as notorious as it had been mysterious, as barefaced as it once was blushing; for with public opinion, with esteem in England, there is happily no compromise. Rank and wealth, and extraordinary dexterity, may keep some women afloat for a season upon the surface of society, in spite of faults and errors; but the surest weight which drags them to the bottom is opprobrium. The very great share of public attention excited in this country by the unexpected emersion of a female from the privacy of concealment to calamitous celebrity, as if a sun were to burst into the meridian at midnight, is precisely the thing which proves the comparative unfrequency of error. Yet, strange to say, much of the depreciation of the reputation of English women, both at home and abroad, is due to this very circumstance. In certain more civilized regions, it must be owned, one is amused with no extraordinary tales of love and intrigue. All goes on smoothly; no Doctors Commons, no damages, no divorces, no intrusive husbands. If a woman escapes the general contagion, she becomes almost as remarkable as those in England, whose loves have been brought before the woolsack. When Madame de Genlis mentions a lady of whom she chooses to tell no scandal, or of whom no scandal can be told, she seldom fails to bestow upon her the due note of singularity.

6

It would be difficult to refine upon the principles of depravity with more ability than the French have done; and, whenever their mettle is not raised by our assertion of purer morality, there is no subject which elates them more than the superior elegance of their corruption. Perhaps,' say they sometimes, ' perhaps we may be as vicious as the English, but then we are bad more gracefully;' and a few instances of very ungraceful vice indeed in some of our fair country women have confirmed this opinion. But a thing which the French have hardly seen at all, or ever can see, is the interior of an English family in the middling ranks of society; in that numerous class which is the broad and solid basis of English worth, and English prosperity. There they might behold -though perhaps they might not comprehend-woman in all her glory; not a doll to carry silks and jewels, a puppet to be dangled by coxcomb children, an idol for profane adoration; reverenced to-day, discarded to-morrow; always justled out of the true place which nature and society would assign her by sensuality or by contempt; admired but not respected, desired but not esteemed; ruling by fashion, not by affection; imparting her weakness, not her constancy, to the sex which she should exalt; the source and the mirror of vanity. They would see her as a wife partaking the cares, and cheering the anxiety of a husband; dividing his labours by her domestic diligence, spreading cheerfulness around her;

for

for his sake sharing in the decent refinements of the world, without being vain of them; placing all her pride, all her joy, all her happiness in the merited approbation of the man she honours. As a mother, they would find her the affectionate, the ardent instructress of the children she had tended from their infancy; training them up to thought and virtue, to meditation and benevolence, addressing them as rational beings, and preparing them to be men and women in their turn.

Our morals, male and female, are chastened by one general cause—a cause of which, even while the French confess its existence, they deny the effect. We are too busy a people to be vicious. We have not time to carry on long and complicated intrigues, to be profound in duplicity; to lavish away a year in Corsica, write volumes, and travesty ourselves perpetually, for the purpose of blasting the reputation of a woman, of seducing her, or of making the public believe that she, and not the wife of our brother, is the object of our desires. We have other matters to settle; and better is it for us to be condemned to labour for our country's good than to luxuriate in olives, vines, and vices.

If the various occupations of Englishmen divide them more from the fair sex than the futile pleasures of the French, we cannot but think that though there may be some cause for regret, on both sides, for this separation, yet the advantages of our system more than compensate its defects. The men remain more men than when softened by the perpetual presence of females. Their minds are more masculine, more capable of the great affairs to which they seem destined by nature, and not unfitted for any of the minor social relations. The women have more leisure for their domestic concerns, more time for improvement; and, as they know that their mates and partners will return to them with invigorated minds, it is natural that they should endeavour to meet them on the same heights. The avocations of the men to public meetings, public dinners, &c. and the seclusion in which the ladies live during those moments, are, we are convinced of it, favourable to both parties; and their meeting again, when those are past, has no taste of satiety. The exclusive tea-table may sometimes be as dull as Madame de Staël has described it in her Corinna; and the evening sittings of the gentlemen may be now and then abusive. But we are persuaded that were these daily secessions to be abolished, as in France, both sexes would be the worse for it, and the nation would lose a part of its greatness. France, says Madame de Genlis, is the paradise of women: but never do we see any of those noble creatures, whose true and Christian paradise on earth we maintain to be Britain, wiled away from their native land to wed in foreign climes, to give up their country, their religion, to wish

for

for the defeat of England in some future war, to disbelieve their Bible, or else to think salvation impossible to the friends, the relations of their youth, without a sentiment of deep regret; and most bitterly do we think those parents to be blamed who, for their own gratification, or for the purpose of teaching a daughter to dance at a little less expense, expose her to such temptation. Generally indeed those who yield to it are not the most to be regretted of our females, but still they might have been preserved. In making these observations we would be understood not to give them a careless breadth of application. We do not mean to say that there is no female chastity in France, no female profligacy in England. We mean to say that the proportions in each country are such as to authorize the conclusions we have drawn, and to make these not universal, but general. We are ready also to make some other concessions; we are quite willing to allow that the dissoluteness of one country diminishes much of the blame, and some of the degradation, attached to the individual;--that a French woman may err with less contamination to herself than an English woman-that she who has been educated in English principles, who is allowed to make her own choice of a husband, who has so many domestic joys, who is called away from them by so few seductions, who has eternally before her eyes the respect paid to those of her sex that perform their duty, and the contempt and misery which awaits those who do not-who must practise so much dissimulation, or brave so much fame-is more to be blamed and pitied when she swerves from virtue's rule.' La Rochefoucault has said, that the smallest fault of a woman of gallantry is her gallantry. If this be true generally, it is particularly true here.

Over such a state of morals as the earlier volumes of these Memoirs exhibit in such glaring light, a revolution swept with all its blasting virulence. The portion of virtue which it had to destroy did not consume much of its strength; the refinements of vice soon yielded before its open profligacy. Its new laws permitted a promiscuous intercourse, and marriages were dissolved on demand. Many of the beasts who roam wild in the woods are bound to their females by more lasting ties than those which the legislature of regenerated France made necessary among the human creatures which it governed; and this system predominated, in various degrees, for more than twenty years. It was not till after the restoration of the Bourbons that it can be said to have ceased; and even then the marriage bond was, in every catholic opinion at least, left incomplete. law which made wedlock a mere civil contract was maintained; the parties were allowed to perform or not, as they pleased, the ceremonies of their respective churches; and the catholic rite,

The

which

At least,' he writes, this feint does not disturb her tranquillity'. Provided she (i. e. Mad. Genlis) can but amuse herself, provided she is praised and flattered, that is all she wants. Her vanity and her vivacity will always stand in the place of reason to her, and she never will know what a strong attachment is." (Our roué had no slight knowledge of the person with whom he had to deal. And again :) So much the better that the world should think that it is upon her account that I am going to Corsica. But how can you, who, with so much nobleness and sensibility, are only alarmed, not moved, by my resolution, fear the dangerous impression which it may make upon her? Trust more to her vanity, and be sure that as long as she thinks herself the cause of my departure, she will find it quite natural.'

These phrases, indeed, help Madame de Genlis to discover that the Vicomte was a Lovelace, much more perfidious and artful than the hero of Richardson.

'What (she exclaims) would have been my misery had I loved him, had my instinct not warned me of his duplicity!

But what did the outraged brother and husband, the Count de C, feel in this conjuncture? He lives with his brother on the same terms as usual. At first, indeed, the effort pained him, but in six months he forgot the injury of which he at first pretended ignorance. On this occasion Madame de Genlis bestows the epithet virtuous upon the Count de C, True-forgiveness of injury is a virtue; but what shall we say of the indifference which, in six months, can forget such depravity as this? Madame de C, too, our authoress holds up to the world as a model of virtue; and the delicacy of dividing the gilt spoon we have already noticed. But woman who can receive, keep and hoard up in a secret treasure, love-letters from her husband's brother, to the day of her death, would certainly not be held as very virtuous in most countries with which we have any acquaint

ance.

Of all the serious concerns of life, says Beaumarchais, the most farcical is matrimony; and such seems to have been the universal creed of his countrymen. It is, indeed, difficult to suppose that rational beings ever did or could treat with such levity a thing upon which so much of human happiness depends. But it isor at least it was-in the moral constitution of that nation to consider serious things with frivolity, and trifles with importance. Of all that can be turned into ridicule, of all that can raise a smile in private or in public, in the closet or upon the stage, the most fertile source of laughter is an injured husband; and the thing which, religion not excepted, creates the greatest mirth, is the rupture of the marriage vow.

Under the old monarchical regimen, the only value that was set upon female virtue was in its sacrifice, and matrimony was

Be

little more than a sacramental license to become unchaste. fore marriage, no communication was allowed between men and women; and the daughters of France were hardly permitted to hear the sound of a male voice. Their usual place of education was a convent, whence they were occasionally taken out by their mothers, whose apron string-to use a vulgar phrase-they never quitted, unless now and then at a ball, during the hurried movements of a country dance. This was the only diversion they were allowed to share; and such were the limits of their intercourse with the sex with whom they divided the world. They had no opportunity of knowing what mankind was; none of forming their hearts and minds in the likeness of the being with whom they were to pass their lives, or of searching out one congenial to their own. No gradual developement, no imperceptible transition led them from infancy to womanhood, and prepared them to fulfil the condition of wife and mother. The state of matron, the blessed state of consort and parent, they never knew; for between education and dissipation, whatever passions might be awakened, the affections slumbered. In the greatest concern of their lives, they were bereft of choice, even of a preference, and others selected for them. In high life, the parents looked around them among their acquaintances of similar birth, rank, and fortune, for a male child whose age might suit that of their daughter, and at a very early period, sometimes long before the children were marriageable, an union was agreed upon between the families, upon the same principle as Arabian breeders couple their horses, upon richness of blood. A day or two before the ceremony was performed-generally indeed not more than twenty-four hours sooner, and long after the gowns and jewelsor, to use the technical terms for these important pieces of French paraphernalia, the trousseau and the corbeil-were purchased, the parties were led out of their respective nurseries, to meet for the first time; to show and see each other's shapes and motions. If these were mutually pleasing, the omen was propitious; if not, the marriage did not the less take place. The nuptial service over, it sometimes happened that the new married couple were permitted to reside together; though not unfrequently the bride was conducted back from the foot of the altar to her former abode, and the bridegroom sent to travel or otherwise improve himself until his papa and mamma judged him fit to undertake the care of his wife;—and then began the honeymoon. From that instant a new era opened in the life of the female. Her former mien and manners were sunk in the new part which she had to play. Her retreating look became advancing; her timidity was changed to confidence, and she immediately assumed

a per