Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

Antoinette? Yet selfishness was the predominating principle; and, in the hour of trial, selfpreservation the only aim. The élite of Paris paid, however, the greater compliment to sentiment, by assuming its language, whilst they were strangers to its real influence.

Nothing is more persuasive than feeling; it has a natural charm to which art can never attain; and therefore it is, that we feel the connection between elegance and amiability: — we must allow, indeed, the not unfrequent existence of the latter without the former; but we can scarcely conceive a really elegant woman altogether unamiable.

Elegance is poetry in action. Imagination may paint the heroine deficient in beauty, but never in elegance. It is this which diffuses, as it were, a halo round woman; which invests her with a romantic charm; and which, more perhaps than any other attraction, renders her an object of interest. Yet it is grace not affected, but natural; grace which tinges every thought, breathes in every expression, and regulates every movement,

- which adorns the hearth as

much as the drawing room,—and which is habitual, because it is innate.

And if such grace is not the property of the many, but of the few, if experience tells us that it exists oftener in the mind of the poet than in every-day life, above all, if there are many kind, and excellent, and most admirable women who by no means realise it; there is still no reason why we should not set it before us, and try to imitate what is so truly attractive. There are none, perhaps, who, in early life, cannot attain to something like elegance, and though it be but an ornament, it is one so agreeable, that it is well worth endeavouring to possess.

[ocr errors]

To be careless of elegance, indeed, proves little anxiety to please, or little acquaintance with the susceptibilities of the heart.

Man is very accessible to the graceful and the beautiful; and, however engrossed by higher pursuits, he seeks in the society of woman relaxation and relief. He wishes to find in her an enlivener and sweetener of his leisure, as well as the sharer of his cares; and a sensible

woman will be desirous that her address should furnish a recommendation, rather than a contrast, to her moral or mental worth.

Religion, far from disparaging elegance, gives new motives for its cultivation. The religious woman should endeavour to increase her influence, that she may turn it to the best account; and, in this view, she will not consider what is ornamental as unworthy her regard. She will cultivate it as a means of persuasion; and will study to be agreeable, were it only from a desire to recommend her principles.

Christianity is itself full of grace. It is a refiner as well as a purifier of the heart: - it imparts correctness of perception, delicacy of sentiment, and all those nicer shades of thought and feeling which constitute elegance of mind. Why, then, should piety and inelegance be associated? Or why should an absence of the graceful characterise religious persons so often, that awkwardness and even vulgarity are regarded by many as the usual concomitants of extraordinary seriousness?

Women of piety should not give occasion to such a reproach. They are not more devout

because they are ungraceful, or more heavenlyminded because they are deficient in taste. On the contrary, they imbibe more deeply the spirit of their lovely religion, when they carry its charm into the detail of life; when they are fascinating, as well as faithful; and agreeable, as well as good.

CHAP. III.

THE VALUE OF LETTERS TO WOMAN.

OPINION is now, more than it ever was, in favour of the diffusion of knowledge; and it is only to be expected that woman should profit by this enlargement of feeling. Not that the bas bleu is not still unpopular: but as female acquirements have become more common, they attract less notice; and their utility and importance are better understood.

Still, however, there is no possession, of which men are so tenacious, as that of learning. Perhaps it is, because knowledge is power, that they are therefore not disposed to share it with woman; or perhaps it is, because, instead of improving her acquirements to good purpose, she sometimes only uses them as a plea for assumption.

It is to be feared that their reluctance is to be ascribed principally to the latter cause: for it must be allowed that literary ladies have not been always very prepossessing. The disciple

« AnteriorContinuar »