THE

LADIES' REPOSITORY.

DECEMBER, 1846.

THE LITTLE VISITOR.

(SEE ENGRAVING.)

CHILDHOOD! What a world of meaning in that word! Childhood is the opening scene in life's eventful drama, and that is a scene of beauty. The first act begins in helpless purity; the last closes with the swelling buds of promise. Nature has produced nothing more wonderful than man; and man is never more interesting than when first a child.

Pure, bright, beautiful childhood! How calm, and sweet, and cheerful is the little innocent! Thought, deep, busy, corroding thought, has worn no wrinkles on its placid brow. The world's care has sent no pangs to its young, buoyant heart. All confiding to friend or stranger, it trusts itself, after the slightest introductory acquaintance, to any one without fear of treachery. And safely may it do so, for, wonderful to tell-wonderful in the lot of any thing pertaining to humanity-the child has no enemy.

hand and bright eyes equally indicate the emotions of his blessed heart. He now cares no more for his rattle, than if it were a straw.

Were I to speak of dress, I should say his cap is a little out of taste. The cat he plays with at home would look quite as well in it as himself. Children, in fact, should not wear caps. Besides making them appear, whichever be their sex, like little grandmothers dressed merely for the fun, they are an injury to the head, and mar very much the beauty of the child. Could I make that lady on the carpet hear I would request her, with all politeness, to take the cap off, and let me see the little fellow's head and hair. She could easily do it, for I see it is not tied.

me,

The mother is in another room. She is holding high converse with some delighted friend, whom she has come to see. How refreshing to the soul are these friendly greetings! but, my dear sister, do not Joyous childhood! How fresh and fair is the great forget your charge. A slight act of negligence may world it sees and wonders at! The eye drinks in occasion him much harm. Besides, madam, it is the pure light, and the car is filled with harmony. very cold weather. The snow is falling fast, and All the organs of sense are rapt into an ecstasy of the wind is whistling clear and cold. When his pleasure. If there is any thing hurtful or danger-evening is spent, give him a nice snug place to sleep ous in nature, that same nature has supplied child-in, and when yours is over, "cuddle" him to your

hood with a friend, who watches it with tireless fidelity. If there is any thing gratifying within the reach of the tenderest affection, childhood lacks nothing that could increase its happiness.

But childhood gives as much pleasure as it receives. Who does not love a child? Those who are not accustomed to caress them, nevertheless love them; and love is the fountain of our peace and joy. Each child is a little fountain of happiness to all around it. How benignant, then, was our Creator, in so arranging the great plan of nature, as to counteract the numerous ills of life, by opening up within the inclosure of almost every family so many little springs of comfort.

Look you, for an example, gentle reader, at the pretty scene on the preceding page. Which is most happy, the little visitor, or the party of aunts, or cousins, or at least fond acquaintances, who caress and gaze? The child is clearly overwhelmed with strange things. He is in a new place. His uplifted VOL. VI.-45

breast till morning.

Long life and joy to the little visitor! May his days be many and his troubles few!

But his days may be as few as his troubles. Tender little being that he is, he may wither and fall in an hour. He may be laid low on the couch of death, and these very friends, who are now so happy in giving him their greetings, may be soon called to weep around his little bier. Guard him, fond mother, guard him from every harm. Preserve by every means his health of body, and with still greater assiduity his purity of mind. Then, if he die early, he may be in the better land before you.

LITERARY SKETCHES.

BY THE EDITOR.

CHARACTER OF ASPASIA.

female has been too roughly handled, to produce the most perfect models of natural beauty. Their habits of out-door exercise are highly conducive to the full development of the female form; but German field labor does nothing toward heightening the personal charms of woman.

Aspasia was born on the shores of the Egean Sea, the most beautiful country, and that blessed with the most delicate climate in the world. The customs of the country were exactly adapted to the full expansion of her physical being. It was the

THE name of this celebrated woman has survived the mutations of more than two thousand years. It will probably go down to the end of time. That there must have been something extraordinary in her character, is certain from the duration of her fame. History has given us the elements of that character, and displayed the causes of her vast ele-land, also, of philosophy, poetry, and song. Thales, vation above the ordinary level of her sex.

the father of the Socratic school, and Homer, the master poet of the past, and Apelles, the most graceful painter of his age, and Parrhasius, the unrivaled delineator of life and manners, and many more whose names I have not space to mention, were all the countrymen of this celebrated woman. She lived, from infancy, in the midst of scenes and so

In her personal appearance, Aspasia was the loveliest of women. Indeed, thus much her name imports, and in her age names were given with a meaning. The historians of that period have not left us any minute description of her person; but when they tell us that her beauty charmed all Athens, any one's historical recollections will soon settle everyciety sufficient to call out and perfect every female other question. Who, in this age of pictures, has not at least a faint conception of a Grecian beauty? Who that has examined the Italian copies of the Greek artists, or that has seen only the imitations imported to this country, and suspended in our museums and athenæums, has not even a vivid idea ofine Aspasia, engaged in some of those domestic arts a belle of Athens? Indeed, we have only to read one or two of the popular authors of that day, and the Grecian female stands before us in full life and action.

The belle of Athens offered to the eye a figure very different from that of a modern belle of Paris, New York, or Boston. The one sought health, and the natural bloom of health, and a full development of her person. The other seeks at least the pallor of disease, depending on the brush for the proper tints, and miserably distorting her natural figure in the most vital parts. In the Grecian beauty, nature was all predominant; in the European and American, art universally prevails; and the art, such as it is, is devoted to purposes the most destructive to human health and happiness. It is annually diminishing the vigor and longevity of the race. Besides, a modern city belle is a caricature on woman.

When first I saw the Venus de Medicis of the celebrated Canova, it seemed to me that the human form could never have been so perfect. The artist, I thought, must have drawn too largely on his imagination, and given us a specimen of what the race ought to be, rather than what it is. But on seeing, several years afterward, a German girl of about seventeen years of age, then recently from the fatherland, in all the fair and full proportions of untortured nature, and in all the beauty and bloom of untrammeled health, the truthfulness of the immortal sculptor became a settled conviction in my mind. But Germany cannot be compared with Greece. The manners of the Germans, from the days of Tacitus till now, have been too coarse, and the

charm. The bland airs from the Euxine, after having breathed a thousand tender strains through the groves and gardens covering the flowery banks of the Propontis, wafted health and fragrance along the green shores of the Egean. It is easy to imag

in which the Grecian ladies excelled, sitting under the long corridor on the shaded side of her father's mansion in Miletus, inhaling the sweet breezes as they come, at the same time profoundly meditating some of those splendid philosophical theories, in which she afterward became the teacher of philosophers themselves.

It is not difficult to discover the taste of a nation, or of an individual, especially of a female, by their dress. Beginning with the savage, who delights in high contrasts and gaudy colors, in spotted robes and silver bands, in every thing showy and striking to the sense, we gradually ascend till we reach the truly cultivated and refined, whose apparel may be beautiful but not ostentatious, rich but not gay, neat without being finical, and striking only for its fitness, propriety, and taste. The uncultivated mind desires to make a show; the refined sees nothing so beautiful as modesty; and this modesty, both of apparel and appearance, is, after all, the ruling charm of woman's loveliness, and the real talisman of all her success.

It is easy, then, to conceive what kind of an appearance the lovely Aspasia must have made. With her perfectly developed form, her neat and tasteful dress, her round full head, her black flashing eyes, her light olive cheek, dimpled by the fullness of health, with every facial curve expressly turned, as it would seem, by the hand divine, and all lighted up by the fire of an intellect created to instruct her age, she must have been regarded as a superior being in whatever sphere she moved. If our eyes had ever beheld the original creations of the chisel of

LITERARY SKETCHES.

Praxitiles, or of the magic pencil of Zeuxis, we could form a clearer conception of that wonderful beauty, and of those refined and elegant graces, which at home charmed her friends and country-familiar to myself and to every one, seemed to be men, and afterward dazzled and bewildered the metropolis of the civilized world.

promiscuous and crowded to suit her purposes and convenience, it is not necessary at this time to inquire. But, to close my hasty sketch, I will present the reader with a little scene, which, as we may imagine from the historians of that period, was for years very frequently repeated.

In a retired section of the city stands a structure, moderate in size, but correct and elegant in its proportions, fitted up for the residence of such as might desire retirement and study. The long hall, passing through the centre of the building, opens, at the farther extremity, into a side room, ample in its di

then carried to the highest point. Eloquence was in high repute, and there never had been a time when the Greek language was spoken with greater propriety, beauty, fluency, and power. Philosophy, handed down from Thales to Anaxagoras, and from Anaxagoras to Socrates, had just lifted the curtain that envelops the universe, and discovered much of the depth and breadth of creation, revealing in a great degree the Creator to the creature, and the creature to himself, by the light thus let in from the works of nature upon the human mind. With the new life opened to the soul by philosophy, the arts began a career closed up only by the universal ad-mensions, tastefully furnished, and lighted by lamps miration of mankind. Poetry led the way, and adorned the earth, air, and waters, with imperishable beauty. Painting, snatching her pencil in high emulation of her sister art, almost surpassed her in the pursuit of fame, by taking down these gorgeous pictures of the imagination, and rendering them visible to the common eye. But sculpture, raging with ambition, and resolved to outdo both, tore the very rocks from their everlasting beds, seized her chisel in a perfect ecstasy of genius, and, dashing off the redundant mass of earth and rock, brought out the forms of glorious beauty, that had for ages slept within. The loftiest creations of fancy she reduced to tangible and undecaying forms, and, as if vieing with the workmanship of nature, gave us a finished model of our kind-a marble man.

of dazzling beauty. Paintings, executed by the greatest masters, representing the glorious deeds of Pericles and of Athens, and displaying the splendor of the republic under his able and patriotic adminis{tration, are skillfully arranged against the high walls; while marble statues of the great and good, of naval officers and military commanders, of scholars, orators, and philosophers, the greater part of whom had been or were then the ornaments of the Periclean government, occupy the various niches formed by the peculiarly magnificent architecture of the age. Two statues I must not forget. They are of the whitest marble, and the work of the first artist of the day. They stand in near companionship, in two conspicuous recesses, on the same side of that highly ornamented room. They are the marble representatives of the two most distinguished friends of the occupant of this house.

That occupant, a lady of such transcendant beau

With all these grand achievements before them, well might the fanciful Athenians imagine, that Minerva had begun in her chosen city a golden reign, which had already adorned all the public pla-ty, that she might easily be mistaken for a Venus, ces with the noblest works of art; and well might that pretending stranger tremble, who, with the purpose of making any figure, should come to the great metropolis of philosophy, literature, and taste.

But, in coming into Athens, Aspasia did not tremble. She had learned the strength of her own faculties, and felt a noble reliance upon herself. She knew, it is true, that the administration of Pericles had filled Athens with the learned and ingenious of all lands. She immediately saw the commanding influence of the great Socrates, and that, too, in almost the very department of knowledge to which she had devoted her own powers. She beheld the sophists, and their vast sway in the city, and she might have reasonably quailed before such an array. But she quailed not, and great was the reward of her resolution.

I shall beg of the reader to pass over all of the incipient labors of Aspasia, immediately after her arrival. Whether she gave public lectures, and was thronged with an audience of statesmen, orators, philosophers, literati, and artists, and astonished her hearers by the depth and grandeur of her genius, and by her amazing beauty, and the elegance of her speech; or whether, by virtue of the fame that had preceded her, public assemblies were likely to be too

with a modesty and grace of carriage, however, unknown to the Cyprian goddess, and with intellect beaming from every feature of her expressive face, sits between the two marble figures, discoursing with great ease and fluency with two persons, who seem to have come in, not so much for mutual conversation, as to spend their leisure in mutely listening to what their hostess may please to offer them.

Directing her conversation to the one, she speaks of the government of cities, of the proper management of revenues and disbursements, of trade and commerce, of the settlement and maintenance of colonies, of armies, of fleets, of walled towns and forts, of every thing, in fine, pertaining to the proper order and prosperity of a republic, either in peace or war. When Athens is named, her whole soul is set on fire. She deems it the centre, and thinks it might be made the head, of civilized nations. With great ardor she proposes a plan for the attainment of this end. Her eloquence now surpasses all bounds. The fire of her genius flashes like lightning from her eyes. Her principal auditor is impressed. Her words have taken hold of his soul. His ambition, his patriotism, his resolution, are roused to their highest point, and when her last