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a perpendicular assurance in the world, without which no married woman could have maintained her footing among her fellows. This conversion began to be apparent in twenty-four hours, though it was not always completed in so short a time; and its suddenness proved that one or other, if not both of the parts so performed, must be the result of very high and general endowments for that species of disguise of which we find so many instances in the Memoirs of Mad. de Genlis.

During the first year, the bride was consigned to the superintendance of her new mother, as the person most interested in preserving the honour of the family. By the honour of the family' we do not mean, as an English reader might suppose, that nice and delicate honour which is sullied almost by the breath of falsehood, and sickens even by calumny; but that distinction which a family derives from the air and gait, the mien and manners, the general deportment and fashion of a female newly adopted into its bosom. To form and perfect these, to give that fluent practice of the etiquettes of high life, which habit only can bestow, was the mighty matter of the first year of matrimonial education. This maternal tuition, indeed, was a restriction upon the developement of the principles which universal custom sanctioned; and it seldom happened that, during the first twelve months, any affair of gallantry was set on foot, or that any thing more than a little general manoeuvring took place. Self-defence made some instruction in amorous tactics necessary; for, even if sure to fall, let us fall with honour. In consequence of this vigilance, the spuriousness of the heir was a rare occurrence; and the real father of the first born of the land very often was, in fact, the pater quem nuptiæ demonstrabant.

But the precaution of not allowing the heart to speak for itself before marriage was not adequate to the end of general legitimacy. Consciences quite timorous as to the representative of the family, yet allowed the utmost latitude as to all the puînés; these, generally destined to the trade of arms and gallantry, which required no wife, or else to be knights of Malta, abbés,-and, if they could, archbishops and cardinals-to live in sworn celibacy —were mere dams in the current of genealogy. Indeed, anecdotes innumerable are upon record, of the most extraordinary squeamishness on the former head, and the most admirable liberality on the latter.

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Two things are much commended by the encomiasts of this system of female morality; first, the honour of French ladies is intact, for they are constant to their lovers: second, they never degrade themselves by fixing their affections upon persons of inferior birth; and considerable superiority is thence inferred

over the ladies of other less polished lands. Now it may be true that these Parisian dames were constant to their lovers; but we should like to have this phrase explained. Among the profound commentaries of that nation-for it has been said that the whole spirit of the nation resides in its songs-we recollect one which may assist us in the present inquiry.

'Je pense à ma belle,
Quand je m'en souviens;
Et je suis tout fidèle,

Quand son tour revient.'

But, supposing the assertion to be true in the literal meaning, and admitting the full claim of honour which is grounded upon it, we cannot help thinking that there might have been as much honour, and perhaps more virtue, in being faithful to a husband.

The second assertion may also be true: this kind of love admitted uot of discrepancies in or out of marriage. But then what was this French love? why, the very fact alleged explains what it was. It levelled no distinctions; it broke no boundaries. It could indeed run even upon even ground; but it could neither overleap the mountain, nor descend into the valley. It had its etiquette, its forms of demeanour, its titles of nobility, its heraldry and its parchments; and any thing short of sixteen quarters dishonoured it. That is to say, it was not love. It was, in its best sense, gallantry; in its least refined, appetite. It might spend a year in Corsica, or ride post to Brussels; it might commit every extravagance, it might do all but love. The heart of a lover of this school might beat for glory, for renown; it might glow with courage, or pant for admiration; it might swear, protest, and fight, run wild, and rave; but it could never melt with tenderness, nor dissolve into affection.

Such was the principle upon which the rising generation of old France was annually supplied with wives and husbands. The annual rotation of population brought into the matrimonial market a certain quantity of nubile head of cattle of whom society absolutely required the consumption, and provided these were paired off, it mattered not with whom the individual was mated. In the same manner a regiment of dragoons is provided with chargers at every remount, and every trooper has his horse-though none has the right to choose; neither is the service of government injured. The selection of lovers between their married folks proceeded on another principle, and reminds us of a play of our youth, blindman's buff, where, when our eyes were well closed, we were told to turn about three times and catch whom we could.

The state of things in our islands has placed the intercourse

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between the sexes upon a very different footing from the above. Our unmarried females stand on the same ground as the other individuals who compose society. As soon as their age and acquirements permit, they are allowed every opportunity of studying mankind, and of becoming acquainted with the being with whom they are to make an interchange of happiness, a barter of affection. Neither are their hearts condemned to apathy, to death-like silence, and a dread repose.' They may feel; they may speak, and unblushingly own the true but chastened language of nature. It is theirs to choose, and to say which the man is whose mind and temper they hold to be the most congenial to their own, from whom they may expect to receive, and on whom to confer the largest portion of happiness. The choice indeed of youth and inexperience may not always be that which the anxiety of parents or the prudence of age would suggest; and the voice of affection may differ from that of interest or ambition. But interest and ambition must be heard with caution in such cases; and age is too frozen a counsellor for the heart of youth. To maintain that conjugal happiness is more to be expected from another's choice than from our own, is little less than saying that, in a lottery, the wheel of fortune would help us with more constancy, than if we were allowed to put our hand in her coffers ourselves, and made our own selection of her favours. Some prizes have indeed been thus obtained; but how many disastrous blanks, with all their attendant depravity, have been poured upon society to make up the amount !

When this choice is made and crowned, the transition from the single to the married state is attended by no moral violence, no expansion of feelings never known before. No new part is to be enacted; no new forms of behaviour are to be conned and learned by rote. New duties indeed are imposed; but they are so in unison with all the preceding obligations, that they seem to flow from them as a necessary consequence. By previous intercourse proportioned to circumstances, by example, by the esteem and sympathy which precede her union, an English female is gradually trained up to the frame of mind which suits a wife; and to feel as a mother needs no tuition. She is not, the day before her marriage, a blushing child, a boarding school miss, or a ' pensionnaire de couvent;' and, the day after it, a heroine dubbed with connubial intrepidity. In both situations she is the same person, in mind and in manners; but now, with a dilated heart and augmented affections.

Like all other things in the two nations-and more especially those which depend on delicacy of tact, and nicety of perception -the question of female morality has been the subject of much

mutual

mutual misunderstanding and misrepresentation. The natural and the artificial language between the sexes are so different in the two countries, that it would be strange indeed if many mistakes did not occur.

women.

The social habits of France have established a more constant intercourse between the adult and emancipated individuals of either sex, than the manners of England. The French indeed live more generally in public than we do; and to them domestic privacy is rather an affliction. Hardly any occurrence, of whatever nature, indispensably requires the separation of men from There was a time-before a political mania had seized heir brains-when one of those apocryphal creatures, called an abbé, was a necessary appendage to every female toilette of fashion; and colonels of hussars have embroidered falbalas with their armed hands. Whether the conversation of such men may have raised the female intellect a little higher than it otherwise would have stood, we know not; but we mightily suspect that the system must have very much weakened that which should be the strongest. But a consequence was, more general ease in society; greater familiarity between the sexes; and more uninterrupted opportunity of indulging whatever feeling or passion might ensue from the presence of each other.

To remove all restraints, yet to preserve the decency of which highly polished society is so jealous, was the great aim of all who sighed for personal gratification, and their nation's glory-of all to whom their own vanity and the vanity of la belle France were dear. Every sophistry was employed to honour depravity; every corner of ingenuity was ransacked to beautify deformity. Illicit perseverance was revered; illicit constancy was held sacred; success was applauded; and to snatch a married mistress from the arms of a favoured rival deserved a Paphian crown, brighter than shone even for him who had the glory of being her first seducer. But, in all this, the forms of good breeding were preserved; in the midst of every wounded feeling of injury and mockery, politeness reigned.

To an Englishman, the masonic language of looks and gestures, which, to the initiated, reveals the past or present intimacy of the parties; the bow, the smile, the word, which all understand, but none will interpret aloud, are not immediately comprehensible. What he sees he believes, and he looks for no more. He interprets that kind of social jargon, as he would a letter written with the common alphabet, and upon a common subject, never suspecting that every word contains, besides what is ostensible, some hidden sign, instantaneously intelligible to all who possess the key of the cipher. He suspects no secret, and no cipher. But

with a single glance, the hackneyed Frenchman catches the clue of every intrigue, of every amour in a crowded assembly; and the discretion to which he is bound is as great a proof of his savoir vivre, as the rapid accuracy of his observation is a proof of his tact. Even in society exclusively French, a respectful silence upon these points in public is required; but it has been justly remarked that, in the presence of Englishmen, scandal-even on the most notorious topics-is absolutely mute. They have somehow picked up a notion that we are fastidious about female morals and suspicious about the female morals of France, and not to act accordingly would be unpatriotic-it would be worse still, mauvais genre'!

If we Englishmen possess no key to decipher the French secret, the French, on the other hand, have one so general that it only serves to lead them astray whenever they apply it to our language. The freedom which they see between unmarried persons in this country, they cannot admit to be innocent, because they know that, with them, the like could not be so; the reserve they take for hypocrisy; and a very general opinion among them has long been, and still is, that all our unmarried females are unchaste, and that our men care not whether they be so or not. They cannot conceive that two persons of opposite sexes can see each other unrestrained, without giving loose to every passion; and all that we look upon as bar-. riers to profligacy they hold as nothing. Neither do they entertain a higher opinion of British wives and mothers; and the modesty which they cannot deny, they consider as a veil to cover secret wrong.

Admitting, for the sake of argument, the shyness and diffidence of English women to be all that these people suppose, we will ask them what has made such hypocrisy necessary? Surely if the French could reason at all, they would stand convicted of absurdity by their own assertion. What is hypocrisy but an extorted homage paid by vice to virtue? The man who does not feel that virtue must be respected has no call to be a hypocrite. Madame de Staël, who abounds in felicitous perceptions, says that the secrecy or the notoriety of amours in England is a proof of morality; and her remark is perfectly just. English women who err are chained to one extreme or driven to the other, by one and the same cause; by the respect in which female virtue is held in this country. As long as they can conceal their misconduct they do so, and use every means to play the hypocrite, and preserve the good opinion of society. When detected, or even suspectedwhen they know that public censure hunts them down, that no management can retrieve them, they throw off the mask, and discard at once all the modesty of their sex. Their gallantry becomes

as

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