Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub

more who commences and fosters them, commits a sin alike against humanity, morality, and religion. She is doing all she can to destroy the pleasures and advantages of society, and make it a miserable slavery, to shut out of it those, who would adorn and improve it the most, and give it up to the empty, the ostentatious, and the weak.

Beware then, I would charge every woman who hears me, beware how you are drawn into the vortex of fashion. You will not only wrong society, but do an irreparable injury to yourself. You will not have travelled far on that road, before you will find a fearful change take place in yourself. You will find the old and home bred virtues of fidelity and sincerity fast taking leave of you. You will find yourself first talking merely to have something to say, then saying what you think will be agreeable, then with no higher temptation, saying what is not true. You will find yourself gradually alienated from the friends of your heart, to be surrounded by the insincere and the sycophantic. When you have cut loose from all natural ties, and smothered every natural

affection, you will find yourself utterly dependent on a circle, who you know in your heart would shake you off on the first reverse of fortune. And you will be moreover, conscious to yourself, that you stand up before the world the most odious of the things which the sun shines upon a woman without a heart.

9*

LECTURE IV.

ON THE SPHERE AND DUTIES OF WOMAN.

IN the lecture before the last we instated woman in that sphere which she was created to fill, that of the wife, the mistress of a home, the head of a family. In that position we shall contemplate her in the present lecture. I intend to show that it is one eminently calculated to promote her happiness, to develope and perfect her character. We have a right to infer this antecedently from the nature of the Deity. Being infinitely wise as well as infinitely benevolent, he could not fail to fit woman to her sphere, and her sphere to woman in such a way, that when she follows the leadings of his hand she shall attain to all the happiness that is compatible with this imperfect state.

She is fitted to find happiness in that relation by the affections of her heart. The grand

essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for. We all must have something to love. Especially is this the case with woman, whose capacity for affection is much greater than that of man.

There is a famous passage in the writings of Rousseau, that great delineator of the human heart, which is as true to human nature as it is beautiful in expression; "Were I in a desert I would find out wherewith in it to call forth my affections. If I could do no better, I would fasten them on some sweet myrtle, or some melancholy cypress, to connect myself to; I would court them for their shade, and greet them kindly for their protection. I would write my name upon them, and declare that they were the sweetest trees throughout all the desert. If their leaves withered, I would teach myself to mourn, and when they rejoiced I would rejoice along with them." Such is the absolute necessity which exists in the human heart of having something to love. Unless the affections have an object, life itself becomes joyless and insipid. The affections have this peculiarity, that they are not so much the means of happiness, as their

exercise is happiness itself. And not only so, if they have no object, the happiness derived from our other powers is cut off. Action and enterprise flag, if there be no object dear to the heart, to which those actions can be directed. The woman then, who has chosen a husband worthy of her affections, with a common share of this world's prosperity, has the highest possible chance for happiness. Her heart has found the very thing to which it was made to attach itself. It is filled and satisfied. She has now something to live for. All her powers of action are awakened to an energy which she never felt before. She has moreover, guidance and protection. What more can she want? Her affections are the buoyant motives to her activity, and her activity is the more happy as it expresses and gratifies her affections. Thus life is absolutely full. Every day brings with it its own satisfactions. There is consequently no regret for the past, nor any necessity of postponing all happiness to the future.

Then, the affections are not only their own reward, their own happiness, but they are the best teachers of duty. And here is an ex

« НазадПродовжити »