11

deal of useful knowledge may be good understandings as men--often gathered from them. better; and that their talents are frequently of a much more useful kind. However, we will not enter into this question now; only, if you will do me the favour to attend any of my female conversaziones held every Wednesday, you will soon be convinced of the fact.

Sir James. Do you think that they are calculated to make Englishwomen better wives and mothers than if they never had heard them? Lady Blue. You know, Sir James, that I am far from being of opinion, that it is fitting that English wives and mothers should be confined to mere pudding and pie-making, and needle-work. You know too, that I think they have at least as

[We have not room for the rest of the conversation upon this interesting topic, and we must defer it till our next number.]

THE FEMALE TATTLER.

No. XLIII.

As when some poet, happy in his choice
Of an important subject, tunes his voice
To sweeter sounds, and more exalted strains,
Which, from a strong reflection, he attains;
As Homer, while his heroes he records,
Transfuses all their fire into his words:
So we, intent the charming sex to please,
Act with new life and an unwonted ease;
Beyond the limits of our genius soar,
And feel an ardour quite unknown before.

I ACKNOWLEDGE the Essay on attentive at his first becoming acDecorum in Personal Behaviour, || and think myself greatly obliged by the writer of it, in preferring the Female Tattler, to convey its admirable precepts to the public. It is too extensive to be inserted at once, and therefore I must be compelled to deal it out in extracts, as I have the permission to do; nor have I the least doubt but that my readers will be satisfied, as I think they will also be instructed, by the manner in which it will be conveyed to them in the pages of the Repository.

quainted with the public; for experience, it must be acknowledged, is a qualification as requisite in a fine gentleman as in a statesman. Yet it is to be remarked, that experience is much sooner acquired by some, than by others; for it does not consist so much in a copious remembrance of whatever has happened, as in a regular retention of what may be useful. When we have gained knowledge, the best way to improve it will be exercise, in which two things are carefully to be avoided, positiveness and affectation. If to our care in shunning them, we add a desire of obliThe world is a great school, ging those with whom we converse, wherein men are first to learn, and there is little danger but that we then to practise. As fundamen- become all we wish; and polite. tals in all sciences ought to be wellness, by an imperceptible gradaunderstood, a man cannot be too tion, will enter into our minutest

FT.

actions, and give a polish to our whole conduct and character.

beautiful picture of the force of female charms, and the happiest effect of it, in the story of “Cymon and Iphigenia." Boccaccio indeed, from whom he took the original idea, had adorned it with all the tinsel of Italian composition; but the English bard, like many an English traveller, gave sterling gold in exchange for superficial gilding, and gave a beauteous moral where he found a wanton tale. He paints in Cymon a soul buried in a confusion of ideas, informed with so little fire, as scarcely to strug

Those who aim at panegyric, are wont to assemble a throng of glittering ideas, and then, with great exactness, clothe them in all the elegance of language, in order to their making the most magnificent figure when they come abroad in the world. So copious a subject as the praises of the fair may, in the opinion of my readers, lay me under great difficulties in this respect: however, not to disappoint them or myself, by foregoing the pleasure I feel in doing justice togle under the load, or to afford any the most amiable part of the creation, I will indulge the natural propensity I have to their service, and paint, though it be but in miniature, the excellencies which they possess, and the accomplishments which, by reflection, they bestow.

"As when some poet, happy in his choice
Of an important subject, tunes his voice
To sweeter sounds, and more exalted strains,
Which, from a strong reflection, he attains;

As Homer, while his heroes he records,
Transfuses all their fire into his words:
So we, intent the lovely sex to please,
Act with new life and an unwonted ease;
Beyond the limits of our genius soar,
And feel an ardour quite unknown before."

glimmerings of sense. In this condition he represents him struck with the rays of Iphigenia's beauty. Kindled by them, his mind exerts its powers; his intellectual faculties seem to awaken; and the uncouth ferocity of manners by which he had hitherto been distinguished, give way to that amiable disposition and animated benevolence, which are among the fruits of a pure and inviolate affection; in short, of genuine love.

The moral of this fable cannot be too much inculcated. It is to the female sex we owe the most shining qualities of which ours is master. Thus the ancients, with their usual address, insinuated, by their

Dryden, the immortal poet, on a solid comparison with whom, the gaudy, glittering, luscious verse-paintings, their sculptures, and writers of the present day, after having amused the fancies and quickened the spirits of high-flown sentimental misses and lovelorn elder maidens, must die away in their own evaporating essence; Dryden, I say, who knew human nature perhaps as well as any man who had employed his knowledge, sagacity, and experience in the study of it, has given us a just and

their verse, that the Virtues and the Graces were female characters. Men of true genuine taste feel a natural complaisance for women when they converse with them, and engage, as if by intuition, in the endeavour to please; a disposition at once the most grateful to others, and the most satisfactory to themselves. Such is the effect of gene"ral society with women; but a more

pleasing attends them through every circumstance of life; and what we improperly call the weak

intimate association with them converts this complaisance into habit, and that habit gives the highest polish to the manners and conductness of the sex, gives them a supeof man in his distinctive, sexual character.

The high polish of a gentleman cannot be otherwise attained.Books may furnish us with right ideas; experience may improve our judgments; but it is our continual communication with female society alone which can bestow that mode of address whereby the fine gentleman is at once distinguished. But let us examine this a little more strictly.

riority unattainable by any other

means.

The fable of the North Wind and the Sun contending to make the man throw off his cloak, is not an improper picture of the specific difference between the powers of either sex. The blustering fierceness of the former, instead of producing the effect at which it aimed, made the man but wrap himself up the closer; but no sooner did the sunbeams play, than that which had been a protection became an encumbrance.

There is somewhat of a constitutional pride in men which frequently hinders them from yield- To speak sincerely and philosoing in point of knowledge, ho-phically, women seem designed by nour, or virtue to one another: but | Providence to spread the same this immediately gives way when splendour and cheerfulness through we approach female society; and the intellectual economy, that the this habitual deference to the la-celestial bodies diffuse over the dies gives a new turn to our ideas, and opens a path to reason which it had not trod before. Things ap-contend, destroy, and triumph over pear in another light; and that degree of complacency, which might in other cases have been regarded as an unmanly humility, will now be considered as a virtue.

material part of the creation. Without them, we might indeed

one another; fraud and force would divide the world between them; and we should pass our lives like slaves, in continual toil, without the prospect of pleasure or relaxation.

I have paid more attention to the charms of the sex arising from the perfection visible in their exterior composition, because there is the strongest analogy between them, and the excellences which, from a nicer inquiry, we discover in the female mind. As they are distinguished from the robust make of man by that delicacy expressed by nature in their form, so the se-pear more agreeable in their verity of masculine sense is softened by a sweetness peculiar to the female soul. A native capacity of Vol. III. No. XLIII.

It is the conversation of women that gives a proper bias to our inclinations, and by abating the ferocity of our passions, engages us to that gentleness of deportment which we style humanity. The tenderness we have for them softens the harshness of our nature; and the virtues we assume, to ap

eyes,

and to win their favourable regards, tend, in no common degree, to keep us in humour with ourselves.

F

account, detrimental to the most valuable charm, and in no small degree to the dignity, of social intercourse. These notions have much spread of late, and the figure called a tonish gentleman has arisen out of them; whose fashion appears to be, to banish respect from, and to introduce a familiar, I might almost say a contemptuous, levity towards, those who are alone capable of making us truly and rationally happy.

I speak it without affectation or vanity, that no man has applied more assiduously than myself to the study of the fair sex; and I aver it with the greatest simplicity of heart, that I have not only found the most amiable and engaging, but also the most generous, and even heroic qualities, among those of the other sex who have honoured me with their favourable regard: nay, I have discovered more of candour, disinterestedness, and, I shall even add, the fervour of friendship" Fram'd to give joy, the darling sex are among them, than among those of my own sex, though I have no right to complain of the latter.

My readers must observe, and indeed I desire they should, a more than ordinary zeal for inculcating a high esteem for, and a sincere attachment to, the sex. What I propose from it is, to rectify certain notions, which are not only destructive of all rational politeness, but, at the same time, and on that

seen;

Beauteous their form, and lovely in their mien :

Silent, they charm the pleas'd beholder's sight;

And speaking, strike us with a new delight:

Words, when pronounc'd by them, such
power impart,

Invade our ears, and claim the willing heart.
To the best ends the glorious passion sways;
By love and honour bound, the youth obeys;
Till, by his service won, the grateful fair
Consents at length to ease the lover's care;
Seals all his hopes, and calls the bridal boy
To give the title to untainted joy.

MUSICAL REVIEW.

||

"La Marziale," Fantasia, Concer- || it as a favourable omen, and our tante for the Harp and Flute, or expectations were not disappointPiano-forte and Flute, with a ed. What is meant by "fingered" Violoncello Accompaniment, ad lib. in this instance, is not quite clear composed, and respectfully dedica- to us, as we find no fingers marked: ted to Mrs. Boissier Buttini of possibly, it implies the qualification Geneva, by C. M. Sola. Pr. 6s. of certain passages, so as to be fin"LA MARZIALE" comprises three gered with convenience. Be this movements in the key of F major, as it may, we are happy to say this besides a few bars of introduction; fantasia is a valuable production; viz. a march, an andante with vari- || great delicacy of taste, a rich vein ations, and a polacca, the whole || of true musical feeling, and a luxof which, as is stated in the title-uriant harmonic colouring distinpage, has been revised and finger-guish its pages. In the march, we ed by Mr. Bochsa. An avowal of observe a peculiar style of solemsuch candid modesty is rather un-nity, and great selectness of exusual in musical writing: we hailed pression. The variations to the