forgave Buzenval for ridiculing her bad pronunciation of the French language; and when Henry IV sent him over on an embassy, she would not receive him. So nice was the irritable vanity of this great queen, that she made her private injuries matters of state." Well then has it been said, that "the toilet of Elizabeth was indeed an altar of devotion, of which she was the idol, and all her ministers were her votaries: it was the reign of coquetry, and the golden age of millinery."

⁵ In the Memoirs of the Duchess d'Abrantes, it is stated that Madame Permon, mother of the Duchess, had a very great aversion to the boots of the Republican generals, particularly when wet and passing through the process of drying.

It is true, in spite of all these foibles and defects of character, she made a great sovereign; but it is easy to mark throughout the whole course of her administration, even in the graver matters of legislation, the constantly modifying influence of feminine weakness. It was Elizabeth who granted, more extensively than any other sovereign, privileges and monopolies to her favorites, which is one of the worst forms which the restrictive system can assume. In doing this, she seems to have been anxious to solve the problem of doing every thing for her friends and pretended admirers, without disturbing her conscience by the infliction of too much injury on the body politic. But experience has shown that she most wofully failed by her plan in the solution of the problem, and took by these monopolies and privileges even a great deal more out of the pockets of the people, than could ever come into those of her favorites and flatterers. Even the celebrated laws of this reign in regard to the paupers of England, in my opinion, mark the overweening humanity of the woman, combined with a deficiency of that power of generalization, which can alone enable us to arrive at just conclusions on so delicate and complicated a subject. When she ordered the overseers of the poor to see that every individual in the kingdom should be well fed, clothed and employed, the order, although a humane one, was certainly impracticable. Mr. Malthus asserts, that when king Canute seated himself on the sea shore, and ordered the rising tide not to approach his royal feet, he was not guilty of more vanity than this celebrated order of Elizabeth displayed; but there was certainly humanity in the intention.

In addition to the preceding remarks upon the incapacity of woman in general for the able discharge of political duties, we may observe that she is more disposed to despotism while in power than man. This may be ascribed to greater physical weakness, and consequent dependence in general. When, therefore, she wields the sceptre, she is constantly disposed to manifest her power—to let the world see she is really a ruler. She makes a show of her authority, precisely for the same reason that a newly created nobleman is more tenacious of his title than an old one, or a legitimate monarch less suspicious on the throne than a usurper. Thomas says that great men are more carried to that species of despotism which arises from lofty ideas; and women above the ordinary class, to the despotism which proceeds from passion. The last is rather a sally of the heart than the effect of system. The despotism of woman however, very rarely, except when stimulated by violent love and jealousy, leads on to cruelty; they have too much feeling, sympathy and kindness to be cruel. Their despotism arises rather from caprice, and a desire to promote the interest of friends and flatterers, than from any regular system of ambition and vice. Give them unlimited sway, and you rarely find them exercising that merciless tyranny which delights in blood. Their sensibility rarely forsakes them, even on the throne. Deny them power, and they make monarchs as jealous and suspicious as rival beauties in a ball room. There never was on the throne of England a more determined stickler for prerogative than Queen Elizabeth. She was exceedingly jealous of the powers of her parliament; and up to the very last hour of her long life, a shuddering came over her whenever she thought of a successor to the throne. Yet Elizabeth was far from beings as cruel as many of the male sovereigns who have sat on the English throne.

The passion of love, however, is the most dangerous one in the breast of the female sovereign. As I have already observed, it is the strongest of our nature whilst it lasts, even in the breast of man; but with woman, it is not only the strongest, but like Aaron's rod, it swallows up all the rest. Elizabeth's lovers were her dependents, and she was withal a woman of strong masculine mind, cultivated by an education of the most classical and severe character, yet we have seen the mighty influence which even her lovers exerted over her, in spite of all her caution.

Mary, the sister of Elizabeth, the bigoted Catholic, is a melancholy instance of the influence of even unrequited love, upon the politics of a female sovereign. While married to Philip of Spain, England was very little more than a Spanish province. Perhaps it was the example of Mary which in a great measure deterred Elizabeth from ever marrying, although repeatedly pressed to it by the Parliament. The caricature gotten up during the reign of Queen Mary is an admirable burlesque of the errors and weaknesses of female rule. It represented her Majesty "naked, meager, withered and wrinkled, with every aggravated circumstance of deformity which could disgrace a female figure, seated in a regal chair; a crown on her head, surrounded with the letters M. R. A. accompanied with Maria Regina Angliæ in smaller letters! A number of Spaniards were sucking her to the skin and bone, and a specification was added of the money, rings, jewels, and other presents with which she had secretly gratified her husband Philip."

To see what woman may be capable of doing under the influence of the passion of love accompanied by jealousy, let us at once recur to a state of semi-barbarism, where but little restraint is imposed on the feelings and passions, and where nature consequently manifests itself in all its most horrid deformities without wearing the mask which civilized manners and an enlightened and moral public opinion, aided by the printing press have imposed even upon the most hardy and most wicked in the polished countries of Europe. Among the Memoirs of Celebrated Women by Madame Junot, we find that of Zingha, a great African princess who ruled in her dominions with absolute sway. In the contemplation of her character we are fully disposed to acquiesce in the truth of Shakspeare's assertion, that "proper deformity shows not in the fiend so horrid as in woman." This princess was a perfect tigress when for a moment her argus-eyed jealousy conceived the least interruption to her amours, from the beauty, or the affections, or the accomplishments of another. We are told that "a young girl who waited on her had the misfortune to be attached to a man upon whom the queen had herself cast an eye of affection. Having discovered that the feeling was mutual between the youthful lovers, Zingha had them brought before her; and giving her poniard to the young man, ordered him to plunge it into the bosom of his mistress, to open her bosom and eat her heart! The moment he had obeyed this cruel order she turned to the wretched man, who perhaps expected his pardon, and looked at him as if to confirm this expectation. But she ordered his head to be severed from his body, and it fell upon the mutilated corpse of his mistress." On another occasion she had spared a particular female from among those doomed to destruction, when perceiving a paramour looking with tenderness upon her, she immediately recalled her executioner, and coldly said, "take this woman also and throw her into the grave with her companion." Such is the influence of the passion of love and jealousy upon the female mind even in Negro land, and well may we join Madame Junot in the remark, that "this memoir (of Zingha) which is strictly true may lead to much reflection in those who so bitterly attack the whites for their treatment of negro slaves. The latter in our colonies have never yet undergone such degradation."⁶

⁶ "Add to this the horrible superstitions of the Giagas," says the same writer, "and our colonial slaves must have little to regret in their native country."

A woman in love, whilst she is willing to sacrifice all for the object beloved, may occasionally demand all. She is very apt to be too capricious for wise and prosperous government. A little experiment in love matters might occasionally be of more moment to her, than the regulation of trade, the modification of the corn laws, or the raising or lowering of the taxes. We all know that woman is sometimes extremely capricious and even despotic in the wars of Cupid. She does sometimes make most fearful exactions merely to manifest her power, or to confirm her faith in the fidelity and devotedness of her lover. Now all this will do well enough in private life, because it chequers the path of love with the powerfully exciting alternations of hope and disappointment, and throws around the object of our affections all those attractions, and all that more ethereal and imaginative loveliness, which the extreme difficulty of attainment ever generates in the mind. Although the lover may sometimes groan under such a despotism, and even attempt to renounce it,⁷ yet the public sustains no injury. But when this capricious lover is a queen upon the throne, or an ambitious aspirant for political power, then the consequences may be truly disastrous. Rousseau tells us upon the authority of Brantome, that during the reign of Francis I, a young girl had a lover who was a great babbler. So capricious was she, and so fond of the exercise of power, that she ordered him to keep an absolute and profound silence, as the condition of her love, until she might release his tongue. He actually remained silent two years, when every body believed him dumb. Then one day in the presence of a large assembly, she boasted that by one word she could restore speech to the dumb. She looked him in the face and said, "parlez!" "speak!" when the man began to speak again! Now in this case no one suffered but the poor man, and he had no doubt hours of ecstatic felicity in her occasional kindness, and sympathy, and love, for so much devotion. He gloried in the chains which he wore: he might be a little restive at times, under the caprice and whim of his mistress, but was no doubt in all his difficulties ever ready to apply to her the language of one of Martial's Epigrams on the whimsical waywardness of a friend,

"Difficilis, facilis, jucundus, acerbus es idem Nec tecum possum vivere, nec sine te."

but when such love or caprice as this reaches the throne, the people pay for the folly. Delirant reges plectuntur Achivi.

⁷ We are informed that during the age of chivalry, a lady and her lover knight, at the Court of Vienna, were looking over a palisade at a very ferocious lion, when the lady designedly let fall her glove within the enclosure, and asked the knight to pick it up for her. Without hesitation he leaped the enclosure, threw a cloak at the lion, which diverted his attention for a moment, and escaped unhurt with the glove, and then in presence of the whole court renounced the lady and her love forever, because she had imposed so cruel and dangerous a test of his affections.

The poor Dutch saw but little sport or justice in those harassing campaigns of Lewis XIV in Holland, undertaken principally to please and amuse his mistresses, and exalt himself in their estimation as a military chieftain. The English too saw nothing but degradation and misfortune while Mademoiselle Queraille, the celebrated Duchess of Portsmouth, was the favorite mistress of Charles, and by her predilections for France, and influence on Charles, made him the subservient tool of Lewis XIV, and England but a province to France. And the ill-fated Protestants of the same country had before but too mournfully lamented at the stake that England's Queen was the wife of the most sullen, dark, and ferocious bigot of his age.

But I have said enough, I hope, to show that the field of politics does not furnish the proper theatre for woman's glory and fame. It is strewed with too many brambles and thorns for her delicate and timid nature. It presents too many temptations to wander from the path of justice and equity, to be resisted by the modest gentleness and the unresisting pliancy of her sympathetic and humane temperament. Let her not then be over-ambitious in politics, lest she be brought to realize at last the maxim which is but too true—"Corruptio optimi pessima est." Let her ever remember that she who has the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, as Gisborne has well observed, enjoys a decoration superior to all the glories of the peerage. Not only, however, has the custom of the world generally excluded woman from political stations, but she has been excluded likewise from the right of suffrage or of voting. Her condition in society, her physical organization, the bearing and nursing of children, her delicacy, modesty, weakness and dependency on man, all concur to make such exclusion proper.⁸ The utilitarians say, that no evil can result to the fair sex from this exclusion, because their interests are involved in the interests of the males, and consequently the former cannot be oppressed by the latter. Thus they say almost every woman has a husband, a brother, or a father, all of whom are interested in her welfare. She need not consequently fear an invasion of her rights, for those in power are interested in defending them. To a certain extent this assertion is true. But the condition of woman in past ages, and in the eastern nations, shows most conclusively that she may be oppressed by the stronger sex, and that her interests therefore have not been so completely involved in those of man as to make oppression impracticable. Well then, under these circumstances, does it behoove man, in the possession of all the political power, to guard against its abuse—to remember that the frailer and weaker member of our race is placed necessarily under his protection, and lies at his mercy—that humanity, magnanimity, and even self-interest, alike require that her rights should be guarded, and her condition ameliorated—that she who is the delight and ornament of society, the Corinthian capital of our race, should not be permitted to pine under neglect and oppression, but should be conducted tenderly to that exalted eminence whence she may diffuse her benign influence over all the ramifications of social intercourse. And the more I have been enabled to read the page of history have I become convinced, that the continued amelioration of woman's condition is one of the most unerring symptoms of the continuing prosperity and civilization of the world.

⁸ I do not then agree entirely with Talleyrand in the assertion that, "to see one half of the human race excluded by the other from all participation of government, is a political phenomenon that, according to abstract principles, it is impossible to explain."

But although I would say that woman is not fitted to take the lead in politics, or to vote at elections, yet would I recommend to all men in political life, or in any other situation, generally to consult female friends before they act in any very important matters. Their opinions and counsels are rarely to be despised, even in politics. The politician ought always to be possessed of their views, though he should not be implicitly governed by them. There is a chain of connection running through and binding together all the events of this world, moral, social, religious, and political. The mind of man, to act with perfect wisdom in any department, must survey all the causes and events, both great and small, which may have a bearing either direct or remote on the issue at which he aims. Now, although man may be able to generalize more extensively, and take a wider and more comprehensive view of the events which are passing around him, yet that very generalization and comprehension of mind, do often make him overlook those little causes, those secret motives, those nice and evanescent springs of action, which are frequently the real causes of the greatest events transpiring in the political drama. "It was not from a massive bar of iron, but from a small and tiny needle," as my lord Bacon observes, "that we discovered the great mysteries of nature." And thus it frequently happens, that by looking attentively at apparently unimportant passions or small events, we are enabled to arrive at the true causes of individual and even national distinctions. It is in this latter department of knowledge that the sagacity of woman is infinitely beyond that of man. She divines more certainly than he all those secret motives of the heart, and detects more readily those delicate, invisible springs of action which so frequently control the course of events. She is more thoroughly acquainted with the nature and character of that mighty influence which woman exerts over man in every condition of life in which he may be placed, and therefore her advice is never to be neglected. In reading the history of any epoch, I always consider my reading as incomplete until I can peruse the histories and the memoirs written by females. They are almost sure to fill the chasms left by the writers of our sex. They frequently enter some of the penetralia of the mind and heart which are inaccessible to man; they perceive the vibration of certain chords invisible to our duller optics. Their views may often be partial, prejudiced, and incomplete, yet when taken in connexion with the more enlarged and philosophical accounts of other writers, they enable the future historian to form a more perfect, more consistent, and more philosophical picture of the whole.

Historians have sometimes puzzled their brains to assign a philosophical cause for this or that course of conduct of a great statesman, when a woman would have told you at once that it originated from some little family feud, or perhaps from an ardent attachment to some sweet, coy, unobtrusive, timid creature, the bare mention of whose name on the page of history would crimson her cheeks with the deep blush of modesty. The historian may be puzzled to account for the sudden and injudicious march of Mareschal Villars, at the head of the grand army of France, towards Brussels. Reader, the true cause was that he was anxious to see his wife, who was staying in a small town on the road to Brussels.⁹ It has been said that the course which Cicero pursued towards the conspirators in Rome, resulted principally from the instigation of Terentia, who had her private reasons for hating them. And the hatred of the great orator for Clodius the Demagogue was likewise inspired principally by his wife Terentia, on account of her jealousy of Clodia, the sister of Clodius, who had been anxious to marry Cicero. Now in regard to all those more impalpable and delicate causes which take their origin in the heart, the affections, the social relations, woman is much more sagacious than man; she sees them when they escape his vision; and consequently her penetration may enable her to make discoveries or applications which man would never have thought of. Hence, I repeat again, the counsel of woman ought ever to be taken before we enter upon important events. Dufresnay has shown that many conspiracies even have failed because not confided to woman. And many a man who has kept his transactions secret from his wife, has rued the consequences. Rousseau tells us that while travelling through Switzerland he frequently found the views and advice of Therese of the utmost importance; sometimes rescuing him from the great difficulties that surrounded him, and which could not have been so well overcome without her. And yet he tells us that she was not a well educated woman. The fact is, woman excels man, as has been well observed, in attaining her present purposes; her invention is prompt, her boldness happy, and her execution facile.

⁹ This celebrated general of Louis XIV, according to St. Simon, often turned his army aside from the great object which he had in view, from some such causes as these.

Even the warnings and cautions of women, for which no good reason can be assigned, ought not always to be disregarded. They are frequently inferences drawn from that nice discernment and tact so characteristic of the sex amid the little incidents of life, or from their capability of reading the varying features of the human countenance, or marking more distinctly the altered shades of manner, even when individuals are attempting to wear the mask of deception and hypocrisy. Cæsar's wife, we are told, implored him not to go to the Senate Chamber of Rome on the fatal day of the Ides of March; and although she could give no better reasons for her solicitude than dreams, visions, and strange feelings, yet it is more than probable that these were produced by the acute, the penetrating, microscopic observation of a woman's mind upon the events and characters which surrounded her in Rome. Brutus, Cassius, Dolabella, &c. might conceal their purposes during their daily intercourse, from him who had led the armies of Rome to victory in Gaul, and Britain, and Illirium, and had, by the majesty and force of his own mind, overturned the liberties of his country, and grasped in his single hand the sceptre of the world, but, in all probability, they were unable to wear that countenance and assume those manners which would impose upon the more minute discernment of Cæsar's wife, amid the troubles, solicitudes, and suspicions, incident to a season of revolution. Pontius Pilate would have released the Saviour of the world, and quieted a troubled conscience, if he had given heed to the solemn warning of his wife, to have nothing to do with that just man, (Jesus.) Yet she could give no better reason for her warning, than that she had suffered many things that day in a dream, because of him.

Conversation—Epistolary Writing.

I come now to the consideration of the relative merits of the sexes, in that most pleasing attitude in which we generally find them indulging familiar converse in the social circle. And here, I think, we shall be forced to assign the palm to the fair sex. The social talents of woman all over the world, where her education is not too much neglected, are superior to those of man. Her conversation we generally find more varied, more natural, more allied with the interesting incidents and events of life than that of man. She is a nicer, and more acute observer of what is passing around her. She treasures up more interesting details and occurrences; she is much better acquainted with that most interesting of all subjects, the play of the social and amorous affections; and she studies the most pleasing and fascinating manner of communicating her thoughts to others; hence she becomes the ornament and the boast of the social circle.

Some persons may imagine the conversational power to bear some proportion to the general strength of the intellect, and that, as man cultivates the higher powers of the mind more thoroughly than woman, he must therefore excel her in the social circle. This, however, is very far from being true. The beauty of conversation depends on two things: 1st. On the character of the facts, anecdotes, knowledge, &c. which form the staple of what is said. 2d. On the manner and style of communicating them. Now I conceive that the subjects most generally pleasing in promiscuous society, are not those of a deeply philosophical or abstract character, not those which require the greatest stretch of intellect to comprehend, but those subjects generally which have reference to the ordinary occurrences and transactions of life; those in which all are interested, and which all can comprehend: those, in fine, which concern ourselves immediately and particularly. Grave disquisitions and lectures on abstract subjects, are out of place in the drawing room; those who indulge much in them may be called learned, but they are generally considered intolerable prosers. The divine who is always talking to us about grace and its operation on the heart, the lawyer who is lavish of his profound learning on contingent remainders and executory devises, or the physician who tries to instruct us in the mysteries of animal life, by recounting theory after theory upon the subject, are ever looked upon as great bores in the social circle. Not only, however, is the character of the subject of importance in conversation, but there must be variety. No matter how important and interesting the topic, the patience of a company will soon be worn out by even an intelligent and fluent man who will discourse of nothing else. The most insufferable of all bores, says the author of Vivian Grey, is the man whose mind is engrossed with one single subject, who thinks of no other, and of course talks of no other.

So far as the subject matter, or materiel of conversation is concerned, let us enter a little into the metaphysics of the subject, and see, upon philosophical principles, how woman becomes superior to man in this respect.

The principle of association, or of suggestion as it is termed by the more recent writers on the philosophy of the human mind, is the great and controlling law of the mental frame; it is that principle which enables us to supply all our wants, to adapt means to ends, to call up the knowledge of the past, to look into the undeveloped events of the future. It is this associating faculty which may be looked upon as truly the master workman of the mind. Its agency is requisite in the action of all our mental powers, and consequently in pointing out the intellectual differences between the sexes, it is proper never to lose sight of so important a modifier of mental character. Metaphysicians tell us that there are three principles or laws, according to which the association of ideas operates. 1st. Resemblance. 2d. Contiguity in time or place. And 3d. Contrast. Now if we examine into these three divisions, we shall find each one susceptible of a subdivision into two classes, marked and distinct. Thus 1st. There may be resemblance in the objects themselves. Or 2d. In the effects or emotions which they excite. For example, I see a man—he is like, in face and feature, to one I knew well in France—I think immediately of the Frenchman: here is resemblance in objects themselves. I see a violent hurricane—it reminds me of the desolating ravages of a Zenghis Khan, or Tamerlane: here is resemblance in the effects, and not in the objects themselves. I hear the cooing of the dove, and I think of the gentleness and innocence of the child. I hear a man reviling and blaspheming his God, and I think of midnight darkness: here is similarity in the emotions excited by the objects. A corresponding division may be made of contrast. Thus I see a dwarf, and he calls instantly to my mind the largest man I ever saw: this is contrast in the objects. I see a raging, destructive lion, and think immediately of the meek and humble Saviour of the world: here is contrast in the effects. I see the white and tender lily on the drooping stalk, and I think of the fiendish passions of a Macbeth or a Richard: here is contrast in the emotions excited by the objects. Lastly, contiguity in time and place may be divided into casual and fixed; thus I see a man today whom I saw yesterday in company with another: I instantly think of that other. I hear the last eclipse mentioned, I think of the place I was in at that time, the company I was with, the anecdotes told, &c. In the first instance we have casual contiguity in place, and in the second in place and time both. I see the moon on the meridian, and think of the tides in our rivers. I see a magnet, and I think of its attraction for iron; here is necessary contiguity in time, and in the last instance in place too. Upon this last species of contiguity is dependent that most important of all relations, the relation of cause and effect, and of premises and conclusions.

In unison with the division here made of the associating principles, it is easy to explain the character of three distinct orders of mind, which will of course appear widely different in the conversational displays of the social circle. There is, first, the common mind, associating its ideas together by palpable resemblance or contrast among them, and by the mere casual and loose contiguity in time and place. Secondly, the poetical or sentimental mind, associating principally by resemblance or contrast in the effects produced by objects or the emotions which they excite. And thirdly, the philosophical mind, associating principally by necessary contiguity in time and place, by cause and effect, premises and conclusions.

Such a mind as the first, is most impressed with the details and occurrences around. It never ascends to the original contemplation of ideas and thoughts which belong to the region of philosophy and poetry. It may, it is true, recollect sometimes, distant and beautiful analogies, or even philosophical associations, but it is purely because it has heard these things spoken of by others, and not from original conception. Such a mind has no creative power of its own; as it receives so does it pour forth, without alteration. It has been well compared to the cistern into which water is poured; you have nothing to do but turn the cock and out it comes (as one of our newspaper editors recently observed, in relation to a different subject,) "water, dirt, sticks, bugs, pine tags and all!" Such a mind has no productive power whatever. In this flood of details, you see no connecting principle like cause and effect, premises and conclusions, &c.—but this thing is remembered because it is like that. This fact is now related because it was spoken at the same time with that, or in the same place. Such an individual as this has, as Diderot expresses it, "une tête meublée d'un grand nombre de choses disparates," which he says resembles a library with mismatched books, or a German compilation garnished, without reason and without taste, with Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, and Latin.

Such individuals as these are more pleasing and amusing to us in conversation, when the mind is not otherwise engaged, than most of us are willing to allow. They spread before us a promiscuous feast of neighborhood news, and like Mathews the comedian, although there be but one speaker, they give you the sayings, the conjectures, the shrugs, and the winks of all the parties concerned, and thus give to their communications quite a dramatic effect. Barbers, midwives, seamstresses, hostesses, &c. cultivate this kind of association to the greatest pitch of perfection. Their professions may be said to demand it.

Such individuals, when called into court to give testimony, are sometimes exceedingly amusing, from the pertinacity with which they detail all, even the most minute circumstances, and when interrupted because of the irrelevancy or illegality of their testimony, they are very apt to begin again at the very beginning of their narrative. In the minuteness of their remembrances they are like Mrs. Quickly in the play, when she wishes to make Falstaff remember the time when he promised to marry her.¹⁰ The Cicerone of Italy have generally memories of the same description.

¹⁰ This has generally been adduced by the metaphysicians since the time of Lord Kames, as an exemplification of this minute memory, and it illustrates so well the remarks which I have been making above, that I cannot forbear to add it in a foot note.

Falstaff. What is the gross sum that I owe thee?

Hostess. Marry, if thou wast an honest man, thyself and thy money too. Thou didst swear to me on a parcel gilt goblet, sitting in my Dolphin Chamber, at the round table, by a sea coal fire, on Wednesday in Whitsun week, when the prince broke thy head for likening him to a singing man of Windsor, thou didst swear to me then, as I was washing thy wound, to marry me, and make me my lady, thy wife. Canst thou deny it? Did not good wife Keech, the butcher's wife, come in then, and call me gossip Quickly? coming in to borrow a mess of vinegar; telling us she had a good dish of prawns; whereby thou didst desire to eat some; whereby I told thee they were ill for a green wound. And didst not thou when she was gone down stairs desire me to be no more familiarity with such poor people, saying that ere long they should call me Madame! and didst thou not kiss me, and bid me fetch thee thirty shillings? I put thee now to thy book oath, deny it if thou canst.—Sec. Part, Hen. 4, Act 2d. Scene 2.

Individuals of this character are the little chroniclers of the day. They are the little historians of the little events transpiring around them. They form a sort of cement for society—they furnish a species of connecting link between the past and the present. They embalm for a few years the memory of those who would otherwise have passed away and been forgotten. The smallest and greatest of the human race love fame. The temple at Ephesus was burnt down for fame, and it is the character which I have just been describing that gives a little fame to classes that would never have been heard of, and in old age such a being can tell the young around him of the deeds and achievements of their sires and grandsires and great grandsires. Such individuals as these are remarkable for very exact memories, and as they are never persons of much comprehension of mind, it has been generally imagined that good memories are rarely accompanied with good understandings. Hence the couplet of Pope,

"When in the mind the Memory prevails, The more solid power of the understanding fails."

This however is but one form which the memory assumes, and consequently we must draw no enlarged inferences from it. Women have generally much more of this memory than men. The sphere in which they move, the occupations in which they are engaged, the lesser necessity on their part for original thought and action of mind, all tend to produce this character.

The second class of mind, according to the division made above, is the poetic or sentimental—that species of mind which associates by the more distant analogies and resemblances, or contrast in objects, in their effects, or in the emotions which they excite. Imagination is the essence of such a mind as this. It enables us to see resemblances and contrasts where others see none. "How many are there," says Doct. Brown, "who have seen an old oak, half leafless amid the younger trees of the forest, and who are capable of remembering it when they think of the forest itself, or of events that happened there! But it is to the mind of Lucan that it rises by analogy, to the conception of a veteran chief:

'Stat magni nominis umbra Qualis frugifero quercus sublimis in agro.'"

What a scene for the enjoyment of love and friendship—what a group of delightful and beautiful images has Virgil brought together in two lines of his Eclogues!

"Hic gelidi fontes, hic mollia prata Lycori, Hic nemus: hic ipso tecum consumerer oevo."

Many have seen a starling in a cage, but it is a Sterne who in imagination sees a captive in his dungeon, half wasted away with long expectation and confinement. Pale and feverish, the western breeze for thirty years had not fanned his blood. He sees him sitting upon the ground in the farthest corner, on a little straw, alternately his chair and bed, with a little calendar of small sticks, and etching with a rusty nail another day of misery to add to the heap.

When this species of association is dwelt on too much the individual is characterized by a sort of sickly, morbid sentimentality, which is both highly unnatural, and very disagreeable. He is ever trying to display the effects of what Mary Woolstonecraft calls a "pumped up passion." Those writers whom Dr. Smith in his Theory of Moral Sentiments calls whining philosophers, possess minds of this order. They can never see happiness in one part of the world but to reflect on the misery which is experienced in another. Is our country at peace, happy and prosperous, than rejoice not at it, for there are millions of human beings suffering in China, Japan, Hindostan, and Bengal. Thompson's writings are deeply imbued with this whining philosophy, and so perhaps are Cowper's, as was to be expected from the state of his mind.

It is, however, the association by distant resemblances in objects, by analogies in effects and in emotions which furnishes the mind with perhaps the most interesting materials for social converse. Such a mind is what the world calls brilliant. We soon tire of it, however, if it does not occasionally relax, and give us a few of those details and minutiæ, which belong to the mind of the first order in our division. As was said of the poetry of Thomas Moore, we do not like always to feed upon the whip syllabubs we soon become hungry for bread and meat.

Such a mind as the one I have just been describing, has rarely a very accurate or exact memory. The imagination is too active for the fidelity of the memory. Pope has well asserted, that

"Where beams of warm imagination play, The memory's soft figures melt away."

Men possessing such minds as these rarely make good historians or profound philosophers. They neither narrate with fidelity, nor can they philosophize with ability. Their imagination gilds and varnishes the knowledge they have accumulated. Events, as Boswell expresses it, grow mellow in their memories.¹¹ But for this very reason do they become exceedingly brilliant in conversation, when they have the power of communicating their ideas well. Mr. Stewart tells as that Boswell himself was a striking exemplification of his own remark, "for his stories," says Mr. S. "which I have often listened to with delight, seldom failed to improve wonderfully in such a keeping as his memory afforded. They were much more amusing than even his printed anecdotes; the latter were deprived of every chance of this sort of improvement, by the scrupulous fidelity with which (probably from a secret distrust of the accuracy of his recollection) he was accustomed to record every conversation which he thought interesting, a few hours after it took place."

¹¹ "I have often experienced," says Boswell in his tour through the Hebrides with Dr. Johnson, "that scenes through which a man has past improves by lying in the memory: they grow mellow."

With regard to the order of mind which we have just been considering, it may be said that although a few men may cultivate it to a much higher pitch of perfection than it is generally found to exist among women, yet taking the sexes together, it is rather a characteristic of the weaker sex, at least in as much as the associations are dependent on similarity or contrast in emotions. Women, taking the whole sex together, have undoubtedly more imagination than men, especially inrelation to what I would term the sentimental and romantic portions of our nature. They have nicer discernment and tact, more feeling, sympathy, emotion and curiosity of all descriptions, and so far as these furnish materials for association, they are superior to our sex. Now these are precisely the materials which are most interesting when properly clothed in the fascinating unaffected phraseology of a well educated lady. Moreover, although men may perhaps display more originality generally in the species of association falling under our second division, yet I apprehend for that very reason they have less variety, and, as we shall soon see, less quickness and ease in calling up their associations.

The third class of minds, according to our arrangements is the philosophical mind—that which associates principally by the relation of necessary contiguity in time and place, by cause and effect, premises and conclusions. This is undoubtedly the mind of the first quality, and much the rarest in the human family. Knowledge, however, which is acquired by associations of this character, is too abstruse and unintelligible to the great mass of mankind to be interesting in the social circle, and persons who have this order of mind rarely have the other two in any perfection, and consequently their conversation is not of that attractive character which pleases by its ease, grace, and variety. Individuals of this character very rarely display a good memory for mere words and details. Their knowledge is arranged under certain general principles, and when they wish to arrive at the detail, they are obliged to reason down from the principle to the fact which is arranged under it. Such a mind has rather a knowledge of general principles, than of particular facts and incidents. General abstract subjects rarely produce much impression on the mind of the mass. This is one reason why divines, who have the most grand and sublime theme to descant on, nevertheless often fail to produce much effect on their audiences. Their subject, although grand, is yet a general one. The vices against which they preach are the vices of the human race. The awful judgment of which they speak, is a judgment to come at some indefinite time hereafter. Mankind to be moved and interested must be addressed specially and personally. You must not come before them clothed in abstractions and generalizations. Look to that celebrated sermon of Massillon, pronounced by Voltaire in his article on Eloquence, in the Encydopedie Francaise, to be one of the most eloquent effusions of modern times, and examine particularly that portion which had so startling an effect on the audience as to make them spring simultaneously from their seats, and you will see that it was just at that moment that the eloquent divine dropped all his abstractions and generalities and applied his subject to those very persons who were listening to him. "Je m'arrête à vous, mes freres, qui êtes ici assemblées. Je ne parle plus du reste des hommes," &c. And again, "Je suppose que c'est ici votre derniere heure, et la fin de l'univers; que les cieux vont s'ouvrir sur vos têtes—Jesus Christe paraitre dans sa gloire au milieu de ce temple," &c.

It is useless to say that men much oftener have minds of the third class in our arrangement than women; not because there is any natural difference between the sexes in this particular, but because ours is placed in a situation requiring the cultivation of this species of mind more than the other. Our professions and occupations exert, if I may say so, a more effectual demand for the development of this order of intellect, than those of woman. Men in their passage through life, are obliged to examine into the necessary connection between events; they must adapt means to ends; they must attain their purposes by well arranged plans, according to the relation of cause and effect. Woman, on the contrary, from the nature of the sphere in which she moves, and the character of the occupations in which she is engaged, is more conversant with objects than with their necessary connections and relations. She is not obliged to arrange so many concatenated plans; her mind is more alive to the perception of the objects around her, and less to the causæ rerum. Her feelings and sympathies are most exquisite, but she attends less to their relations and dependences. She is in fine a creature of emotion rather than of philosophy.

It is for this reason that women rarely make good metaphysicians, although their feelings and sympathies are of the most exquisite character. Yet they are not in the habit of reflecting upon them—arranging them into classes, according to their necessary connections, and thence deducing the general principles and laws of the mind. Mr. Stewart says that the taste for the philosophy of the human mind is rarer among the sex, than even for pure mathematics. He seems to think that there are but two names in the whole catalogue of female authors, at all celebrated for deep metaphysical research—Miss Edgeworth and Madame de Stael; and he deems it not unfortunate for the world that the former was early diverted from such unattractive speculations, to that more brilliant career of literature which she has pursued with so unrivalled a reputation.¹²

¹² In regard to Madame de Stael, it is proper to remark, that although certainly an able metaphysician—perhaps the very ablest that has ever appeared of her sex—yet you see throughout her writings the character of the woman. Her isolated aphorisms and maxims are most splendid; but when you come to examine any one of her productions as a whole, you see the want of system and complete connection between the parts. Her descriptions of our emotions and feelings are almost unrivalled for pathos and beauty; but when she would put together the different parts of the mind, and sketch out a heroine or a hero—a Corinne or her lover—she presents incongruous beings such as nature never produces. Her mind, after all, was but the mind of a woman—a mind that could furnish the very best materials in the world for a philosopher to weave into his systems—a mind too susceptible of emotion to philosophize on abstract principles—a mind that relied on feeling, rather than reason, to guide it to truth. In her work on the French Revolution, though certainly very able, you see how her mind is warped by her affection for her father, (M. Necker.) You see how her conceptions of the Revolution as a whole, are biassed and prejudiced by too intense a consideration of the scenes and events transpiring immediately around her, and concerning her family. Goethe seems to think that Madame de Stael had no idea what duty meant, so completely was she a creature of feeling.

Having described three distinct and separate orders of mind, remarkable for different kinds of associations, and all widely differing in the possession of that information suited to social converse, I come now to compare the sexes together, in relation to the second point essential to conversation, the power of communicating our knowledge pleasantly and attractively to others. He undoubtedly is the most pleasing companion in the social circle whose mind is of that capacious, well stored kind that is capable of ranging at will through the various classes of associations just pointed out, giving you at one time connections and relations of abstract principles, or philosophical deductions—at another, of analogies between objects, effects, and emotions—and at another, interesting and circumstantial details of the common events of every day life. "Conversation," says a modern writer, "may be compared to a lyre with seven chords—philosophy, art, poetry, politics, love, scandal, and the weather. There are some professors who, like Paganini, 'can discourse most eloquent music' upon one string only, and some who can grasp the whole instrument, and with a master's hand, sound it from the top to the bottom of its compass." Such individuals as these are very rare. Perhaps Dr. Johnson,¹³ McIntosh and Coleridge might be cited as specimens in England, and Schlegel in Germany. Individuals of this character are very rare, because in the first place, there are very few whose minds are capable of ranging through the whole extent of knowledge; and secondly, it does by no means follow, that those possessing the information, might be able to communicate it to others with that brilliancy of diction, and judgment in the selection of matter and its quantity, which will insure complete success in the social circle.

¹³ Johnson's style in conversation must have been too grandiloquent and studied, to have admitted of that variety and ease so necessary to the social circle.

I will make a few promiscuous remarks on these two points. Men of deeply philosophic minds, are almost sure, from the character of their speculations, to glide imperceptibly into habits of abstraction, and to withdraw their attention from the scenes and occurrences transpiring around them, to the contemplation of that world of thought in which they dwell. Their thoughts are not the thoughts of other men; the world in which they live is not the world of others. A Newton, while wrapt in these philosophic visions, can sit for hours in the cold, half dressed, eyes fixed, unconscious of all around him; he can forget to dine; he can, in fine, forget himself, his friends, and the world in which he lives. An Adam Smith, while studying the great laws which regulate the accumulation, distribution, and consumption of wealth, can so far forget himself and the world, as to mimic with his cane, a soldier, who presents arms to him through respect, and march after him when he moves off; he can be present when toasts are drunk, and know nothing of what is passing.¹⁴ Minds of this order are almost sure to neglect associations of a lighter character. They fail to acquire that species of information which is most pleasing in conversation. And, moreover, they are apt to have what are called slow memories; they cannot call up their knowledge quick, and utter it with volubility. The process by which they hive their wisdom is slow and tedious, depending on patient thought, and persevering reflection. Such a mind has been compared, in the social circle, to a ship of the line run a ground in a creek. It is too massive and ponderous for the element and space in which it floats. It is said that Newton was rather slow and dull in conversation even upon philosophical subjects. Many an individual in Europe, of far inferior genius, was more brilliant in conversation than himself, even upon his own discoveries. Descartes, whose mind was of the first order, was silent in mixed company. It was said that he received his intellectual wealth from nature in solid bars, not in current coin.¹⁵ Men like these are better pleased with the contemplation of the solid wealth in their possession, than with the means of making it glitter and attract the gaze of the world. They value ideas more than words—knowledge more than the media of communication. They think it better, as Spurzheim on Education says, to have two ideas with one mode of expressing them, than one idea with two modes of expression. Such men as these then are apt, unless stimulated by very peculiar circumstances, to be deficient, first, in that variety requisite for agreeable conversation, and secondly, in the style and power of communicating their ideas to others.

¹⁴ It is said that Dr. Smith was one day present, when the toast to "absent friends" was drank by the company. A friend who sat by the Doctor, told him that he had just been toasted, whereupon he thanked the company for the honor, and apologised for his absence of mind, very much of course to the amusement of his friends so well aware of his habits of abstraction.

¹⁵ The character of Oliver Cromwell in this respect is well known. He did not, during his whole parliamentary career, make one single lucid, perspicuous speech. In fact, his speaking was almost unintelligible; and yet his course of conduct, although that of an usurper and tyrant, marks most generally, clearness of judgment, and great decision of character. Of course I am not here considering his moral character, which was detestable.

Again, men of poetic or miscellaneous minds, possessing that varied store of knowledge and thought so well calculated to form the staple of conversation, may nevertheless, from various causes, be unable to make any display in the social circle. They may write beautifully whilst they converse badly. Addison's dulness in company is well known. Peter Corneille, who has been called the Shakspeare of France, it is said, did not speak correctly that language of which he was so perfect a master in his composition. His answer to his friends, when laughing at his spoken language was, "I am not the less Peter Corneille!" Virgil is said to have been dull in the social circle. La Fontaine, whose writing was the very model of poetry, was coarse, heavy, and stupid in conversation. Chaucer's silence was said to be much more agreeable than his talking. And Dryden says of himself, "My conversation is slow and dull, my humor saturnine and reserved." Thus do we find that it is not only necessary that the mind should be stored with pleasing and varied knowledge, in order that we may converse well; but we must have besides the power of communicating that knowledge agreeably to others—a power which is by no means universally coupled with the knowledge.

Let us then for a moment examine into the character of woman in this respect. We have already seen that she has more of the proper materiel for conversation than man. If then her power and manner of communicating be better, she may certainly be pronounced his superior in the social circle. In the first place I would remark, that she has in general much less professional bias than man. When men arrive at the age of maturity, they generally engage in some one profession or occupation, which employs most of their time and exertion. Their intellectual characters are, to a very great degree, modelled by their employments. Hence an inaptitude to acquire what does not belong to one's business—an indocility upon all subjects not strictly professional. I recollect once to have been a member of a country debating society, in which we had divines, lawyers, doctors, farmers, schoolmasters, &c., and upon all topics discussed, it was easy to determine at once the profession of the speaker. You saw immediately the professional bias and the professional language and knowledge. Woman is in general, except so far as affected by her husband, free from this influence, which is so unfavorable to that varied and brilliant conversation suited to promiscuous society.

Again, the social circle is the field in which woman wins her trophies, displays her accomplishments, and achieves her conquests. The art of pleasing by conversation is all and all to her. The power of colloquial display is her greatest accomplishment—her most irresistible weapon. Hence, while man in general aims to make himself plain and perspicuous, woman endeavors not only to be understood, but to delight and fascinate the hearer at the same time by her style and manner. "Man in conversation," says Rousseau, "has need of knowledge—woman of taste." We are instructed profoundly in a few things by the conversation of an intelligent man. The conversation of woman embraces many things, and though we may not be profoundly instructed in any, yet we have a living and moving panoramic view presented to the mind, which sooths and charms it by the beauty, variety, and brilliancy of the parts. Rousseau was so struck with the differences between the sexes in conversation, that he seems (I think erroneously) to imagine a natural difference in this respect between them. "Women," says he, "have a more flexible tongue: they speak sooner, more easily, and more agreeably than men. They are accused of speaking more. That is just as it should be; this should be considered an ornament of the sex, and not a reproach. Their mouth and eyes have the same activity, and for the same reason."

The occupations of women are generally of such a character as to allow full scope for their conversational talents, while their work is advancing. Knitting, sewing, &c. invite to a free use of the tongue, while the occupations of men will generally allow of no such indulgence. Moreover, the business of woman is oftener social; it can be carried on in society; whereas that of man cannot, being generally much more solitary. This difference in the occupations of the two, produces a much greater effect on the social differences between the sexes than most persons are aware of. Lastly, the greater docility of woman, her greater susceptibility to impression, have a tendency to generate more conversational talent than is developed in man. Woman, as we have frequently remarked, is made physically weaker than man; she is, therefore, dependent on him, and looks up to him as a protector. Man is the governing member of the human family all over the world. Woman submits to his guidance and direction. She adapts herself to him, and endeavors to conform to his nature. Hence a quiet submissiveness on the part of the weaker sex to control and dictation, even when very intelligent, and able to act for themselves. I have known intelligent women look up to their husbands for direction in most matters, and with pleasure submit to their will, when it was evident to the whole world that they were vastly superior in intellectual endowments to those whose dictation and direction they thus seemed to court. All a woman's ambition is for the promotion of her husband. Her own elevation is generally a secondary matter, because always derived from his. Shakspeare makes even the fiendish acts of Lady Macbeth, to proceed from a desire to elevate her own husband rather than herself. This condition of woman makes her more docile and susceptible of impression. Her nature becomes more pliant and flexible. At one period of her life she may be the wife of a divine, at another of a lawyer, and at a third of a physician: and she can quickly conform to these different natures with which she has to deal. Her docility is far superior to that of man. Mr. Stewart thinks that women learn languages even with greater quickness, and pronounce them much better than men. He says Fox spoke French better than any Englishman of his acquaintance, but he knew many females who spoke it better than he.

Now this greater docility and susceptibility of impression, while it admirably adapts the weaker to the stronger sex, at the same time improves greatly the conversational powers of woman. She is alive to all that is passing around; she sees what our duller eyes fail to behold. She thus gathers more, and details it more vividly and impressively. While we are gathering general and stale news, she collects that which is more special and impressive. Every one who has ever been in the habit of paying what are called morning visits, with intelligent ladies, must have remarked the great difference between the sexes in this respect.

Before leaving the subject of conversation, I shall take leave to make a few remarks on the practice so prevalent among the married and elderly gentlemen, of separating themselves from the rest of the company at dinner parties and evening gatherings, to talk among themselves on those topics more congenial to their feelings and business. Such an abstraction as this leaves the young to themselves, and frees them from a restraint which may sometimes be irksome, but is almost always salutary. The elderly portion are in the habit of excusing themselves, by saying the conversation of the young is too frivolous for their attention; that their tastes have changed, and they take now no pleasure in the gaieties, pastimes, and frivolities of youth. But they should recollect that this division is calculated to produce that very frivolity of which they complain. Separate the old and intelligent from the young and thoughtless, and you immediately give a loose to all the wild, buoyant feelings of youth. Lycurgus could never have succeeded in Sparta in enforcing so completely his celebrated system of laws, but for the public tables, which brought the old and young, intelligent and simple together. The young learned modesty in the presence of the old, and the ignorant imbibed wisdom from the instruction of the intelligent. If our most intelligent men would always mingle in the social circle, they would elevate the character of the topics discussed, while they would stimulate the young to more thought and intellectual exertion. The young would be improved by the instruction they would receive, and the laudable ambition that would be exerted by the example of the old and intelligent; and the latter would be compensated by the great improvement which social intercourse produces on all our finer feelings, tastes, and emotions, by the cultivation of talents which would otherwise become dormant and useless, and the consequent opening of new sources of enjoyment. But duty to the rising generation—particularly to that portion for whom we feel the warmest solicitude, because the weaker and more dependent—absolutely demands this intercourse. It would elevate the intellectual character of the sex, and thereby improve the general condition of society. Our wives and daughters would become fit companions for intelligent husbands, and the social circle would lose its unmeaning conversation and reckless frivolity in the presence of age and intelligence.

The social circles of France are greatly improved by the free and unrestrained intercourse of all ages together. There is no man in Paris, it matters not what is his standing or intelligence, but has social ambition; he aims at distinction in conversation, at reputation in the social circle, no less than he does at winning trophies in the field, or fame in the senate chamber. The consequence is, that, frivolous as we consider that people as a nation, they far excel us in the social circle, both in the dignity of the topics discussed, and the ability displayed by both sexes, especially by the females, in conversation. Women who enjoy the society and conversation of the wittiest and greatest men of their country will themselves become witty and clever. "I was talking," says Bulwer in his France, "one evening with the master of the house where I had been dining, on some subject of trade and politics, which I engaged in unwillingly in the idea that it was not very likely to interest the lady. I was soon rather astonished, I confess, to find her enter into conversation with a knowledge of detail and a right perception of general principles which I did not expect. 'How do you think,' said she, when I afterward expressed my surprise, 'that I could meet my husband every evening at dinner, if I were not able to talk on the topics on which he has been employed in the morning.'" Let us then at least imitate the French in this particular, certain that it will in the process of time be productive of the most marked and happy result.

For the same reason that woman surpasses man in conversation, she is superior to him in epistolary composition. Her letters are generally more varied, more lively and impressive, more replete with interesting facts and details, than those of our sex. A gentleman, in writing a mere letter of friendship, is engaged in a business which rather breaks in on his habits, and interrupts for a time the accustomed routine of his thoughts and tastes. He is very apt to run off upon the general news of the day, and commence prosing upon some subject which we would find perhaps infinitely better handled in the public prints than in his letter. He has no variety; he forgets to tell us of our friends, and of what they are doing and saying. He forgets that we have hearts, and thinks only of our heads. He omits to mention trifles, because he considers them "light as air," when some of these trifles might touch a chord that would vibrate to the heart, and fill the soul with joy and gratitude. When Mr. Dacre writes to the Duke of Fitzjames, in the Young Duke, and says in conclusion, "Mary desires me to present her regards to you"—this was worth all the letter besides to the young duke; 'twas this he read over and over again, and forgot his estates and his debts, while his heart was reeling with gratitude for just this little kindness from her whom he loved so devotedly. With woman, letter writing is in complete unison with her condition in society. The details of most interest to her correspondents are precisely those with which she is most conversant. She presents no mutilated picture; she gives that which delights. She is apt to know, too, the little Goshen of our hearts, and to pay all due attention to it. And she is sure to tell, as if by accident, precisely the sweetest things in the world to us. She writes with ease, variety, and interest—because she pursues the course of the celebrated Madame de Sévigné, (who has never perhaps had an equal in our sex for epistolary composition.) "Il faut un peu entre bons amis," says Madame de S. "laisser trotter les plumes comme elles veulent, la mienne a toujours la bride sur le cou."

I had intended, before concluding my remarks on the intellectual differences of the sexes, to offer some considerations in favor of improving the system of female education; but my number has already expanded to a size greatly beyond my anticipations when I commenced it. This subject I must therefore postpone for the present, and resume it in my next, if my time and occupations will permit me.

For the Southern Literary Messenger.

TO F——.

And could'st thou F—— then believe That I had thought thy guileless heart Would prompt thee meanly to deceive, And stoop to play a treacherous part? No, lady no!—I saw thee move, Artless in unsuspecting youth; That heart I saw had learn'd to love The hallowed sanctity of truth. Could F——'s throbbing bosom beat Victims on victims to ensnare: Point to the lovers at her feet, And proudly count the captives there? No, lady no! to honor true, Thou would'st not—could'st not thus appear— Triumphs like these would seem to you, Too dearly purchased to be dear. These, these are arts alone allied To spirits yet akin to earth; The generous soul with nobler pride Spurns the poor trick, and trusts to worth. Yes, lady yes! such worth as thine, Which kindred worth and genius rules, To baser spirits may resign The mad idolatry of fools.

H.

For the Southern Literary Messenger.

TO MARY.

Tune.—Gramachree.

The vernal month comes on with flowers To deck the plains around, No more the frown of winter lowers, Or chills the fertile ground. The snow-white lily, nature's pride, Now blooms in every vale, The rose breathes fragrance far and wide, And perfumes every gale. The vocal thrush pours forth her note To hail the gladsome morn, And every warbler strains his throat, From garden, brake, and thorn. Come then, dear Mary, let us fly To join the impassioned lay, And pluck each flower whose modest eye Just opens into day. And whilst we view the sweetest charms That grace the new born year, I'll fold thee gently in my arms, And crush each budding care. I'll say the blush upon thy cheek Outvies the rose's hue, The lily blooming o'er the vale, No purer is than you. But soon kind nature's sweetest flowers Will wither and decay, And that bright glow which decks thy cheek, Like them will fade away: But let not this alarm thy peace, Nor tremble at thy doom, For though the flush of youth will cease, Thy soul shall ever bloom.

For the Southern Literary Messenger.

SONG.

I will twine me a wreath of life's withering flowers, And bind with their brightness this aching heart, And wear a smile through the long, long hours, As if in their gladness I bore a part. I will seek mid the gay and festive throng, To check each thought of the love I cherished, And playfully murmur his favorite song, As if not a tone of its sweetness had perished. Tho' the flowers of feeling are fallen and faded, Yet the fragrance of memory may still remain:— And the heart by their withered leaves o'ershaded, May hide the wound though it nurse the pain. And if ever we meet upon earth again, He shall not know it by word or by token: For the eye shall still sparkle, though only with pain, And the lip wear a smile, while the heart may be broken.