For the hard fate that binds me in thy chains, Thus she breaks off, at the very first word, in order to say that which is at once far-fetched and false. Never was the wife of one Roman citizen the slave of another Roman citizen: never was any Roman called lord; and this word 'lord' is, with us, nothing more than a term of honour and ceremony, used on the stage. Fille de Scipio, et, pour dire encor plus. Besides the defect so common to all Corneille's heroes, of thus announcing themselves of saying, I am great, I am courageous, admire me-here is the very reprehensible affectation of talking of her birth, when the head of Pompey has just been presented to Cæsar. Real affliction expresses itself otherwise. Grief does not seek after a 'yet more.' And what is worse, while she is striving to say yet more,' she says much less. To be a daughter of Rome is indubitably less than to be daughter of Scipio and wife of Pompey. The infamous Septimius, who assassinated Pompey, was Roman as well as she. Thousands of Romans were very ordinary men: but to be Cesar, de ta victorie ecoute moins le bruit; What a poor artifice! what a false as well as impudent notion! Cæsar conquered at Pharsalia only because Pompey married Cornelia! What labour to say that which is neither true, nor likely, nor fit, nor interesting! Deux fois du monde entier j'ai cause la disgrace.--Id. This is the bis nomi mundo' of Lucan. This line presents us with a very great idea; it cannot fail to surprise; it is wanting in nothing but truth. But it must be observed, that if this line had but the smallest ray of verisimilitude— had it really its birth in the pangs of grief, it would then have all the truth, all the beauty, of theatrical fitness. Heureuse en mes malheurs, si ce triste hymenee This is Lucan again. She wishes, in daughter and wife to the greatest of Ro-the Pharsalia, that she had married Ca mans, was a real superiority. In this speech, then, there is false and misplaced wit, as well as false and misplaced great ness. She then says, after Lucan, that she ought to blush that she is alive : Je dois rougir, partout, apres un tel malheur, Lucan, after the brilliant Augustan age, went in search of wit, because decay was commencing; and the writers of the age of Louis XIV. at first sought to display wit, because good taste was not then completely found, as it afterwards was. sar: This sentiment is not in nature; it is at once gigantic and puerile: but at least it is not to Cæsar that Cornelia talks thus in Lucan. Corneille, on the contrary, makes Cornelia speak to Cæsar himself: he makes her say that she wishes to be his wife, in order that she may carry into his house the mortal poison of a noxious star; for (adds she) my hatred cannot be abated, and I have told thee already that I am Roman, and I sue for nothing. 6 Here is odd reasoning:-I would fain { have married thee, to cause thy death; for I sue for nothing. Be it also observed, that this widow heaps reproaches upon Cæsar, just after Cæsar weeps for the death of Pompey and promises to revenge it. It is certain, that if the author had not striven to make Cornelia witty, he would not have been guilty of the faults which, after being so long applauded, are now perceived. The actresses can scarcely longer palliate them, by a studied loftiness of demeanour and an imposing elevation of voice. The better to feel how much mere wit is below natural sentiment, let us compare Cornelia with herself, where, in the same tirade, she says things quite oppo site: Je dois toutefois rendre grace aux dieux Et tombe eutre leurs mains, plutot qu'aux mains d'un prince Yet have I cause to thank the gracious gods, Let us overlook the slight defects of style, and consider how mournful and becoming is this speech; it goes to the heart all the rest dazzles for a moment, and then disgusts. : The following natural lines charm all readers : O vous a ma douleur objet terrible et tendre, Restes de grand Pompee, ecoutez sa moitie, &c. O dreadful, tender object of my grief, It is by such comparisons that our taste is formed, and that we learn to admire nothing but truth in its proper place. In the same tragedy, Cleopatra thus expresses herself to her confidant Char mion: Know, that a princess jealous of her fame, Charmion might answer :-Madam, I know not what the noble flame of a princess is, which dares not expose her to shame; and as for princesses who never say they are in love, but when they are sure of being loved-I always enact the part of confidant at the play; and at least twenty princesses have confessed their noble flames to me, without being at all sure of the matter, and especially the Infanta in the Cid. Nay, we may go further: CæsarCæsar himself-addresses Cleopatra, only to show off double-refined wit: Mais, o Dieux! ce moment que je vous ai quittee Que combattait partout mon bras ambitieux; Plus pour le conserver que pour vaincre Pompee. Act iv. sc. 3. But, O! the moment that I quitted you, Here, then, we have Cæsar hating his greatness for having taken him away a little while from Cleopatra; but forgiving his greatness when he remembers that this greatness has procured him the success of his passion. He has the lofty hope of an illustrious probability; and it was only to acquire the dear privilege of this illustrious probability, that his ambitious arm fought the battle of Pharsalia. It is said that this sort of wit, which it must be confessed is no other than nonsense, was then the wit of the age. It is an intolerable abuse, which Molière proscribed in his 'Precieuses Ridicules.' circumstances in which they are placed? One philosopher, who had a right to think himself born with some superiority, asserted that minds are equal; yet the con It was of these defects, too frequent intrary has always been evident. Of four Corneille, that La Bruyère said," I hundred children brought up together, thought, in my early youth, that these under the same masters and the same passages were clear and intelligible, to discipline, there are scarcely five or six the actors, to the pit, and to the boxes; that make any remarkable progress. A that their authors themselves understood { great majority never rise above mediocrity, them, and that I was wrong in not un- and among them there are many shades derstanding them: I am undeceived." of distinction. In short, minds differ still more than faces. SECTION V. In England, to express that a man has a deal of wit, they say that he has 'great parts.' Whence can this phrase, which is now the astonishment of the French, have come? From themselves. Formerly, we very commonly used the word 'parties,' in this sense. Clelia,' 'Cassandra,' and our other old romances, are continually telling us of the parts' of their heroes and heroines, which parts are their wit. And, indeed, who can have all? Each of us has but his own small portion of intelligence, of memory, of sagacity, of depth and extent of ideas, of vivacity, and of subtlety. The word 'parts,' is that most fitting for a being so limited as man. The French have let an expression escape from their dictionaries which the English have laid hold of the English have more than once enriched themselves at our expense. SECTION VI. Crooked or Distorted Intellect. We have blind, one-eyed, cross-eyed, and squinting people-visions long, short, clear, confused, weak, or indefatigable. All this is a faithful image of our understanding; but we know scarcely any false vision: there are not many men who always take a cock for a horse, or a coffeepot for a church. How is it that we often meet with minds, otherwise judicious, which are absolutely wrong in some things of importance? How is it that the Siamese, who will take care never to be over-reached when he has to receive three rupees, firmly believes in the metamorphoses of Sammonocodom? By what strange whim do men of sense resemble Don Quixote, who beheld giants where other men saw nothing but windmills? Yet was Don Quixote more excusable than the Siamese, who believes that Sammonocodom came several times upon earth-and the Turk, who is perEnvy," it has been said, "permits suaded that Mahomet put one half of the every one to be the panegyrist of his own moon into his sleeve. Don Quixote, improbity, but not of his own wit." It al-pressed with the idea that he is to fight lows us to be the apologists of the one, but not of the other. And why? Because it is very necessary to pass for an honest man, but not at all necessary to have the reputation of a man of wit. Many philosophical writers have been astonished that, since every one pretends to wit, no one should dare to boast of possessing it. The question has been started, whether all men are born with the same mind, the same disposition for science, and if all depends on their education, and the with a giant, may imagine that a giant must have a body as big as a mill, and arms as long as the sails; but from what supposition can a man of sense set out to arrive at the conclusion, that half the moon went into a sleeve, and that a Sammonɔcodom came down from heaven to fly kites at Siam, to cut down a forest, and to exhibit sleight-of-hand? The greatest geniuses may have their minds warped, upon a principle which they have received without examination. Newton was very wrong-headed when he was commenting on the Apocalypse. All that certain tyrants of souls desire, is that the men whom they teach may have their intellects distorted. A fakir brings up a child of great promise; he employs five or six years in driving it into his head, that the god Fo appeared to men in the form of a white elephant; and persuades the child, that if he does not believe in these metamorphoses, he will be flogged after death for five hundred thousand years. He adds, that at the end of the world, the enemy of the god Fo will come and fight against that divinity. whether the principle is true, even when just consequences are drawn from it; and this is very common. 2. To draw false consequences from a principle acknowledged to be true. For instance,-a servant is asked whether his master be at home, by persons whom he suspects of having a design against his master's life. If he were blockhead enough to tell them the truth, on pretence that it is wrong to tell a lie, it is clear that he would draw an absurd consequence from a very true principle. The judge who should condemn a man for killing his assassin, would be alike iniquitous, and a bad reasoner. Cases like these are subdivided into a thousand different shades. The good mind, the judicious mind, is that which The child studies, and becomes a pro- distinguishes them. Hence it is, that digy; he finds that Fo could not change there have been so many iniquitous judghimself into anything but a white elements; not because the judges were phant, because that is the most beautiful wicked in heart, but because they were of animals. The kings of Siam and Pegu, not sufficiently enlightened. say he, went to war with one another for a white elephant: certainly, had not Fo been concealed in that elephant, these two kings would not have been so mad as to fight for the possession of a mere animal. Fo's enemy will come and challenge him at the end of the world: this enemy will certainly be a rhinoceros; for the rhinoceros fights the elephant. Thus does the fakir's learned pupil reason in mature age, and he becomes one of the lights of the Indies: the more subtle his intellect, the more crooked; and he, in his turn, forms other intellects as distorted as his own. WOMEN: PHYSICAL AND MORAL. WOMAN is in general less strong than man, smaller, and less capable of lasting labour. Her blood is more aqueous; her flesh less firm; her hair longer; her limbs more rounded; her arins less muscular; her mouth smaller; her hips more prominent; and her belly larger. These physical points distinguish women all over the earth, and of all races, from Lapland unto the coast of Guinea, and from America to China. Plutarch, in the third book of his Sym Show these besotted beings a little geo-posiacs, pretends that wine will not inmetry, and they learn it easily enough; toxicate them so easily as men; and the but, strange to say, this does not set them following is the reason which he gives for right. They perceive the truths of geo-this falsehood:metry; but it does not teach them to weigh probabilities: they have taken their bent; they will reason against reason all their lives; and I am sorry for them. Unfortunately, there are many ways of being wrong-headed. 1. Not to examine VOL II.-114 "The temperament of women is very moist; this, with their courses, renders their flesh so soft, smooth, and clear. When wine encounters so much humidity, it is overcome, and it loses its colour and its strength, becoming discoloured and weak. Something also may be gathered 3 G from the reasoning of Aristotle, who ob- been able to trace the secret of concepserves, that they who drink great draughts tion. Sanchez has curiously remarkedwithout drawing their breath, which the "Mariam et spiritum sanctum emisisse ancients call 'amusizein,' are not intoxi-semen in copulatione, et ex semine amcated so soon as others; because the borum natum esse Jesum." This abowine does not remain within the body, minable impertinence of the most knowbut being forcibly taken down, passes{ing Sanchez is not adopted at present by rapidly off. Now we generally perceive any naturalist. that women drink in this manner; and The periodical visitations which weaken it is probable that their bodies, in conse-females, while they endure the maladies quence of the continual attraction of the {which arise out of their suppression, the humours, which are carried off in their times of gestation, the necessity of suckperiodical visitations, are filled with many ling children, and of watching continu conduits, and furnished with numerous ally over them, and the delicacy of their pipes and channels, into which the wine organisation, render them unfit for the disperses rapidly and easily, without hav-fatigue of war, and the fury of the coming time to affect the noble and principal bat. It is true, as we have already obparts, by the disorder of which intoxica-served, that in almost all times and countion is produced." These physics are altogether worthy of the ancients. tries women have been found on whom nature has bestowed extraordinary strength and courage, who combat with men, and Women live somewhat longer than undergo prodigious labour; but, after men; that is to say, in a generation we all, these examples are rare. On this count more aged women than aged men. } point we refer to the article AMAZONS. This fact has been observed by all who have taken accurate accounts of births and deaths in Europe; and it is thought that it is the same in Asia, and among the negresses, the copper-coloured, and { olive-complexioned, as among the whites. "Natura est semper sibi consona." Physics always govern morals. Women being weaker of body than we are, there is more skill in their fingers, which are more supple than ours. Little able to labour at the heavy work of masonry, carpentering, medalling, or the plough, they are necessarily entrusted with the We have elsewhere adverted to an lighter labours of the interior of the house, extract from a Chinese journal, which and, above all, with the care of children. states, that in the year 1725, the wife of Leading a more sedentary life, they posthe Emperor Yontchin made a distribu-sess more gentleness of character than tion among the poor women of China men, and are less addicted to the comwho had passed their seventieth year; mission of enormous crimes—a fact so and that, in the province of Canton alone, undeniable, that in all civilised countries there were 98,222 females aged more than there are always fifty men at least exeseventy, 40,893 beyond eighty, and 3,453 cuted to one woman. of about the age of a hundred. Those who advocate final causes say, that nature grants them a longer life than men, in order to recompense them for the trouble they take in bringing children into the world, and rearing them. It is scarcely to be imagined that nature bestows recompenses, but it is probable that the blood of women being milder, their fibres harden less quickly. No anatomist or physician has even Montesquieu, in his Spirit of Laws, undertaking to speak of the condition of women under divers governments, observes-that" among the Greeks women were not regarded as worthy of having any share in genuine love; but that with them love assumed a form which is not to be named." He cites Plutarch as his authority. This mistake is pardonable only in a wit like Montesquieu, always led away |