SECTION I. Of the great and virtuous Actions of WOMEN in general.

WE find in the writings of Plutarch, the panegyrist and the judge of so many great men, a piece intituled, THE VIRTUOUS ACTIONS OF WOMEN. It is addressed to one of the sex, named CLEA, of whom we know little. But her con­nection with the philosopher of Chaero­nea alone, has been deemed sufficient, by some writers, to class her among the number of learned women.

Plutarch begins his performance with blaming those, who would deprive wo­men of that praise which is their due. 'One might,' says he, ‘make a com­parison between Anacreon and Sappho, between Semiramis and Sesostris, be­tween Tanaquil and Servius, and be­tween Brutus and Portia. The talents [Page 15]and the virtues are modified by the circumstances and the persons, but the foundation is the same; the colour and the surface, so to speak, are only dif­ferent.’

The philosophical historian next pro­ceeds to mention a great number of wo­men of all nations, who have given ex­amples of their courage, and who have shewn a generous contempt of death.

He instances the Phoenician women; who, before an engagement which threat­ened the destruction of their city, agreed to bury themselves in the flames, if the battle should be lost, and crowned with flowers the woman who first made that motion in the council.

He tells us of other women, who, in a city besieged, made the men blush for a shameful capitulation;—of women, who, seeing their sons and their husbands flee in battle, ran before them, and obstructed their passage, forcing them to return, to death or to victory;—of women, who, [Page 16]during the time of a siege, mounted the walls, defended their city, and bravely repulsed the enemy:—of women who resisted despotism and oppression, and who, as soon as the tyrant was slain, ran dancing before the conspirators, and crowned them with their own hands;—of some, who themselves gave liberty to their country;—of several, who exposed themselves to death, and loaded themselves with chains to save their captive husbands:—and he takes particular notice of Camma, who poisoned herself at the altar, that she might poison the murderer of her husband; and who, turning to­ward the assassin, said,

‘I have only lived to revenge the death of my spouse—It is done. Thee, this moment, I order, in place of a nuptial bed, to prepare thyself a tomb.’

He likewise instances the women of Gaul, who, in the time of a civil war, threw themselves between two armies rushing to battle, and separated, and re­conciled the combatants. As a reward [Page 17]for which act of valour, they had the honour of being admitted into the public councils, and sometimes of being chosen the arbiters of nations.

To these great and generous qualities, by which women seem to rise above themselves, Plutarch has joined the soft­er, and to men more attractive virtues, as being more natural to the sex. He praises the women of an island of the Archipelago, where, during the course of seven years, he says, there was neither an instance of weakness in a young per­son, nor of infidelity in a married wo­man: — And he relates an anecdote of the Milesian virgins, which merits the attention of a philosopher. Multitudes fell by their own hands — doubtless in that trying age, when nature giving birth to restless and turbulent desires, inflames the imagination; and when the heart, asto­nished at new wants, which virtue forbids it to gratify, feels pining melancholy succeed to the sportful tranquillity of childhood. Nothing could stop the con­tagion. A law was made condemning [Page 18]the first who should be guilty of self-mur­der, to be brought naked, and exposed in the market-place. Those young women were not afraid of death; but they were afraid of shame, even after death. Not one of them henceforth made an attempt upon her life.

Plutarch in the same piece relates ano­ther anecdote, which, even at this day, might afford an excellent lesson of poli­tical oeconomy. A king, who believed that riches consisted in gold, obliged the greater part of his subjects to labour in the mines. They all perished. The re­maining inhabitants of the country had recourse to the quen. She ordered an artificer to make privately the resem­blance of bread, of meat, and of dif­ferent kinds of fruits, of gold; and, when the king returned from a journey, she had them served up to him. The view pleased him very much; but, at length, he grew hungry, and desired to have something to eat. The queen replied.

[Page 19] ‘We have nothing but gold. Your lands are uncultivated: they produce nothing. I have set before you what you love, and all that now remains to us of a once plentiful and populous kingdom.’

The king saw, and corrected his mis­take.

SECTION II. Of the Grecian WOMEN.

BESIDES his general treatise on the actions of women, Plutarch has left us a piece in honour of the Spartan dames. There he cites a variety of ex­pressions, which demonstrate their cou­rage and vigour of mind; there we find beings and virtues very different from those of the same sex with which we have occasion to be acquainted: — Nature sacrificed to patriotism; honour ranked before affection; the name of citizen pre­ferred to the name of mother; tears of joy shed over the body of a son pierced [Page 20]with wounds; the maternal hands armed against a son guilty of cowardice; the mandate of death conveyed to a son sus­pected of a crime; and sorrow, and even compassion, regarded as a weakness, or as an insult! —

He gives us a singular instance, in a Spartan woman, of intrepidity and forti­tude in a state of servitude. A prisoner, and sold as a slave, the question was put to her, 'What knowest thou?' — 'To be free!' she replied; and, when her master commanded what she deemed ig­nominious, she cooly said, ‘You are unworthy of me:’ and resigned herself to death.

Those who have not been accustomed to look beyond their own times, and who conclude what women have been, from what they are; and those, more particu­larly, who are ignorant what essects a legislation conceived in one head, and combined in all its branches, can produce on the mind, will be at a loss to compre­hend, how a sex that seems rather formed [Page 21]for sensibility than fortitude, should possess so much courage. It sprung from the vigour of ancient laws.

Among the Greeks, who were almost all republicans, the manners of the wo­men became necessarily bold and austere. The retreats where they spent their lives subdued their desires; the poverty of the public denied the means of corruption; and the apprehension of national honour exalted their sentiments. They had an ambition of not being behind their sons, their brothers, and their husbands; and, not being able to attract them by feminine arts, they boldly trod in their footsteps.

Other causes co-operated to place the women of those early ages on a level with the men. In the era of the formation of states, when society is only emerging from barbarism, the toils and the dangers of the two fexes are nearly the same.

The republics, or the kingdoms of Greece, consisting often only of one city, were continually either threatened with [Page 22]war, or were the scene of blood. National animosities, inflamed by the clashing of interests, were more ardent, and less easily extinguished than in our times. The wars of Europe are now only the means, and the manner of deciding the quarrels of princes: they were then the awakened passions of the people. The inhabitants of one state fought for the lives of the inhabitants of another. Vic­tory condemned the women to slavery. Such a condition was an asylum against death, and might sometimes be alleviated by the favour of a master, but could never protect them from dishonour.

The uncertainty of the laws, in the particular states of Greece, and the shocks of liberty, opened a door to tyrants. The right to command, was then a right to abuse it. To ascend the throne, was to be a robber and an assassin. The citi­zen knew not thenceforth what he had to fear, to hope, or to suffer.

The inhabitants of one place were in­volved in opposition and bloodshed, and [Page 23]chose of another were engaged in dark conspiracies, where women were admitted to the mysteries, and sometimes employed as the ministers of vengeance; for the ills complained of extended to them, and they had often more to lose than their lives. The two sexes then kept pace with each other: their courage was great, because the occasions of exerting it were many and trying.

In the same periods, and from the same impulse, both Europe and Asia were over-run by invasions and emigrations of armed multitudes; and, among all those wandering people, the two sexes encoun­tered the same hardships and the same perils. The women would therefore im­perceptibly acquire a habit of fortitude; — and, as the virtue of the softer sex has its existence in pride — as indolence is almost always the companion of se­duction — as the practice of surmounting dangers teaches us to subdue ourselves — as the life of those women was either altogether active, or altogether retired; — and, as they could know nothing of [Page 24]that anxious leisure of society, where imagination eternally out-runs desire, and the soul is at once corrupted by all its senses, they would join to their courage a high and delicate apprehension of ho­nour: — and these are, indeed, the two qualities assigned by Plutarch to the wo­men of those early times, both Greeks and Barbarians.

But, in the different eras of Grecian history, we must not suppose that the women were always the same. It appears that the manners in the isles of Greece, in general, were much purer than on the continent. Those islanders, by being less exposed to foreign intercourse, could more easily preserve their laws and their virtues. The warlike convents of Lace­demon, the nurseries only of soldiers, would be much more rigid than the smiling retreats of Athens, whence po­liteness was propagated, and fashion an­nounced; and the city of Thebes, where a rustic grossness supplied the place of an elegant luxury, must have been very dif­ferent from Corinth, which on account [Page 25]of its situation and commerce, obtained the name of THE TWO SEAS OF WEALTH AND PLEASURE.

In proportion as their Institutions were corrupted, the virtues of the wo­men, we may conclude, were lost. But the rank which the courtezans enjoyed, even in the brightest ages of Greece, and particularly at Athens, is one of the greatest singularities in the manners of any people. By what circumstance could that order of women, who debase at once their own sex and ours — in a country where the women were possessed of mo­desty, and the men of sentiment — arrive at distinction, and sometimes even at the highest degree of reputation and conse­quence? — Several reasons may be as­signed for that phenomenon in society.

In Greece, the courtezans were in some measure connected with the religion of the country. The goddess of Beauty had her altars: and she was supposed to protect prostitution, which was to her a species of worship. The people invoked [Page 26]Venus in times of danger; and, after a battle, they thought they had done ho­nour to Miltiades and Themistocles, be­cause the Laises and the Glyceras of the age had chanted hymns to their goddess.

The courtezans were likewise con­nected with religion by means of the arts. Their persons afforded models for sta­tues, which were afterwards adored in the temples. Phrine served as a model to Praxiteles for his Venus of Cnidus: and, during the feasts of Neptune near Elusis, Appelles having seen the same courtezan on the sea-shore, without any other veil than her loose and flowing hair, was so much struck with her ap­pearance, that he borrowed from it the idea of his Venus rising from the waves.

They were therefore connected with statuary and painting; as they furnished the practisers of those arts with the means of embellishing their works.

The greater part of them were skilled in music; and, as that art was attended [Page 27]with higher effects in Greece than it has ever been in any other country, it must have possessed, in their hands, an irre­sistible charm.

Every one knows, how enthusiastic the Greeks were of beauty. They adored it in the temples; they admired it in the principal works of art; they studied it in the exercises and the games; they sought to perfect it by their marriages, and they offered rewards to it at the public festivals. But virtuous beauty was seldom to be seen. The modest women were confined to their own apartments, and were visited only by their husbands and nearest relations. The courtezans offered themselves every where to view; and their beauty, as might be expected, obtained universal homage.

Society only can unfold the beauties of the mind: modest women were excluded from it. The courtezans of Athens by living in public, and conversing freely with all ranks of people, upon all manner of subjects, acquired by degrees a know­ledge [Page 28]of history, of philosophy, of pe­licy, and a taste in the whole circle of the arts. Their ideas were more exten­sive and various, and their conversation was more sprightly and entertaining, than any thing that was to be found among the virtuous part of the sex. Hence their houses became the schools of elegance. The poets and the painters went there to catch the fleeting forms of grace, and the changeable features of ridicule; the mu­sicians to perfect the delicacy of har­mony; and the philosophers, to collect those particulars of human life which had hitherto escaped their observation. The house of Aspasia was the resort of So­crates and Pericles, as that of Ninon was of St. Evremont and Conde. They ac­quired from those fair libertines taste and politeness, and they gave them in exchange knowledge and reputation.

Greece was governed by eloquent men; and the celebrated courtezans having an influence over those orators, must have had an influence on public affairs. There was not one, not even [Page 29]the thundering, the inflexible Demos­thenes, so terrible to tyrants, but was subjected to their sway. Of that great master of eloquence it has been said: ‘What he had been a whole year in erecting, a woman overturned in a day?’ That influence augmented their consequence; and their talent of pleasing increased with the occasions of exerting it.

The laws and the public institutions, indeed, by authorising the privacy of women, set a high value on the sanctity of the marriage vow. But in Athens, imagination, sentiment, luxury, the taste in arts and pleasures, was opposite to the laws. The courtezans therefore may be said to have come in support of the manners.

There was no check upon public li­centiousness; but private infidelity, which concerned the peace of families, was pu­nished as a crime. By a strange, and perhaps unequalled singularity, the men were corrupted, — yet the domestic man­ners were pure. It seems as if the cour­tezans [Page 30]had not been considered to belong to their sex; and, by a convention to which the laws and the manners bended, while other women were estimated merely by their virtues, they were estimated only by their accomplishments.

These reasons will, in some measure, account for the honours which the vota­ries of Venus so often received in Greece. Otherwise we should have been at a loss to conceive, why six or seven writers had ex­erted their talents to celebrate the cour­tezans of Athens ^*; why three great painters had uniformly devoted their pen­cils to represent them on canvass; and why so many poets had strove to immor­talize them in their verses. We should hardly have believed, that so many illus­trious men had courted their society; that Aspasia had been consulted in deli­berations of peace and war; that Phrine had a statue of gold placed between the statues of two kings, at Delphos; that, after death, magnificent tombs had been erected to their memory.

[Page 31] ‘The traveller, says a Greek writer ^*, who, approaching to Athens, sees on the side of the way a monument which attracts his notice at a distance, will imagine that it is the tomb of Mil­tiades or Pericles, or of some other great man, who has done honour to his country by his services: he ad­vances, he reads, and he learns, that it is a courtezan of Athens who is in­terred with so much pomp.’

Theopompus, in a letter to Alexander the Great, speaks also of the same mounu­ment in words to the following effect.

‘Thus, after her death, is a prostitute honoured; while not one of those brave warriors who fell in Asia, fighting for you and for the safety of Greece, has so much as a stone erected to his me­mory, or an inscription to preserve his ashes from insult.’

Such was the homage which that en­thusiastic people, voluptuous and pas­sionate, [Page 32]paid to beauty. More guided by sentiment than by reason, and having law rather than principles, they banished their great men, honoured their courte­zans, murdered Socrates, permitted them­selves to be governed by Aspasia, pre­served inviolate the marriage bed, and placed Phrine in the temple of Apollo!

SECTION III. Of the Roman WOMEN.

AMONG the Romans, a grave and austere people, who during five hundred years were unacquainted with the elegancies and the pleasures of life, and who, in the middle of furrows and of fields of battle, were employed in til­lage or in war, the manners of the women were a long time as solemn and severe as those of the men, and without the smallest mixture of corruption or of weakness.

The time when the Roman women began to appear in public marks a parti­cular era in history. In the infancy of [Page 33]the city, and even till the conquest of Carthage, shut up in their houses, where a simple and rustic virtue paid every thing to instinct, and nothing to elegance; so nearly allied to barbarism, as only to know what it was to be wives and mo­thers; chaste, without apprehending they could be otherwise; tender and affec­tionate, before they had learned the meaning of the words; occupied in du­ties, and ignorant that there were other pleasures, they spent their life in retire­ment, in nursing their children, and in rearing to the republic a race of labourers or of soldiers. Nor were they inatten­tive to the other parts of domestic oeco­nomy: virtuously happy during the night, in the recess of more important cares, they were employed through the day in working alternately at the loom and at the spindle.

The habits of the most illustrious Ro­mans, for many ages, were spun by their wives, or by their sisters. Even Augustus, when lord of the world, remained an example of that ancient simplicity.

[Page 34] The Roman women, during that pe­riod were respected over the whole earth. Their victorious husbands revisited them with transport, at their return from battle; they laid at their feet the spoils of the enemy, and exalted, and endeared themselves in their eyes, by the wounds which they had received for them and for the state. Those warriors often came from imposing commands upon kings, and, in their own houses, accounted it an honour to obey. In vain the too rigid laws had made them the arbiters of life and death: more powerful than the laws, the women ruled their judges. In vain the legislature, foreseeing the wants which exist only among a corrupt people, per­mitted divorce; the indulgence of the polity was proscribed by the manners.

Such was the influence of beauty at Rome, before the licentious intercourse of the sexes had corrupted both, debasing the one by the other: and every mean it appears was used to prolong the happy period, and preserve the purity of female manners.

[Page 35] A severe guardianship, from which no age relieved the unmarried women; the censure of the magistrates; the domestic tribunals; the laws for preventing their luxury, by fixing their dowries; the sumptuary laws, for regulating their or­naments; the temples erected to chastity, and to a goddess who presided over the peace of marriages and the reconciliation of spouses; decrees of the senate in fa­vour of women who had been serviceable to the state; all demonstrate the attention which that warlike people paid to the softer sex, and to their virtues, as long as they had any themselves.

The Roman matrons do not seem to have possessed that military courage, which Plutarch has praised in certain Greek and Barbarian women. They par­took more of the nature of their sex; or, at least, they departed less from its character. Their first quality was de­cency. Every one knows the story of Cato the censor, who stabbed a Roman senator for kissing his own wife, in pre­sence of his daughter.

[Page 36] To these austere manners the Roman women joined an enthusiastic love of their country, which discovered itself upon many great occasions. On the death of Brutus, they all clothed themselves in mourning. In the time of Coriolanus, they saved the city. That incensed war­rior, who had insulted the senate and the priests, and who was superior even to the pride of pardoning, could not resist the tears and the entreaties of the women: They melted his obdurate heart. The senate decreed them public thanks; or­dered the men to give place to them upon all occasions; made an altar be erected on the spot where the mother had soft­ened her son, and the wife her husband; — and the sex were permitted to add ano­ther ornament to their head-dress.

It is to be wished, that our modern la­dies could assign as good a reason for the size of their caps.

The Roman women saved the city a second time, when besieged by Brennus. They gave up all their gold as its ransom. [Page 37]For that instance of their generosity, the senate granted them the honour of having funeral orations pronounced from the rostrum, in common with patriots and heroes. — After the battle of Cannae, when Rome had no other treasures but the virtues of her citizens, the women sacrisiced both their gold and their jewels. A new decree rewarded their zeal.

Valerius Maximus, who lived in the reign of Tiberius, and who has left us a book which is a more singular monu­ment of great virtues than of good taste, has several essays in praise of the Roman women. But these are less panegyrics than detached histories, to which he has sometimes given the style and the manner of the oration. We have good reason to think so, since the celebrated Portia, the daughter of Cato, and the wife of Brutus, is not there forgot; nor that Julia, the wife of Pompey, who died of terror, at seeing the robe of her husband tinged with his blood; nor that young Ro­man, who, in prison, supported her fa­ther by her milk; nor several other [Page 38]illustrious women, who, during the time of the proscriptions, exposed their lives to save their husbands.

The same writer, in extolling the vir­tues, touches also on the talents of the Roman women. He informs us that, in the second triumvirate, the three assassins who governed Rome, thirsting after gold not less than blood, and having already practised every species of robbery, and worn out every method of plunder, re­solved to tax the women. They imposed a heavy contribution upon each of them. The women sought an orator to defend their cause, but found none: nobody would reason against those who had the power of life and death. The daughter of the celebrated Hortensius alone appeared: she revived the memory of her father's abilities; and supported with intrepidity her own cause, and that of her sex. The ruffians blushed, and revoked their or­ders. Hortensia was conducted home in triumph; and had the honour of having given in one day, an example of courage [Page 39]to men, a pattern of eloquence to women, and a lesson of humanity to tyrants.

But the era of the talents of women at Rome, is to be found under the empe­rors; when society was more perfected by opulence, by luxury, by the use and abuse of the arts, and by commerce. Their retirement was then less strict; their genius, more active, was more ex­erted; their heart had new wants; the idea of reputation sprung up in their minds; their lesure increased with the division of employments. They had ser­vile offices, which the women of rank left — if I may so express myself — to the people: they had those of a higher class, which were soon silled. During upwards of six hundred years, the virtues had been found sufficient to please; they now found it necessary to call in the ac­complishments. They were desirous to join admiration to esteem, till they learned to exceed esteem itself: for, in all coun­tries, in proportion as the love of virtue diminishes, we find the value of talents to increase.

[Page 40] A thousand causes concurred to pro­duce this revolution of manners among the Romans. The vast inequality of ranks; the enormous fortunes of indi­viduals; the ridicule affixed by the im­perial court to moral ideas; all contri­buted to hasten the period of corruption. Then vice had no curb. The excessive desire of shews brought a low and shame­less freedom into fashion. Women con­tended with each other, who should bribe highest for the embraces of a player. They sixed their hearts and their eyes upon the stage, to devour the movements of a pantomime. A dancer, or a jug­gler, swallowed up the patrimonies, and gave heirs to the descendants of the Sci­pios and the Emiliuses. Debauchery re­duced fertility. They learned to cheat nature. The art of producing abortions completed the detestable practice. The passions, always craving, always gratified; and the women tired of all, cloyed of all, multiplied in Rome the monsters of Asia: they mutilated their slaves, to satisfy the new caprices of an imagination jaded even with pleasure itself. The vices became [Page 41]more powerful than the laws. It was no longer the study of the magistrate to pre­serve the manners, but to punish crimes; and sometimes their number, and their nature, was so alarming, that it became necessary for public justice to cover her­self with a veil: because there would have been no less danger than shame in taking notice of all the guilty.

When Septimus Severus mounted the throne, he found three thousand accu­sations of adultery on the roll. He was obliged to lay aside his plan of refor­mation.

In that age, the rank of the women appears to have been more frequently praised than the virtue, and the talents, or accomplishments, than the manners.

About the beginning of the empire, several funeral orations were pronounced at Rome in honour of women: the ora­tion of Junia, the sister of Brutus, and the wife of Cassius; the oration of the Empress Livia, the mother of Tiberius; [Page 42]that of Octavia, spoken by Augustus; and that of Poppaea, by Nero. The first may be said to be the eulogy of virtue, still severe and republican. The second ought to mark the gradation of the man­ners of the women of a common-wealth to their manners in a court, and under monarchical government.

The manners of Livia partook of both periods, and of both governments. She was connected with the republic by a remnant of simplicity; and, to use the words of Tacitus, ‘by the sanctity of her house:’ She was connected with the monarchy by a boundless ambition, by a desire of reputation, by a studied deceit, by the art of happily employing the al­lurements of her sex — in short, by in­trigue and address applied by turns to great or to trifling purposes.

The third oration, or that of Octavia, the sister of Augustus, the wife of An­thony, and the virtuous and tender rival of Cleopatra, was the eulogy of beauty rendered interesting by misfortunes, and [Page 43]mingled with great events, of which she was rather the victim than the cause.

These panegyrics might pass without reprehension; but the eulogy of Poppaea pronounced by an Emperor and ap­plauded by the Romans, was a proof of the last stage of corruption ^* It seemed to insinuate, that all the women con­nected with the imperial house, or who entered there, had a right to be praised in the same manner after their death. Several of them, while on the throne, were publicly abandoned in their plea­sures; but the apotheosis repaired all. Religion was even less strict than the manners: it was easier to obtain the rank of a goddess, than the character of a virtuous woman.

There were still however some virtues among the Roman women; but these were remarkable. The greater part of them owed their birth to Stoicism, which, under the first emperors, spread itself to [Page 44]Rome. Stoicism is to the manners, what republican severity is to government. It revived in some houses the ancient vir­tues; but with this difference, that for­merly the Romans may be said to have sucked in virtue with their milk; it was a kind of habitual instinct, and the happy effect of example and of laws: now, to resist the torrent of corruption, it was necessary to possess cultivated manners, firm opinions, and philosophical re­sources. It was likewise necessary to have principles; for cold reason could not long have held our: it was necessary to possess a certain enthusiasm, which at once animated and supported the soul; which proposed to itself a dignity supe­rior to man, that it might elevate him to the height of his powers; which despised pleasure, that it might hate vice; which withstood sorrow and compassion, that it might fortify itself against weakness; which, in short, in places where guilt was all powerful by authority and by ex­ample, where men were enslaved by all things, rendered man independent of all things — but of moral obligation; and [Page 45]which, raising him above this sublunary scene and all its delusive joys, made him his own censor, his preceptor, his con­templator, and his judge.

Such was the doctrine of the Stoics. It was therefore highly necessary at Rome in this period, as a powerful counterpoise to an enormous weight; and it produced, indeed, in that city the most amazing contrasts: — the most exalted courage was often found by the side of the most de­basing cowardice, and the most rigid austerity in the neighbourhood of the most shameless licentiousness.

It is worthy of remark, that Stoicism never produced such great effects in Greece as in Rome. As there is some­thing extravagant in its nature, it per­haps requires extraordinary circum­stances to give it energy. Great wants and great evils are necessary to create great virtues. Stoicism resembles those mechanical powers, which increase in proportion to their resistances.

[Page 46] Several illustrious Romans, nursed in this sect, displayed the virtues which it inspired: and the women, more suscep­tible of habits than of principles, and almost always governed by the manners, which strike them more forcibly, imi­tated the conduct of their husbands or of their fathers. Portia had given the ex­ample. The daughter of Cato, and the wife of Brutus, she was raised to the very summit of their ideas. In the conspiracy against Caesar, she shewed herself worthy to be associated with the first of human­kind, and trusted with the fate of em­pires. After the battle of Philippi, she would neither survive liberty nor Brutus, but died with the bold intrepidity of Cato.

The example of Portia was followed by that Arria, who seeing her husband hesitating, and afraid to die, to encou­rage him, pierced her own breast, and delivered to him the dagger with a smile ^*; by Arria's daughter, the wife [Page 47]of Thrasea, and by the daughter of Thrasea, the wife of Helvidius Priscus, both worthy of having had for their hus­bands men of the greatest virtue and for­titude; by Paulinia, the wife of Seneca, who made her veins be opened at the same time with her husband's; and who, forced to live, during the few years which she survived him, ‘bore in her counte­nance,' says Tacitus, 'the honourable testimony of her love, a PALENESS which proved that part of her blood had sympathetically issued with the blood of her spouse.’

The same exalted virtues were dis­played, though in a different manner, by Agrippina, the wife of Germanicus; who, naturally haughty and sensible, [Page 48]after the death of that great man, buried herself in retirement in all the bloom of youth; and who, neither bending her stateliness under Tiberius, nor allowing herself to be corrupted by the manners of her age, as implacable in her hatred to the tyrant as she had been faithful to her husband, spent her life in lamenting the one and in detesting the other. Nor should the celebrated Epinina be forgot, whom Vespasion ought to have admired — but whom he so basely put to death.

It is remarkable, that not one of those extraordinary women had the honour of a funeral oration. But that avails little: their virtues were preserved by Tacitus. Two lines of that author are of more weight with posterity than all the pane­gyrics that ever were pronounced.

I do not mean to speak of all the cele­brated women of the empire; but Op­pian, Herodian, Philostratus, and Dion, take notice of a woman possessed of a cha­racter, and a species of merit so very dif­ferent from any of those that I have had [Page 49]occasion to mention, as to claim my par­ticular attention. It is the empress Julia, the wife of Septimus Severus: born in Syria, and the daughter of a priest of the Sun, it was predicted, that she should rise to sovereign dignity. Her character justified the prophecy.

Julia, while on the throne, loved, or pretended passionately to love letters. Be it taste, be it a desire of knowledge, be it a desire of reputation — be it all these, or be it what it may that induced her, she spent her life with philosophers. Her rank of empress would not perhaps have been sufficient to subdue those bold spi­rits; but she joined to that the more powerful influences of wit and beauty. These three kinds of empire rendered less necessary to her that which consists only in art; and which, attentive to their tastes and their weaknesses, governs great minds by little means. It is said that she was a philosopher. Her philosophy how­ever did not extend so far as to give chastity to her manners. Her husband, who did not love her, valued her under­standing [Page 50]so much that he consulted her upon all occasions. She governed in the same manner under his son. To con­clude her character, empress and mini­ster of state, occupied at the same time about literature and politics, and ming­ling her pleasures freely with both, having courtiers for her loyers, scholars for her friends, and philosophers for her coun­sellors, in the middle of a society where she reigned and was instructed, Julia ar­rived at the highest celebrity; but, as among all her excellencies we find not those of her sex, the virtues of a woman, our admiration is lost in blame. In her lifetime she obtained more praise than respect; and posterity, while is has done justice to her talents and her accomplish­ments, has agreed to deny her esteem.

After this extraordinary woman, we find Julia Mammaea, of the same family, and who was likewise an empress, or at least mother to an emperor. Her merit was to have united genius and valour; but, above all, to have educated for the throne, her son, the young Alexander [Page 51]Severus, nearly in the same manner as Fenelon afterwards educated the duke of Burgundy. She made him at once vir­tuous and intelligent.

In following the course of history, the illustrious Zenobia, though not of Roman extraction, presents herself to view—A princess no less worthy, than happy, to have had Longinus for her preceptor; who knew as well to write as to conquer; who was afterward unfortunate with dig­nity; and who consoled herself for the loss of a throne, and the pleasures of grandeur, with the sweets of solitude, and the joys of reason.

All these women received high enco­miums from the writers of their age;— which have since served to swell the size of all the panegyrics of celebrated wo­men.

We have still remaining two panegyrics on empresses: one is the panegyric of Eusebia, the wife of Constance. She was the protectress of Julian. It was she [Page 52]likewise who raised him to the imperial throne; and, by that secret charm which wit and beauty have over even tyrants themselves, she often prevented the po­litical cruelties of a prince, who was al­ways ready to assassinate those whom he feared. Julian, who owed to her, life and empire, composed her panegyric, His gratitude has not made him eloquent.

The other panegyric is written by Lu­cian: it is in dialogue, and in the form of a portrait. We do not know pre­cisely whom it is designed for; but the commentators, who are always in confi­dence of such secrets, have not failed to tell us that it is the panegyric of an em­press. Be that as it may, we may ven­ture to a affirm, that it is the original of forty or fifty thousand portraits of he­roines or of princesses, which, four hundred years after, had been made in France, in Italy, or in Spain, by the ora­tors, historians, poets, and romance­writers of those times, who frequently bestow on one woman all the perfections of the sex.

[Page 53] It is the first trace which we find among the ancients of that light spirit of gallantry, which is so fashionable among the moderns; and which consists in say­ing to women, with a warm tongue and a cold heart, all that we do not believe, and all that we would have them to be­lieve. This rant, which is the offspring of insensibility and affectation, and which joins bombast to falsehood, owes its birth to Lucian; and must have proceeded from the corruption of the manners of the empire, from the levity natural to the Greeks of his time, and from some peculiarity in his own character. The head may declaim, but the heart only knows how to praise.

SECTION IV. Of the Effects of Christianity on the Manners of WOMEN.

WE have already seen, that the re­volution in the government of Rome, was followed by a change in the manners; but, towards the third century, [Page 54]they underwent a new and more remark­able change.

Hitherto the manners of the women had been only founded on morality, and had no connection with religious ideas. The manners had been united to the policy of some countries; but the laws had traced different lines, according to the different plans of legislation, for the commencement and termination of the virtues of women.

The dances, and the dress of the Spar­tan virgins, are well known. According to Montesquieu, Lycurgus had murdered modesty, and chastity itself.

At Rome, women had been seen to dance publicly on the stage, without the slightest veil between their nakedness and the eyes of the people: and, if Cato re­tired from such a spectacle, the magis­trates and the priests there attended.

The arts of painting and sculpture, which chiefly delighted in imitating na­ture [Page 55]simple and unattired, contributed farther to seduce the imagination by means of the senses.

Philosophy had no fixed principles for women. Sometimes it combated, and would have extinguished in them, that sweet sentiment which is at once the safe­guard and the charm of their sex ^*; some­times it taught that the tender union, which supposes a perpetual contract of hearts, was only the tie of a moment, destroyed by the moment that followed ^†.

Religion itself was only a kind of sa­cred policy, which had rather ceremo­nies than precepts. The ancients ho­noured their gods, as we honour our great men: they offered them incense, and expected their protection in ex­change. The gods were their guardians, not their legislators.

[Page 56] Christianity, which now began to spread itself over the earth, was a legis­lation. It imposed the most severe laws upon women, and upon manners. It strengthened the marriage knot. To the political, it added a sacred tie; and, ra­tified between the bench and the altar, placed the matrimonial engagements un­der the jurisdiction of Heaven.

Not satisfied with regulating the ac­tions, Christianity extended its empire even to the thoughts. Above all it com­bated the senses. It waged war even with such inanimate objects as might be the accomplices of seduction, or were the means of delight. In a word, rousing vice in her secret cell, it made her be­come her own tormentor, and condemned all the guilty to blush, by a forced con­fession of their weaknesses.

The legislation of the Greeks and Ro­mans referred the motive of every action to the political interest of society; but the new and sacred legislation, inspiring only contempt for this world, referred all [Page 57]things to a future and very different state of existence. Hence sprung the idea of an unknown perfection.

The detachment of the senses, the reign of the soul, and an inexpressibly sublime and supernatural something, which blended itself with both, became the doctrine of a body of people. Hence the vow of continence, and the conse­cration of celibacy.

Life was a combat. The sanctity of the manners threw a veil over nature and over society. Beauty was afraid to please; valour dropt his spear; the pas­sions were taught to submit; and the se­verity of the soul increased every day by the sacrifices of the senses.

The women, who generally possess a lively imagination and a warm heart, de­voted themselves to virtues which were as flattering as they were difficult, which were no less elevated than austere. It is almost a matter of indifference to happi­ness, whether high passions are to be gra­tified [Page 58]or subdued. The soul is pleased with its efforts; and, provided it is ex­erted, it signifies little though its activity should be turned against itself.

The disciples of Christianity were far­ther taught to love and comfort one an­other, like children of the same family. In consequence of this doctrine, the more virtuous as much as the more tender sex, converting to pity the sensibility of na­ture, — the use and abuse of which religi­on taught them equally to fear, — devoted their lives to the service of indigence and distress. Delicacy learned to overcome disgust; and the tears of beauty were seen to flow in the huts of misery, and in the cells of disease, with the friendly sympa­thy of a sister.

The persecutions which arose in the empire soon after the introduction of Christianity, afforded that religion a new opportunity of discovering its efficacy. To preserve the faith, it was often necessary to suffer imprisonment, banishment, and death. Courage then became necessary.

[Page 59] There is a deliberate courage, which is the result of reason, and which is equally bold and calm: It is the courage of philo­sophers and of heroes. There is a courage which springs from the imagination, which is ardent and precipitant; and such is most commonly the courage of martyrs, or the religious courage.

The courage of the Christian women was founded upon the noblest motives. Animated by the glorious hope of immor­tality, they embraced flames and gibbets, and offered their delicate and feeble bo­dies to the most excruciating tortures.

This revolution in the ideas and in the manners, was followed by another in the writings. Such as made women their subject, became as austere and seraphic as they.

Almost all the doctors of those times, to whom the church has assigned the com­pound title of saints and of orators, com­mend to admiration the Christian women. But he who speaks of them with most e­loquence, [Page 60]and with most zeal, is Saint Je­rom; who, born with a soul of fire, spent twenty-four years in writing, in combat­ing, and in conquering himself.

The manners of this saint were proba­bly more severe than his thoughts. He had a number of illustrious women at Rome among his disciples. But, though surrounded with beauty, he escaped weak­ness, without escaping slander; and, fly­ing the world, the women and himself, he retired to Palestine; where all which he had quitted pursued him still, tormen­ted him under the penitential sackcloth, and, in the middle of solitary deserts, re­echoed in his ears the tumult of Rome.

Such was Saint Jerom, the most elo­quent panegyrist of the Christian women of the fourth century. That warm and pious writer, though generally harsh and obscure, softens his style in a thousand places to praise the Marcellas, the Paulas, the Eustochiums, and many other Roman women, who at the Capitol had embra­ced Christianity, and studied in Rome [Page 61]the language of the Hebrews, to read and understand the books of Moses.

When the Roman empire, like some venerable column, was pushed from its base, and broke in pieces by the myriads of the North, Christianity passed from the conquered to the conquerors, and al­most entirely by the zeal of the women; who, at the same time, diffused the Gos­pel, and softened the manners of savages.

It is observed, that the Christian wo­men have, in all ages, been more anxi­ous of making proselites than the men. Whether it be that their weakness takes advantage of the sacred opinions, which are the greatest support to the soul; that their imagination, more lively, is more strongly inflamed by objects which are above nature, and sometimes even above reason; that the religious principles of men are more connected with reflection, and those of women with sentiment; — for the one, we know, has much more activity than the other; — that they look upon Christianity, which reduces all con­ditions [Page 62]to a level, as a necessary defence for them, and a counterpoise to weakness against force; that, in short, their natu­ral desire of sway, which is supposed to have no bounds, would perhaps exercise its dominion over that which is most free, over the mind itself — or whatever be their motive, the world has been obliged to their ardour.

It was women who, making the charms of their sex subservient to religion — who, raised to thrones by their beauty, drew over their husbands to their opi­nions, and spread Christianity over the greater part of Europe. It was by their means that France, England, a part of Germany, Bavaria, Hungary, Bohemia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, and, for some time, that Persia received the gospel. By the same influence, Lombardy and Spain renounced the opinions of Arius.

I shall not here repeat the names of those princesses. They are inscribed in the barbarous annals of the times, and [Page 63]have since been repeated by a number of panegyrists. It is sufficient for me to have pointed out the species of merit for which they were distinguished, and on what the eulogies dwell, which they re­ceived in their life-time, or which have been paid them by posterity.

SECTION I. Of the Inundation of the Barbarians, and the Effects of Chivalry on the Character and the Manners of WO­MEN.

HISTORY does not afford so sin­gular a revolution in policy and manners, as that which followed the sub­version of the Roman empire.

[Page 65] It is to the Barbarians who spread conflagration and ruin, who trampled on the monuments of art, and spurned the appendages of elegance and pleasure, that we owe the bewitching spirit of gallantry, which, in these ages of refinement, reigns in the courts of Europe: and that system, which has made it a principle of honour among us to consider the women as so­vereigns, which has partly formed our customs, our manners, our policy, and which has so remarkably influenced our writings and our languages— that system, which has exalted the human character by softening the empire of force, which mingles politeness with the use of the sword, which delights in protecting the weak, and in conferring that importance which nature or fortune have denied, was brought hither from the frozen shores of the Baltic, and from the savage forests of the North.

The northern nations in general paid great respect to women. Continually employed in hunting or in war, they con­descended only to soften their ferocity [Page 66]in the presence of the fair. Their forests were the nurseries of chivalry. Beauty was there the reward of valour. A war­rior, to render himself worthy of his mistress, went in search of glory and of danger. Jealousy produced challenges. Single combats, instituted by love, often stained with blood the woods and the bor­ders of the lakes; and the sword ascer­tained the rights of Venus as well as of Mars.

Let us not be surprised at these man­ners. Among men who have made few advances in civilization, but who are al­ready united in large bodies, women have naturally, and must have, the greatest sway. Society is then sufficiently culti­vated to have introduced the ideas of preference and of choice in the con­nexion between the sexes, — which seem to be little regarded, if at all known, among savages: it is too rude to partake of that state of effeminacy, in which the senses are enfeebled, and the affections worn out by habit. People but little re­moved from barbarism, in the perfection [Page 67]of their animal powers, and ignorant of all those artificial pleasures created by the wants of polished life, feel more exqui­sitely the pleasures of nature, and the ge­nuine emotions of man. They mingle even with their love a kind of adoration to the female sex.

Several of the northern nations ima­gined, that women could look into futu­rity, and that they had about them an inconceivable something approaching to divinity. Perhaps that idea was only the effect of the sagacity common to the sex: and the advantage which their natural address gave them over rough and simple warriors; perhaps also those barbarians, surprised at the influence which beauty has over force, were lead to ascribe to supernatural attraction, a charm which they could not comprehend.

A belief, however, that the Deity communicates himself more readily to women, has at one time or other pre­vailed in every quarter of the earth. Not only the Germans, the Britons, and all [Page 68]the people of Scandinavia were possessed of it: it was women among the Greeks who delivered the oracles. The respect which the Romans paid to the Sibyls is well known. The Jews had their pro­phetesses. The predictions of the Egyp­tian women obtained much credit at Rome, even under the emperors. And in most barbarous nations, all things that have the appearance of being superna­tural, the mysteries of religion, the se­crets of physic, and the rites of magic, are in the possession of the women.

The barbarians, who over-ran Europe, carried their opinions along with their arms. A revolution, in the manner of living, must therefore soon have taken place. The climates of the North re­quired little reserve between the sexes; and during the invasions from that quar­ter, which continued for three or four hundred years, it was common to see women mixed with warriors. Hence that sweet and timid modesty, which has generally been considered as essential to [Page 69]beauty, by being unveiled to every eye, ceased to be regarded as a virtue.

Among the ancients, the retirement of women was a long time a part of the constitution of the state; because the go­vernment and the laws rested upon the manners. In modern Europe, the bar­barians having every where concerted military establishments, paid little atten­tion to the manners: they rested all things upon force.

By mingling with a corrupted people, who had all the vices of former prosperity along with those of present adversity, the conquerors were not likely to imbibe more severe ideas. Hence we see those sons of the North, in softer climates, uniting the vices of resinement to the stateliness of the warrior, and the pride of the barbarian.

They embraced Christianity: but it rather modified than changed their cha­racter. It mingled itself with their cus­toms, [Page 70]without altering the genius of the people.

Thus, by degrees, were laid the foun­dations of new manners, which in mo­dern Europe have brought the two sexes more on a level, by assigning to the wo­men a kind of sovereignty, and associ­ating love with valour.

Nearly about the time that this revo­lution took place in the West, a circum­stance pretty remarkable, a religion, ^* and a people, arose, that established and consecrated in the East, the domestic ser­vitude of women: so that the same era which gave birth to the empire of beauty in Europe, doomed the lovely sex to be eternal slaves in Asia. Their slavery ex­tended with the arms of the conquering Arabs, and their dominion and the gal­lantry of the North accompanied the vic­tories of the savage, but generous inha­bitants of the pole.

[Page 71] The reign of chivalry already com­menced, began to advance over Europe. That civil and military institution took its rise from a train of circumstances, and the native bent of the new inhabitants. Its true era was the fourteenth century.

Shattered by the fall of the empire, Europe had not yet arrived at any degree of consistency. After five hundred years, nothing was fixed; nothing, if I may use the phrase, was moulded together. From the mixture of Christianity with the an­cient customs of the barbarians, sprung a continual discord in the manners; from the mixture of the rights of the priest­hood with those of the empire, sprung a discord in laws and politics; from the mixture of the rights of sovereigns with those of the nobility, sprung a discord in government; and, from the mixture of Arabians and Christians, sprung a discord in religions. Anarchy and con­fusion were the result of so many con­trasts.

[Page 72] Christianity, which had now lost much of its original influence, like a feeble curb, was still sufficient to restrain the weak passions, but was no longer able to bridle the strong. It produced re­morse, but could not prevent guilt.

The people of those times made pil­grimages, and they pillaged: they massa­cred, and they afterwards did pennance. Robbery and debauchery were blended with superstition.

It was in this era that the nobility, idle and warlike, from a sentiment of natural equity, and that uneasiness which follows the perpetration of violence— from the double motive of religion and of heroism, associated themselves to ef­fect in a body what government had ne­glected, or but poorly executed. Their object was to combat the Moors in Spain, the Saracens in Asia, the tyrants of the castles and strong holds in Germany, and in France; to assure the safety of travellers, as Hercules and Theseus did [Page 73]of old; and, above all things, to defend the honour and protect the rights of the feeble sex, against the too frequent vil­lany and oppression of the strong.

A noble spirit of gallantry soon ming­led itself with that institution. Every knight, in devoting himself to danger, listed himself under some lady as his so­vereign. It was for her that he attacked, for her that he defended, for her that he mounted the walls of cities and of castles—and for her honour that he shed his blood.

Europe was only one large field of battle, where warriors clad in armour, and adorned with ribbands and with the cyphers of their mistresses, engaged in close fight to merit the favour of beauty.

Fidelity was then associated with cou­rage, and love was inseparably connected with honour.

The women, proud of their sway, and of receiving it from the hands of virtue, [Page 74]became worthy of the great actions of their lovers, and reciprocated passions as noble as those they inspired. An unge­nerous choice debased them. The ten­der sentiment was never felt but when united with glory; and the manners breathed an inexpressible something of pride, heroism, and tenderness, which was altogether astonishing.

Beauty perhaps never exercised so sweet, or so powerful an empire over the heart. Hence those constant passions which our levity cannot comprehend, and which our manners, our little weak­nesses, our perpetual thirst of hopes and desires, our listless anxiety that tor­ments us, and which tires itself in the pursuit of emotion without pleasure, and of impulse without aim, lead us to re­ject, are turned every day into ridicule on our theatres, in our conversations, and in our lives.

But it is nevertheless true, that those passions, fostered by years and roused by obstacles, where respect kept hope at a [Page 75]distance, where love, fed only by sacri­fices, sacrificed itself unceasingly to ho­nour, reinvigorated the characters and the souls of the two sexes; gave more energy to the one, and more elevation to the other; changed men into heroes, and inspired the women with a pride—which was by no means hurtful to virtue.

The foregoing account of the origin and progress of chivalry, seems naturally to arise out of the history of the times, and is founded upon the authority of the best early writers. But there are two late writers, of so high, and such justly me­rited reputation, that it would be an in­jury to the public to omit their opinion, and a crime against genius, to alter their expression: they shall therefore speak for themselves, for the women, and for us; —for their sentiments seem only to cor­roborate ours.

‘The system of chivalry, when com­pletely formed,’ says professor Fergu­son, 'proceeded on a marvellous respect and veneration to the fair sex, on forms [Page 76]of combat established, and on a sup­posed junction of the heroic and sanc­tified character. The formalities of the duel, and a kind of judicial challenge, were known among the ancient Celtic nations of Europe. The Germans, even in their native forests, paid a kind of devotion to the female sex. The Christian religion enjoined meekness and compassion to barbarous ages. These different principles combined to­gether, may have served as the foun­dation of a system, in which courage was directed by religion and love, and the warlike and gentle were united to­gether. When the characters of the hero and the saint were mixed, the mild spirit of Christianity, though of­ten turned into venom by the bigotry of opposite parties, though it could not always subdue the ferocity of the warrior, nor suppress the admiration of courage and force, may have con­firmed the apprehensions of men in what was to be held meritorious and splendid in the conduct of their quar­rels.

[Page 77] The feudal establishments, by the high rank to which they elevated cer­tain families, no doubt greatly fa­voured this romantic system. Not only the lustre of a noble descent, but the stately castle beset with battlements and towers, served to inflame the imagina­tion, and to create a veneration for the daughter and the sister of gallant chiefs, whose point of honour it was to be inaccessible and chaste, and who could perceive no merit but that of the high-minded and the brave, nor be approached in any other accents than those of gentleness and respect. ^*.

Such was the spirit of chivalry. It gave birth to an incredible number of performances in honour and in praise of women. The verses of the bards, the Italian sonnet, the plaintive romance, the poems of chivalry, the Spanish and French romances ^†, were so many monu­ments [Page 85]of that kind, composed in the time of a noble barbarism, and of a he­roism in which the great and the ridi­culous were often blended.

In the courts, in the fields of battle or of tournament, every thing breathed of women:— and the same taste prevailed in letters. One did not write, one did not think, but for them. The same man was often both poet and warrior; he sung to his lyre, and encountered with his lance, by turns, for the beauty that he adored.

The times, and the manners of chi­valry, [Page 86]by bringing great enterprises, bold adventures, and I know not what of ex­travagant heroism into fashion, inspired the women with the same taste. The two sexes always imitate each other; their manners and their minds are refined or corrupted, invigorated or dissolved together.

The women, in consequence of the prevailing passion, were now seen in the middle of camps and of armies: they quitted the soft and tender inclinations, and the delicate offices of their own sex, for the courage and the toilsome occupa­tions of ours. During the crusades, ani­mated by the double enthusiasm of reli­gion and of valour, they often performed the most romantic exploits; obtained in­dulgencies on the field of battle, and died with arms in their hands, by the side of their lovers or of their husbands.

In Europe, the women attacked and defended fortifications; princesses com­manded their armies, and obtained vic­tories. Such was the celebrated Joan de [Page 87]Mountfort, disputing for her duchy of Bretagne, and fighting herself. Such was that still more celebrated Margaret of Anjou ^*, active and intrepid, general and soldier, whose genius supported a long time a feeble husband; which taught him to conquer; which replaced him upon the throne; which twice relieved him from prison; and, oppressed by fortune and by rebels, which did not bend, till after she had decided in person twelve battles.

The warlike spirit among the women, consistent with ages of barbarism, when every thing is impetuous, because nothing is fixed, and when all excess is the excess of force, continued in Europe upwards of four hundred years, shewing itself from time to time, and always in the middle of convulsions, or on the eve of great revolutions.

But there were eras and countries in which that spirit appeared with particular [Page 88]lustre. Such were the displays it made in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Hungary, and in the islands of the Ar­chipelago and the Mediterranean, when they were invaded by the Turks.

Every thing conspired to animate the women of those countries with an ex­alted courage:— the prevailing spirit of the foregoing ages; the terror which the name of the Turks inspired; the still more dreadful apprehensions of an un­known enemy; the difference of dress, which has a stronger effect than is com­monly supposed on the imagination of a people; the difference of religion, which produced a kind of sacred horrour; the striking difference of manners; and, above all, the confinement of the female sex; which, though in the East consi­dered only as a civil and political institu­tion, presented to the women of Europe nothing but the frightful ideas of servi­tude and of a master— the groans of ho­nour, the tears of beauty in the embrace of barbarism, and the double tyranny of love and pride!

[Page 89] The contemplation of these objects ac­cordingly roused in the hearts of the women a resolute courage to defend themselves, nay sometimes even a courage of enthusiasm, which hurled itself against the enemy; and that courage was aug­mented, by the promises of a religion, which offered eternal happiness in ex­change for the sufferings of a moment.

It is not therefore surprising, that when three beautiful women of the Isle of Cyprus were led prisoners to Selim, to be secluded in the seraglio, one of them preferring death to such a condition, conceived the project of setting fire to the magazine; and, after having commu­nicated her design to the rest, put it in execution; — that the year following, a city of Cyprus being besieged by the Turks, the women ran in crowds, ming­led themselves with the soldiers, and, fighting gallantly in the breach, were the means of saving their country; — that, under Mahomet II. a girl of the isle of Lemnos, armed with the sword and shield of her father, who had fallen in [Page 90]battle, opposed the Turks, when they had forced a gate, and chased them to the shore; — that, in Hungary, the wo­men distinguished themselves miraculously in a number of sieges and battles against the Turks ^*; — that, in the two celebrat­ed sieges of Rhodes and Malta, the wo­men seconding the zeal of the knights, discovered upon all occasions the greatest intrepidity: not only that impetuous and temporary impulse which despises death, but that cool and deliberate fortitude which can support the continued hard­ships, the toils, and the miseries of war.

That era, and these multiplied exam­ples of courage among the women merit our most serious attention: but only to consider the revolutions of history, to ob­serve, in the islands of the Archipelago, the descendants of the illustrious Greeks, after a revolution of fifteen hundred years, became Christians, and subjects of the republic of Venice, defending their cities and their coasts against the ravages [Page 91]of the conquering Tartars, who carried to the countries of Homer and Plato the religion of an Arabian prophet, is an in­teresting spectacle, and teems with reflec­tions of every kind.

The Hungarian women, in their en­counters with the same Tartars, do not pre­sent us with a spectacle less singular. We cannot doubt that it was the double mo­tive of religion and honour, which exalt­ed their courage to such a height: for these are the two principles which in all ages have given birth to the great actions of women.

SECTION II. Of the Revival of Letters, and the Learn­ing of WOMEN.

WHILE war reigned in Greece, in Hungary, and in the islands of the Mediterranean, which seemed only so many theatres for the illustrious acti­ons of women, another revolution took place in Italy: — the revival of arts and [Page 92]of letters. That era gave a new direction to the ideas and occupations of the female sex. A general thirst after knowledge turned all the world to the study of lan­guages.

There is a time when the symbols of ideas are taken for ideas themselves. We hope to instruct ourselves by learning words, as some projectors have hoped to enrich themselves by exploring mines. Languages are otherwise so many chains of enigmas, where ideas are hid, and never could provoke our assiduity. Be­fore the exercise of thought, we would know the history of the thoughts of o­thers. This process is perhaps even ne­cessary. In the infancy of life, the senses collect the materials of thinking; in the infancy of letters, the mind treasures up words, to combine them afterwards. In both cases, it is the memory that gives activity to the rest of the intellectual pow­ers.

As words lead to ideas, the ancient philosophy revived with the languages. [Page 93]Persons of austere minds and obtuse feel­ings, those who looked upon cold reason to be right reason, who set most value u­pon a certain logic that restrains, a sub­tilty that divides, and a vague obscurity which exercises the understanding, and leaves it the merit of determining for it­self, and of fixing its ideas, made choice of the philosophy of Aristotle: But people of sensibility and fancy, those who could pardon errors for eloquence, who pre­ferred a sublime and seraphic system of metaphysics to a dry logic, and elegant allusions to sylogistic quibbles; those, in short, who had souls upon which ideas, even chimerically refined, of perfection, of order, and of beauty, made a deep and lively impression, devoted themselves to the philosophy of Plato.

The philosophy of Aristotle occupied the universities and the cloisters; the po­ets, the lovers, the sentimental philosoph­ers, and the ladies, were the disciples of Plato.

[Page 94] Theology, or the art of applying hu­man reasonings to celestial matters, was another kind of knowledge which then employed and engaged the mind: it was fashionable, and it was necessary that it should be so. It was a magazine for the wars of religion, a support for the court of Rome, and a sure road to honour and preferment. A high value was therefore put on that science; and the descendants of the ancient Romans became celebrated by their religious studies, in the country where their ancestors had been so much renowned by their victories.

After the times of conspiracy, of ty­ranny, and of domestic broils, law and order must have been highly prized. Ju­risprudence was therefore cultivated. They had not sufficient knowledge to be­come legislators; but they studied, they explained, they altered, and they disfigur­ed the Roman laws.

Chivalry now began to decline in Eu­rope: but it left behind it a tincture of romantic gallantry in the manners, which [Page 95]communicated itself to the works of ima­gination.

Many verses were then written, ex­pressive of passions either real or feigned, but always respectful and tender: and as in France, where the dissipated nobility spent their life in war, love was general­ly painted under the idea of a conquest; in Italy, where another set of ideas pre­vailed, it was always represented as an adoration or worship.

This confusion of religion and gallant­ry, of Platonism and poetry, of the stu­dy of the languages and of the laws, of the ancient philosophy and the modern theology, formed the general character of the most illustrious men of those times. The same observation may be extended to the most celebrated women.

Never were the women so universally distinguished for profound learning, as in this period. Perhaps as it followed the ages of chivalry, when several wo­men had disputed with men the prize of [Page 96]valour, willing to establish the equality of their sex in all things, they were am­bitious to prove that they had as much genius as courage; and to subject, even by their talents, those over whom they reigned by their beauty.

What strikes us most remarkably in that era is, the general spirit. We see women preach, and unwind controversy; women publicly support theses; women fill the chairs of philosophy and of law; women harrangue in Latin before the popes; women write in Greek, and read Hebrew; nuns, poetesses; women of qua­lity, divines; and (which happened more than once) young girls perfected in elo­quence, with the sweetest features and the softest voice, pathetically exhorting the Holy Father and the Christian princes to declare war against the Turks.

The religious spirit which has animated women in all ages showed itself at this time, but it changed its form. It had made them, by turns, martyrs, apostles, [Page 97]warriors, and concluded with making them divines and scholars.

An incredible value was still set on the study of languages. In private families, in the cloisters, in the courts, and even on the thrones the same taste reigned. It was but a poor qualification for a wo­man to read Virgil and Cicero. The mouth of a young Italian, Spanish, or British lady, seemed adorned with a par­ticular grace, when she repeated some Hebrew phrase, or thundered out some verses of Homer.

Poetry, so dear to the imagination, and to susceptible hearts, was embraced with ardour by the women. It was a new and pleasing exertion of talents, which slattered self-love, and amused the mind. Perhaps too that want which they must have experienced, spite of themselves, and even without knowing it, in a subtile philosophy, an abstract theology, and an empty study of dialects and of sounds, would make them more sensible to the charms of an art, which [Page 98]continually feeds the imagination with its images, and the heart with its senti­ments.

I shall particularize a few of the wo­men, who were most celebrated for their learning and talents in that period. It would be easy to double the list.

In the thirteenth century, a young lady of Bologna, devoted herself to the study of the Latin language, and of the laws. At the age of twenty-three, she pronounced a funeral oration in Latin in the great church of Bologna; and, to be admired as an orator, she had neither need of indulgence on account of her youth nor of her sex. At the age of twenty-six she took the degree of a doctor of laws, and began publicly to expound the Institutions of Justinian. At the age of thirty, her great reputation raised her to a chair, where she taught the law to a prodigious concourse of scholars from all nations. She joined the charms and accomplishments of a woman to all the knowledge of a man. But such was the [Page 99]power of her eloquence, that her beauty was only admired when her tongue was silent.

In the fourteenth century, a like ex­ample was exhibited in that city. In the fifteenth century, the same prodigy re­newed itself there a third time:— and I cannot help here remarking, that even at this day, in the city of Bologna, there is still a learned chair silled with honour by a woman.

At Venice, in the course of the four­teenth century, two celebrated women attract our notice, the one (Modesta di Pozzo di Zorzi) composed successfully a great number of pieces in verse, serious, comic, heroic, and tender; and some pastorals, which were much admired: The other, (Cassandra Fidele) who was one of the most learned women of Italy, wrote equally well the three languages of Homer, Virgil, and Dante, and in verse as well as in prose. She possessed all the philosophy of her own, and of the pre­ceding ages; she embellished with graces [Page 100]theology itself; she supported theses with the greatest lustre; she gave public lectures at Padua; she joined to her se­rious studies the elegant arts, particularly music, and softened her learning still farther by her manners. She received homage from sovereign pontiffs and so­vereign princes; and, that she might be singular in all things, she lived upwards of a century.

At Milan a lady of the illustrious house of Trivulzio, early in life, deli­vered a great number of elegant dis­courses before popes and potentates, in the ancient language of the Romans.

At Verona, in the fifteenth century, Issotta Nogarolla, acquired so great a reputation by her eloquence that kings were curious to listen, and scholars to attend, to hear, and to see.

At Florence, a nun of the house of Strozzi dispelled the languor and indo­lence of the cloister by her taste for let­ters; [Page 101]and, in her solitude, was known over Italy, Germany, and France.

At Naples, Sarrochia composed a ce­lebrated poem upon Scanderbeg; and, in her life-time, was compared to Boyardo and to Tasso.

At Rome, we find Victoria Colonna, marchioness of Pescaira, who passionately loved and successfully cultivated letters; and who, left in youth to mourn a great and gallant husband, spent the rest of her life in study, and in sorrow, cele­brating in her tender verses her long lost hero.

In Spain we see Isabella of Rosera, preach in the great church of Barcelona, come to Rome under Paul III. there con­vert the Jews by her eloquence, and comment upon the learned Scotus, with applause, before the cardinals and arch­bishops; — Isabella of Cardoua, who un­derstood the Latin, the Greek, and the Hebrew, and who, though possessed of beauty, reputation, and riches, had still [Page 102]the whim of becoming a doctor, and took degrees in divinity; — Catharine Ribera, who composed a great many Spa­nish verses, partly devotional and partly amorous; — Aloysia Sigea of Toledo, still more celebrated than the three for­mer, who, besides Latin, Greek, and He­brew, understood Arabic and Syriac; who wrote a letter in these five languages to pope Paul III. who was afterwards called to the court of Portugal, where she composed several pieces, and died young.

In France we see several women pos­sessed of all the learning of the times, particularly the duchess of Retz, who under Charles IX. was celebrated even in Italy, and who astonished the Polish no­bility when they came to demand the duke of Anjou for their king. They beheld with wonder, at court, a young lady so intelligent, and who spoke the ancient languages with no less purity than grace.

[Page 103] In England we meet with the three Seymours, sisters, nieces to a king, and daughters to a protector, all celebrated for their learning, and for their elegant Latin verses, which were translated and repeated all over Europe; — Jane Gray, whose elevation to the throne was only a step to the scaffold, and who read before her death, in Greek, Plato's Dialogue on the Immortality of the Soul; — nor can we pass by the eldest daughter of the il­lustrious chancellor, Sir Thomas More, whose learning was almost eclipsed by her virtues; who corresponded in Latin with the great Erasmus, who styled her the ornament of Britain; and who, after she had consoled her father in prison, had rushed through the guards to snatch a last embrace, had obtained the liberty of paying him funeral honours, had pur­chased his head with a bribe, — accused herself, and loaded with fetters for two crimes — for having watched the head of her father as a relique, and for having preserved his books and writings — ap­peared with unconcern before her judge; justified herself with that eloquence which [Page 104]virtue bestows on injured merit, com­manding admiration and respect, and spent the remainder of her life in soli­tude, in sorrow, and in study.

We behold in Scotland Mary Stuart, heir of that crown, the most beautiful woman of her age, and one of the most learned, who could write and speak six languages; who made elegant verses in French; and who, when very young, delivered an oration in Latin to the court of France, to prove that the study of letters is consistent with the female cha­racter. So lovely, and so happy an ex­ample of the truth which she advanced, could not fail to convince. Mary added to her learning, a delicate taste in the polite arts, particularly music, and a­dorned the whole with the most feminine and courtly manners.

Several women were even desirous of uniting every species of learning, and some succeeded.

[Page 105] What has since been called SOCIETY was not then indeed so much known. Luxury, and the want of occupation, had not introduced the custom of sitting five or six hours before a glass, to invent fashions. Some use was made of time. Hence that variety of languages, arts, and sciences, which were acquired by women.

It is but just, however, to observe, that the vanity of being universal is pe­culiar to the infancy of letters. In child­hood, all the world over-rate their pow­ers. It is only by measuring them that we come to know them. The desires themselves were then more easily satisfied than the thirst of learning. People were more anxious to know than to think; and the mind, more active than extended, unable yet to comprehend the secret, or reach the depth of the sciences, ought naturally to have considered them as a sacred deposit in books, which the me­mory would necessarily impair.

SECTION III. Of the Books written in Honour of WO­MEN, and on the Superiority of the Sexes.

IF the women of those ages were am­bitious of arraying themselves in the knowledge of men, the men were at all times ready with their panegyrics to re­turn the compliment to the women. It was the sequel of the general spirit, which carried gallantry into letters as it had introduced it into arms.

Italy in particular was over-run with performances of that kind. The first who gave the example was Boccace. He passionately loved and was beloved by the women; and composed in Latin a trea­tise in honour of the sex. It is intituled, OF ILLUSTRIOUS WOMEN. In search of these he wanders through the whole circuit of fable; through the Greek, Roman, and Sacred Histories; and places together Cleopatra and Lucretia, Flora [Page 107]and Portia, Semiramis and Sappho, Athalia and Dido.

Boccace undertook above all things to re-establish the reputation of Dido, in opposition to Virgil. The panegyrist proves against the poet, that the widow of Sichaeus was never unfaithful to his memory.

It is humorous to hear Boccace after­wards, in an eloquent and vigorous se­quel to that treatise, harrangue against the Christian widows who married again. The author of the Decameron cites St. Paul, and explains the text of that Apostle to a young widow, who excused herself on account of her age for not imitating Dido. This piece, which af­fords so much pleasantry, is of a serious cast; and, what will scarcely be credited, the moral of Boccace is severe.

The example being now set, a multi­tude of writers published successively pa­negyrical catalogues of the illustrious women of all nations.

[Page 108] Joseph Betussi, translated into Italian the Latin treatise of Boccace; and, in the ardour of his zeal, he enriched it with fifty new articles. Francis Serdo­nati, thinking the work not yet com­plete, collected from historians, sacred and profane, barbarous and polished, the names of all the women of eminence which had been omitted, and added to the catalogue a hundred and twenty pa­negyrics.

But this was not all. Philip de Ber­gamo, an Augustine monk, published a volume in Latin OF ILLUSTRIOUS Wo­MEN. Another performance on the same subject was published by Julius Caesar Capacio, secretary to the city of Naples; — one by Charles Pinto, in Latin, and in verse; — one by Ludovico Dome­nichi; — one by James Philip Thomassini, bishop of Venice; — and one by Bernard Scardioni, a canon of Padua, OF THE ILLUSTRIOUS WOMEN OF PADUA.

Francis Augustine della Chiesa, bishop of Saluca, wrote a treatise on THE [Page 109]WOMEN FAMOUS IN LITERATURE; — Lewis Jacob de St. Charles, a Car­melite, wrote another on THE WOMEN ILLUSTRIOUS BY THEIR WRITINGS; and Alexander Van Denbusche, of the Low Countries, wrote one on THE LEARNED WOMEN.

The celebrated Father le Moine pub­lished a volume under the title of GALE­RIE DE FEMMES FORTES; and Bran­tome wrote THE LIVES OF ILLUS­TRIOUS WOMEN. But it is to be ob­served that Brantome, a French knight and a courtier, speaks only of queens and princesses. It is in his writings that we find the panegyric of Catherine of Medicis, and of the famous Joan of Naples. In his prolix style, simple and plain, Brantome justifies the conduct of these two queens. He tells us that the second was without weakness, and the first free of guilt. He absolves the one of her incontinence, and the murder of her husband; and the other of the civil wars, and the massacre of St. Bartho­lomew.

[Page 110] After Brantome Hilario da Costa, a Minim, published two volumes in quarto, each volume consisting of eight hundred pages, containing, as he tells us, the panegyrics of ALL the women of the fif­teenth and sixteenth centuries, distin­guished by their valour, their talents, or their virtues. But the pious ecclesiastic has, in fact, only given us the panegyrics of the CATHOLIC women of that period. He does not say a word, for example, of queen Elizabeth; but he has made a long and elaborate eulogy on her sister queen Mary, who began her reign with shedding the blood of the amiable Jane Gray; and who, in the five years which she sat on the throne, devoted to the flames on ac­count of religion between six and seven hundred persons, of all ranks, ages, and sexes.

The eulogies of this monkish pane­gyrist amount to a hundred and seventy. No small number. But all must yield to the indefatigable Italian, Peter Paul de Ribera, who published in his own language, a work intituled, ‘The im­mortal [Page 111]Triumphs and heroic Enter­prises of Eight hundred and forty-five women.’ It would certainly be diffi­cult to make a more complete collection.

Besides these large compilations dedi­cated to the honour of the whole sex, many of the writers of those times, men of taste and gallantry, addressed panegy­rics to individuals, to women who were the living ornaments of their age. This practice was most common in Italy, where every thing conspired to favour it. The world perhaps had never seen, at one time, so many shining princesses as then appeared in that part of Europe. The courts of Naples, of Milan, of Mantua, of Parma, of Florence, and several others, formed so many schools of taste, between which reigned an emulation of glory and of talents. The men distin­guished themselves by their address in war, or in love; the women, by their knowledge and accomplishments. Al­most every one of these little courts was the residence of some man of high repu­tation in literature.

[Page 112] In a country, however extensive, which forms only one great kingdom, or state, men of genius are scarce; because there is only one capital, one court, and one centre of luminaries. The distant pro­vinces have neither the same activity, nor the same taste. But in a country like Italy, divided into a number of states, and where almost every city is a capital; the mind gathers energy, and expands itself amazingly. This was certainly one cause of the superiority of the Italians to the rest of Europe. What was their misfortune in politics, was their glory in arts and in letters.

Those men of wit or genius attached themselves to the celebrated women, the ornaments of the courts where they re­sided. Some of them, estimating human conditions only by the mind, and con­ceiving talents to be equal to all things, had even the boldness to entertain the warmest passions for great princesses ^*. [Page 113]To them they addressed their glowing sentiments, in verse or in prose. Others, who had imagination without feeling, substituted for passion the sport of fancy; and, mingling with it the Platonic ideas which then prevailed, composed for those princesses, in a metaphysical style, re­spectful hymns under the notion of pa­negyrics.

But of all the panegyrics, or collec­tions of panegyrics, in honour of women, in verse, in prose, in sermons, or in sonnets, the most singular, without ex­ception, is that which was published at Venice, in 1555, under the title of ‘The Temple of the divine Seigniora Joan of Arragon; erected in honour of her by all the greatest wits, and in all the principal languages of the world.’ She was one of the most extraordinary women of the sixteenth century; and, married to a prince of the house of Co­lonna, was mother to Mark Anthony of Colonna, who signalized himself in the battle of Lepanto, against the Turks.

[Page 114] This ideal temple was erected in conse­quence of a decree passed at Venice, in the year 1551, in the academy of the DUBBIOSI. One of the members of that society had conceived the notion of such a deification; but the idea was too happy not to be adopted by the body. They had only one dispute, which divided them much; viz. whether Joan of Ar­ragon should possess alone the honours of the temple, or if they should associate with that divinity the marchioness de Guast her sister, and no less celebrated. But after mature deliberation and many learned arguments on both sides, it ap­peared to the academy, that two divini­ties, two sovereigns, and two women would not much love to dwell together; it was therefore resolved, ‘That the marchioness de Guast have separate worship; and that Joan of Arragon, her sister, remain in the sole and ex­clusive possession of her altars.’ They next proceeded to the building of the temple; and the Latin, Greek, Italian, French, Spanish, Sclavonic, Polonize, Hungarian, Hebrew, Chaldaic, and many [Page 115]other languages, were made use of in the fabrication of that monument;—one of the most extraordinary that ever gallan­try raised to beauty.

SECTION IV. The subject continued.

THE same spirit which in that era gave birth to so many panegyrics on wo­men, produced a number of books on the merit of the sex in general. The impor­tant question of the equality, or superi­ority, of the sexes was agitated:—and, during five hundred years, there was a kind of literary combination for assigning the pre-eminence to the women.

At the head of that conspiracy was the famous Cornelius Agrippa; who, born at Cologn in 1486, studied all the sci­ences, embraced all conditions, travelled all countries; who bore arms with dis­tinction, and was afterwards divine, doc­tor of law, doctor of physic; who com­mented on the Epistles of St. Paul in [Page 116]England, gave lectures on the philoso­pher's Stone at Turin, on divinity at Pavia, and practised physic in Switzer­land; who was successively connected with three or four princes and princesses, and was only the more unfortunate; who bore injuries with courage, and without complaining; who was twice in fetters; who was always wandering, because al­ways guided by a warm and weak imagi­nation,—because unfit either to be free or to be a slave; because he could neither endure poverty nor dependence; and who, after having excited by turns, or at once, pity, admiration, and hate, died in France in the forty-ninth year of his age, loaded with reputation, and oppressed with misfortunes.

He had published, in 1509, his trea­tise ‘Of the Excellence of Women above the Men.’ He had then the misfortune to please the famous Margaret of Austria, who governed the Low Countries. It is a pity that little cir­cumstance should have mingled itself with so gallant a cause. The book is divided [Page 117]into thirty chapters; and, in each chap­ter, he demonstrates the superiority of the women by theological, physical, his­torical, cabalistical, and moral proofs. He calls to his assistance scripture and fable, the historians, the poets, the civil and canon laws, cites a great deal more than he reasons, and concludes with pro­testing, that he had no human motive for writing but a sense of duty; because every man who knows the truth holds it in trust, and consequently silence would be a crime.

The Italians, on reading that work, must have considered it as a robbery, which had been committed in their terri­tories by a native of Germany. But they soon reimbursed themselves. Cardinal Pompoeia Colonna, Portio, Lando, Do­menichi, Maggio, Bernado, Spina, and a great many others, all wrote on the perfection of women.

But the most singular work on the sub­ject is that of Ruscelli. It appeared at Venice in 1552. Ruscelli came after all [Page 118]the rest; and dissatisfied, as he says, with the manner in which they had supported a cause so evident, he conceived new proofs, so positive, that henceforth there could not be the possibility of a doubt. After having copied, criticised, and com­mented upon Agrippa, he throws in some sublime speculations of his own, and en­deavours to prove, that the contempla­tion of beauty alone can render man happy on earth, and raise him to the contemplation of the divinity.

Such is the scope of Ruscelli's com­position. But the effect of his reasoning is destroyed by the consused impression which is made on the mind of the reader, by the mixture of divinity and Platonism; by blending through the whole the name of God and of woman; by placing Moses by the side of Petrarch and of Dante; and by giving in the same page, and even in the same period, quotations from Boccace and from St. Augustine, from 0 Homer and from St. John.

[Page 119] Nothing, in my opinion, can exhibit a truer picture than this performance does of the spirit of the sixteenth cen­tury, particularly in Italy; where the same man was or would be, in good earnest, a lover, a devotee, a christian, a pagan, a divine, and a philosopher. Perhaps even that extravagant combina­tion of ideas and of characters must ne­cessarily be found in a country, where we often meet with the ruins of a temple of Jupiter in the neighbourhood of a church, a statue of St. Peter upon a column of Trajan, and a Madona beside an Apollo.

It appears, that even after Ruscelli had written, there were still infidels to persuade, and that the work of conver­sion was not thought complete; for we find a great many future performances published in Italy, in France, and in Spain, on the same subject.

In 1593, a celebrated Venetian, al­ready mentioned, MODESTA DI POZZO DI ZORZI, maintained the superiority of her sex to ours. Her performance had [Page 120]great success: and, unfortunately for her, what perhaps added to its celebrity was, that one might commend without jealousy. She died just as it was pub­lished. The men, however, always viewed with pleasure those kind of compositions by women. Pride, which construes every thing to its own advantage, regarded as so many proofs of its pre-eminence, the very efforts which were made to demon­strate its inferiority.

Lucretia Marinella, another Venetian lady, supported the same cause. Her performance is intituled, ‘The Dignity and Excellence of Women, with the Faults and Imperfections of Men.’ The men, at least, will not be accused of the fault of injustice to her; for she had all the success which beauty can give to genius.

In 1628, yet another Italian perform­ance appeared upon ‘The Dignity of Women.’ The author of that book was one Christopher Bronzini. The work is in dialogue, and divided by Days. [Page 121]We may judge by the extent of his plan how rich the subject appeared to him: his division is twenty-four Days. The eighth Day, in which nothing is treated of but marriage, occupies upwards of two hundred pages. Bronzini, in praise­ing the women, has assigned them no rank, and has left the dispute of the sexes undecided.

But, in 1650, a book appeared, in which the controversy was treated very prettily. The title of the piece was, ‘Woman better than man; a paradox, by James del Pozzo.’ It seems doubt­ful how far the women would be flattered with the word Paradox.

In Spain, in the sixteenth century, John Spinosa wrote a dialogue in praise of women. We may believe that he ex­tolled them with all the imagination of his country, and with all the majesty of his language.

The French women were [...] less zealous than the Italian to support the [Page 122]honour of their sex. Margaret queen of Navarre, and first wife to Henry IV. by turns devout and gay, and more ce­lebrated for the sprightliness of her wit than the purity of her manners, under­took to prove, in a piece in the form of a letter, ‘that Woman is much superior to Man.’

Mademoiselle de Gournay, who de­served to be adopted by Montagne, wrote also upon her sex; but, more modest, or more timid, she confined her pretensions, and was contented with equality. That modesty however did not hinder Mary Schurman,— born at Cologn, and who in her life-time had a prodigious reputa­tion, — to say, after she had read M. de Gournay's book in honour of her sex, ‘I neither would nor dare approve all that is contained in this performance.’ Yet, if any woman ever had a right to aspire at the superiority, it was perhaps that lady. She was a painter, musician, engraver, sculptor, philosopher, geome­trician, divine, and understood and spoke nine different languages,

[Page 123] In 1643, a piece appeared at Paris under this title: ‘The Generous Wo­man; who shews that her Sex is more noble, more patriotic, more brave, more learned, more virtuous, and more oeconomical than that of man.’

In 1665, another lady published at Paris a book intituled, ‘The illustrious Dames; where, by good and strong Reasons, it is proved, that the Wo­men surpass the Men.’

In 1673, a performance appeared in­tituled, ‘The Equality of the two Sexes: Discourses philosophical and moral, in which are shewn the Im­portance of divesting ourselves of Pre­judices.’

In 1675, the Author of the last-men­tioned piece refuted himself, in a trea­tise on ‘The Excellency of Men, against the Equality of the Sexes.’ But he reasons feebly, as if afraid of refuting himself, and overturning his former system.

[Page 124] A lady of Languedoc, in the same century, was willing to repossess herself of the superiority, and endeavoured to establish it by GOOD and SURE reasons. In short, that opinion, or that contro­versy, produced a kind of war among writers otherwise obscure, and gave birth to Dissertations, to Answers, and to Re­plies, now equally unknown: and it is but just to remark, that few of them de­serve to be read, and that the question has not been properly treated in any of them. Authority is always substituted for argument. Such pedants should be told, that twenty citations will not make a reason.

SECTION V. OF THE COMPARATIVE MERIT OF THE TWO SEXES.

TO determine this grand question of self-love and rivalry between the sexes, it would be necessary to examine the strength or weakness of their organs; the education of which they are ca­pable; the end of nature in forming them; how far it is possible to correct or to change her purpose; which would [Page 2]gain, and which would lose by departing from her; and, in short, to mark par­ticularly the influence which the dif­ference of duties, of occupations, and of manners, must unavoidably have on the genius, on the sentiments, and on the character of the two sexes.

In comparing the intellectual powers of the sexes, it would be necessary to consider distinctly the philosophical ta­lent, which meditates; the talent of me­mory, which collects; the talent of ima­gination, which creates; the moral and political talent, which governs.

It would further be necessary to in­quire, to what degree women possess these four kinds of genius: If the na­tural weakness of their organs, which is the cause of their beauty; if the in­quietude of their character, which arises from their imagination; if the multi­tude and the variety of their sensations, which are numbered among their charms, may not deprive them of that vigorous and continued attention which is requi­site [Page 3]to connect a numerous train of ideas — an attention, which excludes all other objects, to view and contemplate one; which out of a single idea produces a multitude, all chained to the first; or which, out of a number of scattered ideas, selects one primitive and vast idea which combines all the rest.

This philosophical spirit is rare, in­deed, even among men; but still there are many great men who have possessed it—who have raised themselves to the height of nature to become acquainted with her works; who have shewn to the soul the source of its ideas; who have assigned to reason its bounds, to motion its laws, and to the universe its harmony; who have created sciences in creating principles, and who have aggrandised the human mind in cultivating their own. If there is no woman found on a level with those illustrious men, is it the fault of education, or of nature?

Descartes, abused by envious men, but admired by two generous princesses, [Page 4]boasted of the philosophical talents of women. I am far however from think­ing that his gratitude could lead him into a voluntary error, even in compliment to beauty. He would no doubt find in Elizabeth and in Christina a docility which prided itself in listening to so great a man, and which seemed to associate it­self with his genius in following the range of his ideas. He might perhaps even find in the compositions of women per­spicuity, order, and method; but did he find that strong discernment, that depth of intellect, that dissidence which characterises the real philosopher? — Did he find that cool reason which, always inquisitive, advances slowly, and remea­sures all its steps?—Their genius, pene­trating and rapid, flies off, — and is at rest. They have more sallies than ef­forts. What they do not see at once, they either cannot see at all, or they dis­dain, or they despair to see. It is there­fore little wonder they should want that unremitted assiduity, which alone can pursue and discover important truths.

[Page 5] Imagination might seem rather to be their province.

It has been observed, that the imagi­nation of women has in it something un­accountably singular and extraordinary. All things strike it; all things paint themselves on it in a lively manner. Their volatile senses embrace every object, and carry off its image. Some unknown powers, some secret sympathies enable them rapidly to seize the impressions. The material world is not sufficient for them: they love to create an ideal world of their own; which they embellish, and prodigies — whatever transcends the ordinary laws of nature, is their cre­ation, and their delight. They enjoy even their terrors. Their feelings are fine, and their fancy always approaches to enthusiasm.

But it would be necessary to inquire, how far that fancy, when applied to the arts, can unfold itself in the talent of creating and of painting: if their imagi­nation [Page 6]is as vigorous, as it is lively and versatile; if it does not unavoidably par­take of their occupations, of their plea­sures, of their tastes, and even of their weaknesses. I suspect that their delicate fibres are afraid of strong sensations, which fatigue them, and that they seek the soft, on which they may repose.

Man, always active, is exposed to storms. The imagination of the poet enjoys itself on the ridge of mountains, on the brink of volcanoes, in the middle of ruins, on seas, and on fields of battle; and it is never more susceptible of vo­luptuous and tender ideas, than after having experienced some great emotion.

But women, by means of their delicate and sedentary life, less acquainted with the contrast of the gentle and the terrible, may be supposed to feel and to paint less perfectly, even the agreeable sensations, than those who, thrown into opposite conditions, pass rapidly from the one sentiment to the other. Perhaps too, from the habit of resigning themselves to [Page 7]the impression of the moment, which with them is very strong, their minds must be more replenished with images than pictures:—or perhaps their imagi­nation, though lively, may be compared to a mirror, which reflects fairly, mag­nifies, multiplies, distorts, or diminishes, like their good-humour, their hopes, their fears, their jealousies, their envies, the forms of all things, but creates no­thing.

Love is without dispute the passion which the women feel the strongest, and which they express the best. They feel the other passions more feebly, and by rebound: but love is their own; it is the charm and the business of their life; it is their soul. They should therefore know well how to paint it.

But do they know, like the author of Othello, of The Revenge, or of Zara, to express the transports of a troubled soul, which joins fury to love; which is sometimes impetuous, and sometimes tender; which now is softened, and now [Page 8]is roused; which sheds blood, and which sacrifices itself? Can they paint these doublings of the human heart, these storms of emotion and passion?—No: na­ture herself restrains them. She has given to one of the sexes bold desires, and the right of attack; to the other she has assigned the province of defence, and timid desires, which attract by resist­ing. Love in the one sex is a conquest, in the other a sacrifice.

It therefore follows, that the women of all countries, and in all ages, must have known better how to paint a delicate and tender sentiment, than a violent and turbulent passion. Obliged, in short, by their duty, by the reserve of their sex, by the desire of a certain charm, which is more bewitching than wit, and more at­tractive than beauty, always to conceal a part of their sentiments,—must not these sentiments, by being continually con­strained, become weaker by degrees, and have less energy than those of men, who, at all times, bold and extravagant with impunity, give to their passions what tome [Page 9]they please, and which are invigorated by exercise?

A temporary constraint inflames the passions; but a continued constraint cools or extinguishes them.

With regard to the talent of order and memory, which classes facts, and ideas when necessary, as it depends a good deal upon method and habit, there seems little reason why the two sexes may not possess it in an equal degree, Yet it would still be necessary to examine, if the women would not be deficient in the quantity of materials, which are so es­sential to erudition; if excessive appli­cation would not more easily disgust them. Is it not true, that their impa­tience and natural desire of change, which arise from fleeting and rapid impressions, prevent them from following for a course of years the same kind of study, and con­sequently from acquiring profound or extensive knowledge? We are sensible they have qualities of mind which atone for it. It is not the same hand which [Page 10]polishes the diamond, and which digs the mine.

We come now to a more important object, the moral and political talent; which consists in the regulating of our­selves and of others. To compare the advantages and disadvantages of the two sexes with regard to this object, it would be necessary to observe the same talent in society, and when applied to govern­ment.

The women in society, by being con­tinually upon the look-out, from the double motive of curiosity and of policy, must have a perfect knowledge of men. They must be able to disentangle all the folds of self-love; to discover the secret weaknesses, the false modesties, and the false grandeurs; what a man is, and what he would be; the qualities which he shews, even by an effort to conceal them; his esteem marked even in his satires, and by his satires themselves. They must know and distinguish cha­racters: —the cool pride, which enjoys [Page 11]itself in state; the warm and impetuous pride, which is easily inflamed; the vain sensibility, the tender sensibility, the sen­sibility which is veiled under an appear­ance of indifference; the pretended le­vity, and the levity of the heart; the dif­fidence which proceeds from character, from vice, from misfortune, or from the mind; in short, all the sentiments, and all their shades.

As women set a high value on opi­nion, they must reflect much upon what can produce it, destroy it, or confirm it. They must know how far one may direct, without appearing to be interested; how far one may presume upon that art, even after it is known; in what estimation they are held by those with whom they live, and to what degree it is necessary to serve them that they may govern them.

In all matters of business women know the great effects which are produced by little causes. They have the art of im­posing upon some, by seeming to discover [Page 12]to them what they already know; of di­verting others from their purpose, by confirming their most distant suspicions. They know how to captivate by praises, those who merit them; and to raise a blush, by bestowing them where they are not due.

These delicate sciences are the leading­strings in which the women conduct the men. Society to them is like a harpsi­chord, of which they know the touches: they can divine the sound which every one will produce. But the men, bold and free, supplying address by force, consequently having less call for observa­tion, and hurried along besides by the continual necessity of acting, can scarcely be possessed of that crowd of little no­tices and polite attentions, which are every moment necessary in the commerce of life: their calculations therefore on society must be more slow, and less sure, than those of women.

It would afterwards be necessary to compare the genius of the two sexes, as applied to government.

[Page 13] In society men are governed by their passions, and the least motives often pro­duce the greatest consequences. But, in the government of states, it is by com­prehensive views, by the choice of prin­ciples, and, above all, by the discovery and the employment of talents, that suc­cess can be obtained. Here, instead of taking advantage of foibles, we must fear them; we must raise men above their weaknesses, not lead them into them.

The art of governing in society may therefore be said to consist in flattering vice and folly with address; and the art of administration, in combating them with judgment. The knowledge of man­kind required in the two cases is very dif­ferent: In the one, they must be known by their weakness; in the other, by their strength. The one takes part with fail­ings, for little ends; the other discovers great qualities, which are mingled with those very faults. The one, in short, seeks little blemishes in great men, and the other, in dissecting great men, must often [Page 14]perceive the same spots: for perfect cha­racters exist only in Utopia.

Let us now examine, if this kind of genius and observation agrees equally with the character of the two sexes. I know that there are women who have reigned, and who still reign with lustre. Christina in Sweden, Isabella of Castile in Spain, and Elizabeth in England, have merited the esteem of their age, and of posterity. We saw, in the war of 1741, a princess, whom even her enemies ad­mired, defend the German empire with no less genius than courage; and we be­hold, at this day, the Ottoman empire shaken by a woman. But, in general questions, we should beware of taking exceptions for rules; we ought to at­tend only to the ordinary course of na­ture.

It therefore becomes necessary to in­quire, if in society the women being less engaged in action, and in general less fit for it, can know so well as the other sex, the talents of men, their use, or their [Page 15]extent; if great views, and the applica­tion of great principles, including the habit of seizing at a glance the result of things, correspond not ill with the pro­lixity of their imagination, or at least with the arrangement of their ideas. It is character chiefly which governs; it is the vigour of the soul which gives im­pulse to genius, which strengthens and extends political capacity. But this cha­racter is seldom formed but by great com­motions, by great hopes, by great fears, and by the necessity of being continually engaged in action. Is not then the cha­racter of women in general, better calcu­lated for elegance than for sway?—for attraction than for command?—Does not their rapid imagination, which often makes sentiment precede thought, render them more susceptible of prejudice or of error in the choice of men?—Would not one be in danger of abuse, would not one even run the risk of their displea­sure, if he should say, that in the distri­bution of their esteem they would set too high a value upon external accomplish­ments; and, in short, that they would [Page 16]perhaps be too easily led to believe, that an agreeable man was a great man?—

Yet Elizabeth was not free from this censure. The inclinations of her sex stole beneath the cares of the throne, and the grandeur of her character. We are chagrined at certain times, to see the little weaknesses of a woman mingle with the views of a great mind. If Mary queen of Scotland had been less fair, perhaps her rival had been less cruel. This taste for coquetry, as is well known, furnished Elizabeth with favourites; in the choice of which she judged more like a woman than a sovereign. She was al­ways too ready to believe, that the power of pleasing her implied genius.

That so much celebrated queen exer­cised over England an almost arbitrary sway; at which perhaps we ought not to be surprised. Women in general on the throne are more inclined to despotism, and more impatient of restraint than men. The sex to whom nature has assigned power by giving them strength, have a [Page 17]certain confidence which raises them in their own eyes; so that they have no need of manifesting to themselves that superiority of which they are sure. But weakness, astonished at the sway which she possesses, shakes her sceptre on every side, to establish her dominion.

Great men are perhaps 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.

One thing which favours the despo­tism of female sovereigns is, that the men confound the empire of their sex with that of their rank. What we refuse to grandeur, we pay to beauty. But the dominion of women, even when arbi­trary, is seldom cruel. Theirs is rather a despotism of caprice, than of oppres­sion. The throne itself cannot cure their [Page 18]sensibility they carry in their bosoms the counterpoise of their power ^*

If, after having compared the talents of the two sexes, we should compare their virtues, we would receive very dif­ferent informations.

Both experience and history attest, that in all sects, in all countries, and in all ranks, the women have more religious virtues than the men. Naturally pos­sessed of more sensibility, they have more need of an object that may unceasingly occupy their souls; they offer to God a sentiment which they cannot contain, and which otherwise would be a crime. Greedy of happiness, and not finding enough in this world, they launch into a life and a world abounding with ineffable delights. Extreme in their desires, no­thing limited can satisfy them.—More [Page 19]flexible in their duties than men, they reason less, and feel more. More sub­jected to good opinion, they pay more attention to what concerns themselves. Less occupied, and less active, they have more time for contemplation. Less ab­stracted or absent, they are more strongly affected by the same idea, because they see it continually. More struck by ex­ternal objects, they relish more the pageantry of ceremonies and of temples; and the devotion of the senses has no in­considerable effect on that of the soul. Confined, in short, on all hands, denied the effusion of their sentiments to men by the reserve of their sex, to women by an eternal rivalry, they may at least talk of their pleasures and their pains to the great Being who knows them, and they often pour into his bosom many dear weak­nesses of which the world are ignorant. In so doing they recall their beloved er­rors, they enjoy even their sorrow, with­out reproaching themselves; and afflict­ed, yet free from remorse, because un­der the eye of a benevolent Deity, they [Page 20]find secret delights in repenting, and in combating their warmest wishes.

It should seem therefore, in conse­quence of the character of women, that their religion must be more tender, and that of men more severe, the one con­sisting more in practice, the other in principles; and, in exalting their reli­gious ideas, that the woman is more liable to superstition, the man to fanati­cism. But, if once fanaticism catch hold of the woman, her more lively imagina­tion will carry her a greater length; and, more austere even from the dread of sen­sibility, what was formerly a part of her charms, will only contribute to increase her fury.

The domestic virtues are intimately connected with those of religion. They are doubtless common to both sexes: but the advantage seems still to be in favour of the women. At least they have more need of virtues which they have more occasion to practice.

[Page 21] In the first period of life, timid, and without support, the girl is more attached to her mother: by seldom leaving her, she comes to love her more. The trem­bling innocent is cheared by the presence of her protectress; and her weakness, while it heightens her beauty, augments her sensibility. Become mother, she has other duties, which all things invite her to fulfil. Then the condition of the two sexes is widely different.

Man, in the middle of his labours, and among his arts, employing his powers, and commanding nature, finds a pleasure in his industry, in his success, and even in his toils. But woman, more solitary, and less active, has fewer resources: her pleasures must arise from her virtues; her amusements are her family. It is by the cradle of her child—it is in viewing the smiles of her daughter, or the sports of her son, that a mother is happy.

And where are the bowels, the cries, the powerful emotions of nature?— Where is the sentiment, at once sublime [Page 22]and pathetic, that carries every feeling to excess?—is it to be found in the frosty indifference, and the four severity of so many fathers?—No; but in the warm and passionate bosom of a mother. It is she, who by an impulse, as quick as in­voluntary, rushes into the flood to pre­serve a boy, whose imprudence had be­trayed him to the waves. It is she, who, in the middle of a conflagration, throws herself across the flames to save a sleeping infant. It is she, who with dishevelled locks, pale, distracted, embraces with transport the body of a dead child, press­ing its cold lips to hers, as if she would reanimate by her tears and her caresses the insensible clay.

These great expressions of nature, these heart-rending emotions, which fill us at once with wonder, compassion, and terror, always have belonged, and always will belong, only to women. They pos­sess in those moments an inexpressible something, which carries them beyond themselves; they seem to discover to [Page 23]us new souls, above the standard of hu­manity.

If we consider even the matrimonial duties, the obligations of husband and wife; which of the two sexes is most likely to be faithful?—which, in violating them, has most obstacles to encounter? —Is not woman best defended by her education, by her reserve, by that mo­desty which silences even her desires, and sometimes disputes the rights of the most tender love?—To these restraints we may add, the power of the first passion and the first ties over a heart endowed with sensibility, and which had formerly been forbid to love; the force of opinion, which reigns so despotically over the wo­men, and which, tyrant-like, applauds often the same weaknesses in the one sex, for which it devotes the other to in­famy.

Nature herself, attentive in this in­stance to the manners of women, has taken care to surround them with the strongest, yet the gentlest barriers. She [Page 24]has made inconstancy more painful, and fidelity more pleasing to their hearts:— and it must be owned, that they have seldom begun the disorders of families. Even in ages of general corruption, con­jugal infidelity in women has been one of the last of crimes.

After the religious and domestic vir­tues come the social virtues; and first the virtues of sensibility, or the sweet and affectionate passions. The chief of these are friendship and love.

It has long been a question, which of the two sexes is most capable of friend­ship. Montaigne, who is so much cele­brated for his knowledge of human na­ture, has given it positively against the women; and his opinion has been gene­rally embraced: but he appears to have judged too hastily on this subject. Through his whole Essays, indeed, he has done too little justice to the gentle sex. Perhaps—for we cannot accuse him of insensibility—he was like that [Page 25]judge who, conscious of his own weak­ness, was so much afraid of being par­tial, that he decided every cause against his friends.

If I were to converse with Montaigne on this subject, I would say to him,

‘You undoubtedly agree, that friend­ship is the sentiment of two souls, which seek and which have need of the support of each other. Now it should seem, that the sex whose head and hands are most occupied; which is most independent; which is most free; which has the greatest ability of expanding its ideas, and of employing its sentiments; which in prosperity is better supported by pride; which in adversity is more humbled than af­flicted; which in all conditions has a consciousness of its powers, and which glories in them—it should seem that man could more easily dispense with the commerce, and the sweet effusions of friendship. But woman, delicate and feeble, and on that account having [Page 26]more need of support; in herself more subject to chagrin, to private griefs, and to that sorrow of heart which finds more relief in sensibility than pride; in the world, obliged almost always to play a part, and to carry along with her a load of sensations and of ideas, which she hides, and which oppress her—woman, in short, to whom externals are nothing, and her feelings every thing; woman, in whom every thing produces a sentiment, to whom indifference is violence, and who knows almost only to love and to hate, must feel more exquisitely the liberty and the pleasure of a secret commerce, and the tender considence which friendship gives and receives.’

Montaigne would not fail to reply,

From these objections, it may per­haps follow, that friendship in women must be more rare than among men; but it will also be allowed at the same time, that it must be more delicate and more [Page 30]tender. Men have in general more of the parade than the elegance of friend­ship. They often wound while they serve; and their warmest sentiments are not sufficiently illuminated with those little attentions which are of so much va­lue in the intercourse of souls. But wo­men have a sensibility which is never ab­sent, which never forgets or omits any thing. Nothing escapes them: they di­vine the hidden friendship; they en­courage the bashful or timid friendship, and they offer their sweetest consolations to friendship in distress. Furnished with siner instruments, they treat more deli­cately a wounded heart; they compose it, and prevent it from feeling its ago­nies: and they know, above all things, to give an importance to circumstances which have none in themselves. We ought therefore perhaps to desire the friendship of a man upon great occasions; but, for general happiness, we must pre­fer the friendship of a woman.

Women in love have the same delica­cies and the same weaknesses. Their [Page 31]passions are keen: they either love at once, or do not love at all. Men are less easily inflamed, and by degrees. The passions of women, by being more con­strained, are perhaps more ardent: they are nursed by silence, and roused by op­position. Fear and modesty mingle in­quietude with love in their gentle hearts, and by exercising it, double its force. — When a man is sure of his conquest, his passion is tinctured with pride; but a woman is then only more tender. The more her confession has cost her, the more dearly she loves the man to whom it was made. She attaches herself by her sacrifices. Virtuous, she enjoys her denials; guilty, she glories in the fa­vours she bestows.

Women therefore, when love is a pas­sion, are more constant than men; but, when it is only an appetite, they are more libertine. For then they feel no more those anxieties, those struggles, and that sweet shame, which impressed the delicious sentiment so strongly on their hearts. Nothing remains but the [Page 32]senses and imagination: — senses guided by caprice; an imagination wasted by its own ardour, and which is every moment inflamed and extinguished.

After love and friendship come bene­volence, and that generous compassion which interests the heart in the missor­tunes of others. These are more parti­cularly the portion of women. Every thing inclines them to generosity and Their delicate senses revolt at the presence of distress and pain. Objects of misery and aversion discompose the soft indolence of their minds. Their souls are more hurt by images of sorrow and of spleen than tormented by their own sensibility. They must therefore be very anxious to afford relief. — They possess besides in a high degree, that instinctive feeling, which operates without reason­ing; and they often relieve, while men deliberate. Their benevolence is perhaps less rational, but it is more active. It is also more attentive, and more tender. What woman has ever been wanting in commiseration to the unfortunate?

But it would be necessary to examine if women, so susceptible of friedship, of love, of piety, of benevolence to in­dividuals, can elevate themselves to that patriotism, or disinterested love of one's country, which embraces all its citizens, and to that philanthropy, or universal love of mankind, which embraces all nations.

I would not be thought to undervalue patriotism. It is the noblest sentiment of the human mind; at least it is that which has produced the greatest men, and which gave birth to those ancient heroes, whose history still astonishes our imagi­nation, and accuses our weakness. But if we should trace its source, and exa­mine in what it consists, we would find that this boasted virtue is almost always a composition of pride and selfishness, ge­nerated by the ideas of interest and pro­perty, by the remembrance of past ser­vices, by the hope of future honours or rewards, and a certain factitious enthu­siasm which robs men of themselves, to [Page 34]transform their existence entirely into the body of the state.

These sentiments, it will readily be perceived, do not correspond with the condition of women. In almost all go­vernments, excluded from honours, and from offices, they can neither obtain, nor hope to obtain, nor attach them­selves to the state, from the pride of having held a place of eminence. Pos­sessed of little property, and restrained by the laws even in what they have, the form of legislation in all countries must make them in a great measure indifferent to public welfare. Never acting or fight­ing for their country, they have not one flattering remembrance to tie them to it, by vanity, by labours, or by virtues. Existing, in short, more in themselves, and in the objects of their sensibility, and being perhaps less fitted than men by na­ture for the civil institutions in which they have less share, they must be less susceptible of that enthusiasm, which makes a man prefer the state to his fa­mily, [Page 35]and the collective body of his fel­low-citizens to himself.

The example of the women of Rome and Sparta, I am sensible, may be urged in objection to these observations; but those ancient republics are not to be compared with our modern establish­ments. The wonders performed by the Dutch women, in the revolution of the Seven Provinces, will likewise perhaps be urged. To which I answer, that the glorious enthusiasm of liberty can do all things; that there are times when nature is astonished at herself; and that great virtues spring from great calamities. But of such there is no reasoning.

If the love of their country is little suited to women, that universal love of mankind, which extends to all nations, and to all ages, and which is a kind of abstract sentiment, seems to correspond still less with their character. They must have an image of what they love. It is only by the power of arranging his ideas, that the philosopher is able to overleap [Page 36]so many barriers; to pass from a man, to a people; from a people, to human kind; from the time in which he lives, to ages yet unborn; and from what he sees, to what he does not see.

The tender sex do not love to send their souls so far a-wandering. They as­semble their sentiments and their ideas about them, and confine their affections to what interests them most. Those strides of benevolence to women are out of nature. A man to them, is more than a nation; and the hour in which they live, than a thousand ages after death.

There are certain qualities, which have generally been ranked among the social virtues, but which may more properly be called THE VIRTUES OF POLISHED LIFE. They are the charm and the bond of company; and are useful at all times and upon all occasions. They are in the commerce of the world, what current money is in trade: they are sometimes not absolutely necessary, but [Page 37]one can never safely be without them; and they always procure the possessor a more favourable reception. Such is that mild complacency, which gives a softness to the character, and an attractive sweet­ness to the manners; that indulgence, which pardons the faults of others, even when it has no need of pardon itself; the art of not seeing the weaknesses which discover themselves, and of keeping the secret of those who hide it; of conceal­ing our advantages, when we humble our rivals or opponents; of dealing gently with those, who cannot submit without being offended: that facility, which adopts ideas which it never had; that delicate foresight, which divines the fears of those with whom we converse, and encourages the display of thought and sentiment; that freedom, which inspires confidence; and all that politeness, in short, which perhaps is not virtue,—nay, which is sometimes no more than a happy lie,—but which gives laws to self-love, and makes pride sit easy by the side of pride, which would otherwise every moment be wounded.

[Page 38] We shall not trace the parallel of the sexes through all these sentiments; but it is necessary to observe in general, that the women correct that rudeness which pride and passion introduce into the com­pany of men. Their delicate hand smooths the asperities of human life. Politeness is a part of their character; it is connected with their mind, with their manners, and even with their interest. To the most virtuous woman society is a field of conquest.

Few men have formed the project of making every body happy, and so much the worse for those who have: but many women have not only formed such a scheme, but have succeeded in it. The more general the intercourse of the sexes, the more the talent of pleasing is per­fected; the more general this species of merit; for then there are more little in­terests to conciliate, and characters to unite. Society becomes a complicated machine, and demands more dexterity to regulate its movements.

[Page 39] *We are, in general, so much the more polite, as we are less devoted to ourselves and more to others; as we are more attentive to opinion; as we are more zealous to be distinguished; and, perhaps, in proportion as we have fewer resources and great means of being so. But these are not all: among individuals and among a people, between the sexes and between the ranks, politeness sup­poses a certain degree of idleness; for it supposes the habit and the necessity of living together. Hence the art of regu­lating our behaviour, of adjusting our looks, our words, and our motions; the need of attentions, and all the little gra­tifications of vanity. We are naturally inclined to pay that homage which we re­ceive, and to exact that which we pay. Thus the delicacy of self-love produces all the refinements in society; as the de­licacy of the senses produces all the re­finements in pleasure; and as the deli­cacy of taste, which is perhaps only the result of the other two, produces all the refinements in literature, arts, and sci­ences.—It will be easy to discern how [Page 40]these objects are connected with one another, and how they are all related to women.

But refined politeness, it may be said, is allied to falshood. It substitutes the expression of sentiment too often for sentiment itself. Hence the reproach so common against women:—and it must be owned, that they are by nature more disposed to every kind of dissimulation than men. Power and independance dis­play all their motions with freedom; but weakness and the art of pleasing, must ob­serve and measure all theirs. The timid sex therefore learn to hide the sentiments which they have, and exhibit those which they have not.

A man may be open without being on that account entitled to praise; for he is often so without effort, nay from an im­petuosity of soul which he cannot re­strain; but sincerity in a woman, when real, is never without merit. Men are sometimes frank by design: women sel­dom affect that species of hypocrisy; and [Page 41]when they do, to please the better, they give to their frankness the air of confi­dence. It is a sacrifice which they make to friendship.

Men owe their frankness to pride, women to address. The one sex often utters a truth without any other view than truth itself; in the mouth of the other, even truth itself has an aim. The falsity of man almost always regards his interest; it is only for himself: that of woman generally proceeds from a desire to please; she refers every thing to others. The one cheats, the other se­duces you.

Flattery is common to both sexes. But the flattery of men is often gross to a degree that is base: that of women is more light, and has more the appearance of sentiment. Even when it is over­done, it is generally amusing, and is ne­ver disgusting. The motive and the manner save them from contempt.

[Page 42] To conclude this parallel, (which is already too long) it would be necessary still to examine the rigid virtues of the two sexes which are connected with jus­tice, and the bold and nervous qualities which are allied to courage.

But almost all the distinctions, which can be made on these subjects, proceed upon the same principles. Thus, for instance, in regard to equity, whence arise the duties of a severe and impartial justice; if there is one of the sexes which almost always feels before it judges, and which is led by an imagination, that gives it aversions or likings for which it cannot account; whose caprices an uniform and inflexible rule would fatigue; and whose decisions have at all times been more go­verned by particular ideas, than by ge­neral views: it must be owned, that such a character agrees ill with that rigid equity which pays less regard to circum­stances than to facts, and to persons than to things. Hence women rarely re­semble the law, which pronounces with­out [Page 43]love or hate. Their justice has al­ways some head-mark, to distinguish those whom it condemns or absolves. Consult the annals of history, and you will find them generally bordering on ex­cess of pity, or excess of vengeance. They want that cool deliberation which knows where to stop: to them modera­tion is torment.

A woman of some genius has said ^*, that the French seem to have escaped from the hands of nature, since they have nothing in their composition but air and fire. She might have said as much of her sex; but she, no doubt, was un­willing to betray her secret.

It might seem bold, to presume to de­termine how far the two sexes are by nature susceptible of courage. But the word Courage is so vague, that to give it any determinate idea we must distinguish that virtue into its different species.

[Page 44] The distinction of mental and animal courage, is well known: but these two kinds subdivide themselves again. In the courage of mind, for example, we find a courage of principle, which de­fies opinion; a courage of will, which gives energy to the soul, and spurns con­straint; a courage of constancy, which supports the idea of toil, and toil itself; a calm courage, which, in the most deli­cate circumstances, views all things deli­berately. In the animal courage, in like manner, we find a courage against pain, which knows how to suffer; a courage against danger, whether it consists of that hardiness which encounters, or that firmness which keeps its post; an habi­tual courage, which is always the same, and which discovers itself at all times, and upon all occasions; and that enthu­siastic courage, which is a kind of fine fever of the soul, which rages and ceases by fits, and which meets with intrepidity at one time, what it would shrink from at another.

[Page 45] It would not be necessary to make a particular application of these, details; the reader's own reflections will be suffi­cient. We ought, however, to observe, that the courage which the women pos­sess in the highest degree, is that of sup­porting pain; which is no doubt owing to the variety of ills to which they are subjected by nature. But whatever it proceeds from, the fact is certain: they would sooner suffer than displease, and would a thousand times rather endure pain than reproach.

We have likewise seen women demon­strate an extraordinary courage in dan­ger; but it is always owing to some strong passion, or great idea, which rouses their minds, and elevates them above themselves. Then their inflamed imagination gives a new direction to the imagination of their sex; and their ar­dent sensibility, tending to one object, at­tracts the little sensibilities of character, which are the sources of fear and of weakness. Under such agitations they possess a courage which nothing can [Page 46]withstand, and which in effort exceeds even habitual valour; which, by reason of its experience, has less impetuosity, as it borders less upon extravagance.

These are some of the subjects which should be discussed and compared, in settling the dispute of the Equality, or Superiority of the Sexes. To treat the question properly, it would be necessary to be at the same time a physician, an anatomist, and a philosopher; to be equally rational and sentimental; and, above all these singular attainments, one must have the misfortune to be perfectly disinterested.

SECTION VI. Of the Decline of serious Gallantry, and of the Progress of Society in FRANCE.

THE sixteenth century, in which the dispute of the superiority of the sexes was so much agitated, appears to have been the most brilliant era in the [Page 47]annals of women. After that period we find fewer champions, either literary or warlike, enlisted under their banners. The enthusiasm of serious gallantry was somewhat abated. The entire extinction of chivalry in Europe; the abolition of tournaments; the religious wars in Ger­many. and in France, which drew the women of rank to court; and the man­ners which necessarily flow from idleness, from intrigue, and from beauty being regarded as an instrument of fortune—in short the new taste of society which be­gan universally to prevail, a taste which polished the manners in corrupting them, and which, by mingling the sexes advan­tageously, taught them to seek one ano­ther more, but esteem one another less; —all contributed to diminish a senti­ment, which, to gather strength, stands in need of obstacles, and of a certain state of the soul in which it is honoured by its desires, and respected even from its weakness.

The progress of this revolution, how­ever, was for some time slow in France. [Page 48]Under Francis I. who gave the signal of corruption, we find still in the affairs of love a jealousy, a revenge, a hate, and crimes which prove the manners,

Under Catherine of Medicis, love was a mixture of gallantry and fury. The Italian ardour mingled itself with the French voluptuousness. All was in­trigue. They talked of carnage in the rendezvous of beauty, and meditated in dancing the ruin of nations. In the mean time, the attention to policy and war, the factions, the parties, and a ro­mantic something which still remained, gave an energy to the soul, which disco­vered itself even in the sentiments which the women inspired.

The reign of Henry IV. displayed a milder gallantry. That prince joined the courteous manners of a knight, to the weaknesses of a great king. It was thought an honour to imitate him; and his courtiers, bold and brilliant, accus­tomed to glory and to conquest, carried into love a species of that noble courage [Page 49]which they had displayed in the com­bats of war. They were corrupted, but not debased.

Under Lewis XIII. genius, which be­gan to unfold itself, mingled metaphysics with gallantry. Every body knows the famous thesis which Cardinal Richlieu caused to be supported on love. That ludicrous injunction, which some may suppose was given in jest, and intended as a burlesque on the misapplication of learning and talents, was no more than a serious expression of the manners of those times in France. The religious contests had brought controversy into fa­shion. The infant taste in letters made them take the scholastic forms for science. A false wit sprung from a desire of being witty, and the inability to be so. The gallantry, which mingled itself with all things, and which disturbed nothing, be­cause it was not deep—the gallantry, which was rather a twist of the fancy than a sentiment of the heart, adopted the whole mass of absurdities, and formed a jargon equally mystical, metaphysical, [Page 50]and romantic. There was nothing writ­ten or talked of, but dissertations upon the delicacies and the sacrifices of love.

Though we generally descant little up­on what we feel much, yet these conver­sations and reasonings discovered a turn of mind, which, in permitting gallantry, connected it with tenderness, and which always joined to the idea of woman the ideas of sensibility and respect.

The regency of Anne of Austria, and the war of the minority, formed a singu­lar era. France was a scene of anarchy: but the taste of the times mingled plea­santry with battles, and ballads with fac­tions. All things then were conducted by women. They had in that period all the restless agitation which is communi­cated by the spirit of party; a spirit which is less foreign to their character than is commonly supposed. Some pro­duced the shock, others received it. Every one according to her interest and her views caballed, wrote, and conspired. Their assemblies were at midnight. A [Page 51]woman in a bed, or on a sopha, was the soul of the council. There she deter­mined to negociate, to fight, to embroil or accommodate matters with the court.

Love presided at all their consultations. They conspired to ruin a lover in the affections of his mistress, and a mistress in the favour of her lover, with as much solemnity as to lay waste a city, or assass­inate a prince; and not without reason: for a revolution in love almost always announced a revolution in politics.

Each woman had her department, and her dominion. Madame de Montbazon, fair and shewy, governed the duke of Beaufort; Madame de Longueville, the duke of Rochefoucault; Madame de Chatillon, Namours and Conde; Ma­demoiselle de Chevreuse, the Coadjutor; Mademoiselle de Saujon, devout and ten­der, the duke of Orleans; and the duchess of Bouillon, her husband.—In the mean time Madame de Chevreuse, lively and warm, resigned herself to her lovers from taste, and to politics occasion­ally; [Page 52]and the Princess Palatine, in turns the friend and the enemy of the great Conde, by means of her genius more than by her beauty, subjected all whom she desired to please, and whom she had ei­ther a whim or an interest to persuade. She possessed at once a passionate heart and a sound head; and she was no less romantic in love, than politic in the af­fairs of the state.

Women often appeared publicly at the head of factions, in camps, and in councils of war. Then, to the orna­ments of equipage and dress, they joined the ensigns of their party. At such a sight one must have supposed himself transported to the regions of romance, or carried back to the times of ancient chi­valry. On the field, and in the fortress, instruments of music were mingled with instruments of war; curiasses with vio­lins; lutes with spears; and the polish­ed features of beauty bloomed by the side of the war-worn soldier.

Devotion, among the women, blended [Page 53]itself with the spirit of faction, as the spirit of faction did with gallantry. They plotted one hour and prayed the next. So many women of rank never became Carmelites, as at this time. It seemed as if the soul, roused by violent commo­tions, applied itself to all things with greater impetuosity; and that imagina­tion, inflamed by so much exercise, rush­ed with equal rapidity to war, to love, to religion, and to rebellion.

The spirit of gallantry, during the re­gency, had nearly the same character, and the same symptoms, as under Louis XIII. except that the civil war, and that extravagance which great commotions give to the soul, warmed the little tincture of chivalry which still remained in the cup of love.

Anne of Austria had brought to the court of France, a part of the manners of her country. It was a mixture of co­quetry and pride, of sensibility and re­serve; that is to say, a remnant of the ancient and shining gallantry of the [Page 54]Moors, joined to the pomp and the state­liness of the Castillians. Then dances, romances, plays, intrigues, all were Spa­nish. Disguises and nocturnal scenes be­came the fashion: but the French viva­city substituted the violin in place of the languishing guitar. That polite and loyal people, affected passions which they had not, and counted it an honour publicly to gibbet those which they had. A sacred homage to beauty, was numbered among the duties of men. Every thing that re­lated to women was viewed with an eye of importance: the most inconsiderable trifles had a value; and a present of a bracelet, or a complimentary card, made an event in life. They talked as seriously of an affair of gallantry, as of the pro­gress of a negociation, or the issue of a battle ^*.

[Page 55] It was this spirit which formed the character of the first romances of the age of Lewis XIV:—eternal romances, be­cause the writers supposed that all passion must be durable; serious, because they considered love as an important concern in life; full of adventures, because they imagined it must turn the brain; full of conversations, because they made it a science, which had its principles and forms; heroic, above all things, be­cause it must throw the greatest men at the feet of the women, and because they then believed that true passion is insepara­ble from honour, and will elevate itself to its object, in place of seeking to de­base it.

It was that spirit likewise which form­ed the French theatre; and which made the great Corneille himself blend love with the interest of states, with massacre, conspiracy, and parricide.

[Page 56] It was the same general spirit perhaps, which, reigning during the infancy of Lewis XIV. obtained to that monarch among the women the character of being at once great and tender; by which, when young, and passionately in love, he would have placed one of his subjects up­on the throne, and was afterwards able to conquer his weakness; by which he con­ceived a passion, not less warm, for Hen­rietta of England, yet curbed its violence; by which, always a king, though always a lover, he from his youth knew to pre­serve dignity in his pleasures. But, though he covered sensuality with decen­cy, the manners of the women, by a con­currence of circumstances, must have been much altered under his reign.

Hitherto the vices of the court had not been those of the nation. The different orders of the state were more separated. The nobility still retained a remnant of that feudal grandeur, which had made them at once, the formidable rivals of the prince, and the imperious tyrants of the people. The greater their power, [Page 57]the greater the distinction of ranks. Fa­mily pride kept even wealth at a distance. Vanity had not yet given the signal of union. The crown, no longer jealous, removed its barriers; but the nobility multiplied theirs, to separate themselves more completely from those who might have the insolence to pretend to equality.

In those times, licentiousness and free­dom of manners were almost always re­garded as the privilege of rank. The vices of the great were even a part of the oppression of the common people: we are seldom inclined to imitate those whom we hate. The manners of the court therefore could only be communicated to the chief magistrates, and to the rich. But the magistrates were secure in their austerity: living in the study, and in the exercise of justice, they astonished the court, and disdained its vices. With re­gard to the people of wealth, few were really wealthy; the shameful, or the re­cent acquisition of certain fortunes, did not permit the familiarity of pride with those who were; and luxury, which only [Page 58]can place the rich on a level with the great, was by no means general. The nobility had not yet need of trading with their names; and the traders had still less thought of purchasing titles.

As people of business and commerce were then much occupied in their respec­tive employments, they had little time to lose; and, consequently, little knowledge of society. The manners of all who did not belong to the court were very unpolished; and that species of ancient rusticity was the greater bar to coalition, because it was an object of ridicule among the courtiers. The contrast of behaviour marked the limits of pride: the line was too strongly drawn to be mistaken; and neither party was willing to cross it.

Between the capital and the provinces there were not fewer barriers than be­tween the ranks in life. The insecurity of travelling, the scarcity of great roads, of carriages; and, above all, the ab­sence of luxury and factitious wants; and, of course, the absence in a great [Page 59]measure of that restless dissipation which hurries the present inhabitants from place to place, and which makes them run in crowds to the capital in quest of gold, of slavery, and of vice; by retaining eve­ry one under the roof of his fathers, con­tributed to preserve the manners of the nation.

But, under Lewis XIV. all things changed. The people of the court, hav­ing only titles without power, and being reduced from a real to an imaginary gran­deur, mingled more freely in general so­ciety, and with the people of the city. The inequality of fortunes increased with the inequality of taxes. More value was set upon wealth. The great had more wants, the rich had more state; the poor, corrupted by their desires, had less virtue: all ranks approximated.

The magnisicence and luxury of the prince fostered these ideas. His courtiers, involved in debt by their loyalty, and ruined by their pride, soon came to caress those whom they despised. To preserve [Page 60]their titles, it was necessary to share them with families of inferior condition. Gold, extorted from the poor, became the me­diator between the rich and the great. The magistracy itself was metamorphosed. All who resorted to Versailles partook of its manners. The difference of accent was lost in the polish of society. The rust of ancient manners disappeared. All orders of men mingled.

The provinces were deserted. The misery of the country, the luxury of the city; the ambition, the amours, the re­putation of the prince, and his conquests; the romantic feasts of his court; the pleasures even of the mind drew every body to the capital. They went there in crowds; quitted there prejudices, blush­ed for their manners, and at once polish­ed, enriched, and corrupted themselves.

It is easy to see what influence all these changes, and this universal intercourse must have had upon the women. Gal­lantry became the fashion, and freedom of manners a grace. Every body imitated [Page 61]the court; and, from one end of the kingdom to the other, the vices circulat­ed with the accomplishments.

Another revolution accompanied that of the manners.

In a country where society and letters begin to be cultivated, a taste for litera­ture must prevail among the women. But, as that taste is slowly formed; be­cause the delicate feeling which discovers the natural and the graceful, and which enables us to paint them with truth, is ac­quired by habit; as we are apt to think that must be admired which has cost us much trouble, and that it must be the more so the less it resembles any other composition; as what is false often ap­pears fine, because it presents a new co­louring, and shades part of the object to make the rest spring out; as, in short, whatever is the prevailing humour is car­ried to extravagance, wit must at first be mistaken for genius; — the women, who attempted to distinguish themselves, in­vented expressions which were much ad­mired, [Page 62]because they were little under­stood. They made use of singular words, when they were at a loss for ideas; and, to avoid being common, they became ri­diculous.

Every thing contributed to this de­lirium: — the Italian and Spanish books, which were still much in vogue; the ro­mances of Mademoiselle Scudery; the real admiration of what they called the PRECIEUSES; the conversations of the hotel de Rambouillet; in short, the so­ciety and the imposing name of Madame de Longueville; who, after being in the sweep and at the head of factions, old, and without lovers, as without cabal, amused herself in writing metaphysically upon love, and logically upon wit; and who tastelessly preferred Voiture to Cor­neille.

Moliere, by attacking with ridicule the learning of women, made not only its extravagancies, but the taste itself, dis­appear. Some women afterwards devot­ed themselves to letters, and some culti­vated [Page 63]the sciences; but that spirit was by no means general.

In the most enlightened age, women were not permitted to be intelligent, with­out becoming the objects of derision. They were obliged to hide themselves to improve their minds; and they blushed on the discovery of their knowledge, as much as, in ruder ages, they had blushed on the discovery of an intrigue.

AS all good has its excess, and a pro­verb cannot need a reason; by associating what is ridiculous with what is respecta­ble, the learning of women, like every thing else, may be brought into contempt. To examine the question however impar­tially, it appears, that in a country and in an age very remote from that primi­tive innocence which attaches the heart to the pure pleasures of retirement, and which makes us happy in the ignorance of every thing — but our duty; in an age when the general manners are cor­rupted by idleness; when all the vices mingle by dissipation; and when the vir­tues [Page 64]cannot be replaced, or supplied, but by the help of reason, instead of deter­ring women from instructing themselves, it must be necessary to encourage them. Not all the humour of Moliere had been able to raise a laugh against the lovely sex, on account of their learning if he had not substituted folly for wisdom. Socrates perished by such a misapplication of ri­dicule.

If Moliere, in place of ridiculing the abuse of learning in women, had exhibit­ed an example of its happy effects, op­posed to thoughtless levity and giddy amusement; if he had painted a woman, young and beautiful, whose mind was opened by a liberal education, and who retained all the graces of her sex; who could think deeply, but who assumed no­thing; who covered her knowledge with a gentle veil, and who always had a fa­cility of temper, a presence of mind, and an ease of manner, which made her most profound reasonings appear to be the re­sult of nature; who could estimate and feel the greatest concerns, without being [Page 65]above the least; who prosecuted her speculations only to heighten the com­merce of friendship, and render more ex­quisite the intercourse of affection; who, in studying and knowing the heart of man, had learned to have more indul­gence for his weaknesses, and more re­spect for his virtues; who, in short, rank­ed her duties above all things, but her mental accomplishments next to her du­ties, and who only employed in study what may be called the VOID of life — the intervals of society, and the recess of do­mestic affairs, in bettering her heart by embellishing her understanding; — he would have done a real service to women, to virtue, to his country, and to the world.

But though the women under Lewis XIV. were, in general, laughed out of their passion for letters, the politeness of the age introduced a spirit somewhat al­lied to it, and which was then much in fashion, particularly at court. It may be called the TALENT OF SOCIETY: an amiable kind of genius which delights in [Page 66]light graces, which is fonder of beauty than sublimity, and which borrows few of its ornaments from science, or does it in so easy a way that ignorance cannot be jealous, and knowledge dares not blame; which throws out agreeable trifles, and which sometimes can bring itself to com­pose with elegance a few facetious or sprightly verses; which always charms in conversation, without seeming to aim at it; which pleases every body; which humbles nobody; and even when it shines most, which has a manner that pleads its excuse, and makes us perceive that it is free from ostentation or vanity. Such was the well-known genius of la Fayette, of Ninon, of la Suze; of la Sabliere and of Sevigne; of Thianges and of Montes­pan; of the dutchess of Bouillon, and of the fair Hortensa Mancini her sister; in short, of Madame de Maintenon; who, when young, was the delight of Paris, and till she inhabited a court, and was condemned to grandeur and to care ^*

[Page 67] After all these accomplished women, commended with levity by the poets, or gravity by the orators, there are still two, who, though of a rank and order dif­ferent, arrived nevertheless at the high­est celebrity. The one is the famous Mademoiselle de Scudery, who lived to the age of eighty-five, sixty years of which period she spent in writing with elegance some pretty verses, which are still admired, and with an amazing faci­lity voluminous romances, which are no more read. These romances however were once able to turn heads; and the [Page 68]prejudice in favour of her manner was almost a match for the satires and taste of Boileau. The other is the learned Mademoiselle le Febvre, so well known under the name of Madam Dacier. Her merit, it is true, was not that of a woman, but she chose a good time to assume the character of a man; and, though she had not the manner of Ninon, she did not want her admirers. The two languages natural to her, were those of Terence and Homer; and madrigals were often sent to her in Greek and Latin. The most learned men in Europe conspired to sound her praise.

I say nothing of the other women who wrote about the same time. The cata­logue is every where to be found. Be­sides, I speak only here of the women whose genius had a character, and who can serve to illustrate the ideas or the manners of their age. This is a picture, not a history.

The result of the manners, and the general character of the women of that age [Page 69]was, a voluptuousness united with decency; activity directed to intrigue; little learn­ing; many accomplishments; a refined politeness; a remnant of empire over men; a respect for all the religious ideas, which mingled themselves with that co­quetry of manners, and remorse always by the side, or in the train of love.

During the regency, and under the reign of Lewis XV. the manners under­went another revolution. The latter years of Lewis XIV. had shed over the court, and part of the nation, an air of dejection and melancholy. At bottom the inclinations were the same; but they were more repressed. A new court and new ideas changed all things. A bolder sensuality became the fashion. The de­sires grew more confident and impetuous; and part of the veil which covered gal­lantry was torn away. Decency, which had hitherto been respected as a duty, was not even regarded as a pleasure. Shame was mutually communicated—and mutually pardoned. Levity joined itself to excess; and a corruption was formed [Page 70]at the same time frivolous and deep, which laughed at every thing, that it might blush at nothing.

The ruin of families, and the shifting of fortunes, precipitated this change. Excessive misery and excessive luxury were the consequences;—and the influ­ence of these is known. A sudden re­volution rarely happens in the property of a people, without a quick alteration in manners.

For upwards of six centuries, gallantry had formed the character of the nation; but the spirit of chivalry always mingled itself with that sentiment; which spirit, inseparably connected with honour, gave to gallantry at least the RESEMBLANCE of love, and to vice as much of virtue as its nature is susceptible of. But when few traces of ancient honour remained, gallantry itself was lost; it became a sen­timent which always supposed weakness, or endeavoured to produce it.

In the mean time, by that general sym­pathy [Page 71]which attracted all ranks, the taste for the society of women increased, and the intercourse of the sexes became more frequent. Hope grew more sanguine, as seduction grew more easy. The men every day associated less with each other; the women, less timid, threw off that decent reserve which is their honour. The two sexes changed characters; the men set too high a value upon personal charms, the women on independence.

As the youths were more anxious to be men of the world than men of bu­siness, they entered sooner into society. These young men, corrupted by the libertine part of the other sex, joined the faults of their age to those of their cha­racter. Having in general more desires than ideas, an empty head and an un­principled heart,—inconstant through vanity, or multiplying their amours from idleness, — setting no value upon opinion, which for them indeed had no exist­ence, —they communicated to a great number of women their vices and irregu­larities.

[Page 72] The irksomness of time, and the universal desire to please, spread still wider and wider the spirit of society, till the nation arrived at its present state of sociability and general intercourse, where manners and character are sacrificed to elegance and politeness, while virtue and sentiment are exchanged for pleasure and amusement.

SECTION VII. Of the Progress of Society in BRITAIN, and of the Character, Manners, and Talents of the BRITISH WOMEN.

WHAT polished nations under­stand by society, appears to have been little known in England, be­fore the reign of Henry VIII. This backwardness may in some measure be ascribed to our continual wars with France and with Scotland: by our quarrels with the one we were shut out from foreign intercourse, and by our hostilities with both we were diverted from cultivating the arts of peace.

[Page 73] The spirit of chivalry, which produced such amazing effects on the Continent, was more weakly felt here. Edward III. had indeed established the order of the garter; but real wars allowed the knights little time for the mock encounter, or the generous visions of romantic heroism; and love was still a simple passion, which led the shortest way to its gratification, and generally in conformity with law and custom. It partook little of imagination; and, consequently, required few perfec­tions in its object: it aspired neither at angels nor goddesses.

The women, who still retained all their native innocence and modesty, were regarded only as wives and mothers. Where qualifications are not demanded they will never be found: the accom­plishments of the sex entitled them to no other character; and it had perhaps been happy for both sexes, if they could have remained in such a state of simpli­city.

The Scots, by means of their alliance [Page 74]with France, which had subsisted for several centuries, and that spirit of adventure which has at all times led them abroad in quest of reputation, civil or military, may be supposed at this time to have been better acquainted with the elegancies of life than their wealthy and powerful neighbours: — and we actually find, in the court of James IV. a taste in music, in letters, and in gallantry, to which the great monarch of the house of Tudor and his haughty barons were yet strangers.

But the political state of both king­doms was an insuperable bar to all libe­ral intercourse. The barons, or chiefs, were hostile to the court, from which they had every thing to fear, and nothing to hope; they were dreaded by it in their turn; they looked from the walls of their castles with a jealous eye on each other; they never went abroad but attended by a numerous train of domestics; they visited each other with the state, and the diffidence of neighbouring princes; their marriages were contracted from family motives, and their courtships were con­ducted [Page 75]with the greatest form, and the most distant respect. They took liberties indeed with the women of inferior con­dition, and they rioted in thoughtless jol­lity with their dependents: but the ideas of inferiority and dependence are incom­patible with those of society and gallan­try.

Henry VII. by curbing the hostile spirit of the Barons, by abridging their power, by diminishing their retainers; by extending commerce; by encouraging agriculture; by securing peace to his subjects, at home and abroad, prepared the way for learning, arts and elegance. But the taste of the nation was not yet ripe for their reception; and the temper of his son Henry VIII. was not highly favourable to such a revolution. That prince, however, by his taste for tourna­ments, fostered the spirit of chivalry; and, by his passion for controversy, he encouraged a species of learning, though not the most agreeable: by his magnifi­cence and profusion he drew the nobility to court; who, since deprived of their [Page 76]judicial authority, had less business to de­tain them in the country; and, by his interviews with the emperor and the French King, he roused their emulation of foreign elegance: they were smit with the love of letters and of gallantry. The earl of Surrey, in particular, celebrated his mistress in his verses, and defended her honour with his sword, against all who dared with unhallowed lips profane her immaculate name.

The women in this reign likewise be­gan to discover a taste for literature and politeness. The countess of Richmond, mother to Henry VII. and who survived him, had shewn the way. She translated two pious treatises from the French; and was a great patroness of learning. Eli­zabeth Blount, mistress to Henry VIII. was a woman of elegant accomplishments; and his last queen Catherine Parr, wrote with facility both in Latin and in English, and appears besides to have been a wo­man of address.

But the house of Sir Thomas Moore, [Page 77]whose eldest daughter, Mrs. Roper, has been already mentioned among the learn­ed women of this period, seems in a more particular manner to have been the ha­bitation of the Muses, and even of the Graces. He was possessed of all the learning of antiquity; he was pious even to weakness; for he appears to have given credit to the prophesies of the Maid of Kent; but neither his religion nor his learning soured his temper, or blunt­ed his taste for society. His ideas of the female character would do honour to a gentleman of the present age. In an elegant Latin poem to a friend on the choice of a wife, he speaks to the fol­lowing purpose. ‘May you meet with a wife not stupidly silent, nor always prattling nonsense; may she be learned, if possible, or at least capable of being made so. A woman thus accomplish­ed will be always drawing sentiments and maxims out of the best authors. She will be herself, in all the changes of fortune; neither blown up with prosperity, nor broken in adversity. You will find in her an even, cheerful, [Page 78]good-humoured friend, and an agree­able companion for life. She will in­fuse knowledge into your children with their milk, and from their infancy train them up to wisdom. Whatever com­pany you are engaged in, you will long to be at home; and will retire with delight from the society of men, into the bosom of a woman who is so dear, so knowing, and so amiable. If she touches her lute, and more particularly if she sings to it any of her own com­positions, it will sooth your solitude, and her voice will sound sweeter in your ear than the song of the nightin­gale. You will spend whole days and nights with pleasure in her company, and you will be always finding out new beauties in her mind. She will keep your soul in perpetual serenity; she will restrain its mirth from being disso­lute, and prevent its melancholy from becoming painful.’ — According to these ideas he educated his three daughters, whose virtues and talents appear to have merited all his care. They lived for some time in one house, with their father, their [Page 79]husbands, and their children, and form­ed a society, all things considered, which has seldom, if ever, been equalled, in any age or country; — where morals were sublimed by religion; where manners were polished by a sense of elegance, and softened by a desire to please; where friendship was warmed by love, and strengthened by the ties of blood; — while conversation, animated by genius; enrich­ed by learning, and moderated by respect, exulting in the dignity of its objects, seem­ed to approach to that fine transport, which immortal beings may be supposed to feel in pouring out their contemplati­ons of the wisdom and goodness of the Creator; and, when it condescended to treat of lighter subjects, wit had a spring, humour a flow, and sentiment a poig­nancy, which those who are eternally dis­coursing of trifles, who hover continually on the surface of the earth, and rove like butterflies from sense to sense, both in their lives and conversations, can have no conception.

The religious contests, the reforma­tions, [Page 80]and the presecutions, which dis­figured the latter part of the reign of Henry VIII. and which continued, with little intermission, till the death of queen Mary, were a great bar to the progress of elegance and politeness in England: but it may be doubted how far they were hurtful to learning or to manners. Both parties, and both sexes, were uncom­monly zealous to distinguish themselves by virtues and by talents. Lady Jane Gray, and the three Seymours, who lived in this period, have already been mentioned among the ornaments of the sixteenth century. Queen Mary herself was a writer of no mean rank; and Mary Roper, grand-daughter of Sir Tho­mas More, and one of the GENTLE-WOMEN, as they were then called, of her majesty's PRIVY-CHAMBER, is said to have possessed all the learning and accomplishments of her mother. She must have done honour to the court.

The reign of Elizabeth is justly con­sidered as one of the most shining pe­riods in English history; and for purity [Page 81]of manners, vigour of mind, vigour of character, and personal address, it is perhaps unequalled.

The magnificent entertainments which that illustrious princess so frequently gave her court, and at which she generally appeared in person, with a most engage­ing familiarity, rubbed off the ancient reserve of the nobility, and increased the taste of society, and even of gallantry: but the masculine boldness of her charac­ter was unfavourable to famale graces. The women of her court, like herself, were rather objects of respect than love. Their virtues were severe; their learn­ing, their talents were often great: they had passions, but they knew to suppress them, or to divert them into the chan­nel of interest or ambition. They did not however want their admirers. Men were less delicate in those days.

Spenser, by writing his Fairy Queen, revived in Britain the spirit of chivalry, at a time when it began to expire on the continent, and Sir Philip Sidney, in his [Page 82]Arcadia, refined on that sentiment. The Fairy Queen was intended as a compli­ment to Elizabeth; and the Arcadia was dedicated by Sir Philip to his sister, the countess of Pembroke, the most amiable and accomplished woman of her time ^*

But the most remarkable women of this reign were the Lady Burleigh, the Lady Bacon, the Lady Russel, and Mrs. Killgrew, all daughters of Sir Anthony Cooke, and all distinguished for learn­ing, genius, and virtue.

Elizabeth herself was a great and singu­lar character. But she had few qualities to recommend her as a woman, though passionately fond of personal admiration; nor were her talents as a writer either striking or elegant, though she appears to have been ambitious of literary fame. [Page 83]Her ability as a soverign has been already considered, in treating of the talent of women for government. Her virtues were those of her rank, and of her age; and her weakness, those of her sex: yet they failed to render her amiable.

Mary queen of Scotland, (whose learn­ing and accomplishments have been al­ready mentioned) the cotemporary of Elizabeth, and her rival in beauty, in let­ters, and in sway, though a less perfect, is a more attractive character. While we blame her conduct she conciliates our affection. Even those who accuse her of guilt, must weep for her misfortunes; and will feel their bosoms swell with in­dignation against her inhuman subjects, and her persidious protectress, while they read her unhappy story, as told by her enemies.

The return of Mary to her native kingdom, after the death of her husband Francis II. with all the elegancies of France supperadded to the finest natural endowments, made the Scots hope, and [Page 84]not without reason, that literature, arts, and politeness, would arrive at perfection among them, as soon as in any northern nation. But the spirit of fanaticism, which awaked in Scotland about this time, which was attended with such amazing effects, and which spread itself over the whole island; which produced the death of the lovely Mary, of the pious Charles, and which terminated in the expulsion of the royal house, threw a cloud over the man­ners and the studies of that country, which two centuries have scarcely been able to dispel ^*.

The accession of James VI. to the throne of England, contributed still far­ther to obstruct the progress to civilizati­on in Scotland, and to the decline of the arts in that country. The removal of the court, drew the nobility to London, to spend their fortunes, or obtain prefer­ment; and men of genius and learning likewise looked this way.

[Page 85] That event, however, must have con­tributed to the advancement of society in England. Yet not so much as might be expected. The scantiness of James's re­venue, together with his want of oecono­my, rendered him unable to support the splendor of a court. It was besides in­consistent with his maxims of policy, and with his temper. He loved to be social with his friends, but hated a crowd; and had rather an aversion to the com­pany of woman. A mean jealousy, which took place of a generous emulation, be­tween the Scots and English courtiers, prevented still farther the refinement of manners; which can only be effected by a liberal intercourse.

The nobility and gentry of England are still fonder of a country life than those of any polished nation in Europe: it prevailed much more then, and was highly encouraged by James. He even issued proclamations, containing severe threatnings against the gentry who lived in town. By these means the ancient pride of family was preserved. Men of [Page 86]birth were distinguished by a stateliness of carriage: much ceremony took place in the ordinary commerce of life; and, as riches acquired by trade were still rare, little familiarity was indulged by the great.

The king's pacific, or rather pusilani­mous disposition, though it sunk the na­tional character, was favourable to com­merce, and not altogether unfriendly to letters. James himself was a scholar; but he was unhappy in a bad taste, which infected his whole court, and indeed the whole nation. He was fond of metaphy­sical quibbles, the jingle of words, and every species of false wit. Such a taste is in some measure inseparable from the revival of letters: we admire what is glaring, before we can discern what is beautiful; but the sanction, and even the example of the monarch, only could have carried it to such a height at this time in England. What induces one particu­larly to this opinion is, the comparative purity of the writers of the former reign. The contrast between the composition of [Page 87]Spencer and Drayton, is as great as be­tween the character of Elizabeth and James.

The theatre, that great former of manners, and which is formed by them, had been founded by Shakespeare under the reign of Elizabeth: he was succeeded by Jonson and Fletcher. These writers have seldom painted the manners of their own country, and seldomer those of their own age; but, as they must have endea­voured to please the people for whom they wrote, and as they no doubt knew the taste of the public, we may discern that taste more perfectly in their compositions than in the barren records of the times.

In the writings of Shakespeare we find all the noble spirit of the virgin-reign. Love has its native importance; and little more: it is productive of the greatest events, when connected with circumstan­ces: but, when a simple passion, its effects are feeble and transient. He seldom at­tempts to be wanton; but when his sub­ject makes it necessary to reveal the secrets [Page 88]of Venus, he does it with as much free­dom as if she were a common prostitute: be expresses his meaning in the plainest, and often in the broadest words.

But in the writings of Fletcher,—for I shall omit Jonson, as being a cotempo­rary of Shakespeare, and therefore less proper to mark the gradation of taste,—love has acquired an imaginary power: it is equal to every thing in itself; and seems to disregard those circumstances which alone can give it consequence; without which it is a boyish passion, that excites our contempt; but, connected with which, it is the strongest sentiment of our nature, and awakens most deeply the feelings of the human breast. He is frequently wanton, with a grace peculiar to himself;—for a genteel education and a good na­tural taste conspired to render him the most elegant writer of his age—he veils his idea beneath the delicacy of his lan­guage, or toys with it so prettily, that we often fall in love with a thought, which, rudely disclosed, could not fail to disgust.

[Page 89] We may therefore conclude, that the passion, or rather the commerce, between the sexes was increased; that it was am­bitious of being thought more important than it really was; that it had purposes to carry which made such exaggeration necessary, that it had wishes to reveal which it durst not avow; and which, consequently, suggested the disguise of de­licate expression. The duel, we know, had taken place of the tournament; and the intrigue, we may be certain, would not be long behind.

Under Charles I. a good taste in let­ters, in arts, and in society, began to pre­vail. The king himself was both a judge and an example of fine writing; and he was a lover of painting, music, and archi­tecture; all which he liberally encourag­ed. But the religious and political dis­putes, which early in this reign divided the nation, and which brought about the death of the king, and the subversion of the monarchy, diverted the thoughts of men from every elegant pursuit. The dread of popery and arbitrary power, of [Page 90]slavery and eternal damnation, and the hope of heaven, and of liberty, threw the whole island into the most violent con­vulsions, and gave birth to some of the greatest geniuses, and called forth some of the greatest characters, in the history of mankind.

The cavaliers, or royal party, how­ever, notwithstanding the horrors of civil war, maintained a gaiety of temper which was altogether astonishing, and a free­dom of manners which too often border­ed on licentiousness. But the republi­cans, though perhaps not infected with fewer vices, and those of a less amiable cast, discover so much vigour of mind, such a resolute spirit of action, a love of freedom, and a contempt of death, that we almost despise the polish of society,—even while we detest the cant of hypo­crisy.

The most distinguished women of this period, in Britain, were the Duchess of [Page 91]Newcastle, Lady Pakington, and Lady Halket ^*.

Under the commonwealth the face of the nation was entirely changed; it ex­perienced a revolution, as complete in manners as in policy. One would have imagined himself in a different world. The theatres were shut; games, sports, shews, and amusements of every kind were prohibited. Instead of the voice of [Page 92]mirth and joy, nothing was to be heard but groans, sighs, prayers, and spiritual songs. All liberal knowledge, ornamental learning, gentility of manner, elegance of dress, and all superfluity in eating and drinking were proscribed, as carnal vani­ties, and as the accomplices of sin and Sa­tan. All ranks, ages, and sexes were con­founded. The illuminations of the spirit placed all on a level. The leaders of the republic prayed, or exhorted one while, and listened the next to the meanest of the people. Women taught the brethren.

Those fair divines, by reason of their finer feelings and more vivid imagina­tions, were often carried into the most extraordinary severities, and the wildest enthusiasm. They were not contented with laying aside the allurements of their sex, with making a covenant with their eyes that they should not rove, and with crucifying their thoughts; they con­demned themselves to humiliation and fasting, for the wandering of their hearts. Many of them considered cloaths of any kind to be improper. Whether this [Page 93]opinion proceeded from their looking upon dress as a luxury, or as unnecessary to the truely regenerate, does not dis­tinctly appear; but one of them, ani­mated by that persuasion, came into the church where the Protector sat, in the condition of our original mother before she plucked the fig-leaf, 'to be,' as she said, 'a SIGN to the people.'

The men in general held in contempt all books but the Bible; and some of them were even above using that: they believed themselves illuminated by the same spirit which inspired the sacred writings. One man, from the super­abundance of this inward light, and a certain resemblance between his counte­nance and the common pictures of Christ, conceived himself to be the saviour,—no doubt sent to earth a second time, to collect the faithful, and begin his mil­lennial reign ^*. He pretended to work miracles: to cure the sick, to raise the dead; and entered Bristol mounted [Page 94]on a HORSE—perhaps he thought an ASS too mean an animal, and that he had now a right to assume more dignity—while his disciples spread their garments before him, crying, 'Hosanna! to the High­est.'

Love under the commonwealth, was a mixture of cant and hypocrisy. Never was beauty so much in disgrace. It was not only denied all adventitious orna­ments and excellencies, but even the ad­vantages of nature were subject of re­proach:—it was forbid to please; and it was criminal to consider it as an object of desire.

'Man,' said the godly.—for so they called themselves,— ‘is conceived in sin, and brought forth in iniquity; he is a slave to the flesh, till regenerated by the spirit; it was his complacency in woman that first wrought his debase­ment: let him not therefore glory in his shame, let him not worship the fountain of his corruption!’

[Page 95] The emotions of nature were consider­ed as the struggles of original guilt; and beauty was viewed as a spell in the hands of Satan, to seduce the hearts of the faith­ful. The pleasures of the marriage-bed were only indulged as the means of pre­venting a greater evil, and of increasing the number of the saints; nor even then without fear and trembling, humiliation, and prayer, ‘that they might be separat­ed from the CURSE!’

But the restoration of monarchy made ample amends to beauty for the indigni­ties of the commonwealth. The reign of Charles II. may be considered in one light, as the most glorious era to women in the history of Britain, and as the most debasing in another. They were never so much caressed; never so little respect­ed.

Charles himself had a susceptible, but changeable heart; a social temper; a genteel manner; a lively wit:—and his courtiers partook much of the character of their master. They had all suffered [Page 96]the pressure of adversity, the neglect of poverty, or felt the insolence of pious ty­ranny. They began to think that Christi­anity was a fable; that virtue was a cheat; that friendship and generosity were but words of course; and, in greedily en­joying their change of fortune, they sunk themselves beneath the dignity of men. In avoiding spiritual pride, and in retali­ating selfishness, they departed from the essential principles of religion and morals; and, by contrasting the language and the manners of hypocrisy, they shamelessly violated the laws of decency and deco­rum.

Overjoyed at the return of their sove­reign, the whole royal party dissolved in thoughtless jollity; and even many of the republicans, particularly the younger class. and the women, were glad to be released from the gloomy austerity of the commonwealth. A general relax­ation of manners took place. Pleasure became the universal object, and love the prevailing taste: but that love was rather an appetite than a passion. Beau­ty, [Page 97]unconnected with virtue, was its object: it was therefore void of honour and attachment. In consequence of such manners, famale virtue, robbed of its reward, became rather a mode of beha­viour, to inflame desire, or procure ele­vation, than a sentiment or principle; and, of course, sooner or later, was either sacrificed to inclination or to caprice.

But these observations, in their full extent, must only be understood of the court. The greater part of the gentry still resided on their estates in the coun­try, equally strangers to the pleasures of the court and town; and one half of the island was filled with indignation at the vices of Whitehall. Nor without reason; for it was little better than one great bro­thel — and the stage, which generally takes its complexion from the court, was a con­tinued scene of sensuality, blasphemy, and absurdity.

The free intercourse, however of all ranks of men, from the king to the com­moner, [Page 98]improved the talent of society, and polished the language of conversation; gallantry, licentious as it was, produced a habit of politeness; and from the irre­gular, and even impious freedom of writ­ing and thinking, sprung many strokes of real genius, and a liberal spirit of inquiry, whose researches and experiments have benefited mankind, and carried philoso­phy and the sciences to a height that does honour to modern times ^*.

The women of this reign, as may be expected from the taste of the men, were more solicitous about adorning their per­sons, than informing their minds. But the frequent intercourse between the sexes in some measure compensated that neglect. By such a commerce they be­came more easy, more free, more lively, and more capable of conversation, than the women of any preceding age. They had less learning, but more accomplish­ments; and perhaps, more genius. They [Page 99]wanted nothing but virtue to have made their memories immortal: and, notwith­standing the general depravity, there were some who trod the narrow path; whose taste and sentiments were uncor­rupted, and whose names still live in their writings, and in the verses of their cotemporaries. Katherine Philips, (ce­lebrated under the name of Orinda) Anne Killegrew, and Anne Wharton, employed their elegant talents in a manner suitable to their sex. The female wantons of most genius were Behn and Centlivre, whose writings are both their honour and their disgrace ^*.— Among the women of elegant, or spirited conversation, we should perhaps distinguish the Dutchess of York, the Dutchess of Cleveland, Lady Chesterfield, and the fair Hamilton.

The reign of James II. was too short to have any distinct character. It is only singular for the blind bigotry, and blinder [Page 100]disposition of the prince; which roused the minds of men from the delirium of pleasure, in which they had been lost, and brought about the Revolution.

Under William III. the effects of that change were visible on the manners. The nation returned to what may be called its natural state. An attention to just politics, to found philosophy, and true religion, characterize the era of British liberty.

William himself was of a gloomy temper, and had a dislike to the com­pany of women. The intercourse of the sexes, and those amusements which are its consequence, were therefore little countenanced during his reign. By these means the ladies had more time for the pursuits of learning and know­ledge; and they made use of it accord­ingly. Many of them became adepts in the sciences. Lady Masham, and Mary Astell, in particular, discussed with judg­ment and ability the most abstract points [Page 101]in metaphysics and divinity ^*; and Lady Grace Gethin, at the age of twenty, treated of life and morals with the dis­cernment of Socrates, and the elegance of Xenophon. She is celebrated by Mr. Congreve.

The reign of queen Anne may be said to have been the summer, of which William's was only the spring. Every thing was ripened; nothing was cor­rupted. It was a short, but glorious period, of heroism and national capa­city; of taste and science, learning and genius; of gallantry without licentious­ness, and politeness without effeminacy.

We are in doubt which most to ad­mire in the women of this reign, the [Page 102]manners, the talents, or the accomplish­ments. They were religious without se­verity, and without enthusiasm; they were learned without pedantry; they were intelligent and attractive, without neglecting the duties of their sex; they were elegant and entertaining, without levity; in a word, they joined the graces of society to the knowledge of letters and the virtues of domestic life—they were friends and companions, without ceasing to be wives and mothers.

In support of the foregoing character of the British ladies under the reign of queen Anne, we need only add the names of Lady Chudleigh, Lady Winchelsea, the honourable Mrs. Monk, Mrs. Bovey, and Stella ^*

[Page 103] Under George 1. the manners of the nation were sensibly changed; but not so much as the national spirit. The South Sea scheme, and other mercenary projects, produced a passion of avarice, and a taste of luxury, which prepared the way for all the corruptions of the following reign.

The delirium of riches was beyond what the most extravagant imagination can conceive. Any scheme, however absurd, met with encouragement, if it only proposed sufficient advantages. All ranks and conditions, and even women, resorted to 'Change-Alley, with the looks of harpies ready to seize upon their prey; but, in reality, the victims of their own credulity and sordid passions. The peers of the realm became stock­jobbers, and its ministers brokers; pub­lic virtue was lost in the visions of pri­vate [Page 104]benefit; letters fell into contempt, though supported by the greatest ex­amples of successful genius; love grew covetous, and beauty venal.

There were however, in this reign, many women of liberal and elegant ta­lents; among the first of whom may be ranked Lady Mary W. Montague, so well known for her spirited poems, and inge­nious letters.

Under George II. and George III. the debasement of mind discovered itself more fully in the manners. Corruption be­came general.

The Revolution had restrained the powers of the prince within such narrow limits, that a coalition of parties, or the absolute superiority of one, was essential to carry the measures of government; and, as the opposition, or country party, began to gather strength, the political machine was in danger of standing still by counteracting forces. It was therefore necessary that there should be an ascen­dency;

The Revolution had restrained the powers of the prince within such narrow limits, that a coalition of parties, or the absolute superiority of one, was essential to carry the measures of government; and, as the opposition, or country party, began to gather strength, the political machine was in danger of standing still by counteracting forces. It was therefore necessary that there should be an ascen­dency; [Page 105]it was likewise perhaps necessary that it should be on the side of the court.

At this crisis Robert Walpole, an art­ful and able minister, a lover of peace and an encourager of commerce, found means to increase the influence of the crown without enlarging the prerogative. But he did it at the expence of the virtues of the people:—and his example has been followed by all succeeding ministers. He took advantage of that spirit of avarice and luxury which he had fostered; the treasury was let loose at elections. A majority was obtained of the refuse of both parties; of men determined to sup­port the measures of the court in desiance of conscience, honour, and honesty—and who were only formidable by the number of their voices. Places and pensions were multiplied to reward the mercenary tribe; and men of ability and integrity were deprived of their employments, to make way for those who were destitute of both. When virtue and talents are no longer the means of honour and preferment, they naturally disappear in the public [Page 106]walks of life; they are only to be found in the solitary shade. Character ceased to create distinction. The effect of such a want of sentiment may easily be conceiv­ed. Patriotism became the common ob­ject of ridicule; and virtue and genius were made the butt of ignorance, dul­ness, and profligacy. But people must always have something to be the founda­tion of self-applause. Instead of the es­sential qualities of men and of citizens, they valued themselves on a smooth address, and an absurd mixture of French levity and English gravity; on the splendor of their equipages; on the magnificence of their houses; on the richness of their furniture; and on the elegance and sumptuousness of their tables.

The ruin of many ancient families by the late visionary projects, and the exces­sive fortunes acquired by trade, contri­buted still farther to increase the general mass of manners. The pride of birth, the last barrier of corruption, was broken down. While people value themselves upon their ancestors, it is to be presum­ed, [Page 107]that their actions will not be altoge­ther unworthy of them. The nobility courted the alliance of the wealthy, to enable them to support their state: they intermarried with the sons and daughters of commerce, without regard to charac­ter or accomplishments. Riches became the only idol of worship, and poverty the only object of contempt.

These however were not the only evils refulting from such a coalition. That respect to the higher orders of men, which is so necessary to preserve due subordina­tion in a state, and that frugality and in­dustry, which are so essential to the pros­perity of traders, were at once destroyed by the union of the people of rank and commerce. The merchants soon vied with the peers of the realm, and the prin­ces of the blood, in all the luxuries of life; and, by degrees, people of all con­ditions came to think themselves entitled to the same indulgence; till, at length, the nation arrived at its present state of sociability, luxury, and vicious refinement; in which all ranks, ages, and sexes min­gle, [Page 108]and all aspire at the same pleasures and the same amusements; in which taste is a title to enjoyment, and money and ad­mittance to every polite circle, and to every august assembly; to the ruin of manners, industry, public credit, and private faith; and to the increase of sen­suality, idleness fraud villainy, violence, and all the licentious disorders of a cor­rupted populace ^*.

The manners of the two sexes, as has been already observed, generally keep pace with each other. In proportion as the men grew regardless of character, the women neglected the duties of their sex. Though little inclined to hoarding, they are not perhaps less disposed to avarice than men: gold to them is desireable, as the minister of vanity, voluptuousness, and shew. It became their supreme ob­ject, [Page 109]and the only source of the matrimo­nial union, to the exclusion of that tender sentiment which alone can give strength to the sacred tie, or pleasure to the nup­tial state. The young, the beautiful, the healthful, were wedded — though not al­ways with their own consent — to age, de­formity, and disease; virtue was joined to profligacy, and wantonness to seve­rity.

Such marriages were necessarily de­structive of domestic felicity. The want of cordiality at home naturally leads us abroad, as the want of happiness in our­selves leads us to seek it in externals, and to torture imagination for the gratifica­tion of appetites, which, undepraved, are simple and uniform. New amusements, and societies of pleasure, were every day formed; new modes of dissipation were invented; the order of nature was chang­ed; night and day were inverted; and fancy and language were exhausted for names to the assemblies of politeness and gallantry. Nothing is so oppressive as time to the unhappy, or thought to the [Page 110]vacant mind: these were not all enough They seemed afraid of themselves, and of each other. The husband had one set of visitors, the wife another; he prosecuted his pleasures abroad, she entertained her friends at home; or resorted to some place of public amusement, or private pleasure. In a free country, it is un­pardonable in a man to accuse his wife without evidence, or to pretend to abridge her liberty; and the guilty are silent for their own sakes. It was often morning before they met at their joyless home.

A spirit of gaming, which mingled it­self with dissipation and pleasure, afford­ed a new pretence for nocturnal meetings. Money lost at play must be paid some­how; it is a debt of honour: and, to preserve family-peace, it is to be feared that women of virtuous principles have often sacrificed something more precious than their jewels. At any rate gaming discovers the temper, ruffles the passions, corrupts the heart, and breaks down the strongest barrier of virtue, — a decent re­serve between the sexes.

[Page 111] Love grew confident, as beauty became more accessible; and the freedom of manners permitted the warmest declara­tion without offence. The opportunities of gratification were infinite; the mo­tives of restraint were few; and the temp­tations were many and great. A general tensuality was the consequence. Conju­gal insidelity became common.

Men of spirit obtained divorces. But these, instead of enforcing the obligation of the marriage-vow, by the fear of pub­lic shame, appeared to have a quite con­trary effect; they only propagated weak­ness: the seducing example of human frailty remained, the odium was forgot; while the equity of the sentence was dis­puted, or its severity blamed. Husbands were loudly accused of libertinism, and justly of neglect. The women continu­ed to make reprisals, or make up their wants; the practice triumphed. Pru­dent men overlooked such liberties, when conducted with decency, which it must be owned was seldom violated; and good-natured husbands in general begin to [Page 112]adopt a polite opinion, which will least be conducive to a private peace viz. That a man is not more dishonour­ed by the AMOURS of his wife than by any other DEVIATION of taste, or than she is by those of her husband.

In short, unless manners take a turn, there is reason to belive that our British ladies, once so remarkable for modesty, chastity, and conjugal fidelity, will soon equal their sisters of France in impu­dence, levity, and incontinence; as we already rival our continental brethren in foppery, falshood, inconstancy, vanity, —and in all their unmanly pleasures, capricious appetites, and emasculating luxuries ^*.

But the fears of virtue are often groundless: fancy magnifies future evil, [Page 113]and overlooks present good: we have dwelt long enough—some may perhaps think too long—on the dark side of the picture. Our fair country women still possess many virtues, and more accom­plishments. Their gallantries are at least regulated by a sense of decency: volup­tousness wears its loveliest form; deli­cacy is the handmaid of pleasure: in­fidelity is oftener yet the effect of passion than of appetite; and elopements are stronger proofs of sensibility than the want of shame.

Notwithstanding the general relaxation of manners, the aversion to whatever is serious, the thirst of admiration, and the neglect of esteem, are at least of those qualities which produce it, there are in this age, in this island, and even in this city, women who would have done honour to any age or country; who join a refined taste and cultivated under­standing to a feeling heart, and who adorn their talents and their sensibility with sentiments of virtue, honour, and humanity. We have women who could [Page 114]have reasoned with Locke, who might have disputed the laurel with Pope, and to whom addison would have listened with pleasure.

Even in the middle of opulence, and of that luxury which too often mingles avarice with state, which narrow the heart, and makes it at the same time vain and cruel, we see women who yearly set apart a portion of their substance for the poor; who make it their business to find out abodes of misery, and who number among their pleasures the relief of the orphan, and the tears shed in the con­solation of the widow.

We have still wives, young, beautiful, and affectionate, who honour their vows, and in the most delightful of human con­nections offer the most enchanting spec­tacle of innocence and love; who are not ashamed to be mothers; who devote their happy hours to the tenderest cares of nature; who watch with anxiety, who press with transport, by turns, in their lovely arms, to their lips, and to [Page 115]their breast, the infant whom they nou­rish with their milk, while the husband, in silent joy, divides his fond regards between the mother and the child.

O that these sweet examples could re­vive among us nature and manners!— that we could learn how much the vir­tues, even for our happiness, are supe­rior to the pleasures! — how much a simple, cordial life, where nothing is af­fected, where we live in ourselves, and in the objects of our sensibility, — where we enjoy by turns the delights of friend­ship, affection, and self-approbation, is preferable to that giddy and dissipated life, where we court continually a phan­tom which eludes our pursuit, or vanishes in our embrace! — Then the women would recover their empire; then beauty, adorned with virtue, would lead captive the hearts of men, — would restrain them from wandering, and teach them to be faithful, — happy in their servitude, and proud of their weakness; then a sine and blameless sensuality would season every moment of existence, and make life a [Page 116]delicious dream; then the pains of child­birth, unimpoisoned by remorse, a mo­ther's pains, sweetened by love and par­ticipated by friendship, would be rather a conflict of tenderness than a torment.

Society, in such a world, would in­deed be less busy; but there would be more domestic peace. There would be less ostentation, and more pleasure; less dissipation, and more happiness. We would talk less of pleasing, and we would please more. Our days would flow, like a pure and quiet stream; — and if, in the evening of life, we had not the sorrow­ful satisfaction of having reciprocated the softest feelings with a hundred per­sons — of whom we were unworthy, who were unworthy of us, or who had no share in our hearts — we would at least have the comfort to have lived with those we loved, and would sweetly sink to rest, conscious of having extracted from the pleasures of to-day a charm to mingle with the joys of to-morrow.

SECTION VIII. CONCLUSION.

LET us not however, dream of mi­racles; nor conclude, from the virtues of individuals, that the man­ners of the age are pure, or the charac­ters of women in general respectable. Among a people where the spirit of so­ciety is carried so far, as it is at present both in France and in England, the do­mestic life must be little known. All the sentiments of nature, which spring up in retirement, and which are nursed in so­litude, must be weakened. The women must therefore be less devoted to their original and most important duties; they must be less wives and mothers.

The manners now direct the preju­dices, as much as the prejudices for­merly directed the manners. The sacred attachments of love and friendship are exploded; they are banished to the shepherd and the savage. Why? — Be­cause [Page 118]they are unpolite: they shew too great a preference; they pay to one, what is due to all.

The more the general tie extends, the more the particular ties are relaxed. We seem to be attached to all the world, and we are attached to nobody. Hence the increase of dissimulation and falshood. The less we feel, the more we appear to feel.

By a strange contrast, we are enrap­tured at the word SENTIMENT; — and all genuine sentiment is ridiculed. Per­haps we imagine, what we do not feel, does not exist; and, indeed, we suffi­ciently vindicate ourselves from the im­putation of real sentiment, by the artful declamation which we substitute in its place.

The word ROMANTIC was never so much in use. This happy term affords a double feast to vanity: it excuses esteem, or justifies contempt, to the virtues which we want; and it prevents shame for the [Page 119]vices or the weaknesses which we have. It makes us content with our knowledge: we believe that we have estimated all things; and that we see both what man is, and what he can be.

We talk a great deal about pleasure, and we taste very little. The soul preci­pitates itself upon its objects, when it should keep them at a certain distance; desire is gratified, before it can awake the divinity of passion; the spell which en­chanted the mind is too soon broke. Imagination turns cold, because it has nothing to create; illusion vanishes; sense grows dead. But what is sense, without passion and fancy?

The void which we experience, in con­sequence of false pleasure, and the want of energy in the soul, must have given birth to AMUSEMENT. the resource of cold hearts and empty heads; a word which is become important, and which must be ridiculous to the serious every time they use it; a word which implies [Page 120]what has no connection with virtue, and none perhaps with the senses.

That amusement, that inexpressible something, which is neither imagination, reason, nor passion, and which consists principally in forms, being the universal taste, all things must comply with it. The accomplishments are supposed vir­tues, and the vices are pardoned. Al­most nobody has the boldness to censure guilt, when it wears the habit of the Graces. The mind is contracted; the heart is shut; and attention is busied a­bout trifles. To please or to displease are become the great words of language.

As we are continually under observa­tion, self-love, by being more roused, must be more keen; but the same spirit which rouses it, likeways restrains it. It is curbed, and it is stimulated; its secret is rather veiled than hid, — and yet is se­cure. The eyes of vanity are obscured by a mist, and the mutual feeling is willing to seem blind. Society is a sencing school or field of combat, where self-love en­counters [Page 121]self-love, and where each are desirous to conquer without the air of e­mulation: they disguise their efforts, that their pretensions may not be suspected.

From this assemblage of folly, vanity, and falshood, must spring a restless levity in the commerce of the sexes, and a se­rious and busy mockery of passion. But what above all characterises the manners of the present age, is the madness of shew; the frenzy of sacrificing every thing to appearance; the importance as­signed to little duties, and the value set upon little objects. We talk gravely of the trifles of to-day, and of those of to­morrow. The soul has a languid, and never satisfied activity, which expands it over a thousand objects without interest­ing it in one, and which communicates motion without impulse.

But if a taste for letters, and a deli­rium of talents, mingle with the giddi­ness of society, from such a combination must result other effects. Then a ge­neral passion of appearing informed must [Page 122]prevail, without the time, or the trouble to be so; then we must see a torrent of superficial knowledge, and a crowd of half-learned pretenders to science; a multitude of philosophical ideas, which men of genius throw out in retirement, and which are greedily seized by people of fashion, disputed, repeated, and scat­tered in polite circles; light conversa­tions on profound subjects; the laws of genius settled, and a genius of memory, when we have nothing original; the establishment and the opposition of lite­rary societies; pretensions of all kinds, and of all denominations; bold preten­sions, cool and high pretensions, and cautious pretensions, with a mixture of reserve; the fury of reputation, oftener usurped than real; intrigue, flattery, and little arts to obtain it; in short, the art of praising, to be praised; the art of joining foreign merit to our own, and of procuring renown either by ourselves or by others.

As the general system of luminaries is greater, and as they communicate their [Page 123]influence more fully by motion, the wo­men, without giving themselves any trou­ble, must be more enlightened. But, faithful to their plan, they only covet knowledge as an ornament to the mind, as jewels are to the person. They study the arts rather from a desire to please, than a desire to know, or from the plea­sure of learning; and they read more for amusement, than for instruction.

Besides, in a state of society where the motion is rapid, and where there is an eternal succession of objects and ideas, the women, constantly occupied in fol­lowing the scene, which changes and flies incessantly round them, must know better the ideas of the present, than of past times, and those which are fashionable than those which are just. They must therefore be better acquainted with the language of the arts than wich their prin­ciples, and have more unconnected ideas than useful or systematic knowledge.

It might perhaps be thought curious now to examine, what must be the con­sequence [Page 124]of such a mixture of ideas and manners, of levity and learning, of phi­losophy in the head, and libertinism in the heart: that however is too self-evi­dent to afford room for much disquisition. It might likewise perhaps be thought cu­rious, to compare the characters of wo­men, as they at present exist in London, and in Paris, with those which they have had in different periods, and which they now have in different countries; with their sweet modesty in many parts of England; with their timid reserve in Scotland; with their tameness and want of passion in Holland; with their mix­ture of devotion and sensuality in Italy; with their warm imagination and keen sensibility in Spain; with their profound retirement in China, where they have been separated during four thousand years from the intercourse of men; in short, with the character and the manners which must result from their confinement in Turky, in Persia, and over almost all Asia, where they only exist for one man; where they can neither cultivate their character nor their reason; and, des­tined [Page 125]to have only senses, where they are forced by the absurdity of their condition to join modesty to wantonness, and co­quetry to retirement:—But, to complete such a parallel, it is sufficient to have hinted it.

I shall therefore only observe, that in the present age there are fewer panegy­rics on women than in any former pe­riod. The poets seem to have lost that delicate gallantry which was so long their character. They are either Cynics or voluptuaries. The prevailing taste for women, indeed, which is neither love, nor passion, nor even gallantry, but the cold and barren effect of a habit of sen­suality, can neither rouse imagination nor sentiment. In our numerous and growing assemblies, in the eternal round of dissipation and amusement, where the sexes mingle with freedom, we learn to admire less, because we learn to be more severe. Self-love, judge and rival, some­times indulgent through pride, but always cruel from jealousy, was never more vigilant in spying faults, or sowing ridi­cule. [Page 126]Praise is the result of enthusiastic passion; and never was there an age in which there was less than in this, though perhaps we affect more than our prede­cessors. Enthusiasm springs from a warm imagination, which creates objects in place of seeing them, and which heightens what it has seen. At present we see too much; in consequence of which we feel too little. Beauty obtrudes itself on the view: its spots are too visible; passion is disgusted; and fancy sickens for want of exercise. Female delicacy is lost. Vice is ranked in the number of our ac­complishments. The less we esteem the women, the more we pretend to know them:—and they at present make such a language necessary. Every boy has more pride than to seem acquainted only with their virtues; and would be rakes, whose experience really reaches no further, that they may support a reputation with the sex, accuse them of more than human weakness, by contemptibly assuming a knowledge and a character to which they have no right.

[Page 127] Such, with regard to women, is the influence of that general spirit of society which they have inspired, and of which they do not fail to boast. They are like eastern monarchs, who are never more honoured than when they are least seen: by discovering themselves too freely to their subjects, they have encouraged them to revolt.

But, least the ladies should take offence at being compared to tyrants, I will give them a gentler simile; which I shall in­troduce with a short analysis of female society, as it progresses in countries where the soft affections exercise their sweetest influence. — In a state of nature, the company of women is little desired; their beauties are unveiled to every eye; and their favours are bestowed without courting. In the early periods of socie­ty, they are principally valued on account of their utility; their condition ap­proaches to servitude; and little delicacy is observed in the commerce of love. As society advances, they are prized as objects of pleasure: conscious of their [Page 128]importance, they become more delicate of their beauties, reserved in their man­ner, and nice of their favours. Love grows jealous, and beauty undergoes a degree of restraint. But as the mind opens, and when society is better under­stood, such restraint is thought unjust — ungenerous to the partners of our dear­est interests, our sweetest pleasures! — and inconsistent with that confidence which is due to love, to virtue, to man­kind, and which is essential to our own peace. The freedom of nature is re­stored, within the pale of society. Beau­ty becomes more brilliant, more alluring, — but less engaging. Man ceases to adore what is familiar to his eye. Like her emblematic flower, the same sun that beholds the glory of woman may be said to be witness to her disgrace: her na­ture is too delicate to support the beams of general admiration; she opens her attractions too fully to the heart; she yields too freely her sweetness to the breath of praise; and, if she does not sink into her original neglect, she ex­periences a fate little more to be envied; [Page 129]she is rudely pluckt by every spoiler; and, when her virtues are evaporat­ed, the pride of creation is viewed with contempt.

I shall therefore conclude with advi­sing the gentle sex, to leave a remnant of authority in the hands of the men, and to keep a little reserve in their own; as the best means of securing the hearts of those they love, and the esteem of such as deserve it.