heart. But truth or love must be the basis of all genuine social enjoyment. Not intoxication of the spirits-not mere compliance with formalities-not fullest occupation of rank-but that genuine heart-flow which two or three may make up as fully as a thousand. They alone will create and keep alive such charms as will outlast life, and only make the domestic state happy. Without them, the subjects of the education mentioned above must look for an appreciation of their unreal and factitious attractions, to a constant, and, as it appears to us, immodest, connection with publicity. This connection matured, forms that gangrene on our social life which is called Fashionable Society,—that society of which Madame de Stäel says justly:-"How hard it makes the heart, how frivolous the mind! How it makes us live for what others may say of us!" Of this monarch among women, Mrs. C., by the way, frequently reminds us-from her impassioned bursts of feeling, and exaggerated tones. This much, even, we count high praise.

But what have we here? "You ask my opinions about Women's Rights.'' We must confess, that after our happy agreement with Mrs. C. upon a somewhat kindred topic, we approached this chapter with some tremor-(for not willingly would we disagree)-feeling that the subject was one which required a great deal of quiet tact and shrewdness, and very little of impassioned or imaginative feeling, for proper management. And we knew, and the reader knows, from what glimpses he may have already had, that Mrs. C. could not bring to the discussion the requisite faculties, and held in excess those which were unfit.

She opens with some pleasant retorts upon those who have fancied that woman's interference with public business would be necessarily accompanied with 'boldness and vulgarity. Next, she advances the agreeable idea, that the mildness of woman's nature approaches more nearly to the Gospel standard of exceldence than any attainments of manly supremacy, or any manifestations of mental courage. The boldness of her opinion on this point goes so far as even to liken the meek expression and beauty of woman to the Great Head of Christianity; but the acute intellect and political cunning of man, to-the Devil! But her

* Vide

grand stand-point, to which these playful witticisms are but so many exordia, seems to be this :-"The present position of women in society is the result of physical force." (p. 234.) This is a distinct and full proposition. The confirmatory testimony is in a nutshell, and is equally satisfactory- "Whoever doubts it, let her reflect why she is afraid to go out in the evening without the protection of a man." We repeat it againnow reversing the terms, and supplying the minor of the premises-thus reducing it to the form of a proper enthymeme: Woman is afraid to go out in the evening without the protection of a man; man's physical force is the occasion of the fear; therefore, the present position of women in society is the result of physical force. The logic is even better than the sentiment; and the logic is shocking. She follows her proposition in this language:

"What constitutes the danger of aggression? Superior physical strength uncontrolled by the moral sentiments. That animal instinct and brute force now govern the world, is painfully apparent in the condition of women everywhere, from the Morduan Tartars, whose ceremony of mar. riage consists in placing the bride on a mat, and consigning her to the bridegroom, with the words, Here, wolf, take thy lamb'to the German remark, that Stiff ale, stinging tobacco, and a girl in her smart dress, are the best things. The same thing, softened by the refinements of civilization, peeps out in Stephens' remark, that 'woman never looks so interesting as when leaning on the arm of a soldier:' and in Hazlitt's complaint that it is not easy to keep up conversation with women in company. It is thought a piece of rudeness to differ from them: it is not quite fair to ask them a reason for what they say.'"-(pp. 234-5.)

p.

We fear we shall be guilty of a piece of rudeness, in saying that these reasons, which we have without the asking, appear to us to be no reasons at all. Such a silly remark as this-a man never appears so interesting as when in the dress of a soldier, with a woman leaning on his arm, would seem to our obtuse senses as good proof that "animal instinct and brute force now govern the world," as the equally silly remark which Mrs. C. quotes from Stephens. If she wishes to make out the fact that woman is everywhere dependent upon the superior energies and physical power of man for protection

234.

more and more that there is no separation or discord in their mutual duties. They will be one, but it will be as affection and thought are one; the treble and bass of the same harmonious tune."

We have thus given Mrs. C. the benefit of her own representations; nor would we let our language jar discordantly upon the rich tone of prophecy into which she so naturally falls. We, too, believe and trust in a higher harmony to be heard yet on earth; but so far as the respective duties of man and woman are concerned, we believe it will consist in perfect and well-ordered distinction. Treble and bass make harmony, it is true; but amalgamate them in a common utterance, and the charm of the music is gone. Affection and thought appear to us in no way one. And if it were possible to conceive of every thought as made up of affection, and every affection as a mental act, the beauty of the one and the force of the other would be lost. The universe is in a noble sense one; and in a conceivable sense distinct in parts. As one, it has entireness, likeness, and grandeur of movement;-as many, its parts have their proper and peculiar action: as one, it possesses a glorious harmony, limited only by itself, and as more than one, its several units possess the attributes of individual perfection, comparable only with themselves.

Women's rights are one thing; women's duties quite another. Very many women are disposed to discuss the first, who are exceeding shy of the latter. Mrs. C., in a rambling way, (all letters are rambling,) runs over both grounds, and ends with assuming that man's duties and women's should coalesce. This seems to us a meager handling of the great issues-very meager. The grand question is this-what duties, in this strange, perplexed lifetime of ours, belong more appropriately to women than to men? The next question is equally plain and to the point-are these duties performed-fully, rightly, advantageously performed?

The question of man's duties and their performance is another, and one for his conscience to deal with. And woman must have her question of duty, and be guided in answer by her perception of what is true, and her love of what is good. And would to Heaven that those perceptions and that love were better fortified with reason, and more familiar by frequent appeals, than we have cause to think. VOL I.-NO. 1.

Is it wrong for us to inquire, in this connection, where some of the more prominent duties lie? And we fall back here upon what we have previously said relative to the sickening formalities of social life. Here lies work, in subduing, purging, and building anew. It is an urgent duty of women everywhere to direct the weight of their influence against those dicta of fashion which are ridiculous in themselves, and which curb every natural expression of thought or manner; which, discarding appropriate distinctions between refinement and vulgarity, education and ignorance, set up their own unreal distinctions, guarding them with despotic sway, and blazoning them over with the false glare of their own deceits and follies. Tell us, Mrs. C., looking back to your eloquent chapter of regrets at the mockery which invests social usage, tell us, is woman fulfilling her right vocation in adding to, more and more, the frivolities which consummate the evil; and if she has not an appropriate work-more appropriate than new-modelling alms-houses, or satirizing civil justice-in frowning down those pompous vanities, and that empty ostentation, which, together, are doing more to teach ignorance and vice, that society is rotten, is tottering and deserves to fall, than all the misregulations of prisons, or the errors of legislation, or the most wanton scapements of justice? To that woman, your neighbor-not the man, gross though he is to the woman, following every shift. ing tide of fashion in her dress and manner, obeying every idle requirement of its voice in her home and with her children, levelling her distinctions with ig norant pride, sucking ever at the faintest hope of enlisting public attention-no from the prudence of her domestic management, not from the entireness of conjugal devotion, not from the depth and richness of her social qualities, not from the diffusion of her benevolence, but from the exquisite nicety of conformance with certain arbitrary and soulless forms-to her we bid you go, good Mrs. C., with your pleading voice and your sharp invective, and you will find work enough without enlisting in man's duty of directing civil progress. Do you resort to the old bugbear, the criminality of society, in breeding and fostering its own ailments? This is idle-idle before, and idle now. Such reasoning falls voiceless. The argumentum ad hominem must be the appeal. Besides, we have not now to do with so

10

ciety in its corporate capacity. Social life is the word, and here woman should rule supreme arbitress of forms. She is responsible, and justly so, for every controlling usage.

We regret that our space compels us to leave the subject with this mere glance at one of its features. We may possibly take some future occasion to pursue our thoughts further upon this and kindred topics.

A word or two now about the book; for we should hardly be true to our office of reviewer without some such note. Yet it would be scarcely fair to test its matter, as a whole, by any rules of critical analysis. Written, as it seems to have been, at different times, and without comparison of the parts, there is of necessity frequent repetition of some opinions and phrases. Many things are for the like reason carelessly said-some unprettily said; and her illustrations, though fanciful, are many of them crude and undigested. But there is little that is common-place in the volume. This is praise; better praise than we wish we could give parts of it, which seem to us objectionable in sentiment. Moreover, there is a vivacious naturalness about the book, compassing even its oddities, covering up its minor defects of rhetoric, that to one like ourselves, tired with the heat and dust of this dry September, is refreshing as an April shower. At times, too, there are scattered up and down over the letters little eloquent apostrophes, which, if we liken its general vivacity to a shower, may in sequence be likened to an iced draught of the pure element. We have not even now said what we might say, that there is an extravagant tone pervading the whole, which being at once natural and graceful in the writer, we can by no means condemn; but the same being strange and unsuited to a running comment upon practical matters, and such occasionally are sublimed by the writer's touch, we cannot wholly praise. Mrs. C. should have written "Letters from the Country." How redolent would they have been of fresh air and springing verdure! how full of the music of birds, and of leaves, and of brooks murmuring softly-as brooks do

in dreams! What a book would it have been for a companion in summer-time, for one to lounge with of a hot afternoon, under grand old trees, whose leaves let no spangle of the sunshine through upon the grass where you lie-watching sun and shadow chasing each other far away, and then the lights and shades of the book, the original and the copy, at a glance. As it is, we see everyday scenes when we see them at all-for it is wonderful how the writer, living in a city, has found extrinsic sources of interestthrough a prism. Every beggar we meet is a Belisarius or Cervantes; every rambling songstress a Corinne forsaken; every outcast a Lear without his crown; every street-walker an Olivia Primrose. And if she were to write us a novel---as who knows but she may-there would be in it enormities, but few realities— personifications, with few persons;there would be witches, but no Macduff; Rob Roy, but no Nicol Jarvie; Meg, but no Dandie Dinmont; Burchell, but no Vicar; Titania and Peas Blossom, but no Snug or Bottom; Ravenswood, but no Caleb; Juno, but no Andromache.

It is, in short, a book for a steamboat ride, but not upon the Hudson; to relieve a sick chamber, but the patient must not be nervous; to engage a man after business hours, but he must avoid the Woman's Rights. It is a book for you, indulgent reader, to run through after this hasty comment, and say if you will be most her friend or our friendor, better, friend to both.

One word more, and a kind one, to Mrs. Child. We wish not to lessen oneiota the amount of your influence, which we believe to be considerable; and so believing, we implore you, by your hatred of formalism and cant, of ostentation and pride-by your sympathy with human want, and your hearty relish for all that is natural and noble in thought and in action, to direct that influence against the crying evils of social life. Your energies misdirected will avail less than those of a weak man; rightly directed, they will avail more than those of the strongest. "Vale, nunc-tibique persuade, esse te quidem mihi caram; sed multo fore cariorem, si talibus preceptis lætabere.”

THE life and character of Henry Clay are fully before the public. Were it otherwise, no brief space, which alone this journal could afford-a few pages quickly and easily run over-would suffice for such a purpose. No scattered words of tribute could bring a man before us, who, for half a century, has filled so large a space in the eye of the nationwho, for all coming time, will occupy and adorn so large a portion of the nation's history. But it is in all respects unnecessary. His humble childhood and early struggles, his subsequent long and brilliant career, his great public services and eminently noble qualities, have been many times set forth and with the greatest distinctness. The various distinguished positions which he has occupied from the first are, perhaps, more familiar to the people than those of any man, but Washington, who has arisen in the commonwealth. From his birth in a farmhouse of Virginia amid the conflict of the Revolution, and his entrance, an unfriended youth, into the hardships of a professional life in the West, to his last exit from the chief council of the nation --whether lifting the hand of eloquence at the bar or in the senate-chamber, whether raising a determined voice for the birth of other republics in the New World, and against the oppression of longstruggling, famished, and down-trodden Greece, or presenting an equally determined front towards the encroachments of executive power at home-whether representing the dignity and worth of the American name in a foreign country, or, in our own midst, forming, defending, establishing, the great American System of Finance, or, by the efforts of an almost despairing eloquence, saving the republic from dishonor, disunion, and ruin-no one of these, or the many other high stations occupied by him in the public eye, during the course of a long life, did Mr. Clay ever leave with one stain upon his public character, or without an addition to his honorable fame. But, of all those elevated positions, though some may have been by externals more brilliant, no one has appeared to us more truly exalted by purity of patriotism and the dig

nity of wide-secing statesmanship, than that in which he now, at last, stands before us, on the exciting question of the admission of Texas into our Union. And we esteem ourselves fortunate that we can fortify our opinion by such a communication as follows, from one not blinded by the dust of any political arena, but whose vision is the clearer, that he looks forth upon men and things from the calmness of academic shades and the quiet repose of Letters.

To the Editor of the American Review.

SIR-I am no politician in the ordinary sense of that term; that is, I never have held, and I never expect to hold office. My daily professional employments re

move me far from the strifes of elections and mass-meetings. The pursuits in which I am constantly engaged are such as, in any ordinary condition of our country, would entirely shut me out from all active participation in the political contentions of the day; and yet I must confess a deep and, at times, a most exciting interest in the result of the present election. The reasons of this interest I wish to state, because they are somewhat different from those which are most usually urged upon the country. I profess no very deep understanding of the real merits of those questions of tariff, currency, and distribution, which most regard as the main matters at issue. As far as I understand these points, I am in favor of the Whig measures, at the same time admitting that their opponents may possibly be right, that they present some fair arguments, and that their policy, if wrong, could only produce a temporary evil, soon to be rectified when the mischief should be so palpable that a desire for its removal would become stronger than any party ties. But, sir, I go much further than this. If I were opposed to the Whig policy on all the points which have been mentioned, and decidedly in favor of all the Loco-Foco views on the same subjects, I should still give my vote, and a thousand if I had them, for Henry Clay. For such an apparent inconsistency many reasons might be given,