On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
smile-lighted face of a loving heart , sustained b y moral and mental energy . Little has hitherto been said of Caroline , because she is of a class of women who say little for themselves , and for whom little
can be said . That she had won the love of such a man as Cyril , was partly owing to his imagination , which ( as the imagination of the passionate too often does ) had endowed his idol with supposititious gifts , and partly from the conventional and poetical notions which he entertained of women . Experience was destined to awaken him to the truth , that it is art , not nature , which has
made men and women so widely different , and that the simplest self-acting work of nature is worth more than the finest piece of clockwork which human skill ever constructed . He looked on women as women themselves look on babies—as things to be cared for and controlled—whose faults were to be forgiven for the sake of their weakness , —whose errors were pardonable on account of their ignorance—who if
' Some few follies to their lot might full , Look in their faces you'd forget them all . ' All this does very well in theory , it may animate the spirit of gay gallantry in a drawing-room , where 'the ladies' slave trade' is a matter of passing amusement ; where hearts kindle and catch cold in the brief space of ten minutes , and the sweets brought abroad for the evening , by some strange moral chemistrv , turn to sours
at home the next morning . She who desires to have a slave , deserves to have a tyrant ; and she generally has her desert , for slavery is only an apprenticeship to tyranny . I think with Madame de Stael , that ' it is only in childhood that levity has a charm ; it seems as if the Creator still held the child by the hand , and assisted him to tread gently over the clouds of life : but when time abandons man to himself , it is only in the seriousness of his soul that he can find reflection , sentiment , and virtue . '
Let vis not confound the elasticity of an excursive and excitable mind , the flashes of a buoyant imagination , with levity . They often have their source in the deepest springs of the soul , to which the spirit can retire , as the eagle to his eyry , and say unto the world , as that does to the winds , I can defy you . Let us define levity to be an utter absence of reflection on the past , and of any thing like calculation on the consequence of the present . It is this levity which may lead to everything bad and cruel in life .
Caroline Conway was a lovely woman , as far as symmetry of form and feature , fair skin , sweet eyes , and fine hair may constitute loveliness ; she had , in addition , a soft voice and a graceful gentleness of carriage , , which as much as anything about her won upon affection . Her small , yet beautiful forehead , too , indicated just that degree of intellect which men like to meet in women , that is , enough to appreciate male talent , not to rival it . But to even this extent Caroline ' s intellect had not been culti-
Untitled Article
Sketches of Domestic Life . 149
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1835, page 149, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2643/page/5/
-