Miss rest are so kind and cordial that she feels “About five o'clock on Monday I set out to walk through the snow to this splendid mansion. I was ushered into the drawing-room, where I found Mrs. Tempest, a very pleasing woman. She received me with great kindness and cordiality. There was a timidity and nervous trepidation about her whole manner which surprised me till I had seen her husband. I sat with her for some time alone; at length dinner was announced, and as I rose to accompany her, she said, I do hope you will agree with Mr. Tempest. I will do everything I can to make you comfortable.' I had begun to hope till I saw him, and then I soon understood that he was in very deed lord and master, and she was the very dust of the earth. "He was already seated at the dinner-table, and desired us both to take our seats as quickly as possible, for he had waited long enough for his dinner. Now I thought that we had been waiting for him, and Mrs. Tempest ventured to say that he was later than usual in returning home, and she had been quite faint with staying so long. He was graciously pleased to wonder what business women who stayed at home and said that I left Mrs. Sowerby in about a month. his grossness. If he had been driving a bar- ་ These are trying encounters to have to report to a lover, longing, but as yet unable, to offer the independence of a home. But there are other themes for her cor did nothing had to want any dinner! I thought I had never seen such a bear; however, I said to myself,Let me not judge hastily-he is hungry, and out of humour;' so after eating voraciously, he began to be what he called respondence. She has to give her views agreeable. So, ma'am,' he said, addressing me, I hear you have determined to leave Mr. Sowerby. He is a good sort of man enough, but I understand she is a terrible tigress.' This was a subject on which I did not choose to converse; and as he seemed to expect an answer, I of young ladies on their duties, and on feminine manner and sentiment generally -on which she has opinions as defined and mature as on everything else. We are allowed to gather that the young curate, to whom these letters are mainly addressed, and taking in a few serials. And it is just this atmosphere that our poor friend in the days we live in would have found it her vocation to help in forming, instead of drearily conning her multiplication table. is an attractive person to the ladies; and visitors or dinner company, walking below. as it is thought expedient not to talk of an I hear them talk and laugh, but I feel no engagement which may be indefinite, our wish to join them. I seem as if I had said, friend has evidently some uneasy moments, Of laughter, it is folly; and of mirth, which lend a force to her contempt and what doeth it?" I remain still studying abhorrence of all unfeminine display of in- my book of arithmetic, and I close it someterest in his direction. These were the days times, and cannot help sighing for a little when defiance of propriety took the form of society." The want of books oppresses German sentiment instead of the fastness her- a much more common ally to dulness of modern manners. We are led to sup- then than now. "I declare," she writes pose, from the reflections we encounter at one time, "I have never seen anything here, that in the higher middle-class so- in the shape of a modern publication since ciety of that day there was fully as much I have been in the house, except A Trearoom for the strictures of thoughtful or tise on that very prevalent Disease, a Scald severe judges of manner as now, though it Head.' As famished people will prey on is common among us to attribute an out- garbage, I seized it with avidity, and acpouring of giddy disregard to old-fashioned tually read it through." A good many proprieties as a special token of modern people nowadays may not read much more degeneracy. Very much excellent sense is than when Murray's Grammar, Meditations uttered in these pages, of which the follow- for the Aged, and Blair's Sermons, were ing sentence, worthy of Miss Edgeworth, the only books to be found in an elegant may be taken as a specimen. She is commend-drawing-room; but they secure an atinosing a sister" who has very strong affec- phere of books by subscribing to a library tions, but is quite free from that sort of passionate disposition which would make her fall in love,' as the common phrase is. If you observe the female characters that fall in your way, you will find that a woman of strong passions has always a cold Holding firm to her decision in spite of heart. I do not know if the rule is the Mr. Tempest's prophecies, she accepts a same with the other sex, but I have never new situation in the country, frankly ownseen an exception to it in my own. A wo- ing her regret that it is the country. 'Yes, man of fiery passions is happily a monster, indeed, I do," she says to her romantic and she is invariably destitute of natural lover; "I am not sufficiently enamoured affection." Our friend in the solitude of of the banks of this romantic stream to wish her schoolroom might well be anxious on for nothing else. I like the human face dithis score for a lover in the world. What vine infinitely better. I daresay you are that solitude was, and the failure of all all amazement shocked and disgusted. intellectual resource, is sometimes told I insist upon it that you believe, notwithwith a force which accounts to us for the standing, that I have just as much taste for unpleasing traits so often connected with the sublime and beautiful, and just as high the conventional governess. It is not a a relish for the beauties of nature, as you training to make woman amiable, especially your very self; and if I were independent, where there is no way out of the life visi- I should be just as sublime a character, and ble even to hope. I may talk upon paper," sigh as much after green fields and shady she says, "but I am now many hours, I groves and falling floods; but being, as might almost say days, without hearing I am, kneaded into the common mass, the sound of my own voice. Who would take me for the same Miss C., who at Bath was not expected to be silent for five minutes ? " Again : "This has been a trying summer to me. I have not, it is true, had my usual anxiety of seeking where to be, but I have tasted all the horrors of complete solitude. We never go beyond the garden; and I have sometimes felt that I should be afraid to go beyond its walls. The children are seldom with me except in school hours, and there is not one single human being with whom I can exchange a word like conversation." At another time: "I sometimes see gay company, morning 66 66 obliged to conform to the humours and habits and tastes and caprices of everybody that I come near, not suffered even to think my own thoughts, I do confess that I had much rather see a variety of men and women than all the trees and floods and hills in the country." Here she finds a fairly happy refuge in a valley of Forges, but so far removed from the outer world and its interests that only the vicar and the curate furnish external excitement. But there is a relaxation of that rule of solitude which secludes the governess of society proper. She is received with honour and estimated as a god he went on eating his supper with all the com- We gather that in the end such happiness as is compatible with spending a life with Mr. Mann is accorded to his fair admirer. The old nurse, who also has her say about curates, is more intelligent in her estimate of the race. This old woman's very relation to her employers is an oldworld trait. Our friend finds her past ac tive services, and admitted to the companionship of the family circle; full of the shrewd quaint humour which makes gossip attractive, and indulged in unlimited illhumour when anything goes amiss. send. Within doors, however, the old nurse is the only portrait drawn with any elaborateness. Outside there are all sorts of clerical foibles to analyse: first, the vicar, a good man, but whose vanity and jealousy of his curates is a pretty piece of human nature; then the curates, whom, in the security of pre-engaged affections, she can lift off pedestals on which the rest of the valley placed them. It is curious to see how the veriest prig can make way, in spite of ridicule, into a position of importance where he is the only man. The letters have so much about this Mr. Mann that her correspondent does not quite like it; for this prig can preach, and has his real side; and she is not awed by the sanctimonious horror he shows of anything but hymn singing, but boldly laughs at him, till she believes he thinks her the veriest heathen that ever was born, and calls her lively; pronouncing lively as if it included every "I have no time to write, for in the midst of sin in the decalogue. And, in the mean- all our bustle and anxiety nurse was seized with while, one of the most pious and excel- the gout, and the task of nursing her was by lent girls I ever met with-she scarcely common consent turned over to me. The serreads anything but her Bible - is falling in vants had enough to do with the child and their love with this gentleman," and is read by mistross; besides, nurse was so exceedingly our friend's formidable eyes. She uses her cross that nobody liked to go near her. I was penetration, however, after a really friendly alternately praised and abused. If the pain abated, I was the sweetest lady that ever walked, that I should give up my time to wait on her! Was there ever such a thing heard of? A paroxysm of pain would come, and then I suppose I heard the truth. She would rave and storm at me because I could not lift her very large person by myself. She should like to know what I was fit for. She would not give a halfpenny for a hundred such. The Lord help the poor man as did light on me!'"' fashion. 66 "I have a great objection to any one of my own sex falling very seriously in love, so I tried by all means to break the charm. She was not at all aware that I could see into the inner chamber of her heart; and I have been sometimes a little amused at her innocence, when she considered herself so very sly, and sure of her secret being undiscovered. She is naturally silent, and her secret consciousness kept her more so before the object of it; and I saw she thought I The eloquent Mr. Mann is dismissed. had a great advantage in the careless unembar- His successor is of a different stamp-a rassed manner in which I could talk to the man. sleepy, dull fellow. On returning from She wondered that Mr. and Mrs. Brown should hearing his first sermon, somebody touched propose my having the eldest boy to educate in her arm. "It was nurse. A hummingconjunction with the same curate. It was so bee in a pitcher,' she said, and passed on;" very odd-it was bringing us so much together a judgment supplemented on longer expe-and -And what?' I asked, as she made rience by another oracular utterance, a pause. Do you really, now, think I can be in any danger from him? No, no: he mayDepend upon it, miss, our parson got him do very well for you young misses who have chep out o' Yorkshire." Yet nothing could seen nothing better; but I have been beyond keep curates under in this favoured region. the blue hills yonder, and I do assure you I shall not pull caps for Mr. Mann.' 999 But illusions are not so easily dispelled; and, to her exasperation, our friend perceives that the gentleman is aware of the feeling he has excited, and takes it easily. "He has already learned his power, and made her wretched several times, and I cannot for the life of me disturb him. I put all my powers forth the other night to make him believe that he had committed an unpardonable offence, and You never in your life heard such nonsense as he preaches; and would you be lieve that the first thing he does when he comes in is to ask us, with evident self-complacency, what we think of his sermon? Mrs. Brown is the only person that attempts an answer; and he is not contented with a general one, but he goes on, And what do you think of such and such a passage?' I assure you, Miss,' he said, turning to me, I never preach anybody else's sermons; I always make them all my self. I am sure, sir, I never doubted it,'| was the only answer I gave him. Mr. Brown turned to the window to laugh. Mrs. Brown scolded me after the man was gone for looking contemptuous. She insisted upon it that she was the only one who behaved properly. As for you, Mr. Brown, who talk so much about civility and kindness, I must say I admire you.' Yes, my dear, you always did,' he says, in his usual good-humoured way." Only once have we anything to call self-portraiture in this page of bygone life. Our friend is carried off to the sea for a holiday by the Vicar and his wife. A spiteful religious professor, a widow, is of the party, and extremely resentful of the attention a person in a dependent situation" could gain by her amusing powers. Our aim in this delineation has been to show some of the trials inseparable from the position of the clever woman of fifty years ago thrown upon her own resources. Unless a woman had an inexhaustible series of good novels in her head-unless, that is, she had genius of a high order there was nothing for her but tuition- a noble calling or the merest drudgery, according to the degree of fitness for the work. No one can read the facile, picturesque style of these familiar letters without perceiving that literature in some branch would have been a more appropriate field for the writer's talents, and also that such a field would have been open to her now. Reading, and readers, and books, and authors, all mean something different from what they once did; they have lost the weight that used to "She is a person of at least thirty-five, and attach to the words. It is vain to regret then I have the advantage of better society than this. The fact cannot be controverted that her birth entitles her to claim. You see at once there is an immense demand now for a certhat she is illiterate and vuigar. Now I have tain class of writers whose business it seems youth on my side, and I love literature and, if to be to supply reading for persons who did I may believe the judgment of others, I have not read at all fifty years ago. People what that Vicar calls a marvellous gift of speech' have grown too lazy or too restless to deso my vanity placed me above supposing that I velop in themselves or others the good talk could annoy Mrs. Smith by engrossing the few that used to be the world's best refreshmen that have come in my way. Yesterday at dinner the Vicar announced that he had acci-ment, and they ask from literature a subdentally met with a Cambridge man, Professor stitute. Our lighter periodical literature is this substitute, and a very appropriate one for female talent. And let no one say that this lighter literature has not a very important part to play, though in humbler field than that literature which is properly an art, though its productions are ephemeral, and the day a short one, and though its writers do not even pretend to any of that infallibility which once was attributed to all printed matter. I made L., and that he would take tea with us. allude to the more remarkable efforts of We need not say that we do not now female genius. Our age can boast of not a few works composed by women which are marked by such grasp of thought, subtle depth of observation, and original force and grace of expression, as not only rank them among the highest literature of the day, but must secure them a lasting reputation. But, short of this, wherever there is definiteness of aim, independence of thought, and freshness and accuracy of style - something to say, and the power of saying it attractBy no ively sor. Very great was my surprise, for I had -a woman may find in these days employment for her pen. She may take her place and stand her chance among men similarly endowed. Especially does woman's naturally didactic turn find an appropriate field in the modern periodical literature designed for children and the poor, and for that vast mass of uncritical readers who do not range under either of these heads, but who yet require a literature ture, or the sciences, she can neither conadapted to an immature taste and judg-verse with her father-in-law, her clergyman, ment; readers to whom well-worn truths or any man of serious mind; and yet the in fact and morals are by no means trite or first talent of a woman is to be able to concommonplace, who have no taste for the verse. The fatal prejudice which forbids delicacies of criticism, and by whom the women to do more than listen to serious leaders of cultivated public opinion are and useful conversation has much to do neither appreciated nor understood. And with this frivolity. The bishop, while apthis recognition of an unpretentious form of preciating this listening power as the first authorship as woman's work tells indirectly of the liberal arts, justly adds, If you forbid in another way on the position of women, women to write or to talk about things that as an influence for the diffusion and ad- interest them, how can they even listen vance of female education, counteracting well? How can you suppose that they will the long-standing family injustice of sacri- have the courage to study, if they may not ficing daughters to sons. A boy's talents talk and write about what they know? must be cultivated, because he can make There is an intrinsic fallacy in the permissomething of them, a girl marries just as sion to listen flanked with strong prohibiwell without any accuracy of knowledge as tions to make use of what is heard. We with; and the possibility of his daughters can only hope that the cours which are being dependent is too repugnant to Eng- being adopted in so many of the leading lish fathers to be provided against. Ever towns in France, in place of education in so modest a cheque from a publisher, or pensions, which has hitherto been the prevafrom the editor of a Society's periodical, produces a different impression. If women can receive them, their education may be worth some outlay. As a cheerful family event, coming, as a matter of course, with no publicity or parade, it is a marvellous reconciler to woman's work. Our readers will understand that no part of our argument applies to writers of the strong sensational school. Ladies who have earned their laurels in this field commonly derive their knowledge of life from anything but its domestic aspect, or from its play in general society. The clever women we have in view, whether they talk or write, are still mindful of their catechism, and hold by old insular proprieties; as little drawn towards transcendentalism on the one hand, as to French or German sentiment on the other. In France we gather from Mgr. Dupanloup's plea for the right of women - first, to a liberal education, and then to use their intellect as inclination and genius shall prompt them that the employment of the pen is discountenanced among Frenchwomen. He boasts of the good done to religion by such writers as Mrs. Craven, Eugenie de Guerin, and others; but as to the modern Frenchwoman, he complains that she knows absolutely nothing. She can only talk about dress, fashions, and steeplechases. She knows all the famous actors and horses, and the best milliners and saddlers; but if you attempt to talk to her on the literature of her country, she is struck dumb; she can only entertain frivolous young men. Equally incapable of talking on business, art, politics, agricul lent system, may produce a change for the better. M. Dupanloup is said to be strongly opposed to them, as removing education out of the hands of the Church; but he has declared himself too strenuously on the results of things as they are to be a very formidable opponent to experiments in a new line. Our subject has not been education, but how women may use and apply such education and powers as they have; and we are happy to note a relaxation of prejudice on our side of the Channel which remains in full force on the other. Quiet unprending talent in women does not meet with the snubs here which it has to endure in France. Genius in women who disdain all restraints has made itself felt there even more em phatically than with us. But a body of intelligent women, quietly yet successfully employing their powers for the mutual benefit of their readers and themselves, are doing more for the intellectual advance of women than an erratic woman of genius can do by her most brilliant triumph. It has always been acknowledged that there are women of genius who do great things, but they are regarded as exceptions. The class we mean are not exceptions from the ordinary domestic type of woman, and have no desire or temptation to be. They use their pen with such skill as they have on subjects especially open to feminine treatment, as skilful women of old span gossamer thread, or made exquisite lace or embroidery, or exercised themselves in any other graceful art where delicate fingering, a soft touch, and quick perception found an appropriate field. |