E forse ascosi han lor debiti onori
L’invidia, o il non saper degli scrittori.”
Ariosto.
In all ages woman may lament the ungallant silence of the historian. His pen is the record of sterner actions than are usually the vocation of the gentler sex, and it is only when fair individuals have been by extraneous circumstances thrown out, as it were, on the canvas of human affairs—when they have been forced into a publicity little consistent with their natural sphere—that they have become his theme. Consequently those domestic virtues which are woman’s greatest pride, those retiring characteristics which are her most becoming ornament, those gentle occupations which are her best employment, find no record on pages whose chief aim and end is the blazoning of manly heroism, of royal disputations, or of trumpet-stirring records. And if this is the case even with historians of enlightened times, who have the gallantry to allow woman to be a component part of creation, we can hardly wonder that in darker days she should be utterly and entirely overlooked.
Mohammed asserted that women had no souls; and moreover, that, setting aside the “diviner part,” there had only existed four of whom the mundane qualifications entitled them to any degree of approbation. Before him, Aristotle had asserted that Nature only formed women when and because she found that the imperfection of matter did not permit her to carry on the world without them.
This complimentary doctrine has not wanted supporters. “Des hommes très sages ont écrit que la Nature, dont l’intention et le dessein est toujours de tendre à la perfection, ne produirait s’il était possible, jamais que des hommes, et que quand il naît une femme c’est un monstre dans l’ordre de ses productions, né expressément contre sa volonté: ils ajoutent, que, comme on voit naître un homme aveugle, boiteux, ou avec quelqu’autre défaut nature; et comme on voit à certains arbres des fruits qui ne mûrissent jamais; ainsi l’on peut dire que la femme est un animal produit par accident et par le hasard.”[1]
Without touching upon this extreme assertion that woman is but “un monstre,” an animal produced by chance, we may observe briefly, that women have ever, with some few exceptions,[2] been considered as a degraded and humiliated race, until the promulgation of the Christian religion elevated them in society: and that this distinction still exists is evident from the difference at this moment exhibited between the countries professing Mohammedanism and those professing Christianity.
Still, though in our happy country it is now pretty generally allowed that women are “des créatures humaines,” it is no new remark that they are comparatively lightly thought of by the “nobler” gender. This is absolutely the case even in those countries where civilization and refinement have elevated the sex to a higher grade in society than they ever before reached. Women are courted, flattered, caressed, extolled; but still the difference is there, and the “lords of the creation” take care that it shall be understood. Their own pursuits—public, are the theme of the historian—private, of the biographer; nay, the every-day circumstances of life—their dinners—their speeches—their toasts—and their post cœnam eloquence, are noted down for immortality: whilst a woman with as much sense, with more eloquence, with lofty principles, enthusiastic feelings, and pure conduct—with sterling virtue to command respect, and the self-denying conduct of a martyr—steals noiselessly through her appointed path in life; and if she excite a passing comment during her pilgrimage, is quickly lost in oblivion when that pilgrimage hath reached its appointed goal.
And this is but as it should be. Woe to that nation whose women, as a habit, as a custom, as a matter of course, seek to intrude on the attributes of the other sex, and in a vain, a foolish, and surely a most unsuccessful pursuit of publicity, or power, or fame, forget the distinguishing, the high, the noble, the lofty, the pure and unearthly vocation of their sex. Every earthly charity, every unearthly virtue, are the legitimate object of woman’s pursuit. It is hers to soothe pain, to alleviate suffering, to soften discord, to solace the time-worn spirit on earth, to train the youthful one for heaven. Such is woman’s magnificent vocation; and in the peaceful discharge of such duties as these she may be content to steal noiselessly on to her appointed bourne, “the world forgetting, by the world forgot.”
But these splendid results are not the effect of great exertions—of sudden, and uncertain, and enthusiastic efforts. They are the effect of a course, of a system of minor actions and of occupations, individually insignificant in their appearance, and noiseless in their approach. They are like “the gentle dew from heaven” in their silent unnoted progress, and, like that, are known only by their blessed results.
They involve a routine of minor duties which often appear, at first view, little if at all connected with such mighty ends. But such an inference would lead to a false conclusion. It is entirely of insignificant details that the sum of human life is made up; and any one of those details, how insignificant soever apparently in itself, as a link in the chain of human life is of definite relative value. The preparing of a spoonful of gruel may seem a very insignificant matter; yet who that stands by the sick-bed of one near and dear to him, and sees the fevered palate relieved, the exhausted frame refreshed by it, but will bless the hand that made it? It is not the independent intrinsic worth of each isolated action of woman which stamps its value—it is their bearing and effect on the mass. It is the daily and hourly accumulation of minute particles which form the vast amount.
And if we look for that feminine employment which adds most absolutely to the comforts and the elegancies of life, to what other shall we refer than to NEEDLEWORK? The hemming of a pocket-handkerchief is a trivial thing in itself, yet it is a branch of an art which furnishes a useful, a graceful, and an agreeable occupation to one-half of the human race, and adds very materially to the comforts of the other half.
How sings our own especial Bard?—
“So long as garments shall be made or worne;
So long as hemp, or flax, or sheep shall bear
Their linnen wollen fleeces yeare by yeare;
So long as silkwormes, with exhausted spoile
Of their own entrailes, for mans gaine shall toyle:
Yea, till the world be quite dissolv’d and past,
So long, at least, the NEEDLE’S use shall last.”
’Tis true, indeed, that as far as necessity, rigidly speaking, is concerned, a very small portion of needlework would suffice; but it is also true that the very signification of the word necessity is lost, buried amidst the accumulations of ages. We talk habitually of mere necessaries, but the fact is, that we have hardly an idea of what merely necessities are.
St. Paul, the hermit, when abiding in the wilderness, might be reduced to necessities; and in that noble and exalted instance of high principle referred to by Mr. Wesley,[3] where a person unknown to others, seeking no praise, and looking to no reward but the applaudings of his own conscience, bought a pennyworth of parsnips weekly, and on them, and them alone, with the water in which they were boiled, lived, that he might save money to pay his debts.—Surely a man of such incorruptible integrity as this would spend nothing intentionally in superfluities of dress—and yet, mark how many he would have. His shirt would be “curiously wrought,” his neckcloth neatly hemmed; his coat and waistcoat and trousers would have undergone the usual mysteries of shaping and seaming; his hat would be neatly bound round the edge; his stockings woven or knitted; his shoes soled and stitched and tied; neither must we debar him a pocket-handkerchief and a pair of gloves. And see what this man—as great, nay, a greater anchoret in his way than St. Paul, for he had the world and its temptations all around, while the saint had fled from both—yet see what he thought absolutely requisite in lieu of the sheepskin which was St. Paul’s wardrobe. See what was required “to cover and keep warm” in the eighteenth century—nay, not even to “keep warm,” for we did not allow either great-coat