of Iago, judge as he does of the characters and productions of

others.

ALDA.

Heavens bless me from such critics! yet if genius, youth, and innocence could not escape unslurred, can I hope to do so? 1 pity from my soul the persons you allude to-for to such minds there can exist few uncontaminated sources of pleasure, either in nature or in art.

MEDON

Aye-" the perfumes of Paradise were poison to the Dives, and made them melancholy. You pity them, and they will sneer

at you. But what have we here?" Characters of Imagination— Juliet-Viola;" are these romantic young ladies the pillars which are to sustain your moral edifice? Are they to serve as examples or as warnings for the youth of this enlightened age?

ALDA.

As warnings of course-what else?

MEDON.

Against the dangers of romance ?-but where are they? "Vraiment," as B. Constant says, "je ne vois pas qu'en fait d'enthousiasme, le feu soit à la maison." Where are theythese disciples of poetry and romance, these victims of disinterested devotion and believing truth, these unblown roses-all conscience and tenderness-whom it is so necessary to guard against too much confidence in others, and too little in themselves-where are they?

ALDA.

Wandering in the Elysian fields, I presume, with the romantic young gentlemen, who are too generous, too zealous in defence

An Oriental proverb.

of innocence, too enthusiastic in their admiration of virtue, too hatred of vice, too sincere in friendship, too too active and disinterested in the cause of

violent in their faithful in love, truth

MEDON.

Very fair! But seriously, do you think it necessary to guard young people, in this selfish and calculating age, against an excess of sentiment and imagination? Do you allow no distinction between the romance of exaggerated sentiment, and the romance of elevated thought? Do you bring cold water to quench the smouldering ashes of enthusiasm? Methinks it is rather superfluous; and that another doctrine is needed to withstand the heartless system of expediency which is the favorite philosophy of the day. The warning you speak of may be gently hinted to the few who are in danger of being misled by an excess of the generous impulses of fancy and feeling; but need hardly, I think, be proclaimed by sound of trumpet amid the mocks of the world. No, no; there are young women in these days, but there is no such thing as youth-the bloom of existence is sacrificed fashionable education, and where we should find the rose-buds of the spring, we see only the full-blown, flaunting, precocious roses of the hot-bed.

ALDA.

Blame then that forcing system of education, the most pernicious, the most mistaken, the most far-reaching in its miserable and mischievous effects, that ever prevailed in this world. The custom which shut up women in convents until they were married, and then launched them innocent and ignorant on society, was bad enough; but not worse than a system of education which inundates us with hard, clever, sophisticated girls, trained by knowing mothers, and all-accomplished governesses, with whom vanity and expediency take place of conscience and affection-(in other words, of romance) -"frutto senile in sul giovenil fiore;" with feelings and passions suppressed or contracted, not governed by higher faculties and

purer principles; with whom opinion-the same false honor which sends men out to fight duels-stands instead of the strength and the light of virtue within their own souls. Hence the strange

anomalies of artificial society-girls of sixteen who are models of manner, miracles of prudence, marvels of learning, who sneer at sentiment, and laugh at the Juliets and the Imogens; and matrons of forty, who, when the passions should be tame and wait upon the judgment, amaze the world and put us to confusion with their doings.

MEDON.

Or turn politicians to vary the excitement.-How I hate political

Why! why are they mischievous? Nay, ask them, or ask the father of all mischief, who has not a more efficient instrument to further his designs in this world, than a woman run mad with politics. The number of political intriguing women of this time, whose boudoirs and drawing-rooms are the foyers of party-spirit, is another trait of resemblance between the state of society now and that which existed at Paris before the revolution.

ALDA.

And do you think, like some interesting young lady in Miss Edgeworth's tales, that "women have nothing to do with politics?" Do you mean to say that women are not capable of comprehending the principles of legislation, or of feeling an interest in the

government and welfare of their country, or of perceiving and sympathizing in the progress of great events?-That they cannot feel patriotism? Believe me, when we do feel it, our patriotism, like our courage and our love, has a purer source than with you; for a man's patriotism has always some tinge of egotism, while a woman's patriotism is generally a sentiment, and of the noblest kind.

MEDON.

I agree in all this; and all this does not mitigate my horror of politica women in general, who are, I repeat it, both mischievous and absurd. If you could but hear the reasoning in these feminine coteries! -but you never talk politics.

ALDA

Indeed I do, when I can get any one to listen to me; but I prefer listening. As for the evil you complain of, impute it to that imperfect education which at once cultivates and enslaves the intellect, and loads the memory, while it fetters the judgment. Women, however well read in history, never generalize in politics never argue on any broad or general principle; never reason from a consideration of past events, their causes and consequences. But they are always political through their affections, their prejudices, their personal liaisons, their hopes, their fears.

MEDON.

If it were no worse, I could stand it; for that is at least feminine.

ALDA.

But most mischievous. For hence it is that we make such blind partizans, such violent party women, and such wretched politicians. I never heard a woman talk politics, as it is termed, that I could not discern at once the motive, the affection, the secret bias, which swayed her opinions and inspired her arguments. If it appeared to the Grecian sage so "difficult for a man not to love himself, nor the things that belong to him, but justice only?". now much more for women!

E

MEDON.

Then you think that a better education, based on truer mora. principles, would render women more reasonable politicians, or at least give them some right to meddle with politics?

ALDA.

It would cease in that case to be meddling, as you term it, for it would be legitimized. It is easy to sneer at political and mathematical ladies, and quote Lord Byron-but O leave those angry common-places to others!-they do not come well from you. Do not force me to remind you, that women have achieved enough to silence them for ever;* and how often must that truism be repeated, that it is not a woman's attainments which make her amiable or unamiable, estimable or the contrary, but her qualities? A time is coming, perhaps, when the education of women will be considered, with a view to their future destination as the mothers and nurses of legislators and statesmen, and the cultivation of their powers of reflection and moral feelings supersede the exciting drudgery by which they are now crammed with knowledge and accomplishments.

MEDON.

Well-till that blessed period arrives, I wish you would leave us the province of politics to ourselves. I see here you have treated of a very different class of beings, "women in whom the affections and the moral sentiments predominate." Are there many such, think you, in the world?

ALDA.

Yes, many such; the development of affection and sentiment is more quiet and unobtrusive than that of passion and intellect, and less observed; it is more common, too, therefore less remarked: but

In our own time, Madame de Staël, Mrs. Somerville, Harriet Martineau, Mrs. Marcet; we need not go back to the Rolands and Agnesi, nor even to our own Lucy Hutchinson.