Part 12

As thus explained, it is very evident that these two great principles, pride and vanity, must have almost omnipotent sway in the formation of character. Chenevix, in his work on national character, and Adam Smith in his theory of moral sentiments, make the whole human character to hinge on these two qualities. When pride is excessive, you have for the most part a haughty isolated independent taciturn being, who, wrapt up in himself, and his own ideal perfections, despises the opinions of those around him, and treats the world with austerity and scorn. His social defects are bluntness, rudeness, and a want of sympathy and compassion. But then he is a being who is firm and steady in his character, and unwavering in his resolves. He may be relied on, if you can ever win him to your side. When vanity is excessive, you have a being the very reverse of the one just described. He is social, loquacious, polite and attentive to all around him. He has no fixed character or opinion of his own: the opinion of the world is the looking glass in which he daily dresses himself. Affectation and disingenuousness are his social defects. Win him to your side to-day, and to-morrow when he finds the other the most popular, he will desert you without hesitation. He is a treacherous friend. When these two qualities are properly combined, you have the perfect character.

Now it is easy to see, from what has already been said, that of the two sexes man is the prouder, and woman the vainer. The greater physical strength of man, the occupations in which he is engaged, his self dependence and self sufficiency, make him generally more proud and less vain than woman, who being weaker than man, and more dependent on others, is obliged to seek their esteem and applause, in order that through their attachment and love, she may exercise a power which she finds not within herself. The desire to please is undoubtedly the ruling passion in the female heart. As I have before observed, her virtue is a much more sensitive and tender plant, than that of man: it can much more easily be tarnished, by the breath of public opinion; and when her reputation is once lost, it can never be regained. Hence the good opinion of the world is all in all to her. She endeavors to secure it by every means. She is generally more gay and cheerful, more loquacious and polite, infinitely more amiable and agreeable in the social circle, and she trifles with more grace and elegance. For the same reason she adorns and perfects her beauty more, and endeavors to heighten and polish her natural endowments by the aid of artificial ornaments. "I have observed, (says Ledyard,) among all nations, that the women ornament themselves more than the men; that they are ever inclined to be gay, cheerful, timorous and modest." They are more observant of fashions and of etiquette, and, as we shall presently see, they have more tact, more nice discrimination of feeling and discernment of character than men have. Women are precisely what the men make them, all over the world. Addison says, "that had women determined their own point of honor, it is probable that wit or good nature would have carried it against chastity;" but our sex have preferred the latter, and woman has conformed to the decision.

The vanity of woman, under proper regulation, makes her the most fascinating being in creation, when it is the virtuous, the intelligent, and the just, whose approbation she attempts to win, by the charms and graces of virtue, innocence, modesty, and accomplishment, where "she is the darling child of society, indulged not spoiled, presiding over its pleasures, preserving its refinements, taking nothing from its strength, adding much to its brilliancy, permitted the full exercise of all her faculties, and retaining the full endowment of all her graces."

And this same being, who, in her unmarried state, is the delight and charm of every circle in which she moves, may after marriage look to the esteem and approbation of him who has won her hand and heart, as the jewel of greatest price. His opinion may become to her what that of the world was before. His taste is the one which she may delight to please.

"She, if her lord but gaze with pride, Wears what he loves, and thinks no gem denied; And if, compliant with his wish, she roam, To the gay tumults which endear her home, 'Mid brighter fashions, and that pomp of waste, Which glittering fools misname, and call it taste; Tho' not a gem her simple hair have crown'd, While lavish diamonds fling their beams around, Can smile serene, nor feel one envy burn, And sleep without a sigh, on her return."[6]

[Footnote 6: _Paradise of Coquettes_, generally ascribed to the pen of the late Dr. Thomas Brown, the professor of moral and mental philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, of whom Mr. Dugald Stewart said, "in my opinion even Dr. Brown would have been a still better metaphysician, if he had not been a poet, and a still better poet if he had not been a metaphysician." I have no doubt of the truth of this remark, though we must acknowledge, that whether we examine his metaphysics or his poetry, we shall find that none has ever better understood the heart of a truly virtuous and constant female, or more highly appreciated it.]

Such a companion makes the home of her husband a paradise on earth, and the thought of him and his happiness, soon interweaves and intertwines itself with all her little schemes and projects, with all her desires and ambition, and her house becomes the true scene of domestic happiness and of the domestic virtues.

On the other hand, when vanity is excessive, or badly regulated, woman is too apt to substitute art for nature, and to attempt to impose upon the world by outward show and hollow pretensions; to manage and intrigue for the purpose of carrying her plans, and consummating her schemes; and when in danger of detection, she has recourse to evasions and devices, which in the end may produce the character of falsehood and hypocrisy.

"A person (says Adam Smith,) who has excessive vanity, in attempting to win the applause of those around him, is apt to fall into the practice of lying, but the lies are not of a black or very hurtful character to society; they are intended to deceive you, and make you think more of the person who tells them, and not to injure others; whereas a proud man but rarely lies, and when he does, it is apt to be a dark and malicious falsehood, which he tells; one intended for the injury of others, not for the exaltation of himself." It is badly regulated vanity, which produces that character for cunning, which Rousseau considered one of the distinguishing characteristical traits in the female. He was so much impressed with the predominance of this trait in woman's character, that he was disposed to attribute it, (I think falsely,) rather to nature than to circumstances and education. He tells us of the following device, practiced by a girl of six years old, who had been strictly forbidden to ask for any thing at table. For the purpose of inducing her parents to help her to a dish which she had not tasted, she pointed her finger at the several dishes, saying, I have eaten of that, and of that, &c. until she came to the one of which she had not eaten, passing that by in silence. A cunning hint was thus given to the parents, without violation of their commands, that she would like to be helped to it. This little stratagem Rousseau thinks far beyond what a boy of the same age would have planned, and hence he comes to the conclusion, that "_La ruse est un talent naturel au sex_"--he thinks this a wise dispensation of nature, for, says he, "La femme a tout contre elle nos defauts, sa timidité, sa faiblesse; elle n'a pour elle que son art et sa beaute. N'est il pas juste qu'elle cultive l'un et l'autre?" When these devices and stratagems, which the softer sex practice for the attainment of their ends, become too apparent, they disgust; when well concealed, they frequently succeed: but honesty here, as every where, will prove to be the best policy; and I cannot agree with Rousseau, that generally they are advantageous to those who practice them: they always endanger more or less the character of the individual. In spite, however, of all our caution and advice on this subject, in the little concerns of life, and the petty tactics of the drawing and ball rooms, woman will always display more skill and cunning than man. These are the scenes with which she is more conversant, and which she studies far more deeply than he. A skilful tactician in the drawing room, may almost be compared to a general in the field. She notes, without being perceived, every movement, and by skilful evolutions she brings about that arrangement of parties which best suits her taste, and which seems to others, who have not the sagacity to see the game, the effect of magic, rather than of art. With man it is very different; concealment and stratagem in the little courtesies and plans of life, are never expected of him. The maxim of David Crockett, "go ahead," is the one on which he practices. As woman is the most skilful manager on these occasions, so is she the most sagacious observer, and she can sometimes greatly amuse us, by furnishing a key to the manoeuvring in the social and fashionable world.

_Mother and Child._

I now proceed more particularly to the consideration of the effects produced upon the female character, by that most interesting and tender tie, the relation of mother and child. We have already pointed out the reasons why the mother should be considered, as intended more particularly by nature, for the office of nursing, rearing, and tutoring the infant. Although the effects of this position, are first manifested upon mothers, yet, as they constitute so large and influential a portion of females, their character, whatever it may be, will quickly diffuse itself over the whole sex, and consequently we may predicate of the whole, to a certain extent at least, the properties and peculiarities of character, which flow from the relation of mother and child.

There can scarcely be conceived in the whole range of nature, a more tenderly interesting object, than the perfectly helpless and innocent babe. The writers on the sublime tell us, that that obscurity and indistinctness which prevents us from seeing the exact proportions of objects, is favorable to sublimity, by the increased play which it gives to the imagination. Now, what is there so well calculated to rouse the imagination and excite our anticipations, as the listless, inactive infant,--slumbering from the moment at which he takes his milky food to the moment at which he awakes to require it again? What is that infant to become? What is to be his destiny? What the rôle which he is to play in the great drama of life? He is now at the starting point; the future lies latent within him. He is to be nursed and taken by the hand, and led gently along the path of life, until the growth of body, and the developement of mental powers, shall enable him, unaided, to combat the difficulties and obstacles which beset him on his way.

Then, is he to select the part which he is to act? Is he to be the great warrior, "striding from victory to victory, and making his path a plane of continued elevation"--dethroning and unmaking princes, and grasping the destiny of empires in his single hand? Or is he, by overturning the fair fabric of his country's government, and wading through war, anarchy and blood, at last to triumph over the law and the constitution, and build up his own throne on the melancholy ruins of his country's liberty? Or will he be the philosopher of his age, taking

"His ardent flight Through the blue infinite;"

numbering the planets, noting their complex but harmonious movements, and deducing the unerring laws by which they are governed? Or, by pouring truth after truth upon the world, is he to break up the prejudices and dissipate the errors which have before bound down the restless energies of the mind under the fatal spell of ignorance and superstition? Perhaps he is to be the genuine philanthropist, and like Howard, to travel from country to country, "not to survey the sumptuousness of palaces or the stateliness of temples; not to make accurate measurement of the remains of ancient grandeur; not to form a scale of the curiosity of modern arts; nor to collect medals or to collate manuscripts: but to dive into the depths of dungeons--to plunge into the infection of hospitals--to survey the mansions of sorrow and pain--to take the gauge and dimensions of misery, depression and contempt--to remember the forgotten, to attend to the neglected, to visit the forsaken--and compare and collate the distresses of all men in all countries." Or is he to be the simple, but contented being, whose world is bounded by his visual horizon,--

"Who never had a dozen thoughts In all his life; and never changed their course; But told them o'er, each in its 'customed place, From morn till night, from youth till hoary age, And never had an unbelieving doubt; But thought the visual line that girt him round The world's extremes: and thought the silver moon That nightly o'er him led her virgin host, No broader than his father's shield."--

Well, this being who is now rocked in his cradle, with these germs infolded, but unperceived, in his heart and in his feeble intellect, although the most helpless and dependent of animated creation, commands the sympathies and love of those who were the authors of its being, and possesses already so great an influence, that he cannot in after life, "by the most imperious orders which he addresses to the most obsequious slaves, exercise an authority more commanding, than that which in the first hours of his life, when a few indistinct cries and tears were his only language, he exercised irresistibly over hearts of the very existence of which he was ignorant." But it is the mother that gave it birth, who feels the deepest sympathy with all its pains and wants, and carries in her heart, the most unbounded and unremitting affection for it. Man as I have before observed, has a ruder and a hardier nature than woman: the out of door world, with all its bustle and jostling, its difficulties, dangers, hardships and labors, is the theatre for his actions. He only enjoys the domestic scenes during the intervals of his labors, and then perhaps worn down by toil and fatigue, he dandles for a moment his smiling infant on his knee, and retires to rest, or to muse on the projects of his ambition, or to form schemes for the accumulation of wealth and the extension of his influence. And when he thinks of his child, he associates him with those schemes and projects with which he is to be connected in after life, and looks upon

"The bright glad creature springing in his path But as the heir of his great name, the young And stately tree, whose rising strength ere long Shall bear his trophies well. And this is love! This is man's love!"

The prayer which Homer puts into the mouth of Hector for his son Astyanax, at the parting with Andromache, most beautifully illustrates the nature of a father's love. "O Jupiter, and ye gods! grant that this my son may be like his father, a leader among the Trojans, brave in battle, and a brave king of Illion. And hereafter, may the people say of him as he comes from battle, he is far braver than his father, and may he bring back the bloody spoils, having slain his enemy, and please his mother's heart." A Brutus and a Titus Manlius, who would condemn their own sons to death for the satisfaction of public justice, may be found among fathers, but never among mothers. Agamemnon may consent to the sacrifice of Iphigenia, but Clytemnestra, although a woman of depravity, could not,--because she loved the daughter more than she loved Greece. Joy it is well known, may sometimes be so intense as to produce death. Listen to the three following cases of death from joy: they will illustrate the difference between the father's and mother's love. Pliny tells us, that Chilo the Spartan died upon hearing that his son had gained a prize at the Olympic games. Again--the three sons of Diagoras were crowned on the same day victors in the Olympic games, the one as a pugilist, the other as a wrestler, and the third, at the _pancration_, or game combined of wrestling and boxing; and Aulus Gellius tells us, that the father's joy was so great, that he expired in the arms of his sons in the presence of the assembled multitude, "ibi in stadio inspectante populo, in osculis atque in manibus filiorum animam efflavat." In both of these cases joy came from gratified ambition. Livy tells us of an aged mother, who, while she was plunged into the depths of distress from the news of her son's death in battle, died in his arms from the excess of joy, on his sudden, unexpected safe return; the mother loved her son, not for the lustre which he might shed on her name and family, but for himself, and well might she, for it is the lot of a mother to watch with unremitting care over her infant during the first years of its existence. She notices with a tender anxiety all its little movements, and administers to all its wants. She alone learns to

"Explore the thought, explain the asking eye;"

she alone learns to read all the emotions of its heart by gazing on the play of its features. To her the voice of laughter is as delightful and beautiful as the most ravishing music; and the tones and cries of sickness and distress, are as afflicting and melancholy, as the fall of stocks, revulsions of commerce, and the disasters of trade and business are to man.

Even in women of the most wicked character, those who are the very fiends of their sex, we sometimes see this maternal fondness bursting out, and demonstrating at once, the difference between the wickedness of man and that of woman. Mrs. Jameson admires very much those touches of Shakspeare's pencil, which mark in the midst of all her atrocities and dark crimes, the womanly character of Lady Macbeth. How beautiful is the recollection of a mother's love, even in this fiend:

"I have given suck, and know how tender 'tis To love the babe that milks me."

And again she shows the woman, when she exclaims:

"Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done it"--

Well, then, are we prepared in the fifth act for the declaration of this monster of depravity, under the stings of a tormenting conscience, when she gazes on the hand that had done the deed and exclaims:

"All the perfumes of Arabia, will not sweeten this little hand."

But let us quit such specimens as these, and go back to our subject.

Who is there among us, who can look back to the period of his infant career, and not shed a tear of gratitude for a mother's love, and a mother's care? What heart does not heave with emotion at the recollection of the first years of our education, when day by day we were clasped in our mother's arms, and with the kiss of affection imprinted upon the brow, were charged to be good boys, and learn with cheerfulness the lesson that was assigned us. Black indeed must be that heart which can forget a mother's solicitude. The recollection of her advice and admonition has often saved the individual in the hour of temptation, and we can almost forgive Marmontel for his vices and his sins, while breathing the atmosphere of a profligate and abandoned court, when we peruse in his interesting memoirs the following paragraph, occasioned by the farewell which he took of his mother in declining health. "Yet a little while, and she will be no longer mine; this mother who from my birth has breathed only for me; this adored mother whose displeasure I feared as that of heaven, and if I dare say it, yet more than heaven itself. For I thought of her much oftener than of God, and when I had some temptation to subdue or some passion to repress, it was always my mother that I fancied present. What would she say, if she knew what passes in me? What would be her confusion? What would be her grief? Such were the reflections that I opposed to myself, and my reason then resumed its empire, seconded by nature, who always did what she pleased with my heart. Those who, like me, have known this tender filial love, need not be told what was the sadness and despondency of my soul." Montaigne in his singular, but highly amusing and ingenious essays, places Epaminondas of Thebes, among the _three men_ who were "more excellent than all the rest" of whom he had any knowledge; and the very first proof which he adduces of his excessive goodness is the declaration of Epaminondas, "that the greatest satisfaction he ever had in his whole life, was the pleasure he gave his father and mother by his victory at Leuctra."

The influence which a mother's care and a mother's love produces upon a girl, is much greater than that wrought on a boy. The girl is more constantly with her mother; she is taught to imitate and act like her; she is more constantly with the younger children of the family; her attentions, her kindnesses, her sympathies and her love, come in process of time to resemble those of the mother, much more than of the father. Hence it is fair to say, that all the effects wrought on the mother by the nursing, training, &c. of the infant, are produced in some degree on all her daughters.

Having thus pointed out the character of that love which a mother bears for her children, I will now proceed to show the effects which it produces on the character of the mother herself. Marmontel in his "_Lecons Sur la Morale_," pronounced "the heart of a good mother, to be the masterpiece of nature's works;" and Stewart, on the Active and Moral Powers, endorses the assertion,--and adds, "there is no form certainly, in which humanity appears so lovely, or presents so fair a copy of the Divine image after which it was made."