Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 by Various

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"It was once suggested by an eminent physiologist, that the
greatest enjoyments of our animal nature might be those which,
from their constancy, escape our notice altogether.

"His investigations had led him to think, that even the
involuntary motions carried on in our system, were productive of
pleasure; and that the act of respiration was probably attended
by a sensation as delightful as the gratifications of the palate.
It is certain that every sense is a source of unnoticed
pleasures. Sound and light are agreeable in themselves, before
their varied combinations have produced music to our ear, or
conveyed the perceptions of form to our mind. Innumerable are the
emotions of pleasure conveyed to the imagination and the senses,
by the endless diversities of form, colour, and sound; and the
unbought riches poured upon us from these sources, are more
prolific of enjoyment, than any of the far-sought distinctions
which stir the hopes and rivalries of men. Yet, on these and
other spontaneous blessings, no one reflects, or even enumerates
them among the sources of happiness, till some casual suspension
of them revives sensibility to the delight they afford.

"Such are the lamentations, though rarely so eloquently uttered,
which we daily hear on the loss of some possession, which, while
held, was scarcely noticed; and could preserve its owner, neither
from the gloom of apathy, nor the irritation of discontent.

"Were it not for this, the necessary effect of habit both in the
physical and moral world, women might be expected to live in
daily and hourly exultation, who have been born in a Christian
and civilized country. Whatever theorists may have thought
occasionally of the happiness of men in barbarous or savage
conditions, no doubt at all can be entertained as to that of
women. It is civilization which has taken the yoke from their
neck, the scourge from their back, and the burden from their
shoulders. It is Christianity chiefly which has raised them from
the state of slaves or menials to that of citizens, and compelled
their rough and unresisted tyrants to call up law in their
defence; that potent spirit which they, who have evoked it, must
ever after themselves submit to. Religion, which extends the
sanctity of the marriage vow to the husband as well as to the
wife, has rescued her from a condition in which her best and most
tender affections were the source of her bitterest misery; a
condition in which her only escape from a sense of suffering too
unremitting for nature to endure, was in that mental degradation
which produces insensibility to wrong. The instances of primitive
communities, in which such injustice has not prevailed, are too
few and far between, to form any solid objection to the truth of
this general picture. The mere increase of numbers infallibly
obliterates the fair but feeble virtues that originate in nothing
but ignorance of ill; and the first inroads of want or discord,
usually settle the doom of the weak and defenceless. In restoring
to women their domestic dignity, religion has done more than
every other cause towards shielding them from the consequences of
weakness and dependence. From the dignified affections of the
other sex, they have gradually acquired some social rights, and
some share of that freedom, without which virtue itself can
scarcely exist. Opinion, the offspring, not of resplendent
genius, whose earliest fires burned indignantly against the
tyrant and oppressor, but of a religion which preached the
equality of all before God, has given them a share of those
blessings, without which life is not worth possession. At length
it has opened to them the portals of knowledge and wisdom, the
gradual, but effective supports against degradation; and has
sanctified its gifts by withholding from them every license that
leads to vice, every knowledge that detracts from their purity,
and every profession that would expose them to insult."

Then follows a masterly sketch of the condition of woman in uncivilized
life, in which the subject is illustrated by the most apposite quotations
from the works of different travellers and historians. It is the writer's
opinion that in uncivilized life, the degradation of woman, though common,
is not universal. The celebrated passage in Tacitus is quoted in support
of this position; and among other less interesting extracts, is the
following account of Galway by Hardiman, a country which, so great is the
blessing of a paternal and judicious government, may furnish, in the
nineteenth century, illustrations of uncivilized life, equally picturesque
and striking with those which Tacitus has recorded in his day as familiar
among the inhabitants of Pagan Germany.

"This colony, from time immemorial, has been ruled by one of
their own body, periodically elected, who somewhat resembled the
Brughaid or head village of ancient times, when every clan
resided in its hereditary canton. This individual, who is
decorated with the title of mayor, in imitation of the city,
regulates the community according to their own peculiar customs
and laws, and settles all fishery disputes. His decisions are so
decisive, and so much respected, that the parties are seldom
known to carry their differences before a legal tribunal, or to
trouble the civil magistrate. They neither understand nor trouble
themselves about politics, consequently, in the most turbulent
times, their loyalty has never been questioned. Their mayor is no
way distinguished from other villagers, except that his boat is
decorated with a white sail, and may be seen when at sea, at
which time he acts as admiral, with colours flying at the
masthead, gliding through their fleet with some appearance of
authority.... When on shore, they employ themselves in repairing
their boats, sails, rigging, and cordage, in making, drying, and
repairing their nets and spillets, in which latter part they are
assisted by the women, who spin the hemp and yarn for their nets.
In consequence of their strict attention to these particulars,
very few accidents happen at sea, and lives are seldom lost.
Whatever time remains after these avocations, they spend in
regaling with whisky, and assembling in groups to discuss their
maritime affairs, on which occasions they arrange their fishing
excursions. When preparing for sea, hundreds of their women and
children for days before crowd the strand, seeking for worms to
bait the hooks. The men carry in their boats, potatoes, oaten
cakes, fuel, and water, but never admit any spirituous liquors.
Thus equipped, they depart for their fishing ground, and
sometimes remain away several days. Their return is joyfully
hailed by their wives and children, who meet them on the shore.
The fish instantly becomes the property of the women, (the men,
after landing, never troubling themselves further about it,) and
they dispose of it to a poorer class of fishwomen, who retail it
at market.

"The inhabitants of the Cloddagh are an unlettered race. They
rarely speak English, and even their Irish they pronounce in a
harsh, discordant tone, sometimes not intelligible to the
townspeople. They are a contented, happy race, satisfied with
their own society, and seldom ambitious of that of others.
Strangers (for whom they have an utter aversion) are never
suffered to reside among them. The women possess an unlimited
control over their husbands, the produce of whose labour they
exclusively manage, allowing the men little more money than
suffices to keep the boat and tackle in repair; but they keep
them plentifully supplied with whisky, brandy, and tobacco. The
women seldom speak English, but appear more shrewd and
intelligent in their dealings than the men; in their domestic
concerns the general appearance of cleanliness is deserving of
particular praise. The wooden ware, with which every dwelling is
well stored, rivals in colour the whitest delft.

"At an early age they generally marry amongst their own clan. A
marriage is commonly preceded by an elopement, but no
disappointment or disadvantage from that circumstance has ever
been known among them. The reconciliation with the friends
usually takes place the next morning, the clergyman is sent for,
and the marriage celebrated. The parents generally contrive to
supply the price of a boat, or a share in one, as a beginning."

The writer then proceeds, in a strain of generous yet chastened energy, to
comment on the false measure which people apply to the sufferings of
others. Insensibility to wretchedness, or, as in the vocabulary of
oppression it is called, content, is often a proof of nothing but that
stupefaction of the faculties which is the natural result of long and
blighting misery. A contented slave is a degraded man. His sorrow may be
gone, but so is his understanding.

In the course of her enquiries into the condition of women under the
Mahometan law, the author is led to make some reflections upon one by whom
Mahometan manners were first presented in an attractive shape to the
English public--a person celebrated for her friends, but still more
celebrated for her enemies--known for her love, but famous for her hate--a
girl without feeling, a woman without tenderness--a banished wife, a
careless mother--on whom extraordinary wit, masculine sense, a clear
judgment, and an ardent love of letters seem to have been lavished for no
other purpose than to show that, without a good heart, they serve only to
make their possessor the most contemptible of mankind. Lady Mary Wortley's
heart was the receptacle of all meanness and sensuality--the prey of a
selfishness as intense as rank, riches, a bad education, natural
malignity, and the extremes of good and bad fortune, ever engendered in
the breast of woman. The remarks on her character, in the volume before
us, are, as might be expected, excellent.

The condition of women among the more polished nations of antiquity, is a
subject which, if fully examined, would more than exhaust our narrow
limits. It does not appear from Homer, says our author, that the condition
of women was depressed. Achilles, in a very striking passage, declares
that every wise and good man loves and is careful for his wife, and
Hector, in the passage which Cicero is so fond of quoting, urges the
opinion of

"Troy's proud dames, whose garments sweep the ground,"

as a motive for his conduct. However this may be, certain it is, that the
feelings and affections of domestic life are portrayed by Homer with a
degree of purity, truth, and pathos, that casts every other writer, Virgil
not excepted, into the shade; and which, to carry the panegyric of human
composition as far as it will go, he himself, in his most glorious
passages, has never been able to surpass. It has been so long the fashion
to represent Virgil as the sole master of the pathetic, that this
assertion may appear to many paradoxical; and it is undoubtedly true, that
the fourth book of the Aeneid cannot he read by any one of common
sensibility without strong emotion; but how different is the lamentation
of Andromache over her living husband, uttered in all the glow and
consciousness of returned and "twice blest" love, from the raving of the
slighted woman, abandoned by the lover whom she has too rashly trusted,
and to whom she has too plainly become indifferent! How different is the
character of the patriot warrior, the prop and bulwark of his country,
sacrificing his life to delay that ruin which he knew it was beyond his
power to avert--snatching, amid the bloody scenes around him, a moment for
the indulgence of a father's pride and a husband's tenderness, from the
perfidious paramour flying from the vengeance of the woman he had wronged!

And how noble is the simplicity of Andromache, how affecting the appeal in
which, after reminding her husband that all else to which she was bound
had been swept away, she tells him that, while he remains, her other
losses are unfelt! Let us trace the episode. "She had not gone," the poet
tells us, "to the mansions of her brothers or of her sisters, with their
floating veils; neither had she gone to the shrine of Minerva, where the
Trojan women strove to appease the terrible wrath of the fair-haired
goddess. No. She had gone to the lofty tower of Ilium, for she had heard
that the Trojans were sore harassed, and that the force of the Greeks was
mighty; thither, like one bereft of reason, had she precipitated her
steps, and the nurse followed with her child." Then follows that
interview, which no one can read without passion, or think of without
delight--that exquisite scene, in which the wife and mother pours out all
her tenderness, her joy, her sadness, her pride, her terror, the memory of
the past, and the presage of future sorrow, in an irresistible torrent of
confiding love. Not less affecting is her husband's answer. Conscious of
his impending doom, he replies, that "not the future misery of his
countrymen, not that of Hecuba herself, and the royal Priam--not that of
all his valiant brethren slain by their enemies, and trampled in the dust,
give him such a pang as the thought of her distress." Then, as if to
relieve his thoughts, he stretches out his hand towards his child, but the
child shrinks backwards, scared at the brazen helm and waving crest--the
father and the mother exchange a smile--Hector lays aside the blazing
helmet, and, clasping his child in his arms, utters the noble prayer which
Dryden has rendered with uncommon spirit and fidelity:--

"Parent of gods and men, propitious Jove,
And you, bright synod of the powers above,
On this my son your precious gifts bestow;
Grant him to love, and great in arms to grow,
To reign in Troy, to govern with renown,
To shield the people, and assert the crown:
That when hereafter he from war shall come,
And bring his Trojans peace and triumph home,
Some aged man, who lives this act to see,
And who in former times remember'd me,
May say, 'The son in fortitude and fame,
Outgoes the mark, and drowns his father's name;'
That at these words his mother may rejoice,
And add her suffrage to the public voice."

"Thus having said, he placed the boy in the arms of his beloved wife, and
she received him on her fragrant breast, sailing amid her tears;" her
husband uttered a few words of melancholy consolation, "and Andromache
went homewards, weeping, and often turning as she went." There is but one
passage in any work, ancient or modern, which can bear comparison with
this, and that is one in the Odyssey, in which is described the meeting of
Ulysses and Penelope; and yet some unfortunate people, who write
commentaries on the classics, only to show how completely nature has
denied them the faculty of taste, affirm that these passages were written
by different people. It is curious to what a pitch pedantry and dulness
may be brought by diligent cultivation.

As the fanatics of the East, to prove their continence, frequented the
society of women under the most trying circumstances, so these gentlemen
seem to study the writers of antiquity with the view of showing that their
understandings are equally inaccessible. In one respect the analogy does
not hold good. History tells us that the fanatics sometimes sunk under the
temptations to which they exposed themselves; but these gentlemen have
never, in any one instance, yielded to the influence of taste or genius.
Zenophon, in a beautiful treatise, has given an account of the manner in
which an Athenian endeavoured to mould the character of his wife, and to
this we would refer such of our readers as wish for more ample knowledge
on the subject. There is one circumstance, however, which we the rather
mention, as it has not found its way into the work before us, and as it
furnishes the most conclusive and irresistible evidence of the value set
upon matrimonial happiness at Athens, and of the servile vassalage to
which women, in that most polished of all cities, were reduced. By the law
of Athens, a father without sons might bequeath his property away from his
daughter, but the person to whom the property was bequeathed was obliged
to marry her. This was reasonable enough; but the same principle, that of
keeping the inheritance in the stock to which it belonged, occasioned
another law--if the father left his estate to his daughter, and if the
daughter inherited his property after the father's death, her nearest male
relation in the descending line, the [Greek: agchioteus], might, though
she was married to a living husband, lay claim to her, institute a suit
for her recovery, force her from her husband's arms, and make her his
wife.

Such a law must, alone, have been fatal to that domestic purity which we
justly consider the basis of social happiness--the very word, [Greek:
hetairai], which the Athenians enjoyed to denote the most degraded of all
women, if it proves the exquisite refinement of that wonderful people,
serves also to show how different were the associations with which, among
them, that class was connected. Can we wonder at this? Under that glorious
heaven, such women might, when they chose, behold the statues of Phidias
and the pictures of Zeuxis; they could listen to the wisdom of Socrates,
or they might form part of the crowd, hushed in raptured silence, round
the rhapsodist, as he recited the immortal lines of Homer--or round
Demosthenes, as he poured upon a rival, worthy of himself, the burning
torrent of his more than human eloquence.

In their hearing the mightiest interests were discussed--the subtle
questions of the Academy propounded--the snares of the sophist
exposed--the sublime thoughts and actions of heroes and demigods,
embodied in the most glorious poetry, were daily exhibited to their view;
while the wife, occupied solely with petty cares and trifling objects,
without charms to win the love, or dignity to command the esteem, of her
husband, was condemned, within the narrow walls of the Gynaeceum, (of
which the drawings of Herculaneum and Pompeii may enable us to form some
notion,) to drag out the insipid round of her monotonous existence.

True the Hetairai were stigmatized by law--but, as opinion was on their
side, they might well submit to legal condemnation and formal censure,
when they saw every day the youth, the intellect, the eloquence, the
philosophy, and the dignity of Athens crowding round their feet. At Rome,
the wife was not subject to the same rigorous seclusion, she was not cut
off from all possibility of improvement; her influence was gradually felt,
her rights were tacitly extended, and long after the letter of the law
reduced her to the condition of a slave, she held and exercised the
privileges of a citizen. At Rome, domestic virtues were more considered,
domestic ties were held in great esteem. The family was the basis of the
state. The existence of the Roman was not altogether public, it was not
merely intellectual; in what Grecian poet after Homer shall we find lines
that convey such an idea of domestic happiness as these?--

"Praeterea neque jam domus accipiet te laeta, neque uxor
Optima, nec dulces occurrent oscula nati
Praeripere--et tacita pectus dulcedinet tangent."

There is no event to which women are more indebted for the improved
situation they hold among us than the propagation of Christianity. It was
reserved for religion to urge the weakness of woman as a reason for
treating her, not with tenderness only, but with respect; it was reserved
for religion to bring the charities that are lovely in private life into
public service; to break down the barriers which had so long separated the
husband from the citizen, and to pour around the private hearth the light
which, up to the time of its revelation, had been reflected almost
exclusively from the school of the philosopher or the forum of the
republic, unless in a few rare and favoured instances when it had shed its
radiance over the cell of the captive and the deathbed of the patriot. It
was for religion to inculcate that purity of heart, without which mere
forbearance from sensuality is a virtue which may be prized in the
precincts of the seraglio, but to which true honour is almost indifferent.
Nothing less powerful than such an influence prescribing a new life, and
commanding its votaries to be new creatures, could have wrenched from
their holdings prejudices as old as the society in which they flourished.
Our limits will not allow us to descant at any length on the condition of
women during the early ages of Christianity; but we transcribe on this
subject, from a recent work, a passage which we are sure our readers will
peruse with pleasure.

"Ce qui rendit les moeurs des familles Chretiennes si graves, ce
qui les conserva si chastes, c'est ce qui a toujours exerce sur
les moeurs en general l'influence la plus profonde, l'exemple des
femmes. Douees d'une delicatesse d'organes, qui rend, pour ainsi
dire, leur intelligence plus accessible a la voix d'un monde
superieur, leur coeur plus sensible a toutes ces emotions qui
enfantent les vertus, et qui elevent l'homme terrestre au-dessus
de la sphere etroite de la vie presente, les femmes, etrangeres a
l'histoire des travaux speculatifs du genre humain, sont
toujours, dans les revolutions morales et religieuses, les
premieres a saisir, et a propager ce qui est grand, beau, et
celeste. Avec une chaleur entrainante elles embrasserent la cause
Chretienne, et s'y devouerent en heroines, depuis l'annonciation
du Sauveur jusqu'a sa mort; en effet, elles furent les premieres
aux pieds de sa croix, les premieres a son sepulcre. Presentant
avec leur tact si prompt et si fin, tout ce que cette cause leur
deferait d'elevation morale et d'avantages sociaux, elles s'y
attacherent avec un interet toujours croissant. Depuis les
saintes femmes de l'evangile et la marchande de pourpre de
Thyatire jusqu'a l'imperatrice Helene, elles furent les
protectrices les plus zelees des idees Chretiennes. Leur zele ne
fut point sans sacrifices, mais avec empressement elles
renoncerent a leurs gouts les plus chers, a la parure et aux
elegances du luxe, pour rivaliser avec les hommes les plus sages
de la societe Chretienne. Quelques rares exceptions ne se font
remarquer que pour relever tant de merite."--Matter, _Hist. du
Christianime_, Vol. I.

"The tendency of this creed," to use the words of our author, "is
to direct the aim and purposes of mankind to whatever can exalt
human nature and improve human happiness. It represents us as
gardeners in a vineyard, or servants entrusted with a variety of
means, who are not 'to keep their talent in a napkin,' but to
exert their skill and ingenuity to employ it to the best
advantage. The moral principles themselves are fixed and
unchangeable; but their application to the circumstances by which
we are surrounded, must depend very much on the degree in which
reason has been exercised. By no imaginable instruction could the
mind be so tutored, as to see through all the errors and
prejudices of its times at once, but the principles possess in
themselves a power of progression. The generosity of one time
will be but justice in another; the temperance that brings
respect and distinction in one age, will be but decorum in one
more civilized, yet the principles are at all times the same."

It is difficult to read without a smile some of the passages in which the
dress and manners of the first ages are described by the Fathers of the
Church; the fair hair, (our classical readers will recollect the

"Nigrum flavo crinem abscondente galero"

of the Roman satirist,) which the daughters of the South borrowed from
their Celtic and German neighbours, seems especially to have excited their
indignation. Tertullian, in his treatise "De Cultu Foeminarum," declaims
with his usual fiery rhetoric against this habit. "I see some women," says
the African, "who dye their hair with yellow; they are ashamed of their
very nation, that they are not the natives of Gaul or Germany. Evil and
most disastrous to them is the omen which their fiery head portends, while
they consider such abomination graceful." This charitable hint of future
reprobation, savage as it appears, seems to have been much admired by the
Fathers; it is repeated by St Jerome and St Cyprian with equal triumph.
Well, indeed, might Theophilus of Antioch, in his letter to Autolycus,
place the Christian opinions concerning women in startling contrast with
the revolting scheme proposed in relation to them by the most refined
philosopher of antiquity. Well might the matrons of Antioch refuse to
gratify Julian by a sacrifice to gods whose votaries had steeped their sex
in impurity and degradation. The death of Hypatia is indeed a blot in
Christian annals, but she fell the victim of an infuriated multitude; and
how often had the Proconsul and the Emperor beheld, unmoved, the arena wet
with the blood of Christian virgins, and the earth blackened with their
ashes! Indeed, the deference paid to weakness is the grand maxim, the
practical application of which, in spite of some fantastic notions, and
some most pernicious errors that accompanied it, entitles chivalry to our
veneration, and prevented the dark ages from being one scene of unmixed
violence and oppression. The flashes of generosity that gild with a
momentary splendour the dreadful scenes of feudal tyranny, were struck out
by the force of this principle acting upon the most rugged nature in the
most superstitious ages. While the fire that had consumed the surprised
city was slaked in the blood of its miserable inhabitants, the distress of
high-born beauty, or the remonstrances of the defenceless priest, often
arrested the career of the warrior, who viewed the slaughter of
unoffending peasants and of simple burghers with as much indifference as
that of the wild-boar or the red-deer which it was his pastime and his
privilege to destroy. Who does not remember the beautiful passage in
Tasso, where the crusaders burst into tears at the sight of the holy
sepulchre?--

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