LETTERS TO THE COUNTRY. No. II. Reason for writing to a lady-Disavowal of politeness-The misogynist answered-The two little milliners-A specimen of family conversation-Difference between the mental powers of the sexes stated and demonstrated—Argument interrupted by Miss Kitty Rivers-Beauty in a rage-Richard's character -Argument resumed and concluded. WHY is my second letter addressed to Mrs. instead of, to Mr. Rivers? Am I about to turn tail (if I had one), and flee communication with my own contemplative sex? Wherefore do I not lay my epistle at the feet of him who reigns over the Riversdale family, one of the "lords of the creation?"-For the best of good reasons: because I love the ladies of the creation better. And, by my beard! they deserve that title more truly than we do ours. We may be the tyrants of the creation, if you will; but the temperate dignity of mind, which almost echoes in the monosyllable "lord," is seldom an inmate of our bosoms: we have, then, no right to usurp the appellation, with so little pretence to the attribute. But in the word "lady," what is implied?-Sweet sway and gentle majesty. And how often do we meet those of your sex, who are justly entitled to this name, by the mildness and grace with which they exert that little influence which custom and illiberal philosophy have left them? La! what a gallant man Mr. Chatterton is !-No, I am not. I despise and detest a gallant man. I would as soon see my great-grandfather's ghost enter the room, as a gallant man. I had rather be a downright monkey at once, than a gallant man; with his bows, and his smiles, and his grimaces; his compliments and his courtesies; his perpetual handing of chairs, and picking up of gloves, handkerchiefs, and pincushions; his incessant exertions in plying you with bread and butter, watching your cup that he may snatch it away before it is comfortably exhausted, his inevitable" you are perfectly right, madam," his pert commonplaces, and smirking poetry,-I hate him. I had rather, any time, be half an hour in Hades (if you know it by that tender and poetical name), than have one of these philandering fellows billetted on my society through the length of an entertainMARCH, 1821. ment. He disorders the whole economy of the room by his indefatigable attentions to propriety and decorum. Out upon him! You, and all who know my heart, will exonerate me from the imputation of being a gallant man. (That we will, says Kate, looking slyly through her long lashes at a certain person whom she would tease a little, and the laugh that she endeavours to repress on her lips swimming out at her eyes,-that we will, indeed; especially when you get into chat with sweet Miss Sigh-away there of an evening, and leave me to poke the fire, snuff the candles, ring the bell, &c. &c.) But although there is a good deal of incivility, nay, asperity, in my manner towards women,-I had rather (to my shame I confess it) spend an hour in the society of an amiable sensible woman, than an age in the company of Plato himself. I had rather correspond with one of your sex, than with all of my own put together. Now do not say, that this proceeds from the ungenerous pleasure of exulting in my own sexile superiority of mind, and that I prefer the conversation of a woman only that I may enjoy my intellectual pre-eminence without fear of rivalry. To say this, would be unjust not only to our sex, but to your own. For though I candidly avow my opinion, that in the extremes of intellect, genius, wisdom, energy of mind, profundity of thought, and sublimity of imagination, women have never reached, and never can, by the very nature of their frames, habits, and constitution, reach the heights to which men frequently soar,-yet I think that in all the qualities of mind less than these, and which we may denominate conversational qualities, the balance, upon the whole, inclines equally towards your side. On an average, I think there is as much intellectual power dispersed through the general female mind, as through the general U male,--but being more equally diffused, is inconsiderable in each individual. This, to be sure, looks too like an hypothesis; perhaps it would be better to say, that the general mental power of your sex is inferior in kind, but equal in the degree of its kind, to ours,-both kinds being supposed to be evenly distributed over their respective sex, and such a comparison instituted between them as two dissimilar powers of mind will bear. Away with your metaphysics and mystifications! says the Misogynist, answer me to this: where do you meet a woman, who can utter any thing beyond a stream of silly prattle, sweet enough, I grant you, but withal insipid?-And where do you meet a man, say I, who can utter any thing at all, silly or solid, sweet or sour, insipid or sapid? Behold two boobies salute in the street! "Haw diddoo, Tom?" "Haw diddoo, Jack?" make up the sum of their conversation. The tail-less monkies -No: to call them so, would be a libel on the Ape, for they cannot even chatter. The boobies, I say, are not only senseless, but speechless; it is not that they have ideas, but no words or words, but no ideas, they have neither ideas nor words. And if what some philosophers assert be true, namely, that it is the use of speech which puts the difference between men and brutes, I wonder how far removed these dumb young gentlemen are from the condition of upright quadrupeds, and whether they may not be considered as the veritable Monboddo men, who have just gotten rid of their dorsal appendages. Now cast your eyes over to the other side of the street, and look at those two little milliners, propped each upon a couple of clattering pattens, holding in one hand a bonnet or a band-box, and with the other keeping their scanty trains out of the gutter.-Only look at them, where they stand; I wish you could only see them, standing with invincible patience in the very middle of the pathway, elbowed, joggled, and jostled, by the careless herd of passengers, now driven two yards asunder, now pushed into each other's bosom-there they stand, whilst the mizzle falls thick and fast upon their tippets, and the gusts, every now and then, from an adjacent alley, blow back curls, caps, and bonnets, in beautiful confusion-there they stand, I say, and neither rain, wind, jostlings, nor impudent salutations; nor the uproar of the middle of the street, the thunder of the heavy rolling vans and drays, drawn by a team of black elephants with their ponderous tread and splatter, nor the braying rattle of the stage-coach, nor the wild whoop of the Jarvies,✦ nor the swift flash of the landau, grinding the curb-stones as it flies along; no, nor the mingled din and clamour of coachmen, coal-heavers, criers, ballad-singers, barrel-organs, and blackguard boys,-Punch with his peculiar squeak down one lane, the Pandeans swelled with a rope-strung violoncello up another, not all this broil and brattle, this worse than Babel in the best of its days, can hinder the two little milliners from talking. From hearing, it does undoubtedly but from talking, is beyond its efficacy, or that of any sublunary preventive short of cutting out their tongues, or sewing up their lips. "Though hell itself should gape, and bid them hold their peace." Why, Richard! why my dear boy, I thought you were speaking in defence of women? Why, so I am, Ma'am, as hard as I can. What! by saying that we would speak in spite of In spite of the d; yes, Ma'am. Upon my word, we are much obliged to you for your advocacy. Mary, love, in your next letter to Richard, be sure you cross it in blue ink, as usual, and then diamond-cross it in red, that you may not seem to degenerate from the volubility of speech, which this Defender of the Sex so particularly admires. Ah! mamma, I'm sure he is not so bad as he seems (my protecting angel replies). Odious, odious Richard! (says Kitty). He says what I am afraid is but too true of our sex in general (says grave Susan). Mamma, I remember (says Cherry) Extra-sedent bipeds, who transfer intra-sedent bipeds, from place to place, through the instrumentality of rotatory vehicles, each solicited by a pair of ambling quadrupeds : they were formerly known by the generic appellation of-hackney-coachmen. (This is too bad; this is downfight love-making; no more of it!) But I do love to hear a woman's sweet voice; and methinks, were I to die now, it would be a sweeter death than mortal ever met, to die whilst Mary sung me to eternal slumber in one of those low-breathed melancholy ditties of her's, which seems to be made up of little more than a succession of musical sighs. 'Pon my honour, he's making love again! says that wicked girl (whom I cannot often enough wish-over head and ears in love, herself), and then goes on Distracted with care Poor Damon her lover trembling with secret laughter all the time, whilst poor Mary is drowned in a flood of blushes. But where, in the name of all the planets, have I wandered? Let me regress to the point from whence I have travelled so far and so wide. I was saying, and I now say, that, taking the intellectual advantages which masculine education confers upon us, and the disadvantages which feminine education entails upon women, taking these things into account, I say that the mean mental height is pretty nearly the same for both sexes; in other words, that women, in general, are equally gifted, in point of mind, with men in general, that they are as pleasing companions, and not a whit inferior in powers of conversation. So that you are unjust to yourselves, and to men also, when you impute our preference of female society to a feeling or an idea that we shall find ourselves superior: at least, speaking for myself, I can truly say, that I never sought a woman's conversation for the purpose of finding my own strength in her weakness; but for the positive cause, that her conversation has charms in which that of my own sex is deficient.. The mind of man, like his body, is cast in a grander mould than that of his more delicate companion, and is composed of a firmer material. Not that I mean to institute any hypothetical analogy between body and mind, or to argue from the weight of a man's fist to the solidity of his understanding; persons great in mind are frequently Ta ing very diminutive in stature. another and more philosophical view of it, however, the form and frame of the stronger sex furnish, in my opinion, an indisputable proof, that the same It is he sex is also endowed with a more vigorous and energetic power of mind; for, unless we admit this, Providence would contravene itself, and break down its own general law, whereby the faculties of its creatures are proportioned to the circumstances in which they are placed. The frame and figure of man show him to be destined to fulfil the active, perilous, external duties of life, as opposed to the inactive, peaceful, and domestic offices, adapted to the softer and more delicate sex. who must build the house, cultivate the field, barter the commodities, defend his property and his family; or, to speak of him in a more advanced state of human affairs, it is to him that the difficult and important duties of life are committed,— women are physically incapable of executing them. Man, therefore, must be endowed with the faculties which the due performance of these offices require; that is, he must be endowed with superior vigour, strength, boldness, and sagacity of mind. For, if not, there would be no congruity between the creature and its circumstances; and he would be in the same unphilosophical situation as an eagle with the soul of a dove, or a lion with the spirit of a mouse. The frame of woman fits her for duties of an opposite kind, which therefore demand opposite faculties. It is superfluous to confirm what I have above, I think, demonstrated, by an appeal to general biography and experience: if any one, recurring to that test, should affirm that our superiority of genius or understanding is wholly owing to education, I would ask, how it happens that, in a period of six thousand years, there should have been no instance of a Burns, or a Bloomfield, a John fright from such contemplations; you tremble at the voice of the mightier Muse, after having invoked her, and the spirit which she would breathe into your feebly-ambitious bosoms suffocates you whilst you inhale it, How then can you pretend to equal energy, vigour, power, or (as I may call it) ferocity of mind, with us, when you disclaim and deprecate all intercourse with those passions, in the delineation of which alone energy, vigour, and power of mind are supremely displayed? You shut your eyes upon the play of the deadly passions, exhibited by the poets of our sex, and yet you pretend to those qualities of mind which are most congenial to such passions, which taught us to delineate them, and which would teach you (did you possess them) to enjoy the delineation! Bunyan, or a John Clare, in petticoats? We find many such illiterate geniuses amongst men, and very few geniuses, literate or illiterate, amongst women. Even Sappho and Semiramis, or at least, their deeds, are apocryphal. Catherine of Russia, and Elizabeth of England, Madame de Staël, and Miss Edgeworth, with a few others, are some proof that genius does not always wear a beard and a pair of breeches-but the value at which these gems are esteemed amongst you indicate their scarcity. Moreover, to make assurance treble sure, I may as well add, -that you are avowedly inimical to the exhibition of the greater passions, to their delineation, and to their fictitious exercise, by the poet, the orator, or the imaginator; whilst it is in the developement of these greater passions, and the transient assumption of them by the poet, or imagina- I take it then, as completely estator, that genius ascends to its highest blished:-1st, by the necessary ecopoint of sublimity. In fact, you dare nomy of Providence, which adapts not be great imaginators, you are the faculties of its creatures to their afraid to be creatures of genius. Are circumstances, giving to men the the dagger and the bowl dear to your more strenuous powers of mind, as, thoughts? Are the demons of jea- by the structure of their bodies, they lousy, hatred, anger, revenge, scorn, are engaged in the more arduous and impious ambition, the compa- offices of life: *-2d, by the evidence nions of your meditative hours? No: of general biography and experience, -then pretend not to genius. A which not only afford no instance of powerful imagination and a soaring a female Homer or Milton, whose fancy delight in pictures of horror, superiority may be attributed to agony, madness, guilt, and trans- education, but which cannot adduce cendent woe; these inspire you with one woman who has raised herself fear and aversion. Genius is ever above the common standard of the dipt in visionary blood: the groans world, for every hundred thousand of midnight murder, the supplication, men who have sprung up from the the shriek of perishing mortality, are lowest and most ignorant classes of music upon which the ear of a true society, by the mere force of natural poet, in his waking dreams, feeds abilities:-3d, by the peculiar diswith horrid pleasure: the imaginary position of the female mind (a pecubowl from which he drinks his most liarity, manifest to observation, and potent draughts of inspiration is evinced, theoretically, from such pestained with gore, and is mingled culiar disposition of mind being neof death-sweat and bitter-scalding cessarily congruous to such a peculiar tears. He revels, he riots, in scenes form of body), a disposition which of anguish, cruelty, darkness, death, abjures even the poetic assumption and despair: Hell is the poet's or display of the greater passions, heaven: tragedy, deep and dreadful, the fruit of the grander energies of is the gloomy amusement of his soul. the soul, and withdraws for relief You turn away in sickness and af- from the terrible and sublime to Even on the supposition of mental equality between the two sexes, at first setting out from infancy, it is plain, that the stronger-bodied sex, being therefore engaged in the more important line of actions, must eventually acquire stronger powers of mind; and that our intellectual superiority over the weaker-bodied sex is as firmly established, from the same premise of corporeal structure, as it was before, on the hypothesis of faculties being the immediate gift of Providence itself. 1 themes more congenial, a love-tale, a narrative of domestic sorrow, a pathetic story, or a scene of gentle woe: I say, I take it as completely established by any one of these arguments, and à fortiori by all three, that women, as intellectual creatures, are inferior to men, in power of thought and energy of mind. Nay, even where we cannot use these terms with propriety, even in the "common cry" of society, I think those qualities of mind in which energy or vigour make a part, such as judgment, penetration, subtilty, are chiefly visible in our sex or to come more nearly to the subject I set out with, I think, the conversation, even of ordinary men, superior to that of women, in sense and solidity. See what a passion Kitty is in! O, she could bite me, she could! See how the blood dashes over her checks, and fires her red lip with a double portion of vermilion! See how her glossy-black curls swell on her forehead, like the leaves of a young pinetree preparing to blow! Now the rack begins! Why, you odious fellow, didn't you say this instant, that our conversational powers were not a "whit" inferior to yours? No. a passion, all about nothing. Look how I've tumbled all my things! Bless me! where's my needle? Mary dear, that's a good girl, lend me a needle. Run, Cherry, and bring me the hall of cotton that fell off my lap while I was talking; there it is under the sofa. Heigh-ho! I'm all in a flutter. I thought he would end with some such piece of foolery, drily observes Mr. R. When nature was about putting the finishing touch to Richard's composition, she was called away in a hurry to some more important business, the formation of a beau, or a butterfly, perhaps, and left poor Dick quite in doubt whether she had intended him for a fool or a philosopher. Thus he is perpetually oscillating between sense and nonsense; one time you would take him for a grave sexagenarian, and another time for a witless child. Sir, I do not dissent one tittle from the opinion you have just passed upon me; though I give you no credit for your penetration, inasmuch as you only repeat what I have often pronounced of myself. Sometimes I do and say things,, which a Cretin would condemn; sometimes those which a rational man might fairly allow. Despondency has, sometimes, no depth to which I do not sink, under the consciousness of my own No? O what a - Mary, weakness and folly; I sometimes indidn't he say that? What? "What!" Do you hear her, now? You know as well as I do, only you won't speak against him. Didn't he say, I say, what I said he said, just this instant, about conversation? 1-I-I don't exactly remember; I believe I believe You belee-ee-ve! No, but you know as well as your name's Mary, that he said not a moment ago—, I did not. You did not! Now, Richard, upon your honour-Now, have you the face The same I've had, man and boy, any day these eight and twenty years. So you say you didn't say, that in powers of conversation we were not inferior to you, just this moment? I do, for it was a full half hour ago. Well, did you ever know such a provoking fellow! Put me into such dulge in aspirations which I should be ashamed to declare. Incessantly replacing the rational by the absurd, the only question is, whether the star of stupidity does not generally predominate over my words and actions. But, as to Women versus Men: if Miss Kitty would have let me explain myself out, I would have said, that sense and solidity characterise (not the general conversation of our sex, for these qualities are seldom to be met with any where, but) the conversation of our sex as opposed to that of yours. Yet I say also, that your general conversation is not inferior to ours, How is this apparent contradiction to be reconciled? Why, by the production of other qualities, which counterbalance in your conversation the weight of ours. And what are these?-delicacy and feeling. Now mark for I will not sacrifice one particle of truth (at least, of what I conceive to be the truth,) to false gallantry; I will not, for the sake of |