LADIES' MAGAZINE.

VOL. I.

MAY.

No. V.

FEMALE CHARACTER.

It is related of Diogenes, the ancient philosopher, that seeing a number of females hanging on the branches of an olive tree, he exclaimed, "Oh that every tree would produce such fruit." The Cynic undoubtedly intended his exclamation as a sneer, and his want, not to say of charity, but of respect for the sex, induces us to concur in opinion with those who have thought that his tub would not bear too close an examination. Indeed we naturally and honestly suspect any one's motives in an eccentric course. of life, who like Diogenes, have been expatriated for coining false money, or who subsequently endeavor to palm off oddity for genius, or brutal indifference for philosophy.

There are not wanting, in our own days, those who have thought lightly of the sex, and who from the obliquity of a few have inferred the general delinquency of the whole. We will not be so sparing of charity, even to the uncharitable, as to suppose that their opinions are predicated wholly on prejudice, or that their estimation of the sex, has not been compounded with study and observation. But while we concede that there may be many instances of depravity, -of turpitude,-nay, even of wretched imbecility, from which such sentiments may with apparent honesty have been deduced, it will be our endeavor in the few remarks we have to make, to rescue the sex from the stigmas and false accusations which have been so illiberally and wantonly thrown upon them.

We are not of the number of those, who in their fulsome flattery, or their unfettered enthusiasm, indiscriminately

heap eulogium and panegyric upon the sex. Nor would we commend ourselves to their smiles by turgid hyperbole, or terms of unqualified commendation. They have their failings and their weaknesses, as a sex, and the perversions of habit or of nurture, may swell them to bloated dimensions. But in general those failings are not too large for the cloak of charity, and their very weaknesses, from the constitution of our nature, are the bonds by which they are peculiarly endeared to us.

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There is one essential trait in the female character, that enters largely into her loveliness, without which, a masculine tone appears, which is wholly inconsistent with natural delicacy. We shall be anticipated in the remark, that this is an amiable disposition. We know that mankind in general, consider this trait as entitled to faint praise, because the quality has often been ascribed to those who have little else to recommend them; and to say of a person that he is an amiable man, has been construed into à tacit concession that the powers of his mind are either naturally weak or have accidentally been impaired. The injustice of such a conclusion, we are not called upon to discuss-it will readily appear to all, who take into consideration the particulars which render the disposition such as we have mentioned. It is not a single virtue, residing in the heart, from which, like so many native streams, the benevolent feelings of our nature flow, but rather a congregation of virtues, regulating the judgment, the temper and the feelings. The hasty and the passionate, the malicious and the revengeful, are hurried into excess, by an obedience to the suggestions of phrensied feeling, and a forgetfulness or disregard of that inward monitor, whose voice is stifled by the uproar of contending emotions. But the folly, as well as the fatal effects of passion, is abhorred by those who takeinto the account the motives of men, and are willing that charity should see misguided zeal, where passion can behold nothing but intentional error. Indeed, the whole virtue of an amiable disposition, consists in a sort of clear sighted charity, which is more ready to suspect the accuracy of its own vision, than to view the actions of mankind through the optics of malevolent feeling. And thus we find that the sex in whom this quality (called frequently, but falsely, a weak minded virtue) preeminently resides, are less willing to lend a ready

ear to the hints of hatred and suspicion, to the suggestions of envy and jealousy, and to the exaggerated tales which teem from a perverted understanding or a misguided heart.

From the view we have taken of this quality, so essential to the perfection of female character, it will clearly be seen what confidence is to be reposed in the opinions, and what deference is due to the motives of those, who represent an amiable disposition, as the offspring of imbecility of mind. Shall we call the monarch of the forest weak, because he renders at best but a surly obeisance to the breeze, while we dignify the pliant rush with the characteristics of strength and excellence, because it "bends its body if the wind but carelessly nod on it ?" It is the amiable in disposition, who, like the oak, are unmoved amid the storm of passion; while the angry and the passionate, like the rush, are bent from their uprightness by every gust of temper.

The female sex have long been the acknowledged possessors of a sort of mental quickness and intellectual acumen, or rather sharpness of vision, which may be better understood by the term sprightliness of imagination, which has enabled them to discern, or at least to recognise those smaller springs of action that regulate the conduct of mankind, which, from their supposed insignificancy, have escaped the notice of the grosser sex. This is undoubtedly to be considered as the compensation which nature in her justice has awarded to the sex, when she denied them the disposition for studied research and laborious investigation. It is this, that gives them that decided superiority in the lighter departments of literature, especially in epistolary writing. And in this too we are to recognise one of the remoter causes of benevolent feeling, and of amiableness of disposition; since this fertility of the imagination is constantly producing palliatives for error, or excuses for failure in moral obligation.

That there have been, and still are many disgraceful exceptions in the quality we have ascribed to the sex, history obliges us to acknowledge, and our own experience of the world compels us to confess. It is true that when the female descends the scale of moral excellence, instead of rising in it, as nature intended, it cannot with certainty be foretold where she will stop. Depravity in the sex, is of a deeper and a darker cast, as the strongest acids are obtained from the sweetest base. But it is as unjust to visit individual turpi

her laws.

tude upon the sex in general, as it would be to infer the asperity of winter from the darkness of the summer cloud, or the deformity of nature from an occasional deviation from The agents of nature are often at work in apparently open disobedience to her laws; and thus we find that the violence of the breeze is often seducing objects from their affection to the stronger and more stable law of gravity. But it would be credulity, not wisdom, to conclude from such facts, that nature is not steady in her operations. And so too if the agitations of passion, the desire of personal aggrandizement, the jealousy of love, the rivalship of beauty, and the thousand contending emotions that struggle for vent, in the human breast, have hurried their unhappy victim from the paths of rectitude and principle; if the violence of untamed temper and the phrensy of unsubdued feeling, have plunged their wretched possessor into an abyss of guilt and consequent misery, it would be weakness, not wisdom, to infer that such were the characteristics of the species.

It is a remarkable fact, and one very much to our present purpose, that in all the tales invented for the amusement or adapted to the instruction of mankind, woman bears a conspicuous part. She is there arrayed in all the charms of her moral, as well as physical nature, and seldom fails to add not only an interest, but the chief interest to the relation. The selfish misogynist bends in rapture over the story of her excellence, no less than the experienced in conjugal felicity; and although his professions and his practice appear to be predicated upon a light, or a hasty estimation of the merits of the sex, he cannot but confess to himself and to his heart, that truth requires some concessions from prejudice, and that the decisions of the will, ought in justice to be reversed by the determinations of the judgment.

Intimately connected with that characteristic which we have ascribed to the sex, and upon which we have dwelt at some length, is, sensibility of heart. The world and its business is continually effacing the impressions received by the other sex, from objects of affecting interest, until the powers and feelings of sympathy are blunted or impaired. But here is the peculiar sphere of woman, and it is in this light that her character shines with the most distinguished lustre. The ardor of maternal affection, the sanctity of a sister's love, are themes upon which the poet and the orator have

lavished their sweetest strains, and have delineated with their strongest powers. What is there in the affection of a mother, or the tender relation of a sister, that derives not its best, its only charm, from that sensibility to which we allude? To whom would we communicate with confidence the trials and the vexations of life, those sorrows, troubles, and disappointments, and all those ills "that flesh is heir to?" The world is dead to sympathy. Man is too much occupied in the pursuit of wealth or fame, to lend a willing ear, or a consoling voice, to the complaints or the afflictions of disappointed hope, and blighted expectation. But there is an ear, which is open to the sorrows of man; there is a voice, whose sweetest accents are the accents of comfort and consolation. The vine that clings to the oak for shelter and protection, and supports itself by its mantling embrace, in it turn affords support, when age has destroyded the strength, or the lightning has shivered the body of the tree. So woman, who naturally leans upon man for succor, in her turn supports him in adversity, when the cares and the troubles of life threaten to bear him down, or the mortifications of disappointed ambition prey upon his spirits.

If any proof were wanting that the qualities which we have mentioned are, indeed and in truth, to be predicated of the sex, we should not appeal to the experience of fashionable life, to the rival contentions of beauty and accomplishment, or to the mawkish sensibility derived from affected sentiment, and studied refinement. The beauties of nature are to be contemplated, not as she is fettered by the appliances of art, but when in the solitude of the mountain, the secrecy of the cave, or the glitterings of the grotto, she revels in her own splendors, and retires from observation, as if fearful of the officiousness of mankind. The native beauty of the flower is to be estimated not from the factitious enhancement of its value, derived from a deviation from its species, but when in its original features, it spontaneously exults in its own perfumes. And so too, we are not to look for the natural traits of the female character, among the botanical monsters of fashionable life, but rather in the retirement of the domestic circle, the quietness of contentment, and the freedom from excitement and restraint.

In the enumeration of those individuals in whom the virtues of the head and heart are to be justly estimated, and in