ESSAY XXIII.'

THE GODDESS OF SILENCE;

TO THE LADIES OF LONDON AND WESTMINSTER, GREETING.

LADIES; though I am personally acquainted with but few of you; though an utter stranger at all your modern entertainments, routs, drums, or assemblies, yet as I was once well known to your grandmothers, and am still in some esteem with your husbands and lovers, I must be permitted to offer my complaint; I must beg leave to introduce my petition upon the strength of former intimacy, even though I should be heard with as much disgust as the poorest of your poor relations.

It is now many years since I was obliged to give up the amusements of town, and fly to a retreat in the country. I own I retired with reluctance, and fondly imagined you would have felt equal reluctance at my departure; but instead of this I find no single creature regrets my absence; every pretty mouth strives which shall make most noise, and all seem to conspire in thinking that company best where I am totally excluded.

And yet, Ladies, I have some right to expostulate against this ingratitude, for I will appeal to the opposite sex, whether you ever had in Great Britain a sincerer friend than I. I have made more matches in my time than a grass widow, and have reconciled more matrimonial disputes than the fears of pin-money, or a separate maintenance. I have taught ladies how to get husbands, and the harder lesson still, how to keep them; and yet for all this I am discarded, rejected from all polite society.

But I am not only deposed; the Goddess of Discord has been set up in my stead; all your pleasures seem dictated by her direction; she is constituted mistress of the ceremonies, if I can call that ceremony which is noise and confusion; it is she alone that prescribes the drum, the ball, and the tempests; 'tis she increases the hurry of ridottas, whirlwinds, routs, hurricanes -but my head aches; I must discontinue a catalogue of names more grating than a curtain lecture, or the grenadier's march.

I never think of the power I once enjoyed without regret; in those happy times when the beautiful sex was dressed in ruffs and fardingales; when your grandmothers showed their skill, not in playing piquet, but in making pies; and were equally remarkable for raising passion and paste; in those happy times, I say, Silence made some figure in every assembly even court-ladies themselves were then contented with silent pleasures, and a lover who resisted all the eloquence of their eyes above-stairs, was after caught in the attractive circle of a custard, or a mince-pie, of my lady's own making below in the larder.

Here I had enjoyed a peaceful reign from time immemorial; had flattered myself that modesty and I were to be inseparable companions; but it seems I was mistaken; I was first deposed at court by Miss Jenny Up-and-down, and my lady Betty Round-about; they hunted me from drawing-room to drawing-room, pursued me from family to family; for wherever they came, I was never after admitted. Those two ladies had led the fashion for many years; they continued tip-top talkative toasts for almost half-a-century; I wished a thousand times to see them peaceably married out of the way;

From "The Public Ledger."

but they continued their visiting and virginity to the last, and I was undone.

.

From court I was obliged to retire into the city. Here I sought for some time, though in vain, for refuge; but at last happily took shelter in the family of the Widow Slumber. I had no fears of having my repose disturbed in this family; for though it consisted mostly of women, there was no great noise; the widow herself being lethargic, and Mrs. Abigail dumb from her cradle. Yet, who would have thought it? A captain of grenadiers attacked the widow with success, and discharged both me and the dumb waiting-maid in the flash of a pistol!

We both travelled together for some time; and whatever she thought of me, I found her excellent company; so borrowing wings from poverty, we flew up together to a garret in Drury Lane. Here all was perfect tranquillity; even carts and hackney coaches from below could scarce be heard; the very woman that cried sprats was unable to interrupt our repose; and yet, after all, our repose was interrupted. Scandal, in the shape of our landlady, began to intrude upon our retirement; she did not care, she said, to lodge single women; she lived in a very honest neighbourhood, and would not have her house get a bad character for our scurvy two shillings a week. So giving us warning, we were obliged to decamp; Abigail to the workhouse, and I to the place of my nativity near Penman-maur.

From this retreat then it is, Ladies, that I address you; though I hate noise, I am equally averse to solitude. Permit me once more to return to be admitted at your entertainments; permit a banished goddess once more to show her friendship to the sex, and add lustre to your beauty. I do not know that I ever disgusted one of your lovers, though I have attracted thousands. I never knew a husband complain that I kept his wife too much company, and even on the most critical occasions my presence has been regarded as an omen of victory; for Silence gives consent. I am, Ladies, &c., &c.

ESSAY XXIV.1

FEMALE CHARACTERS.

MAN's province is universal, and comprehends everything, from the culture of the earth, to the government of it: men only become coxcombs by assuming particular characters, for which they are particularly unfit, though others may shine in those very characters. But the case of the fair sex is quite different; for there are many characters which are not of the feminine gender, and, consequently, there may be two kinds of women coxcombs; those who affect what does not fall within their department, and those who go out of their own natural characters, though they keep within the female province.

I should be very sorry to offend, where I only mean to advise and reform; I therefore hope the fair sex will pardon me, when I give ours the preference. Let them reflect, that each sex has its distinguishing characteristic, and if they can with justice (as certainly they may) brand a man with the name of a cott-quean, if he invades a certain female detail which is unquestionably their prerogative, may not we, with equal justice, retort

1 From "The Ladies' Magazine."

"A man that is too busy in meddling with women's affairs."-PHILLIPS's New World of Words.

upor them when, laying aside their natural characters, they assume those which are appropriated to us? The delicacy of their texture, and the strength of ours, the beauty of their form, and the coarseness of ours, sufficiently indicate the respective vocations. Was Hercules ridiculous and contemptible with his distaff? Omphale would not have been less so at a review, or a council-board. Women are not formed for great cares themselves, but to soothe and soften ours; their tenderness is the proper reward for the toils we undergo for their preservation; and the ease and cheerfulness of their conversation, our desirable retreat from the labours of study and business. They are confined within the narrow limits of domestic offices, and when they stray beyond them, they move eccentrically, and consequently without grace.1

Aggripina, born with an understanding and dispositions which could, at best, have qualified her for the sordid helpmate of a pawnbroker or usurer, pretends to all the accomplishments that ever adorned man or woman, without the possession, or even the true knowledge of any one of them. She would appear learned, and has just enough of all things, without comprehending any one, to make her talk absurdly upon everything. She looks upon the art of pleasing as her master-piece, but mistakes the means so much, that her flattery is too gross for self-love to swallow, and her lies too palpable to deceive for a moment; so that she shocks those she would gain. Mean tricks, shallow cunning, and breach of faith, constitute her mistaken system of politics. She endeavours to appear generous at the expense of trifles, while an indiscreet and unguarded rapaciousness discovers her natural and insatiable avidity. Thus mistaking the perfections she would seem to possess, and the means of acquiring even them, she becomes the most ridiculous, instead of the most complete of her sex.

Eudosia, the most frivolous woman in the world, condemns her own sex for being too trifling. She despises the agreeable levity and cheerfulness of a mixed company; she will be serious, that she will; and emphatically intimates, that she thinks reason and good sense very valuable things. She never mixes in the general conversation, but singles out some one man, whom she thinks worthy of her good sense, and in a half voice, or sotto voce, discusses her solid trifles in his ear, dwells particularly upon the most trifling circumstances of the main trifle, which she enforces with the proper inclination of head and body, and with the most expressive gesticulations of the fan, modestly confessing every now and then, by way of parenthesis, that possibly it may be thought presumption in a woman to talk at all upon those matters. In the mean time, her unhappy hearer stifles a thousand gapes, assents universally to whatever she says, in hopes of shortening the conversation, and carefully watches the first favourable opportunity, which any motion in the company gives him, of making his escape from this excellent solid understanding. Thus deserted, but not discouraged, she takes the whole company in their turns, and has, for every one, a whisper of equal importance. If Eudosia would content herself with her natural talents, play at cards, make tea and visits, talk to her dog often, and to her company but sometimes, she would not be ridiculous, but bear a very tolerable part in the polite world.

Sydaria had beauty enough to have excused (while young) her want of

1 "Women, it has been observed, are not naturally formed for great cares themselves, but to soften ours. Their tenderness is the proper reward for the dangers we undergo for their preservation; and the ease and cheerfulness of their conversation, our desirable retreat from the fatigues of intense application. They are confined within the narrow limits of domestic assiduity: and when they stray beyond them, they move beyond their sphere, and consequently without grace."-"The Citizen of the World," Letter lxii., vol. ii., p. 294.

common sense. But she scorned the fortuitous and precarious triumphs of beauty: she would only conquer by the charms of her mind. An union of hearts, a delicacy of sentiments, a mental adoration, or a sort of tender quietism, were what she long sought for, and never found. Thus nature struggled with sentiments till she was five-and-forty, but then got the better of it to such a degree, that she made very advantageous proposals to an Irish ensign of one-and-twenty. equally ridiculous in her age and in her youth.

Canidia, withered by age, and shattered by infirmities, totters under the load of her misplaced ornaments; and her dress varies according to the freshest advices from Paris, instead of conforming itself (as it ought) to the direction of her undertaker. Her mind, as weak as her body, is absurdly adorned; she talks politics and metaphysics, mangles the terms of each, and, if there be sense in either, most infallibly puzzles it; adding intricacy to politics, and darkness to mysteries, equally ridiculous in this world and

the next.

I shall not now enter into an examination of the lesser affectations (most of them are pardonable, and many of them are pretty, if their owners are so), but confine my present animadversions to the affectation of ill-suited characters; for I would by no means deprive my fair countrywomen of their genteel little terrors, antipathies, and affections. The alternate panics of thieves, spiders, ghosts, and thunder, are allowable to youth and beauty, provided they survive them. But what I mean is, to prevail with them to act their own natural parts, and not other people's; and to convince them, that even their own imperfections will become them better than the borrowed perfections of others.

Should some lady of spirit, unjustly offended at these restrictions, ask what province I leave their sex? I answer, that I leave them whatever has not been peculiarly assigned by nature to ours. I leave them a mighty empire-Love. There they reign absolute, and by unquestioned right, while beauty supports their throne. They have all the talents requisite for that soft empire, and the ablest of our sex cannot contend with them in the profound knowledge and conduct of those arcana. But then, those who are deposed by years or accidents, or those who by nature were never qualified to reign, should content themselves with the private care and economy of their families, and the diligent discharge of domestic duties.

I take the fabulous birth of Minerva, the goddess of arms, wisdom, arts, and sciences, to have been an allegory of the ancients, calculated to show, that women of natural and usual births must not aim at those accomplishments. She sprung armed out of Jupiter's head, without the co-operation of his consort Juno, and, as such only, had those great provinces assigned

her.

I confess one has read of ladies, such as Semiramis, Thalestris, and others, who have made very considerable figures in the most heroic and manly parts of life; but considering the great antiquity of those histories, and how much they are mixed up with fables, one is at liberty to question either the facts, or the sex. Besides that, the most ingenious and erudite Conrad Wolfang Laboriosus Nugatorius, of Hall, in Saxony, has proved to a demonstration, in the 14th volume, page 2891, of his learned treatise De Hermaphroditis, that all the reputed female heroes of antiquity were of this epicene species, though out of regard to the fair and modest part of my readers, I dare not quote the several facts and reasonings with which he supports this assertion; and as for the heroines of modern date, we have more than suspicions of their being at least of the epicene gender. The greatest monarch that ever filled the British throne (till very lately) was queen Elizabeth, of whose sex we have abundant reason to doubt, history furnishing us with many instances of the manhood of that princess,

without leaving as one single symptom or indication of the woman; and thus much is certain, that she thought it improper for her to marry a man. The great Christina, queen of Sweden, was allowed by everybody to be above her sex; and the masculine was so predominant in her composition, that she even conformed, at last, to its dress, and ended her days in Italy. I therefore require that those women who insist upon going beyond the bounds allotted to their sex, should previously declare themselves hermaphrodites, and be registered as such in their several parishes; till when, I shall not suffer them to confound politics, perplex metaphysics, and darken mysteries.

How amiable may a woman be! what a comfort and delight to her acquaintance, her friends, her relations, her lover, or her husband, in keeping strictly within her character! She adorns all female virtues with female softness. Women, while untainted by affectation, have a natural cheerfulness of mind, tenderness and benignity of heart, which justly endear them to us, either to animate our joys, or soothe our sorrows; but how are they changed, and how shocking do they become, when the rage of ambition, or the pride of learning, agitates and swells those breasts, where only love, friendship, and tender care should dwell!

Let Flavia be their model, who though she could support any character, assumes none; never misled by fancy or vanity, but guided singly by reason, whatever she says or does is the manifest result of a happy nature, and a good understanding; though she knows whatever women ought, and it may be, more than they are required to know, she conceals the superiority she has, with as much care as others take to display the superiority they have not: she conforms herself to the turn of the company she is in, but in a way of rather avoiding to be distanced, than desiring to take the lead. Are they merry, she is cheerful; are they grave, she is serious; are they absurd, she is silent. Though she thinks and speaks as a man would do, still it is as a woman should do; she effeminates (if I may use the expression) whatever she says, and gives all the graces of her own sex to the strength of ours; she is well-bred, without the troublesome ceremonies and frivolous forms of those who only affect to be so. As her good breeding proceeds jointly from good-nature and good sense, the former inclines her to oblige, and the latter shows her the easiest and best way of doing it. Woman's beauty, like men's wit, is generally fatal to the owners, unless directed by a judgment which seldom accompanies a great degree of either; her beauty seems but the proper and decent lodging for such a mind; she knows the true value of it, and far from thinking that it authorises impertinence and coquetry, it redoubles her care to avoid those errors that are its usual attendants. Thus she not only unites in herself all the advantages of body and mind, but even reconciles contradictions in others, for she is loved and esteemed, though envied by all.

ESSAY XXV.1

ZENIM AND GALHINDA.

An Eastern Tale.

IN the early ages of the world, all the inhabitants of earth were subject to Firnaz, the genius of pleasure. He was a good spirit, and favourite of the Most High. The air, the mountains, the woods, the rivers,

1 From "The Ladies' Magazine."

VOL. III.