§ 4. We proceed to consider in what sphere women make any approach to intellectual excellence. Their conversational powers, in the first place, have been always greatly extolled; this is a claim somewhat strenuously insisted on, wherefore we shall pause to consider it at more than usual length-entreating of those not interested to pass on to our next section. Women do please in conversation; and there are reasons for it. In the first place, men court female society expressly as a recreation; they love to unbend their minds, and seek a respite from business, or from sense and speculation. For the soul of man has its slave, the body, to care for: it must at intervals break off its more severe schooling, and intermissions of this kind agreeably serve to slacken the cords of intellectual as well as physical exertion. Perhaps, also, the determination, on the one hand, to be pleased, furnishes as much the entertainment of social converse, as the actual gift of pleasing supplies on the other. It was observed by Burke, and the remark is put forth with the usual discernment of that writer, that "those persons who creep into the hearts of most people-who are chosen as the companions of their softer hours, and their relief from cares and anxieties-are never persons of shining qualities or strong virtues." Again: though men must take care to say only what they know, when they would please in conversation; yet "a small degree of knowledge entertains in a woman*;" for she merely requires taste, her object being rather the agreeable than the useful. Besides all which, the very simplicity of mind, the playful thoughtlessness observable in women, is of itself engaging: they say, as they have always a licence to say, just what they please; they mortgage all the stores of their mind "to make a flash with;" their ideas are never frozen up, and no sooner do they conceive one, than they are sure to be delivered of it forthwith, with a perfect contempt as to time or place: they cannot wait for the slow operation of judgment, having far too much alertness and rapture to have leisure to tell their meaning.—So natural is it for the unthinking to suppose the little they know important, and to tell it forthwith! * Dr. Fordyce. Above all, it is to be remembered that charms of sex, however unsuspected in their influence, mix themselves up with conversation as with everything else. When a beautiful woman speaks, more than half the point and magic of what she utters is in her glance; cheeks that are soft and blooming need not the aid of a ripe wit; a "red, red lip," has wisdom in it,—a philosophy of its own more than sufficient to confer "A gay prerogative from common sense!” There is eloquence itself in a pretty mouth, and whatever it presides over and gives birth to shall bear so near a semblance to the wisdom of Truth as to be mistaken for it: what man would not be liable to the error, who will consent to lay down reflection for a minute's space? "With skill she vibrates her unwearied tongue, YOUNG. "La confiance fournit plus à la conversation que l'ésprit." Confidence is half the battle in the wordy war, and gaiety oftentimes takes the place of sense very successfully. But this ready vivacity is in truth much better calculated to sur* La Rochefoucauld. prise admiration than to deserve it: the speaker who dashes at everything, and is for ever aiming at something brilliant, can hardly fail of some lucky hits; it would be surprising were it not so as it would likewise be, did not certain sage compilers of almanacks, among a hundred absurdities, foretel one truth. Examine your imaginary prodigy, and you may soon be convinced of this; "are you ambitious of saying a few good things? then give utterance to a great many indifferent ones:" it would, however, be the extremity of blindness to mistake this precocity for any evidence of true talent. "Yon light is not daylight; I know it well, It is some meteor, that the sun exhales.” "Women either talk too much or too little," as the adage runs; that the far greater proportion of the daughters of Eve have tongues too voluble for their brains, is an old charge against the sex. The courage of the tongue is undoubtedly theirs, wherever else they may be irresolute If there be only a few who write in "twelves," it is common to most of them to speak in "folio." They seem unable to move forward without an army of words at the heels of a solitary sentiment; so that in stead of their ideas "running together in a gang" (which Locke assures us is the nature of these little articles), it is their words which claim the peculiarity. But with all their fascinating glibness of tongue, women are very uneven in their success: if they are brilliant to-day, they disappoint to-morrow. And this is precisely because they have in reality no variety of mental power; knowledge in them is bald and meagre; they have no stock of ideas to fall back upon, and like the mouse in the fable, "of little soul," have but one or two crannies to fly to. In the midst of their wordy abundance, they lack discretion, and indifferently sever words from sentiments (which, as Cicero tells us, is to separate the very soul from the body of conversation). "Eloquence in discourse," says a French writer, "requires more order in the ideas, and more energy in the thought, than women are susceptible of." Their happiest efforts are like the flourishes of a musician, detached in their kind; their very wit,-like fire in the flint-nothing while it is in,-is also nothing the moment it is out,-there are scintilla * Segur. |