they remain right; and who, without the real depravity of heart and malignity of intention of Iago, judge as he does of the characters and productions of others. ALDA. Heavens bless me from such critics! Yet if genius, youth, and innocence could not escape unslurred, can I hope to do so? I pity from my soul the persons you allude to; for to such minds there can exist few uncontaminated sources of pleasure, either in nature or in art. MEDON. Ay, "the perfumes of Paradise were poison to the Dives, and made them melancholy."* You pity them, and they will sneer at you. But, what have we here? -“Characters of Imagination—Juliet-Viola." Are these romantic young ladies the pillars which are to sustain your moral edifice? Are they to serve as examples or as warnings for the youth of this enlightened age? ALDA. As warnings, of course-what else? MEDON. Against the dangers of romance? But where are they? "Vraiment," as B. Constant says, "je ne vois pas qu'en fait d'enthousiasme, le feu soit à la maison." Where are they-these disciples of poetry and romance, these victims of disinterested devotion and believing truth, these unblown roses-all conscience and tenderness-whom it is so necessary to guard against too much confidence in others, and too little in themselves -where are they? * An Oriental proverb. ALDA. Wandering in the Elysian fields, I presume, with the romantic young gentlemen who are too generous, too zealous in defence of innocence, too enthusiastic in their admiration of virtue, too violent in their hatred of vice, too sincere in friendship, too faithful in love, too active and disinterested in the cause of truth MEDON. Very fair! But seriously, do you think it necessary to guard young people, in this selfish and calculating age, against an excess of sentiment and imagination? Do you allow no distinction between the romance of exaggerated sentiment and the romance of elevated thought? Do you bring cold water to quench the smouldering ashes of enthusiasm ? Methinks it is rather superfluous; and that another doctrine is needed to withstand the heartless system of expediency which is the favourite philosophy of the day. The warning you speak of may be gently hinted to the few who are in danger of being misled by an excess of the generous impulses of fancy and feeling; but need hardly, I think, be proclaimed by sound of trumpet amid the mocks of the world. No, no; there are young women in these days, but there is no such thing as youth; the bloom of existence is sacrificed to a fashionable education, and where we should find the rosebuds of the spring, we see only the full-blown, flaunting, precocious roses of the hot-bed. ALDA. Blame, then, that forcing system of education, the most pernicious, the most mistaken, the most far reaching in its miserable and mischievous effects, that ever prevailed in this world. The custom which shut up women in convents till they were married, and then launched them innocent and ignorant on society, was bad enough; but not worse than a system of education which inundates us with hard, clever, sophisticated girls, trained by knowing mothers and all-accomplished governesses, with whom vanity and expediency take place of conscience and affection (in other words, of romance)-"frutto senile in sul giovenil fiore;" with feelings and passions suppressed or contracted, not governed by higher faculties and purer principles; with whom opinion-the same false honour which sends men out to fight duels-stands instead of the strength and the light of virtue within their own souls. Hence the strange anomalies of artificial society-girls of sixteen who are models of manner, miracles of prudence, marvels of learning, who sneer at sentiment, and laugh at the Juliets and the Imogens; and matrons of forty, who, when the passions should be tame and wait upon the judgment, amaze the world and put us to confusion with their doings. MEDON. Or turn politicians, to vary the excitement. How I hate political women! ALDA. Why do you hate them? MEDON. Because they are mischievous. ALDA. But why are they mischievous? MEDON. Why!-why are they mischievous? Nay, ask them, or ask the father of all mischief, who has not a more efficient instrument to further his designs in this world than a woman run mad with politics. The number of political intriguing women of this time, whose boudoirs and drawing-rooms are the foyers of party-spirit, is another trait of resemblance between the state of society now and that which existed at Paris before the Revolution. ALDA. And do you think, like some interesting young lady in Miss Edgeworth's tales, that "women have nothing to do with politics?" Do you mean to say that women are not capable of comprehending the principles of legislation, or of feeling an interest in the government and welfare of their country, or of perceiving and sympathising in the progress of great events?— that they cannot feel patriotism? Believe me, when we do feel it, our patriotism, like our courage and our love, has a purer source than with you; for a man's patriotism has always some tinge of egotism, while a woman's patriotism is generally a sentiment, and of the noblest kind. MEDON. I agree in all this; and all this does not mitigate my horror of political women in general, who are, I repeat it, both mischievous and absurd. If you could but hear the reasoning in these feminine coteries !—but you never talk politics. ALDA. Indeed I do, when I can get any one to listen to me; but I prefer listening. As for the evil you complain of, impute it to that imperfect education which at once cultivates and enslaves the intellect, and loads the memory while it fetters the judgment. Women, however well read in history, never generalize in politics; never argue on any broad or general principle; never reason from a consideration of past events, their causes and consequences. But they are always political through their affections, their prejudices, their personal liaisons, their hopes, their fears. MEDON. If it were no worse I could stand it; for that is at least feminine. ALDA. But most mischievous. For hence it is that we make such blind partisans, such violent party women, and such wretched politicians. I never heard a woman talk politics, as it is termed, that I could not discern at once the motive, the affection, the secret bias, which swayed her opinions and inspired her arguments. If it appeared to the Grecian sage so " difficult for a man not to love himself, nor the things that belong to him, but justice only," how much more for a woman! MEDON. Then you think that a better education, based on truer moral principles, would render women more reasonable politicians, or at least give them some right to meddle with politics? ALDA. It would cease in that case to be meddling, as you term it, for it would be legitimized. It is easy to |