Woman's Power of Persuasion "In her youth There is a prone and speechless dialect, Such as moves men: beside, she hath prosperous art And well can she persuade." "Ar The sometime proposed admission of females to practice in courts of law is subject to a serious objection- the handsome would win all their causes, and the homely would lose them. guments out of a pretty mouth are unanswerable," says Addison. A beautiful woman, who has added the graces of art to the charms of nature, and who, by assiduous culture, has made her mind as attractive as her person, would have but little difficulty, I imagine, in convincing a susceptible jury of almost anything. And then, the old fable of the Syrens would be every day realized. Thought-laden words pass for little beside the light jibes of flippant Beauty. "Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw," In Reason is ever the dupe of appearances. deed, no drug, no potion, no enchantment, works so subtilely and so quick as the charm that resides in a beautiful face. In the assemblages of the gods, do not all eyes turn from Jupiter and Juno to Venus and Apollo? And, before such a face as that of Miss Gunning (afterwards Elizabeth Duchess of Hamilton and Brandon, and Duchess of Argyle,*) Wisdom herself would deem it presumption to do more than admire. Woman's Whims-" As numerous as as "As the sands of the sea-shore," suggested a lively lady, wishing to help the speaker out in an oratorical flourish. "No," said he, "I wish to speak more comprehensively whims." as woman's All extremes find their home in a woman of sensibility. Behind her smiles, what tears! And from graces that enchant, how readily she passes to whims that disenchant! As with Shakspeare's Venus, "A thousand spleens bear her a thousand ways." Woman's Worth-But still, with all their foi bles, women are better than men. What sa * See an exquisitely beautiful portrait of her sweetest of faces in "George Selwyn and his Contemporaries; " Vol. 2, Bentley's Ed. 1848. crifices are they not capable of making; how unselfish are they in their affections; how abiding is their love! They enchant us by their beauty, and charm us by their conversation. They add grace and a softer coloring to life, and assist us to bear its asperities. In our youth they are our instructors; in sorrow, our comforters; in sickness, the sweet beguilers of our misery. They are the only divinities on earth. Alas, that so many of them are fallen divinities! But who is it that makes them so? Who is it that takes advantage of their weakness, when that weakness should be their best claim to protection? Let him answer who abuses them. It is among the poor that the truest worth of woman is disclosed. Women in superior circumstances have less in their conditions to develop their nobler qualities. It was chiefly through her limited means that I came to know and to revere my mother's noble qualities of character, and her surprising capacities of selfsacrifice. A more ample fortune would scarcely have afforded that scope for the display of the virtues peculiar to her sex, and which her nar row resources, considerable family, and the necessity of providing for it, so abundantly evoked. THE WORLD, (AS IT APPEARED TO ME TWENTY YEARS AGO.*) HAT a bugbear is the world, and in WH what awe does it hold us! It exercises the severest espionage over us, and calls us rigidly to account for all our actions; it requires us to stand cap in hand to it, to bow and cringe before it, to obey its behests, and to fear its censure. And yet, this arrogant world is after all but a somewhat foolish, and often a very evil-minded, world. Tenacious of error, and slow to receive new truths, it has made martyrs of the good, and persecuted the wise; selfish and tyrannical, it fawns on the strong, and oppresses the weak; corrupt, its opinions can be bought by show; capricious, it has its favorites whom it intoxicates with its praises or its favors — but they are not long such—caressed to-day, they are discarded to-morrow. † Such is the world; in * About which time this impression of it was written. † Great positions seldom confer great happiness, never great in striving to please which we displease the gods, and to which we cannot be true without being false to ourselves. THE WORLD, (AS IT APPEARS TO ME TO-DAY, AT THE AGE OF FORTY.*) HIS is indeed a beautiful world!" exclaimed THI my mother, one fine day, with enthusiasm, and I loved her all the more that at the age of dependence, and not always even great honor. The great artist is the slave of his ideal. The power we covet at a distance, turns out, in possession, to be little more than a gilded slavery. "Whom the grandeur of his office elevates over other men," said the Chancellor Daguesseau, "will soon find that the first hour of his new dignity is the last of his independence." Consider the statesman's position. It adds much to the embarrassment of a statesman, under every form of government, that the people, or his superiors in authority, are pretty sure, in the end, to hold him responsible for even their own ill-advised influence over his measures. If he resists their solicitations, he braves a present destruction; if he yields, he perhaps but postpones his fate. *The world is this to one, that to another, and still something quite different to a third, according as it is seen in the light of different principles, under the influence of elevating or depressing circumstances, or through the medium of a more or less developed character. The world but rarely seems a generous world to him who has been hardly used in it; though the ills he has suffered have only proceeded from a few, or from laws beneficent in their general operation, though exceptionally rigorous. Timon, therefore, may be excused for the austerity |