Part 6 (1/2)
In the midst of so many discordant appearances, the mind is perplexed, and can hardly fix upon any cause to which female delicacy is to be ascribed. If we attend, however, to the whole animal creation, if we consider it attentively wherever it falls under our observation, it will discover to us, that in the female there is a greater degree of delicacy or coy reserve than in the male. Is not this a proof, that, through the wide extent of creation, the seeds of delicacy are more liberally bestowed upon females than upon males?
In the remotest periods of which we have any historical account, we find that the women had a delicacy to which the other s.e.x were strangers.
Rebecca veiled herself when she first approached Isaac, her future husband. Many of the fables of antiquity mark, with the most distinguis.h.i.+ng characters, the force of female delicacy. Of this kind is the fable of Actaeon and Diana. Actaeon, a famous hunter, being in the woods with his hounds, beating for game, accidentally spied Diana and her nymphs bathing in a river. Prompted by curiosity, he stole silently into a neighboring thicket, that he might have a nearer view of them.
The G.o.ddess discovering him, was so affronted at his audacity, and so much ashamed to have been seen naked, that in revenge she immediately transformed him into a stag, set his own hounds upon him, and encouraged them to overtake and devour him. Besides this, and other fables, and historical anecdotes of antiquity, their poets seldom exhibit a female character without adorning it with the graces of modesty and delicacy.
Hence we may infer, that these qualities have not been only essential to virtuous women in civilized countries, but were also constantly praised and esteemed by men of sensibility; and that delicacy is an innate principle in the female mind.
There are so many evils attending the loss of virtue in women, and so greatly are the minds of that s.e.x depraved when they have deviated from the path of rect.i.tude, that a general contamination of their morals may be considered as one of the greatest misfortunes that can befal a state, as in time it destroys almost every public virtue of the men. Hence all wise legislators have strictly enforced upon the s.e.x a particular purity of manners; and not satisfied that they should abstain from vice only, have required them even to shun every appearance of it.
Such, in some periods, were the laws of the Romans; and such were the effects of these laws, that if ever female delicacy shone forth in a conspicuous manner, it was perhaps among those people, after they had worn off much of the barbarity of their first ages, and before they became contaminated, by the wealth and manners of the nations which they plundered and subjected. Then it was that we find many of their women surpa.s.sing in modesty almost every thing related by fable; and then it was that their ideas of delicacy were so highly refined, that they could not even bear the secret consciousness of an involuntary crime, and far less of having tacitly consented to it.
INFLUENCE OF FEMALE SOCIETY.
The company of ladies has a very powerful influence on the sentiments and conduct of men. Women, the fruitful source of half our joys, and perhaps of _more_ than half our sorrows, give an elegance to our manner, and a relish to our pleasures. They soothe our afflictions, and soften our cares. Too much of their company will render us effeminate, and infallibly stamp upon us many signatures of the female nature. A rough and unpolished behavior, as well as slovenliness of person, will certainly be the consequence of an almost constant exclusion from it. By spending a reasonable portion of our time in the company of women, and another in the company of our own s.e.x, we shall imbibe a proper share of the softness of the female, and at the same time retain the firmness and constancy of the male.
As little social intercourse subsisted between the two s.e.xes, in the more early ages of antiquity, we find the men less courteous, and the women less engaging. Vivacity and cheerfulness seem hardly to have existed. Even the Babylonians, who appear to have allowed their women more liberty than any of the ancients, seem not to have lived with them in a friendly and familiar manner. But, as their intercourse with them was considerably greater than that of the neighboring nations, they acquired thereby a polish and refinement unknown to any of the people who surrounded them. The manners of both s.e.xes were softer, and better calculated to please.
They likewise paid more attention to cleanliness and dress.
After the Greeks became famous for their knowledge of the arts and sciences, their rudeness and barbarity were only softened a _few degrees_. It is not therefore arts, sciences, and _learning_, but the company of the other s.e.x, that forms the manner and renders the man _agreeable_.
The Romans were, for some time, a community without any thing to soften the ferocity of male nature. The Sabine virgins, whom they had stolen, appear to have infused into them the first ideas of politeness. But it was many ages before this politeness banished the roughness of the warrior, and a.s.sumed the refinement of the gentleman.
During the times of chivalry, female influence was at the zenith of its glory and perfection. It was the source of valor, it gave birth to politeness, it awakened pity, it called forth benevolence, it restricted the hand of oppression, and meliorated the human heart. ”I cannot approach my mistress,” said one, ”till I have done some glorious deed to deserve her notice. Actions should be the messengers of the heart; they are the homage due to beauty, and they only should discover love.”
Marsan, instructing a young knight how to behave so as to gain the favor of the fair, has these remarkable words:--”When your arm is raised, if your lance fail, draw your sword directly; and let heaven and h.e.l.l resound with the clash. Lifeless is the soul which beauty cannot animate, and weak is the arm which cannot fight valiantly to defend it.”
The Russians, Poles, and even the Dutch, pay less attention to their females than any of their neighbors, and are, by consequence, less distinguished for the graces of their persons, and the feelings of their hearts.
The lightness of their food, and the salubrity of their air, have been a.s.signed as reasons for the vivacity and cheerfulness of the French, and their fort.i.tude, in supporting their spirits through all the adverse circ.u.mstances of this world. But the constant mixture of the young and old, of the two s.e.xes, is no doubt one of the _princ.i.p.al_ reasons why the cares and ills of life sit lighter on the shoulders of that fantastic people, than on those of any other country in the world.
The French reckon an excursion dull, and a party of pleasure without relish, unless a mixture of both s.e.xes join to compose in. The French women do not even withdraw from the table after meals; nor do the men discover that impatience to have them dismissed, which they so often do in England.
It is alleged by those who have no relish for the conversation of the fair s.e.x, that their presence curbs the freedom of speech, and restrains the jollity of mirth. But, if the conversation and the mirth are decent, if the company are capable of relis.h.i.+ng any thing but wine, the very reverse is the case. Ladies, in general, are not only more cheerful than gentlemen, but more eager to promote mirth and good humor.
So powerful, indeed, are the company and conversation of the fair, in diffusing happiness and hilarity, that even the cloud which hangs on the _thoughtful brow_ of an Englishman, begins in the present age to brighten, by his devoting to the ladies a larger share of time than was formerly done by his ancestors.
Though the influence of the s.e.xes be reciprocal, yet that of the ladies is certainly the greatest. How often may one see a company of men, who were disposed to be riotous, checked at once into decency by the accidental entrance of an amiable woman; while her good sense and obliging deportment charms them into at least a temporary conviction, that there is nothing so delightful as female conversation, in its best form! Were such conviction frequently repeated, what might we not expect from it at last?
”Were virtue,” said an ancient philosopher, ”to appear amongst men in a visible shape, what vehement desires would she enkindle!” Virtue, exhibited without affectation, by a lovely young person, of improved understanding and gentle manners, may be said to appear with the most alluring aspect, surrounded by the _Graces_.
It would be an easy matter to point out instances of the most evident reformation, wrought on particular men, by their having happily conceived a pa.s.sion for virtuous women.
To form the manners of men, various causes contribute; but nothing, perhaps, so much as the turn of the women with whom they converse. Those who are most conversant with women of virtue and understanding, will be always found the most amiable characters, other circ.u.mstances being supposed alike. Such society, beyond every thing else, rubs off the _corners_ that gives many of our s.e.x an ungracious roughness. It produces a polish more perfect, and more pleasing than that which is received from a general commerce with the world. This last is often specious, but commonly superficial. The other is the result of gentler feelings, and more humanity. The heart itself is moulded. Habits of undissembled courtesy are formed. A certain flowing urbanity is acquired. Violent pa.s.sions, rash oaths, coa.r.s.e jests, indelicate language of every kind, are precluded and disrelished.
Female society gives men a taste for cleanliness and elegance of person.
Our ancestors, who kept but little company with their women, were not only slovenly in their dress, but had their countenances disfigured with long beards. By female influence, however, beards were, in process of time, mutilated down to mustaches. As the gentlemen found that the ladies had no great relish for mustaches, which were the relics of a beard, they cut and curled them into various fas.h.i.+ons, to render them more agreeable. At last, however, finding such labor vain, they gave them up altogether. But as those of the three learned professions were supposed to be endowed with, or at least to stand in need of, more wisdom than other people, and as the longest beard had always been deemed to sprout from the wisest chin, to supply this mark of distinction, which they had lost, they contrived to smother their heads in enormous quant.i.ties of frizzled hair, that they might bear greater resemblance to an owl, the bird sacred to wisdom and Minerva.