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 woman! MEDON. Then you think that a better education, based on truer moral principles, would render women more reasonable politicians, or at least give them some right to meddle with politics? ALDA. It would cease in that case to be meddling, as you term it, for it would be legitimatized. It is easy to sneer at political and mathematical ladies, and quote Lord Byronbut O leave those angry common-places to others—they do not come well from you. Do not force me to remind you, that women have achieved enough to silence them for ever;* and how often must that truism be repeated, that it is not a woman's attainments which make her amiable or unamiable, estimable or the contrary, but her qualities? A time is coming perhaps when the education of women will be considered with a view to their future destination as the mothers and nurses of legislators and statesmen; and the cultivation of their power of reflection and moral feelings supersede the exciting drudgery by which they are now crammed with knowledge and accomplishments. MEDON. Well-till that blessed period arrives, I wish you would leave us the province of politics to ourselves. I see here * In our own time Madame de Stael, Mrs. Somerville, Harriet Martineau, Mrs. Marcet; we need not go back to the Rolands and Agnesi, nor even to our own Lucy Hutchinson. you have treated of a very different class of beings," women in whom the affections and the moral sentiments predominate." Are there many such, think you, in the world? ALDA. Yes, many such. The development of affection and sentiment is more quiet and unobtrusive than that of passion and intellect, and less observed; it is more common, too, therefore less remarked; but in women it generally gives the prevailing tone to the character, except where vanity has been made the ruling motive. MEDON. Except! I admire your exception! You make in this case the rule the exception. Look round the world. ALDA. You are not one of those with whom that common phrase "the world" signifies the circle, whatever and wherever that may be, which limits our individual experience as a child considers the visible horizon as the bounds which shut in the mighty universe? Believe me, it is a sorry, vulgar kind of wisdom, if it be wisdom-a shallow and confined philosophy, if it be philosophy— which resolves all human motives and impulses into egotism in one sex, and vanity in the other. Such may be in the way of the world, as it is called, the result of a very artificial and corrupt state of society, but such is not general nature, nor female nature. Would you see the kindly self-sacrificing affections developed under their most honest but least poetical guise-displayed without any mixture of vanity, and unchecked in the display by any fear of being thought vain ?-you will see it, not among the prosperous, the high-born, the educated, “far, far removed from want, and grief, and fear," but among the poor, the miserable, the perverted-among those habitually exposed to all influences that harden and deprave. MEDON. I believe it-nay, I know it; but how should you know it? or know any thing of the strange places of refuge which truth and nature have found in the two extremes of society? ALDA. It is no matter what I have seen or known; and for the two extremes of society, I leave them to the author of Paul Clifford, and that most exquisite painter of living manners, Mrs. Gore. St. Giles's is no more nature than St. James's. I wanted character in its essential truth, not modified by particular customs, by fashion, by situation. I wished to illustrate the manner in which the affections would naturally display themselves in women-whether combined with high intellect, regulated by reflection, elevated by imagination, or purified by the moral sentiments; or existing with perverted dispositions or contending with untoward fate. I found all these in Shakspeare; and his delineations of women, in whom the virtuous and calm affections predominate, and triumph over shame, fear, pride, resentment, vanity, jealousy, are particularly worthy of consideration-and perfect in their kind, because so quiet in their effect. MEDON. Most true; and I believe some of his commentators have remarked in general terms on those beautiful pictures of female friendship, and of the generous affection of women for each other, which we find in Shakspeare. Other writers, especially dramatic writers, have found ample food for wit and satiric delineation in the littleness of feminine spite and rivalry, in the mean spirit of competition, the petty jealousy of superior charms, the mutual slander and mistrust, the transient leagues of folly or selfishness miscalled friendship; all the result of an education which makes vanity the ruling principle, and of a false position in society. Shakspeare, who looked upon women with the spirit of humanity, wisdom and deep love, has done justice to their natural good tendency and kindly sympathies. In the friendship of Beatrice and Hero, of Rosalind and Celia; in the description of the girlish attachment of Helena and Hermia, he has represented truth and generous affection rising superior to all the usual sources of female rivalry and jealousy; and with such force, and simplicity, and obvious self-conviction, that he absolutely forces the same conviction on us. ALDA. Add to these the generous feeling of Viola for her rival Olivia; of Julia for her rival Sylvia; of Helena for Diana; of the Old Countess for Helena, in the same play; and even the affection of the wicked queen in Hamlet for the gentle Ophelia, which prove that Shakspeare thought(and when did he ever think other than the truth?)—that women have by nature "virtues that are merciful," and can be just, tender, and true to their sister women, whatever wits and wordlings, and satirists and fashionable poets, may say or sing of us to the contrary. There is another thing which he has most deeply felt and beautifully represented, the distinction between masculine and feminine courage. A man's courage is often a mere animal quality, and in its most elevated form a point of honor. But a woman's courage is always a virtue, because it is not re quired of us; it is not one of the means through which we seek admiration and applause; on the contrary, we are courageous through our affections and mental energies, not through our vanity or our strength. A woman's heroism is always the excess of sensibility. Do you remember Lady Fanshawe putting on a sailor's jacket, and his "blue thrum cap," and standing at her husband's side, unknown to him during a sea fight? there she stood, all bathed in tears, but fixed to that spot. Her husband's exclamation when he turned and discovered her-" Good God! that love should make such a change as this!" is applicable to all the acts of courage which we read or hear of in women. This is the courage of Juliet when, after summing up all the possible consequences of her own act, till she almost maddens herself with terror, she drinks the sleeping potion; and for that passive fortitude which is founded in piety and pure strength of affection, such as the heroism of Lady Russel and Gertrude de Wart, he has given us some of the noblest modifications of it in Hermione, in Cordelia, in Imogen, in Katharine of Arragon. MEDON. And what then do you call the courage of Lady Macbeth ? My hands are of your color, but I shame To wear a heart so white. And again, A little water clears us of this deed. How easy is it then! If this is not mere masculine indifference to blood and death, mere firmness of nerve, what is it? ALDA. Not that, at least which apparently you deem it; you will find, if you have patience to read me to the end, that I |