The Young Lady's Mentor by A Lady

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But it is more to our present purpose to say, that we think the fair
writer before us is eminently a mistress of this poetical secret; and,
in truth, it was solely for the purpose of illustrating this great charm
and excellence in her imagery, that we have ventured upon this little
dissertation. Almost all her poems are rich with fine descriptions, and
studded over with images of visible beauty. But these are never idle
ornaments; all her pomps have a meaning; and her flowers and her gems
are arranged, as they are said to be among Eastern lovers, so as to
speak the language of truth and of passion. This is peculiarly
remarkable in some little pieces, which seem at first sight to be purely
descriptive--but are soon found to tell upon the heart, with a deep
moral and pathetic impression. But it is, in truth, nearly as
conspicuous in the greater part of her productions; where we scarcely
meet with any striking sentiment that is not ushered in by some such
symphony of external nature--and scarcely a lovely picture that does not
serve as an appropriate foreground to some deep or lofty emotion. We may
illustrate this proposition, we think, by the following exquisite lines,
on a palm-tree in an English garden.

It waved not through an Eastern sky,
Beside a fount of Araby
It was not fanned by southern breeze
In some green isle of Indian seas,
Nor did its graceful shadows sleep
O'er stream of Africa, lone and deep.

But far the exiled Palm-tree grew
Midst foliage of no kindred hue;
Through the laburnum's dropping gold
Rose the light shaft of orient mould,
And Europe's violets, faintly sweet,
Purpled the moss-beds at his feet.

There came an eve of festal hours--
Rich music filled that garden's bowers:
Lamps, that from flowering branches hung,
On sparks of dew soft colours flung,
And bright forms glanced--a fairy show--
Under the blossoms, to and fro.

But one, a lone one, midst the throng,
Seemed reckless all of dance or song:
He was a youth of dusky mien,
Whereon the Indian sun had been--
Of crested brow, and long black hair--
A stranger, like the Palm-tree, there!

And slowly, sadly moved his plumes,
Glittering athwart the leafy glooms:
He passed the pale green olives by,
Nor won the chestnut-flowers his eye;
But, when to that sole Palm he came,
Then shot a rapture through his frame!

To him, to him its rustling spoke:
The silence of his soul it broke!
It whispered of his own bright isle,
That lit the ocean with a smile;
Ay, to his ear that native tone
Had something of the sea-wave's moan!

His mother's cabin home, that lay
Where feathery cocoas fringed the bay;
The dashing of his brethren's oar;
The conch-note heard along the shore;--
All through his wakening bosom swept;
He clasped his country's Tree--and wept!

Oh! scorn him not! The strength whereby
The patriot girds himself to die,
The unconquerable power, which fills
The freeman battling on his hills--
These have one fountain deep and clear--
The same whence gushed that child-like tear!

ENNUI, AND THE DESIRE TO BE FASHIONABLE.

BY LORD JEFFREY.

There are two great sources of unhappiness to those whom fortune and
nature seem to have placed above the reach of ordinary miseries. The one
is _ennui_--that stagnation of life and feeling which results from the
absence of all motives to exertion; and by which the justice of
Providence has so fully compensated the partiality of fortune, that it
may be fairly doubted whether, upon the whole, the race of beggars is
not happier than the race of lords; and whether those vulgar wants that
are sometimes so importunate, are not, in this world, the chief
ministers of enjoyment. This is a plague that infects all indolent
persons who can live on in the rank in which they were born, without the
necessity of working; but, in a free country, it rarely occurs in any
great degree of virulence, except among those who are already at the
summit of human felicity. Below this, there is room for ambition, and
envy, and emulation, and all the feverish movements of aspiring vanity
and unresting selfishness, which act as prophylactics against this more
dark and deadly distemper. It is the canker which corrodes the
full-blown flower of human felicity--the pestilence which smites at the
bright hour of noon.

The other curse of the happy, has a range more wide and indiscriminate.
It, too, tortures only the comparatively rich and fortunate; but is most
active among the least distinguished; and abates in malignity as we
ascend to the lofty regions of pure _ennui_. This is the desire of being
fashionable;--the restless and insatiable passion to pass for creatures
a little more distinguished than we really are--with the mortification
of frequent failure, and the humiliating consciousness of being
perpetually exposed to it. Among those who are secure of "meat, clothes,
and fire," and are thus above the chief physical evils of existence, we
do believe that this is a more prolific source of unhappiness, than
guilt, disease, or wounded affection; and that more positive misery is
created, and more true enjoyment excluded, by the eternal fretting and
straining of this pitiful ambition, than by all the ravages of passion,
the desolations of war, or the accidents or mortality. This may appear a
strong statement; but we make it deliberately; and are deeply convinced
of its truth. The wretchedness which it produces may not be so intense;
but it is of much longer duration, and spreads over a far wider circle.
It is quite dreadful, indeed, to think what a sweep of this pest has
taken among the comforts or our prosperous population. To be though
fashionable--that is, to be thought more opulent and tasteful, and on a
footing of intimacy with a greater number of distinguished persons than
they really are, is the great and laborious pursuit of four families out
of five, the members of which are exempted from the necessity of daily
industry. In this pursuit, their time, spirits, and talents are wasted;
their tempers soured; their affections palsied; and their natural
manners and dispositions altogether sophisticated and lost.

These are the great twin scourges of the prosperous: But there are
other maladies, of no slight malignity, to which they are peculiarly
liable. One of these, arising mainly from want of more worthy
occupation, is that perpetual use of stratagem and contrivance--that
little, artful diplomacy of private life, by which the simplest and most
natural transactions are rendered complicated and difficult, and the
common business of existence made to depend on the success of plots and
counterplots. By the incessant practice of this petty policy, a habit of
duplicity and anxiety is infallibly generated, which is equally fatal to
integrity and enjoyment. We gradually come to look on others with the
distrust which we are conscious of deserving; and are insensibly formed
to sentiments of the most unamiable selfishness and suspicion. It is
needless to say, that all these elaborate artifices are worse than
useless to the person who employs them; and that the ingenious plotter
is almost always baffled and exposed by the downright honesty of some
undesigning competitor. Miss Edgeworth, in her tale of "Manoeuvring,"
has given a very complete and most entertaining representation of "the
by-paths and indirect crooked ways," by which these artful and
inefficient people generally make their way to disappointment. In the
tale, entitled "Madame de Fleury," she has given some useful examples of
the ways in which the rich may most effectually do good to the poor--an
operation which, we really believe, fails more frequently from want of
skill than of inclination: And, in "The Dun," she has drawn a touching
and most impressive picture of the wretchedness which the poor so
frequently suffer, from the unfeeling thoughtlessness which withholds
from them the scanty earnings of their labour.

THE INFLUENCE OF PERSONAL CHARACTER.

The immense importance of personal character is a subject which does not
enough draw the attention of individuals or society, yet it is to the
power of gaining influence, what the root is to the tree,--the soul to
the body. It is doubtful if any of us can be acquainted with the
infinitely minute ramifications into which this all-pervading influence
extends. A slight survey of society will enable us, in some degree, to
judge of it. There are individuals who, by the sole force of personal
character, seem to render wise, better, more elevated, all with whom
they come in contact. Others, again, stand in the midst of the society
in which they are placed, a moral upas, poisoning the atmosphere around
them, so that no virtue can come within their shadow and live. Family
virtues descend with family estates, and hereditary vices are hardly
compensated for by hereditary possessions. The characters of the junior
members of a family are often only reflections or modifications of those
of the elder. Families retain for generations peculiarities of temper
and character. The Catos were all stern, upright, inflexible; the Guises
proud and haughty at the heart, though irresistibly popular and
fascinating in manner. We _see_ the influence which men, exalted and
powerful, exert on their age, and on society; it is difficult to
believe that a similar influence is exerted by every individual man and
woman, however limited his or her sphere of life: the force of the
torrent is easily calculated,--that of the under-current is hidden, yet
its existence and power are no less actual.

This truth opens to the conscientious a field of duty not enough
cultivated. The improvement of individual character has been too much
regarded as a matter of personal concern, a duty to ourselves,--to our
immediate relations perhaps, but to no others,--a matter affecting out
individual happiness here, and our individual safety hereafter! This is
taking a very narrow view of a very extended subject. The work of
individual self-formation is a duty, not only to ourselves and our
families, but to our fellow-creatures at large; it is the best and most
certainly beneficial exercise of philanthropy. It is not, it is true,
very flattering to self-love to be told, that instead of mending the
world, (the mania of the present day,) the best service which we can do
that world is to mend ourselves. "If each mends one, all will be
mended," says the old English adage, with the deep wisdom of those
popular sayings,--a wisdom amply corroborated by the unsettled
principles and defective practice of too many of the self-elected
reformers of society.

It is peculiarly desirable, at this particular juncture of time, that
this subject be insisted upon. Man, naturally a social and gregarious
animal, becomes every day more so. The vast undertakings, the mighty
movements of the present day, which can only be carried into operation
by the combined energy of many wills, tend to destroy individuality of
thought and action, and the consciousness of individual responsibility.
The dramatist complains of this fact, as it affects his art, the
representation of surface,--the moralist has greater cause to complain
of it, as affecting the foundation of character. If it be true that we
must not follow a multitude to do evil, it is equally true that we must
not follow a multitude even to do good, if it involve the neglect of our
own peculiar duties. Our first, most peremptory, and most urgent duty,
is, the improvement of our own character; so that public beneficence may
not be neutralized by private selfishness,--public energy by private
remissness,--that the applause of the world may not be bought at the
expense of private and domestic wretchedness. So frequent and so
lamentable are the proofs of human weakness in this respect, that we are
sometimes tempted to believe the opinion of the cold and sneering
skeptic,[112] that the two ruling passions of men are the love of
pleasure and the love of action; and that all their seemingly good deeds
proceed from these principles. It is not so: it is a libel on human
nature: men,--even erring men,--have better motives, and higher aims:
but they mistake the nature of their duties and invert their order; what
should be "first is last, and the last first."

It may be wisely urged, that if men waited for the perfecting of
individual character, before they joined their fellow men in those great
undertakings which are to insure benefit to the race, nothing would ever
be accomplished, and society would languish in a state of passive
inertness. It is far from necessarily following that attention to
private should interfere with attention to public interests; and public
interests are more advanced or retarded than it is possible to believe,
by the personal characters of their agitators. It is difficult to get
the worldly and the selfish to see this, but it is, nevertheless, true;
and there is no wisdom, political or moral, in the phrase, "Measures,
not men." Measures, wise and just in themselves, are received with
distrust and suspicion, because the characters of their originators are
liable to distrust and suspicion. Lord Chesterfield, the great master of
deception, was forced to pay truth the compliment of declaring, that
"the most successful diplomatist would be a man perfectly honest and
upright, who should, at all times, and in all circumstances, say the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." So the rulers of
nations ought to be perfectly honest and upright; not because such men
would be free from error, but because the faith of the governed in their
honour would obviate the consequences of many errors. It is the want of
unselfishness and truth on the part of rulers, and the consequent want
of faith in the ruled, that has reduced the politics of nations to a
complicated science. If we could once get men to act out the gospel
precept, "Do unto others as ye would that they should do unto you,"
nations might burn their codes, and lawyers their statute-books. These
are the hundred cords with which the Lilliputians bound Gulliver, and he
escaped. If they had possessed it, or could have managed it, one cable
would have been worth them all. Much has been said,--much written,--on
the art of governing. Why has the simple truth been overlooked or
suppressed, that the moral character of the rulers of nations is of
first-rate importance? Except the Lord build the city, vain is the
labour of them who build it; except religion and virtue guide the state,
vain are the talents and the acts of legislators. Is it possible that
motives of paltry personal advancement, or of pecuniary gain, can induce
men to assume responsibilities affecting the welfare of millions? The
voice of those millions replies in the affirmative, and their
reproachful glances turn on _you_, mothers of our legislators! It might
have been yours, to stamp on their infant minds the dispassionate and
unselfish devotedness which belongs to your own sex,--the scorn of
meanness; the contempt of self, in comparison with others, peculiar to
woman. How have you fulfilled your lofty mission? Charity itself can
only allow us to suppose that its existence is as unknown as its spirit.

The important fact, then, of the great influence of personal character,
can never be too much impressed upon all; but it is peculiarly needful
that women be impressed with it, because their personal character must
necessarily influence that of their children, and be the source of their
personal character. For, if the active performance of the duties of a
citizen interfere, and it undoubtedly does so, with the duty of
self-education, of what importance is it that men enter upon them with
such a personal character as may insure us confidence while it secures
us from temptation? The formation of such a character depends mainly on
mothers, and especially on their personal character and principles. The
character of the mother influences the children more than that of the
father, because it is more exposed to their daily, hourly observation.
It is difficult for these young, though acute observers, to comprehend
the principles which regulate their father's political opinions; his
vote in the senate; his conduct in political or commercial relations;
but they can see,--yes! and they can estimate and imitate, the moral
principles of the mother in her management of themselves, her treatment
of her domestics, and the thousand petty details of the interior. These
principles, whether lax or strict, low or high in moral tone, become, by
an insensible and imperceptible adoption, their principles, and are
carried out by them into the duties and avocations of future life. It
would be startling to many to know with what intelligence and accuracy
motives are penetrated, inconsistencies remarked, and treasured up with
retributive or imitative projects, as may best suit the purpose of the
moment. Nothing but a more extensive knowledge of children than is
usually possessed on entering life, can awaken parents to the perception
of this truth; and awakened perception may, perhaps, be only awakened
misery. How important is it, then, that every thing in the education of
women should tend to enlighten conscience, that she may enter on her
arduous task with principles requiring only watchfulness, not
reformation; and such a personal character as may exercise none by
healthy influences on her children!

FOOTNOTES:

[112] Gibbon.

ON THE MEANS OF SECURING PERSONAL INFLUENCE.

The qualities which seem more especially needful in a character which is
to influence others, are, consistency, simplicity, and benevolence, or
love.

By consistency of character, I mean consistency of action with
principle, of manner with thought, of _self_ with _self_. The want of
this quality is a failing with which our sex is often charged, and
justly; but are we to blame? Our hearts are warm, our nerves irritable,
and we have seen how little there is, in existing systems of female
education, calculated to give wide, lofty, self-devoted principles of
action. Without such principles, there can be no consistency of conduct;
and without consistency of conduct, there can be no available moral
influence.

The peculiar evil arising from want of consistency, is the want of trust
or faith which it engenders. This is felt in the common intercourse with
the world. In our relations with inconsistent persons, we are like
mariners at sea without a compass. On the other hand, intercourse with
consistent persons gives to the mind a sort of tranquillity, peculiarly
favourable to happiness and to virtue. It is like the effect produced by
the perception of an immutable truth, which, from the very force of
contrast, is peculiarly grateful to the inhabitants of so changeable a
world as this. It is moral repose.

This sort of moral repose is most peculiarly advantageous to children,
because it allows ample scope for the development of their mental and
moral faculties; banishing from their minds all that chaotic
bewilderment into which dependence on inconsistent persons throws them.
It is advantageous to them in another, and more important way,--it
prepares them for a belief in virtue; a trust in others, which it is
easy to train up into a veneration for the source of all virtue; a trust
in the origin of all truth. There can be no clearness of moral
perception in the governed, where there is no manifestation of a moral
rule of right in the governor. In speaking of moral perception, I do not
mean to say that children have, properly speaking, a moral perception of
inconsistency; but it affects their comfort and well-being,
nevertheless. There is, in the nature of man, as great a perception of
moral, as of physical order and proportion; and the absence of the moral
produces pain and disgust to the soul, as the absence of the physical
does to the senses. This state of pain and disgust is felt, though it
can never be expressed, by children, who are under the management of
inconsistent persons,--that is, persons whose conduct is guided solely
by feeling, (good or bad,) by caprice, or impulse; and how injurious it
is to them, we may easily conceive. If, however, their present comfort
only were endangered by it, the evil would be of comparatively small
magnitude; but it affects their character for life. They cease to trust,
and they cease to venerate; now, trust is the root of faith, and
veneration of piety:--and when the root is destroyed, how can the plant
flourish? Perhaps we may remark that the effect here produced upon
children is the same as that which long intercourse with the world
produces in men: only that the effect differs in proportion to their
differing intellectual faculties. The child is annoyed, and knows not
the cause of annoyance; the man is annoyed, and endeavours to lose the
sense of discomfort in a universal skepticism as to human virtue, and a
resolving of all actions into one principle, self-interest. He thus
seeks to create a principle possessing the stability which he desires,
but seeks in vain to find; for, be it remembered, our love of moral
stability is precisely as great as our love of physical change;--another
of the mysteries of our being. The effects on the man are the same as on
the child,--he ceases to believe, and he ceases to venerate; and the end
is the most degrading of all conditions,--the abnegation of all abstract
virtue, generosity, or love. Now, into this state children are brought
by the inconsistency of parents,--that is, these young and innocent
creatures are placed in a condition, moral and intellectual, which we
consider an evil, even when produced by long contact with a selfish and
unkind world. And thus they enter upon life, prepared for vice in all
its forms,--and skepticism, in all its heart-withering tendencies. How
can parents bear this responsibility? There is something so touching in
the simple faith of childhood,--its utter dependence,--its willingness
to believe in the perfection of those to whom it looks for
protection--that to betray that faith, to shake that dependence, seems
almost akin to irreligion.

The value of principle, then, in itself so precious, is enhanced tenfold
by constancy in its manifestations, and therefore consistency, as a
source of influence, can never be too much insisted upon.

Consistency of principle is brought to the test in every daily, hourly
occurrence of woman's life, and if she have been brought up without an
abiding sense of duty and responsibility, she is of all beings most
unfortunate; influences the most potent are committed to her care, and
from her they issue like the simoom of the desert, breathing moral
blight and death. I have endeavoured, in some degree, to enforce the
power of indirect influences on the minds of _children_: they are very
powerful in the other relations of life; in the conjugal, the truth is
too well known and attested by tale and song to need additional
corroboration here--and this book is principally, though not wholly,
dedicated to woman in her maternal character.

The extreme importance of the manifestation of consistency in mothers
may be argued from this fact, that it is of infinite importance to
children to see the daily operation of an immutable and consistent rule
of right, in matters sufficiently small to come within the sphere of
childish observation, and, therefore, if called upon to give a
definition of the peculiar mission of woman, and the peculiar source of
her influence, I should say it is the application of large principles to
small duties,--the agency of comprehensive intelligence on details. That
largeness of mental vision, which, while it can comprehend the vast, is
too keen to overlook the little, is especially to be cultivated by
women. It is a great mistake to suppose the two qualities are
incompatible; and the supposition that they are so, has done much
mischief; the error arises not from the extent, but from the narrowness
of our capacity, _To aspire_ is our privilege, and a privilege which we
are by no means slack to use, without considering that the operations of
infinitude are even more incomprehensible in their minuteness than in
their magnitude, and that, therefore, to be always looking from the
minute towards the vast, is only a proof of the finite nature of our
present capacity. The loftiest intellect may, without abasement, be
employed on the minutest domestic detail, and in all probability will
perform it better than an inferior one: it is the motive and end of an
action which makes it either dignified or mean. In the homely words of
old Herbert

All may of thee partake:
Nothing can be so mean,
Which, with this tincture, _for thy sake_
Will not grow bright and clean.

It is then in the minutiae of daily life and conduct that this
consistency has its most beneficial operation, and it must derive its
power from the personal character for this reason, that no virtues but
indigenous ones are capable of the sort of moral transfusion here
mentioned. It is rare to see a parent, eminently distinguished by any
moral virtue, unsuccessful in the transmitting that virtue to children,
simply because, being an integral part of character, it is consistent in
its mode of operation; so virtues originating in effort, or practised
for the sake of example, are seldom transferable; the same consistency
cannot be expected in the exercise of them, and this may explain the
small success of pattern mothers, _par excellence_ so called, and whose
good intentions and sacrifices ought not to be objects of derision; the
very appearance of effort mars the effect of all effort.

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