FRED, Fred, Fred-I am plunging "deeper and deeper still," as the poet says. This Agnes-I must call her Agnes -for I hate that name which gives her propriety to another person-has fastened upon me with a tenacity unequalled even by the little hunchbacked man whom we detested so much in Sinbad the Sailor. Look which way I will, her form is present to my imagination. Sleeping and waking-idle or occupied-restless or reposing, it is all the same. Out of her sight, a sickening impatience for her society: in her presence, a restless irritation-a maddening impulse-a kind of furor amandi, that tingles to my fingers' ends; and a most irrepressible inclination to knock every one down who addresses her, not excepting her husband, who has paid the price of his liberty for the privilege. Are not these symptoms? strong, convincing, damnable symptoms, Fred? I am afraid they are; and as many times as I have felt them before, I never yet felt them so strongly, so forcibly, so madly, as now; and the worst is, that the inclination has grown, and grown; and I have cherished it. and cherished it-till, like the lion's whelp, it threatens to eat up its nurse. Then the absurd laws here pronounce this to be wrong; and I am doomed in her presence every Sunday to hear her and the whole congregation pray against this same feeling which is devouring my very heart; and yet I can't keep out of church, while I know my divinity is there. So you see I am growing good, Fred. Surely there must be some mistake in the history of my birthplace. I never could have been born in this cold country, subject to these November laws: I must rather owe my birth to more tolerant France -to warmer Italy-or to some of those climates where, as old Dryden says— The sun with rays directly darting down Prometheus must certainly have amused himself by throwing an extra quantum of gas into my composition; and like other gas, compressed into too small a space, it will have its way, even though it blows up the gasometer. And what is the human frame but a gasometer, of which the senses are the apertures for ignition? If they did not catch fire, Fred -aye, and burn out-why they would stink. So what is the use of arguing? I tell you woman is my destiny-from my boyish days to the present-through our exercises at Eton-through our studies at Oxford—at our first initiation into society-at our temporary expulsion from it—and at my re-entrance into it-thou knowest that woman-woman-woman-has been my only object; and so she will be to the end of the chapter. I know every description of them-have studied their passions, their minds, their vanities, and find the last the strongest, and the very best weapon to wound or win them with. And can you wonder at this predilection? Ought our sires, our elders, or our tutors, to wonder at it, when every part of our education tends to the inculcation of that passion which is inspired by the dear--the damnable—the delightful sex? What are the first ideas engendered in our minds by the books which are put into our boyish hands, at the very commencement of our education? at the very budding of our youthful passions? at the very moment when sparks are growing into flames, and when embers are fanned into fire in our constitutions? Look at the Satires of Juvenal-the first book of Lucretius-the Odes of Horace and Catullus-the Idylliums of Theocritus-and above all, the Epistles and Metamorphoses of old Ovid. Is it not all love? all procreation? and are not all these school-books? the very foundation of our minds -the first pursuits to which we are directed? Why, even the very flowers, Fred-the innocent flowers-with their stamens, and pistils, their polyandria, and their polygamiawith all their innocence, according to Linnæus, set us the same example. What beaux and beauties crowd the gaudy groves, And woo and win (not wed, Fred,) their vegetable loves! Love out their hour, and leave their lives in air. This is natural philosophy. Then look to history. Do you think the precocious schoolboy ever connects the Rape of the Sabines with Malthus on Population? and what must he naturally think when he finds in the next page these very ladies pleading the cause of their rude ravishers-and that they can Hug the offender, and forgive the offence? What can they think but that, Indulgent to the wrongs which they receive, Yes, Romulus was a true politician as well as a great general. He not only made conquests abroad, but provided subjects at home-and like a kind soul Took care the commonwealth should multiply, Like a true king, to get a race of slaves. Alas! there is no necessity for modern sovereigns to employ their subjects in this manner. 66 Look again at the histories of Anthony and CleopatraTelemachus and Calypso-Paris and Helen-Pericles and Aspasia; and a thousand other lovers of all sorts and nations, that glow from the title-page to the finis in our schoolbooks, and from the alpha to the omega of our education: and do they think, that with these exempla profana before our eyes, we can turn over a new leaf," as the old women say? and even if we did, why we should find another story of the same nature in the next page. Look through the ancient mythology, where even the gods themselves had their pandars, and their procuresses. Is not their whole history, from Jupiter down to the Cyclops, one tissue of amorous adventure? and do you not remember when we have read the tales of Europa, of Danae, of Leda, and the hundred other little passetemps of the bearded Jupiter, how we envied him his powers of metamorphosis and ubiquity much more than we ever did that power which, When he shook his head, could shake the firmament? or all the decp-mouthed thunder with which he could hurl his vengeance on the poor mortals who had excited his anger, by following his example? Indeed, the principal use of his thunder seems to have been to silence Juno, when her goddess-ships's jealousy degenerated into mere womanly scolding; and certainly it is a weapon which might be very useful to mortals for similar purposes. But these you will say are indeed the mere exempla profana; but look to the sacra, and see if the matter be at all mended in the histories of Mrs. Potiphar and the two Miss Lots. But as there are so many subjects from which to illustrate my position, without infringing upon those which are considered sacred, and as it has ever been a maxim with me that those are but weak wits who indulge themselves in veins that are only pleasant, because they run in a current contrary to generally received opinions, let us keep, Fred, in the beaten track of the amatory classical. Vivan le femmine say I-look, Fred, at all the other pursuits of life-what is ambition but the king's evil? a path of thorns-a mountain, up which a man rolls his tub like Sisyphus, only to have it |