Part 5 (2/2)
She accustoms her face to a simper, which every separate feature in it belies. She spoils, perhaps, a blooming complexion with a profusion of artificial coloring, she distorts the most exquisite shape by loads or volumes of useless drapery. She has her head, her arms, her feet, and her gait, equally touched by art and affectation, into what is called the _taste_, the _ton_, or the _fas.h.i.+on_.
She little considers to what a torrent of ridicule and sarcasm this mode of conduct exposes her; or how exceedingly cold and hollow that ceremony must be, which is not the language of a warm heart. She does not reflect how insipid those smiles are, which indicate no internal pleasantry; nor how awkward those graces, which spring not from habits of good-nature and benevolence. Thus, pertness succeeds to delicacy, a.s.surance to modesty, and all the vagaries of a listless to the sensibilities of an ingenuous mind.
With her, punctilio is politeness; dissipation, life; and levity, spirit. The miserable and contemptible drudge of every tawdry innovation in dress or ceremony, she incessantly mistakes extravagance for taste, and finery for elegance.
Her favorite examples are not those persons of acknowledged sincerity, who speak as they feel, and act as they think; but such only as are formed to dazzle her fancy, amuse her senses, or humor her whims. Her only study is how to glitter or s.h.i.+ne, how to captivate and gratify the gaze of the mult.i.tude, or how to swell her own pomp and importance. To this interesting object all her a.s.siduities and time are religiously devoted.
How often is debility of mind, and even badness of heart concealed under a splendid exterior! The fairest of the species, and of the s.e.x, often want sincerity; and without sincerity every other qualification is rather a blemish, than a virtue, or excellence. Sincerity operates on the moral, somewhat like the sun on the natural world; and produces nearly the same effects on the dispositions of the human heart, which he does on inanimate objects. Wherever sincerity prevails and is felt, all the smiling and benevolent virtues flourish most, disclose their sweetest l.u.s.tre, and diffuse their richest fragrance.
Heaven has not a finer or more perfect emblem on earth than a woman of genuine simplicity. She affects no graces which are not inspired by sincerity. Her opinions result not from pa.s.sion and fancy, but from reason and experience. Candor and humility give expansion to her heart.
She struggles for no kind of chimerical credit, disclaims the appearance of every affectation, and is in all things just what she seems, and others would be thought. Nature, not art, is the great standard of her manners; and her exterior wears no varnish, or embellishment, which is not the genuine signature of an open, undesigning, and benevolent mind.
It is not in her power, because not in her nature, to hide, with a fawning air, and a mellow voice, her aversion or contempt, where her delicacy is hurt, here temper ruffled, or her feelings insulted.
In short, whatever appears most amiable, lovely, or interesting in nature, art, manners, or life, originates in simplicity. What is correctness in taste, purity in morals, truth in science, grace in beauty, but simplicity? It is the garb of innocence. It adorned the first ages, and still adorns the infant state of humanity. Without simplicity, woman is a vixen, a coquette, a hypocrite; society a masquerade, and pleasure a phantom.
The following story, I believe, is pretty generally known. A lady, whose husband had long been afflicted with an acute but lingering disease, suddenly feigned such an uncommon _tenderness_ for him, as to resolve on dying in his stead. She had even the address to persuade him not to outlive this extraordinary instance of her conjugal fidelity and attachment. It was instantaneously agreed they should mutually swallow such a quant.i.ty of a.r.s.enic, as would speedily effect their dreadful purpose. She composed the fatal draught before his face and even set him the desperate example of drinking first. By this device, which had all the appearance of the greatest affection and candor, the dregs only were reserved for him, and soon put a period to his life.
It then appeared that the dose was so tempered, as, from the weight of the princ.i.p.al ingredient, to be deadly only at the bottom, which she had artfully appropriated for his share. Even after all this finesse, she seized, we are told, his inheritance, and insulted his memory by a second marriage.
THE MILD MAGNANIMITY OF WOMEN.
A late eminent anatomist, in a professional discourse on the female frame, is said to have declared, that it almost appeared an act of cruelty in nature to produce such a being as woman. This remark may, indeed, be the natural exclamation of refined sensibility, in contemplating the various maladies to which a creature of such delicate organs is inevitably exposed; but, if we take a more enlarged survey of human existence, we shall be far from discovering any just reason to arraign the benevolence of its provident and gracious Author. If the delicacy of woman must render her familiar with pain and sickness, let us remember that her charms, her pleasures, and her happiness, arise also from the same attractive quality. She is a being, to use the forcible and elegant expression of a poet,
”Fine by defect, and admirably weak.”
There is, perhaps, no charm by which she more effectually secures the tender admiration and the lasting love, of the more hardy s.e.x, than her superior endurance, her mild and _graceful_ submission to the common evils of life.
Nor is this the sole advantage she derives from her gentle fort.i.tude. It is the prerogative of this lovely virtue, to lighten the pressure of all those incorrigible evils which it cheerfully endures. The frame of man may be compared to the st.u.r.dy _oak_, which is often shattered by resisting the tempest. Woman is the pliant _osier_, which, in bending to the storm, eludes its violence.
The accurate observers of human nature will readily allow, that patience is most eminently the characteristic of woman. To what a sublime and astonis.h.i.+ng height this virtue has been carried by beings of the most delicate texture, we have striking examples in the many female martyrs who were exposed, in the first ages of christianity, to the most barbarous and lingering torture.
Nor was it only from christian zeal that woman derived the power of defying the utmost rigors of persecution with invincible fort.i.tude.
Saint Ambrose, in his elaborate and pious treatise on this subject, records the resolution of a fair disciple of Pythagoras, who, being severely urged by a tyrant to reveal the secrets of her s.e.x, to convince him that no torments should reduce her to so unworthy a breach of her vow, bit her own _tongue_ asunder, and darted it in the face of her oppressor.
In consequence of those happy changes which have taken place in the world, from the progress of purified religion, the inexpressible spirit of the tender s.e.x is no longer exposed to such inhuman trials. But if the earth is happily delivered from the demons of torture and superst.i.tion; if beauty and innocence are no more in danger of being dragged to perish at the stake--perhaps there are situations, in female life, that require as much patience and magnanimity, as were formerly exerted in the fiery torments of the virgin martyr. It is more difficult to support an acc.u.mulation of _minute_ infelicities, than any single calamity of the most terrific magnitude.
FEMALE DELICACY.
Where the human race has little other culture than what it receives from nature, the two s.e.xes live together, unconscious of almost any restraint on their words or on their actions. The Greeks, in the heroic ages, as appears from the whole history of their conduct, were totally unacquainted with delicacy. The Romans in the infancy of their empire, were the same. Tacitus informs us that the ancient Germans had not separate beds for the two s.e.xes, but that they lay promiscuously on reeds or on heath, spread along the walls of their houses. This custom still prevails in Lapland, among the peasants of Norway, Poland, and Russia; and it is not altogether obliterated in some parts of the highlands of Scotland and Wales.
In Otaheite, to appear naked or in clothes, are circ.u.mstances equally indifferent to both s.e.xes; nor does any word in their language, nor any action to which they are prompted by nature, seem more indelicate or reprehensible than another. Such are the effects of a total want of culture.
Effects not very dissimilar, are, in France and Italy, produced from a redundance of it. Though those are the polite countries in Europe, women there set themselves above shame, and despise delicacy. It is laughed out of existence, as a silly and unfas.h.i.+onable weakness.
But in China, one of the politest countries in Asia, and perhaps not even, in this respect, behind France, or Italy, the case is quite otherwise. No human being can be more delicate than a Chinese woman in her dress, in her behavior, and in her conversation; and should she ever happen to be exposed in any unbecoming manner, she feels with the greatest poignancy the awkwardness of her situation, and if possible, covers her face, that she may not be known.
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