These are beautiful lines-but who will now-a-days read and ackowledge them? Nine young men out of every ten one meets with would not for a trifle read them, and own their virtue before each other. Our modern poets of "the fashion" have not dared to treat of love, as love should be treated of, and felt, but have given its name, to cover the deceit, to a silly fancy, and have sought out beauty in an Eastern harem, as if they were incapable of conceiving the real, the noble, and ennobling passion, that ever brings with it into the mind it enters, tenderness, generosity, courage-lifting, raising human character, and illuminating it with almost angelic brightWe see little indeed of this now. And what do we see in its stead? Take the following dialogue which took place a short time since in my presence—A and B, two youths, ages about twenty-one. Oxford term ness. over. A. "Well, B, glad to see you. Stay long in town?" B. "No, I'm off to-morrow. Going to hunt in-shire. Then go for pheasant-shooting to Hall Sir P. P.'s-good fellow-gives capital feeds." A. "I only stay here a week just to see the fun, and am off for Brighton." B. "For Brighton are you? why, George Sighaway is gone there quiz him out of his love. The fool of a fellow is deucedly taken with some girl there." A. "What-is he going to be married first and japanned after, or japanned first and married next, or take the two black jobs at once?" Here both laughed heartily. B. "No, no! not so bad as thatI don't think he's going to marry the girl. He isn't quite such a fool as that." A. "Well, perhaps we shall see you taken in one of these odd days." B. "No objection, if you can but tell me of a good spec-not less than twenty thousand." A. "I suppose you'll take a 'Byron Beauty' with fifteen ?" VOL. XLV. NO. CCLXXX. B. "I think I should go too cheap, and one mustn't underrate one's-self." And so away they walked-and away I walked; they in their conceit, I in disgust. Are these men? thought I were they of "woman born." Have they sisters? Sisters, oh nothat must be impossible. They might have slandered their mothers-but the words "taken in" could not have come from one who had sisters to love and to protect. They could not have been quietly and unblushingly heard by one who had a sister whose pure character was dear to him. Indignation at the suspicion implied, that a sister could "take in" any one, would have roused in a brother the little remnant of the dormant man within him. And if the being blessed with a sister only, lovely as the title is, and as the bond is, that name confers, shall it be asked if either of them love even one dearer than sister? It is impossible! The thought is a profanation. If half of our modern young men were choked in some of their "deuced good feeds," and the world left to be peopled by the other half, the ensuing generation would not inherit too much goodness. Our modern young gentlemen are but ill plants, grow like cucumbers, more to belly than head, and have but little pips for hearts. It was quite different in my younger days. Who would believe it now? but we were certainly in some way gifted then. We saw angels-and now one scarcely even hears of them. It was an angelseeing age; I have myself seen many. I first began to see them about seventeen years of age, and that was in the year-but no, there is no occasion to mention the year, the angels might not like again to visit me, if I did— and I still live in hope. I cannot exactly say how many I saw before I was twenty, but they all struck me as having very beautiful hair-their eyes were heavenly; but if the first sight was enchanting, the first touch of the little finger of one, thrilled me all over, and then I knew and felt it was an angel. What is extraordinary is, that I have seen them of all ages, and up to a certain point, they seemed to advance in age as I did, and after that, to grow somewhat younger. I have seen them in cities, and towns. in villages, in the country, in theatres, at concerts, in churches, and chapels; N and some few, some very few at balls, private and public; yet at balls I have seen many that at the first glance had an angel look, particularly those in cerulean blue, as they stood up in those days in the long country-dance, but their mothers mostly sat behind them, and seemed to disenchant them by resemblance, and you could then see right through the seeming angels to the mothers in perspective. Those were happy days-sorry am I to say I have not seen one for some years; sorry, and ashamed too, for were I worthy, they would perhaps sometimes give a glimpse of their persons. Their persons-it was then not the least extraordinary thing that we angel-seers could read their mindsand it was the very first conception we ever had of the wonderful power of all the virtues united-united in one angelic form-not one left out. The sight did infinite good to the youth of that generation; that angels of the very same kind still walk the earth cannot be doubted, but the gift of discerning them is removed. Philosophers tell us that vision remains active after the removal of the object-that is, we fancy we see what we do not see. It cannot be denied that this occasionally took place in the gifted. The last angel left a something upon the vision which was imparted to a new object, and the seers even fancied those angels that were none. I remember well an incident of this kind that happened to myself being then under twenty-one years of age, I had been conversant long enough with one of those wonderful creatures to excite the suspicions of my parents, who wished for no angels in their family, and had no notion of their son's building castles in the air. I was therefore consigned to a relative at a great distance, with whom I resided some months. I was under a promise not to correspond with my beloved, and they were under promise that if, at the end of a twelvemonth, I was in the same mind, they would no longer oppose my wishes. Away I went with a heavy heart, and the angelic vision ever present. After I had been with my relations a few week, in a delightful country of hills and plains, rivers and woods, some visitors arrived at the house, and I must confess that the vision daily became rather faint, and seemed to require some substance was upon which it might throw its air of The creature had no vice, and was just what she described as most to her liking. We proceeded leisurely at first; Adelaide became desirous to have a canter; I did not think her seat remarkably good; but had never questioned inability for any thing in such a being. The bay mare was hot, the canter became a gallop, I tried to keep near, fearing an accident. This made the matter worse. I saw her become unsteady in her seat; she caught hold of the mane and leaned forward; the mare threw up her head, and I heard a cry for help. I forced my horse on, and was at the moment of seizing the mare by the bridle when-what did I see? What horrible mischief, what irreparable damage had I, as I rapidly thought, caused? I was Beauty's murderer. I It is said we are progressing daily towards perfection. Our speed may be too great to allow us to stop and look; or for any thing besides "deuced good feeds,"" shares," and "good specs." The age takes that turn and so words change their meaning. The "golden age" in one sense is not the "golden age" in another. Our most romantic writers, that would fain follow" the course of true love," as far as they find it navigable, would as soon think of endeavouring to discover the source of the Niger, as to sail their little frail-boats a mile beyond Matrimony Point-as if it there terminated in a huge swamp. Where is the true loyal historian of the sweet passion, who shall faithfully delineate all the home tendernesses, and show the sunlit play of the perennial fountain in the everblooming garden of wedded love, whose infants are endearing cupids, such as Bartolozzi drew and painted in a fleshy red, as patterns for connubial bliss? He never told their parentage. They were so innocent they must have been the progeny of the angels; or, more probably, of some of Angelica Kauffman's pairs. Modern historians of the passion stop short at the most interesting point, when examples would be really servicable; and there we are, obliged to embark upon a perilous sea, without star, unless they be evil stars, and with no compass at all. Great as the state of wedded happiness must, in most cases, be, when not only hands and arms, heraldic and otherwise, are united, but souls too are united, we have not a dozen pages in literature, after Homer, that give us any notion of it. Meagre, indeed, are the accounts of our Portias and Arrias, with their Pætuses and Brutuses, of whom our Sir John Brutes are no descendants. I say, since Homer, for he does all things well, and tells us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; and we have lovely portraits of Andromache with her Hector and Astyanax and of the ever-loving and chaste Penelope, whose suitors, by the bye, may very much resemble our modern young men, for they did not care three farthings about Penelope for Penelope's sake, but had "deuced good feeds," and intrigued with the maidservants. And Helen-there is a history beyond courtship! It was a perpetual courtship by her devoted goodman Menelaus, who never ceased running after her, when Paris had run away with her, and against her consent, by the bye-all the wickedness of We do the thing was Venus's doing. not lose our interest for Helen, though she had been married, and run away with after. She is still the very animating soul and beauty of the "Tale of Troy divine." So wonderful was she, that Eschylus, who takes us into Menelaus's palace, shows us the bewildered husband walking his deserted halls, feeding his love only by a look at her many statues. That, too, must have been the age of angel-seeing; or Priam and his old counsellors would never have paid her the worship they did. And no one speaks ill of her but herself xuwv d'i-which, translated, is nothing more than calling herself a female dog--what every body now calls Still everybody from unsweet lips. there must be in life some evil examples -and, accordingly, we find them in Homer. Clytemnestra had a strong arm—no more need be said. His very gods had their differences of opinion, but still Jupiter was Jupiter, and Juno, Juno-and they made up their miffs, and had undoubtedly a very fine family. The Greeks had magnificent and tender women- and how they loved them! Yet was their love nothing to the love the women bore them. Look at Medea; her history, too, is post-connubial-she murdered her own children rather than see them under a stepmother. And dear Alcestis-and the beautiful tale-the loveliest, the most perfect of her sex, dying that her husband might live. Thrice happy, thrice loved, living dead, and living again. I know of no more delicate compliment than that of our philosopher, Sir Kenelm Digby, who well knew sympathies. Behind a portrait of Lady Venetia, his wife, he had written "Uxorem vivam amare, voluptas, defunctam religio." I do not wonder that men of sense have ever (and men of sense are alone worthy of their regard), almost adored the sex. Consider for a moment what wonderful endowments they must necessarily have what gifts of nature to conduct them selves as they do. They must have, as the wise Medea says, a sort of witchcraft about them-and yet a strange witchcraft, for they cannot divine, she asserts, into whose house and home they shall walk, nor whether they shall meet with bad or good husbands and yet they must, and they do, adapt themselves to all the ways, whims, and vagaries of their husbands, and, oftentimes, of all their husbands' relations. They are called upon to act in a thousand capacities which they never dreamed of; they have too often to unlearn courtship, and to learn hard duties. To serve, literally, in every grade of life, and in every situation the treasury, the nursery, and even the pantry "The Queen of Hearts put by those tarts," and the kitchen, for she made them. They are required to have at ready command real smiles for home, and artificial good-humour for company; tears are their own, and almost all they can call their own-their power and their privilege. In higher life they must be content with a thousand friends at home, instead of one husband, who is at his club; in low life, with a sorry cinder and lonely fire, and a sickly infant, for the sot of a husband is at the pot-house. All these capabilities and superhuman powers are expected of women; and, happy as the state of wedded life must be in general, or must at times have been, though now deteriorating, who can doubt that women have had, and have, all these duties to perform, and that they do perform them with patience, with every virtue-in one name, with love! Take the best man the world ever saw, and, were it possible, convert him into a woman, and let him retain his own inward character, and he would be nothing worse than nothing. Then how would the feminine virtues and graces shine, as seen by the side of this defective creature! The man-woman couldn't go through a day with patience, nor without discomfiture and disgrace. As to nursing his sick children, he would whip them, and forget to put them to bed. No-the sex must bear all our pains, and we inflict upon them all the penalties too. They bear all -the least we can give them is our love. Our love, if I speak to a degenerate race, let me say your love-our love, that is the love of us who have been angel-seers, is quite a different thing. Women do not always know this, but there really is no other love worth their having. They do not know it. Many a time have I seen them turn away from one of us, who would have even died for them if necessary, and have bound ourselves to do so in unalterable verse. Yes, I have seen them turn from one of us, under the fascinations of a pert, prating, empty-headed coxcomb, with no more feeling than his buttons-a grinning, teeth-showing coxcomb, incapable, utterly, of loving any but himselfwho could twist, and turn, and waltz, and look impudent, which the sweet innocents could not perceive nor understand. And then the coxcomb would turn away, and say to another coxcomb, "Devilish fine girl that; I've been making an impression, I conceive, but don't intend to go too far, and be trapped-not to be trapped, hey!" Oh, this insufferable state of things! When the one who would have been the real true and good lover, suitor, husband, and father, for lack of grace in these minor accomplishments, either dies a bachelor, or, in romantic despair of any better angel, marries late in life Mary, the Maid of the Inn." Let me give this one friendly hint to the dearest sex :-Do let the scholar, the gentleman, the man of sense, if he be not irreconcilably ugly, have a fair hearing. You will find such your best and truest worshipper. He will not saunter listlessly up to you, nor run, nor jump, nor skip up to you, grinning, and roaring his loud inanities of thought; he will not be voluble in slang to you, for that is the language in which he has not been a candidate for honours; he will not send you presents of jewellery for which he does not pay, because he is a man of principle; he will not deceive you in any way, much less in flatteries, because Nature moulded his lips for truth; they are, therefore, rather of a manly shape, which you will quite love when you know their character, than of that versatile and changeable grimace, which, when you do understand, you will no more like than you do the unnatural evolutions of tumblers-both alike the effects of early distortions from the original stamp of truth. And, when such a one does utter sweet things to you-how sweet-!they will not come from a mouth tainted with cigar. His soft and pure breathings will need no fumigation they will have a natural enchantment. You will be spared the incense of tobacco-the odious incense of a lying breath-the insult of tobacco. Were I a woman, I had rather be a widow and wear weeds, such as might become a widow, than admit a filthy fellow to blow his weed into my nostrils. But oh! I am raving like an impatient, illconditioned man, and showing how unfit we are for conversion into women. They have patience-can endure that and a great deal more. Do 1 forget Griselda-patient Griselda! Every woman is a "patient Griselda" who has a smoking husband. It must be the poison of that noxious weed that has pinched in, and deteriorated to such a degree as we see them, the bodies of the young men of the present day. Half of them are dwindling fast into shadows, nipt, cast off, smoking away their own epitaphs-" Fumus et umbra sumus"-we are but smoke and shadow. Who shows disrespect to womankind insults his own mother; who shows disrespect to age, offers his own person for scorn to shoot at, at twenty paces. For to that age is he progress ing, and some twenty paces will bring him to the point. Yet, is such disrespect too common. It is a mark of a selfish heart and a mean mind. Whence comes it, and to what degradation is it to lead? We never shall go on as we ought to do, until there be in our manners and feelings an infusion of the spirit of chivalric days. Men were then brave and gentle that could neither write nor read. And now we read and write ourselves out of all that is good. There never can be a better time to commence a change. Have we not a young Queen? A more "Glorious Gloriana." So even in our homes let the empire of womankind be restored-fully restored, That But elegant and amiable dominion will demand our delicate attentions which will grace us like reflected beauty, even perhaps the best beauty. The habit of pleasing is ever rewarded by the habit of being pleased. Where there is a due deference to the sex, and a romantic caution not to offend, of how little consequence will be a few discrepancies of taste and temper. Things that are not quite pleasant in themselves, will be gilded over with agreeability. I have seen the happy effects of pursuing the deferential system. I knew a gentleman much given to study and reflection-there was a charm to him in silence. he was wedded to one who knew it not. He was the most polite listener, even when what he heard was not to his own praise. He neither could nor would see a fault in the wife of his bosom, and though her incessant speech was a sad interruption to him for years, and perhaps deprived the world of valuable inventions, so far from complaining of or to her, he rather called himself to task for feeling it an annoyance. Now, one of the bruteschool would have plainly said, " My dear madam, your talk is a great bore,' and perhaps used still coarser language. Not he. He bore it smilingly for years, rather than endure the cruelty of making her aware of it; and at last, most happily invented an instrument which secured enjoyment to both. It was made of wire, and passed over the head, reaching on either side to each ear, where the wire was ingeniously turned inwards, and formed at the same time a coil, which was thickly padded, and pressed in upon the ears; they were, in fact, ear-dampers. The wire was so slight as not to be visible under the hair, and so likewise by a little arrangement were the dampers themselves concealed. He told me he had worn them for years, that he could think and reflect with perfect security, without interruption, merely occasionally bowing his head politely as in assent to what in reality he did not hear; and his dear talkative wife spoke in raptures of his sweetness of temper, for he never contradicted her. I have described the instrument that it might be useful in cases of domestic discord. Oh! M. Gisquet! M. Gisquet! did you really kick and cuff your chère amie? Did you really propose to a virtuous woman, with whom you could |