corner; a moonlight walk, or even an opera-box, to a rubber at whist ; but she is rooted to her house and country: too indolent, too strongly attached to her climate, her habits, and connexions, to long for the excitement of change.

Oú peut-on être mieux, qu'au sein de sa famille !

Her meekness and amiability enables her to live at peace with her mother and sisters-in-law. She does not break up her husband's establishment because his house happens to be "too near Holborn, or on the wrong side of Oxford-street." She finds it unnecessary to dismiss her domestics at the end of every fortnight. As long as she loves and is beloved, she extends her affections to her husband's family, to his home-grown servants, to every animated or inanimated being in his patriarchal household. Her dread of separation is paramount over all considerations of her husband's interests or her children's preferment. She is a creature of impulse; all remonstrances of reason break against the stormy tide of her love.

A woman in Italy is seldom a forward character. Corinne' is a French creation. An authoress in Italy, or an actress, is a being apart. Female authorship in that country is a kind of anomaly; a sort of moral hermaphrodism. Woman, there, is trained to shrink from the open air and the public gaze: she is no rider; never in at the death at a fox-hunt; no hand at a whip if her life depended upon it; she never kept a stall at a fancy fair, never took the lead at a debating club; she never addresses a stranger, except, perhaps, behind a mask in carnival ; her politics are limited to wearing tricolour ribbons, and refusing an Austrian's hand as a partner in waltzing: she is a dunce, and makes no mystery of it; a coward, and glories in it—at least she keeps her accomplishments for her domestic circle, her moral courage for those rare instances in which affection calls forth the latent energies of her better nature.

For our own part, we are sorry for this. We are very partial to female authorship: we like to look over a book written by a lady; there is, we believe, an immense tract of unknown world in the female heart. There are still barriers of conventional propriety, of sexual etiquette, which render the characters of our own wives and daughters too often a riddle; and we would willingly renounce all the pleasure derivable from a South Sea expedition, to overhear, without indelicacy, a conversation between two fair bosom-friends, in some trying and unguarded moment, or to possess the key to that magic telegraph of nods, and winks, and smiles, by which two female spirits commune before company, to the utter mystification of the duller sex.

Next to this, would be the other no less unhallowed gratification of intercepting one of those four-page, small-hand, close-written, cross-lined, feminine epistles, to the uninitiated conveying scarcely any meaning at all, but where, in every turn, in every syllable, the parties concerned are enabled to decipher so much more than meets the eye.

Next to this, again, is the pleasure of perusing the works of a female writer; for although the fair authoress, knowing that her page is to stand the full glare of broad daylight, may be constantly on her guard, lest she should, by any involuntary indiscretion, jeopardise the secret interests of the community, yet some unlucky expression, some half-word may, in the heat of inspiration, happen to drop from her pen, which will shoot like wild-fire across the benighted understanding of a man who can read, and

do more than an age of learning towards his initiation into the mysteries of female freemasonry.

Of these voluntary confessions and involuntary revelations, thanks to Heaven and Madame George Sand, we have now enough, and the new novels in French, German, and even Swedish, bid fair to leave scarcely one fold of the female heart unexplored, scarcely one blush of the maiden's cheek unaccounted for.

Of this vast store of recondite information Italian authoresses will give us but an indifferent share. There is only one romance-writer among the ladies of that once-favoured land, and she is an exile's wife residing at Malta, and bluism has been inoculated in her veins by her English acquaintance.

Finally, an Italian woman is never intolerant. She indulges in no invectives against the frail and unfortunate of her sex. There is not a grain of ostentation in her virtue, not a scruple of pharisaism in her religion. There is no humbug about her. She judges not lest she be judged. Disgusted with the chit-chat of a slanderous community, she disbelieves every word uttered to her friend's disparagement; she sets public opinion at defiance, and screens its victim with all the aegis of her unpolluted fame.

She is a woman, in short; a thing of feeling and impulse-a rib, a mere dependence on man-a subject only on the first stage of enfranchisement from the utter slavery of the ancient gyneceum. Satisfied with her moral influence, she has not yet aspired to chartered rights. She is far yet from the rational dignity of a free-born Englishwoman; but the latter, again, has hardly yet risen to the queenly independence of an American she-citizen.

Such are the ranks progressively occupied by the sex on each successive step of civilisation. At Cairo, a woman is an idolised slave; at Milan or Florence, a cherished article of domestic chattel; in London, a reasoning, perhaps (vide Mrs. Caudle), sometimes even an arguing associate; in New York, she is an equal, and more often an aggravating, overbearing confederate!

ON A PICTURE OF A MARTYR AT THE STAKE.

A SOUTH AFRICAN PIC-NIC.

BY MRS. WARD.

I WOULD give something to know the derivation of the term pic-nic. It has only lately found its way into the dictionaries.

Few species of entertainments present more variety than these said parties called "pic-nics." There is the fashionable pic-nic, got up at great expense, and by people who do not care a straw for one another; they meet together in the smartest dresses, are surrounded by all the appliances of luxury, and go home genés-that is a better word than our broad English term "bored," I think. I recollect one of these re-unions long ago, where a number of ladies and dandy hussars "excursed" down a river to a pavilion hired for the purpose. It was "done" in most perfect style; the ladies wore the gayest pelisses, and the liveliest bonnets, the palest gloves, and the thinnest shoes; the gentlemen had boating-jackets made for the occasion. A refection of every eatable that could be procured awaited our arrival; the band was placed between two green slopes, and played deliciously during the repast; the Champagne was iced to perfection, and the very day smiled upon us. had a charming dance and went home by moonlight, the band playing up the river. Now this sounds delightful: pretty women, dashing hus sars, ices, champagne, dancing, a river with green banks, moonlight, and an exquisite military band! How was it that the party was decidedly "slow?" We were all mere acquaintances, not friends, and we were (the ladies at least) much too well dressed.

We

The family pic-nic is only endurable if you can send the children on before you with nurses whom they like better than their mammas, and with a separate establishment of plates, dishes, goblets, &c. To take them under any circumstances is a risk. If they are beyond infancy they insist on joining the grown-up party, and the mothers are in terror lest they should tumble off donkeys. If they are little, and gain admittance, they scream, or torment you quickly, by crawling over the table-cloth, or walking into the pies, not in the slang acceptation of the term "walking into" any thing, but literally stepping ancle-deep into a luscious mass of currants and raspberries, a river of damson juice, or a small flock of pigeons buried in jelly. I have a vision of a fat little child before me now, holding up its shapeless foot saturated with cherry-juice, and garnished with short crust. Poor dear Matthews! What he would have made of such a story.

A pic-nic to be pleasant should be an impromptu. We should all be friends, intimate friends, and we should all wear such gear as no storms can injure, no brambles destroy. We should, too, have something in prospect; a ruin, fine scenery, a show house, a sketching, or a nutting party-something to make us walk about, get pleased with ourselves and each other, and grow hungry. The mistress of the feast for these things should invariably be placed in a lady's hands-always excepting the wine department-must see herself to the classing of her guests, and the packing of the salt, otherwise the former may be unsuited to each other, and the latter strewed over the tarts, or upset into the custard-jar. Young ladies should not be suffered to pair off with elderly gentlemen,

and young gentlemen should not be expected to wait exclusively on elderly ladies. Old bachelors and orderly spinsters, who cannot bear to be put out of their way, should not be invited; cross chaperones must be flattered, and stray newspapers may be thrown in the way of cranky papas; an especial batch of good wine should make its appearance the moment the young people are about to move, and the necessary orders for departure must be given in good time to servants, and children must be despatched homewards as soon as they have had enough to eat.

I never think a pic-nic so agreeable as when got up quite suddenly, so to speak when one cannot help it. Commend me to a pic-nic in South Africa-aye, in this vast land of desert plains, tangled kloofs (fens), stupendous mountains, and scorching valleys-with all these we have some pleasant nooks.

In England, where every thing is going by steam, even gentlemen will soon learn to shudder at the idea of a ride of fifty miles. Now here, in South Africa, where our choice of a mode of travelling lies between a waggon and oxen moving at the average rate of two miles and a half an hour, and our horses, we sometimes make charming parties. Some people have here made attempts to see something, but this only does in Europe. In this climate, le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle, it is hard work scrambling under an African sun, with the thermometer at ninety in the shade! The pleasantest "meets" are those where we agree to rest on some spot during a journey.

Let me see, where shall it be? Ah, there is water here, a clear vley (pool), clear for this country at least, and wood for the fire. Off saddles, now knee-halter the horses there, turn them out, and let them have a roll—a roll to a Cape horse is as refreshing as a feed. How they would stare in England, if they were permitted a peep at us in a magic mirror! How they would stare at those armed orderlies, dusky Hottentots, soldiers of the colonial cavalry! Their very look would frighten a London girl, whose ideas of pic-nics are associated with Putney, Chiswick, Twickenham, Richmond, and "about there." How little is known in England of the good-natured, ready-witted, keen-eyed, patient, merryhearted Hottentot. How little can be imagined of their real character and attributes, and, I might have added, tastes; the Hottentot's ear for music is perfect, and the women dance frequently with an air of grace, and always in perfect time. The gay combinations of their dress give a group of Hottentot women quite a picturesque appearance. But this is not the place to redeem them from false imputations.

We have these Hottentot soldiers not so much as guards against the savages, on whose territory we sit-though these said savages are not to be despised in lonely places-as to take care of our horses, light our fire, and toast our carbonatje.† What a charming locale! A mimosa tree in blossom, and such a wreath of Cape jessamine, convolvolus, and wild cucumbers over our heads! Soh, now! look about for snakes-thereclear the underwood. Ah! see that cobra capello gliding away, erecting his head every minute! he would fasten on one of our horses if he dare. Well done, good Totty, you have broken his back with one blow of your sambok. How the horse near him shivers! Now beat the bush-all

The first time I saw the water of the Great Fish River, I thought it was tea! + Meat toasted on sticks before the fire in the open air.

safe-spread the cloaks-how hungry we are!-Ah! there come our friends; they are two miles off, and yet look close to us-there is a deep valley between them and ourselves. How strange looks the English habit and hat in these wilds! See-a Kafir chief, wrapped in his tiger-skin, steps out from a green nook and scans the party. They stop to speak with him-he veils his face at their approach. It is his mode of showing respect to one of the gentlemen, an officer of rank. They greet him, he draws near, and having made his salutation, grows familiar; he ventures to lift the ladies' veils. We can hear the clear laugh of light-hearted girls ringing across the valley-they have given him something; he kisses their hands and retires.

Here they come-more off-saddling. Cut away some of these boughs, good Totties: there, now we have a spacious arbour-what, more provisions! Yes; and an English groom with some champagne, packed somehow on a led horse. We could have been very merry without it, but it is no bad thing now we have it. Put the bottles into the vley to cool.

Now we are ready, greetings have been exchanged, for we have not met for weeks-anecdotes are told, and we all laugh over the repast. It is over. Songs are sung-sweet English ballads from the lips of gentle ladies in the desert, and-hark!-there is the deep-mouthed bay of English fox-hounds! See, one, two, three-nine red coats, and a bevy of horsemen in strange field dresses of hodden grey, and on the queerest horses, rough, scrubby things, very different in appearance to those on which the red-coats are mounted. There goes the jackall into the kloof -the dogs are upon him-such a yell-and then a sharp cry.

Shouts of laughter-they are christening (as they call it) some neophyte with the jackall's blood.

"They have gone-they have all passed by." They are on the other side of the kloof, they are winding slowly up the hill-they are on the top, they look quite gigantic between that hill-top, and the sky-strangely sounds that clear English call to the dogs across the valley; it dies away in the distance, and our little party is alone on the green plain among the mimosas, the sweet jessamine, and the graceful convolvolus.

See! There is a tiny cloud rising in the direction of the sea. A storm is coming up. Hush! there is the mutter of the thunder. Strange-a few minutes ago there was not a breath of wind. Hang the cloaks over the bushes, tie up the horses, cover up the carbines of the orderlies, lest we should have lightning. I hope not, though. God forbid! it is very terrible in this country. Hark-there is the "sound of a mighty rain,' it hangs between us and the hill, like a veil-here it comes, splashing and driving, and striving to penetrate our bower. Never mind, remember the old English proverb, the "sharper the shower, the sooner it is over." Ha! we breathe again; we are refreshed-there is a tiny pool of water on my habit skirt, shake it off-luckily our saddles have been kept dry. How delicious the air is after the rain! See, the sun lights up the valley, the roads are fairly washed, the sprews, with their bright green wings, are glancing hither and thither, and the butterflies come creeping out from under the jessamine wreaths. Let loose the knee halters, now spread the cloaks in the sun for half an hour, rub down and saddle the horses.

And now, some treck one way, some another. Our friends retrace