"The tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me." "O for the touch of a vanished hand, And the sound of a voice that is still!" "God gives us love! Something to love He lends us; but when love is grown "This is the curse of time. Alas! In grief we are not all unlearned; Once, through our own doors Death did pass; "This star Rose with us, through a little arc "Sleep sweetly, tender heart, in peace; 66 While the stars burn, the moons increase, Sleep till the end, true soul and sweet, Sleep, full of rest from head to feet; Lie still, dry dust, secure of change." "Vattene in pace, alma beata e bella." Go in peace, soul beautiful and blessed. Our readers may think we make too much of this; it would be difficult to do so. All our highest and most perilous interests are involved in some of the points on which this young man has with such deep seriousness spoken. Do we believe that God is Love? are we loving God? are we resting on nothing short of Him? and are we ready to join in this prayer? "Lord, I have viewed this world over, in which thou hast set me; I have tried how this and that thing will fit my spirit, and the design of my creation, and can find nothing on which to rest, for nothing here doth itself rest, but such things as please me for a while, in some degree, vanish and flee as shadows from before me. Lo! I come to Thee the Eternal Being-the Spring of Life-the Centre of Restthe Stay of the Creation-the Fulness of all things. I join myself to Thee; with Thee I will lead my life, and spend my days, with whom I aim to dwell for ever, expecting when my little time is over, to be taken up into Thine own eternity." The Social Position of Woman. 515 ART. VIII.—1. Thoughts on Self-Culture, Addressed to Women. By MARIA G. GREY, and her Sister, EMILY SHIRREFF. 12mo. 2 vols. London, 1850. 2. Woman in the Nineteenth Century. By S. MARGARET FULLER. London, 1850. FOR many years past the presses of England, France, Germany, and America have teemed with books, having for their object, the definition and adjustment of the "rights," "duties," and social position" of woman. It is especially note-worthy, first, that the works produced in England are written, for the most part, to denounce and confute the errors originated and disseminated by the publications of the other three countries; and, secondly, that a large proportion of these works are by female authors. We propose to say a few words concerning the chief elements of this controversy, and to revive, if possible, into the force of truths, certain truisms, which, so restored, may help to clear the mental atmosphere in which most of us breathe, from a good deal of vaporous mock-philosophy. America, France, and Germany, in doleful chorus, lament the slavery of woman, and the tyranny of man. Masculine and feminine are proclaimed to be accidents of organization, which ought in no way to affect the relationship of souls. The woman's excellent privilege of subordination, and the man's ennobling responsibility as chief, are declared to be the prime evils, which have preyed, "fell and forgotten," on the heart of society, ever since the days of the first despot, Adam. Even were a new confutation at large, of the folly in point demanded, we should not think of offering it in this Journal. The great majority of our readers are sober Christians; persons who conceive that St. Peter and St. Paul, and the Author of the book of Genesis, spoke with an authority sufficient to determine men's opinions, in the ever-surprising, although ever-recurring event of their deafness to the clear sentence of the natural world. We choose rather to contemplate the matter as one of the odd aberrations of the popular intellect, which alternate with periods of common sense, by laws akin to those which produce the alternations of graceful and disgraceful fashions in dress. When once the people, generally, have ceased to look beyond their own judgments for their opinions, truth and untruth become mere fashions. Consequently, beauty, which is the blosom of truth, is unknown to them; and the love of excitement and change is their only guide, in matters which the law cannot remove from their jurisdiction. If they cannot preserve common propriety, for ten years together, in the adornment of their bodies, shall we expect that they will succeed, unhelped, in arraying their minds with the subtle loveliness of true opinions, especially upon a subject, the due comprehension of which is one of the dearest rewards of true worthiness; we mean that of the psychical relations of the sexes. Sin, which must always abound when the light of Christianity suffers, as now in certain countries, an eclipse, is not only the leveller of men, it also abolishes the loveliest and the deepest distinctions of sex. The more a man fulfils his sphere, which of himself he cannot do, the more does he become peculiarly a man; and so it is with woman; but, in abandoning their happy station, on the Rock which is higher than they, and withdrawing, as it were, from the light which creates colour with its contrasts, they suffer a base approximation of natures, and, as they descend, part, one by one, with every blissful spiritual opposition, until external difference alone is recognised, of all the infinite and far deeper original diversity. This doctrine is variously confirmed. We know that the entire psychical contrast of man, and his sweet coheiress of immortal life, is nowhere so emphatically declared as in the Book of Absolute Verity. And, next in force to this fact, is the truth, which is a matter of common remark, that none but the very highest poets have succeeded in obtaining an insight into the sexual diversity of souls sufficiently deep to enable them to sing truly concerning woman. To the degraded and unchristian apprehension of many people in the present day, this question is hopeless of a solution. Nothing but the noble life to which injustice is impossible will ever give light enough to determine what is the nature of that justice which man owes to his life's partner. To a wide moral debasement, therefore, it is that we refer the present revival of this ridiculous question. It cannot be denied, indeed, that a similar question appears to have occupied the minds of men at a time in which this wretched excuse for such a wretched folly could not be pleaded. Alas, for the inspiration of the Fathers of the Church! Definit in piscem mulier formosa superne, was the devil's lie, which had its nest in the hearts of most of them, although they lived hard upon the time when a woman had been honoured more than ever man was; and although-nay, by the doctrine of extremes, perhaps, because they already beheld that honour in an exaggerated and unnatural light. Tertullian teaches that marriage is to be permitted only to prevent greater sins; Jerome condemns marriage itself as damnable; and Epiphanius writes, Nisi quis eunuchus fieret salvari non posse. If thus, like Democritus, these men put their eyes out to save them from the sight of woman, we need not go farther to account for their blindness, Doctrine of the Equality of Sexes. 517 or for that of their disciples. Neither is the origin, in a serious age, of a controversy like that which engages our own frivolous one, in the light of this fact, a mystery. It was among the fetid and gaudy poppies which dyed the harvest of the first French Revolution, that the doctrine of the 66 equality" of man and woman first, in modern times, arose. It has been blundering on ever since, with the vigour of ignorant and conceited zeal, and is now echoed in many a shrill cry for the " emancipation of woman," by the female "spirits of the age" in Germany and America. The French, who have spoken and written about women ten times as much as all the rest of the world put together, are precisely the people in the world who know least about the subject. Hannah More, concerning the social position of woman in the East, well remarks, that "it is humbling to reflect that, in those countries in which fondness for the mere person of women is carried to the highest excess, they are slaves, and that their moral and intellectual degradation increases in direct proportion to the adoration which is paid to external charms. The observation bears almost as strongly upon France as upon Persia. It is true, that some of the most polished female intellects on record have belonged to France. But notwithstanding many noble instances to the contrary, it is yet generally true, that in France, as in the East, the culture of the female intellect is, and long has been, consciously and avowedly, no more than one of the means of increasing sensual debasement; and, if the question is candidly examined, it will be found that, between the African savage, who approaches her master on her knees, and the French woman, elegantly postured and adored on a plaster-of-Paris pedestal, there exists far less real than apparent difference of social rank. "Une femme tendre est, pour un algébriste ce que l'algèbre est pour une femme tendre ;" and no less a mystery is she to the sensualist than to the algebrist. Let the reader determine for himself, whether we are wrong in affirming that, in a country where men like Fourier pass for "pure-minded" and philosophic, it is impossible that anything true can be said concerning the relationship of man and woman. We believe that we are justified in regarding any doctrine that may have been propounded by the popular teachers of modern France on the subject in point, as a presumption that the reverse is the truth; or rather, in treating their social philosophy, in this respect, as having no direct significance whatever for a people who are still in a condition of moral vigour. We proceed, then, not to expose French lies, or the spawn of them in Germany and America, but to confirm and clarify the knowledge of the truth, which, with hearty gratitude to God, we perceive to prevail, although somewhat dimmed and confused, in the breasts of most of those who have been nurtured in this favoured island. A glance at certain facts concerning the condition of women in past times, and other nations, will help us to arrive at just views of their present social position, and their prospects for the future. It is impossible for any one to close his apprehension against the shameful truth, that, in the history of the world, the rule has been for woman to suffer oppression from man: and it is most necessary to remark, that in direct confutation of the assertions of certain French pseudo-philosophers, the question of relative stages of civilisation really seems to have had little to do with that of the refusal or cession to woman of her natural rights. Short of habitual subjection to physical injury, she could scarcely have been worse off than among the most highly polished people of the ancient world; while in the neighbouring and comparatively uncivilized Sparta, her condition, relatively to man, was much higher. It seems probable that the ancient German barbarians entertained a deeper respect for, and conceded practically a larger amount of social "rights" to their women, than are conceded to or entertained for the women of France, by their obsequious lords and masters, in the present day. It has been observed that, with different tribes of savages inhabiting the same country, the treatment of women varies between the extremes of kindness and ferocity; and that their social position, as it happens, is one of importance, responsibility, and respect, or of worse than bestial slavery and insignificance. Franklin, Parry, La Perouse, Clarke, and other travellers, have borne ample and very curious evidence to the entire dependence of the social condition of women, among savage tribes, upon caprice and accident; and historians have shewn that these agencies are almost as powerful with civilized as with uncivilized peoples, in the determination of woman's happiness. Climates, in which she is unusually beautiful, or circumstances which render the services that she is best fitted to perform unusually necessary, are found to tell favourably upon her social condition; that is to say, her rank has been raised, when its elevation has happened to recommend itself obviously to the selfishness of man. These facts might have been predicted from a moderate amount of insight into the human constitution. The social subordination of woman to man is a law of nature: it is not a thing that can ever be reasonably called into question. That men have the strongest muscles no one doubts; and it must be almost equally manifest upon reflection, that women are quite as little fitted to become Miltons or Bacons, as to share the laurels with Van Amburgh or Ben Caunt. Having thus the advantage of the stoutest limbs, and the strongest wit to use |