THE YOUNG LADY'S BOOK.1 [FEBRUARY 1830.] It must be a heavenly life-wedlock-with one wife and one daughter. Not that people may not be happy with a series of spouses, and five-and-twenty children all in a row. But we prefer still to stirring life-and therefore, oh! for one wife and one daughter! What a dear delightful girl would she not have been by this time, if born in the famous vintage of 1811 -the year, too, of the no less famous comet! But then-in spite of all her filial affection, speaking in silvery sound, and smiling in golden light, she would, in all human probability, have been forsaking her old father this very month; without compunction or remorse, forgetting her mother; and even like a fair cloud on the mountain's breast, cleaving unto her husband! Such separation would to us have been insupportable. Talk not of grandchildren, for they come but to toddle over your grave;-as for sons-in-law, they are sulky about settlements, and wish you dead;-every Man of Feeling and every Man of the World, too, knows that his last day of perfect happiness is that on which he sees his only daughter a bride. But let us not run into the melancholics. We wish-notwithstanding all this-that we had now-one wife—one single wife-and one only daughter. Ourselves about fifty-My Dear some six summers farther off heaven-and My Darling, "beautiful exceedingly," on the brink of her expiring teens! Ay, we would have shown the world "how divine a thing a woman might be made." Our child would have seemedalternately-Una-Juliet-Desdemona-Imogen; for those bright creatures were all kith and kin, and the angelical family expression would, after a sleep of centuries, have broken out 1 The Young Lady's Book; or, Manual of Elegant Recreations, Exercises, and Pursuits. in beauty over the countenance of their fair cousin, Theodora North! "And pray, sir, may I ask how you would have educated your sweet scion of the rising sun?" whispers a dowager now at her third husband, and therefore at present somewhat sarcastically inclined towards bachelors of a certain age. We answer susurringly. "Think not, madam, though we have hitherto been the most barren, and you the most prolific of the children of men, that, therefore, were a daughter yet to be born to us, we should show ourselves ignorant of the principles of female education. There was Miss Hamilton-and there is Miss Edgeworth, who never had a child in their lives-though you have had a score and upwards-yet each of them writes about children as well or better than if she had had bantling after bantling annually, ever since the short peace of 1802. So are we to our shame be it spoken-childless; that is, in the flesh, but not in the spirit. In the spirit we have had for nearly twenty years-an only daughter-and her Christian and Scriptural name is Theodora, the gift of God!" Some day or other we intend publishing a poem with that title, which has been lying by us for several years—but meanwhile, let us, gentle reader, as if in a "twa-haun'd crack," chit-chat away together about those ideal daughters, of whom almost every man has one-two or three-as it happensand whose education he conducts, after a dreamy mode it is true, yet not untrue to the genial processes of Nature, in the schoolroom of Imagination. The great thing is, to keep them out of harm's way. Now, surely that is not hard to do, even in a wicked world. There is a good deal of thieving and robbing going on, all round about villages, towns, and cities, especially of flowers and vegetables. Yet, look at those pretty smiling suburban gardens, where rose-tree and pear-tree are all in full blossom or bearing, not a stalk or branch broken; nor has the enormous Newfoundlander in yonder kennel been heard barking, except in sport, for a twelvemonth. Just so with the living Flower beneath your in your own Eden eye "No need for you to growl, Not a hair of her head shall be touched by evil; it is guarded by the halo of its own innocence; and you will feel that every evening when you press it to your heart, and dismiss the pretty creature to her bed with a parental prayer. It is, then, the easiest of all things to keep your rose or your lily out of harm's way; for thither the dewy gales of gladness will not carry her; in sunlight, and moonlight, and in utter darkness, her beauty is safe-if you but knew what holy duties descended upon you from Heaven the moment she was born, and that the God-given must be God-restored out of your own hand at the Last Day! But we are getting rather too serious-so let us be merry as well as wise-yet still keep chatting about Theodora. She has, indeed, a fine temper. Then, we defy Fate and Fortune to make her miserable for as long a time as is necessary to boil an egg-neither hard nor soft-three minutes and a half; for Fate and Fortune are formidable only to a female in the sulks; and the smile in a serene eye scares them away to their own dominions. Temper is the atmosphere of the soul. When it is mild, pure, fresh, clear, and bright, the soul breathes happiness; when it is hot and troubled, as if there were thunder in the air, the soul inhales misery, and is aweary of very life. Yet there are times and places, seasons and scenes, when and where the atmosphere, the Temper of every human soul, is like the foul air or damp in a coal-pit. The soul at work sets fire to it, by a single spark of passion; and there is explosion and death. But Religion puts into the hand of the soul her safety-lamp; and, so guarded, she comes uninjured out of the darkest and deepest pit of Erebus. You have kept your Theodora, we hope, out of harm's way; and cherished in her a heavenly temper. The creature is most religious of all books she loves best her Bible; of all days, most blessed to her is the Sabbath. She goeth but to one church. That one pew is a pleasant place, hung round by holy thoughts, as with garlands of flowers, whose bloom is perennial, and whose balm breathes of a purer region. The morning and the evening of each week-day has still to her something of a Sabbath feeling-a solemnity that sweetly yields to the gladness and gaiety of life's human hours, whether the sunlight be astir in every room of the busy house, or the "parlour twilight illumined by the fitful hearth, that seems ever and anon to be blinking lovingly on the domestic circle. Humble in her happiness-fearful of offence to the Being from whom it is all felt to flow-affectionate to her earthly parents, as if she were yet a little child—pensive often as evening, yet often cheerful as dawn-what fears need you have for your Theodora, or why should her smiles sometimes affect you more than any tears? Can a creature so young and fair have any duties to perform? Or will not all good deeds rather flow from her as unconsciously as the rays from her dewy eyes? No-she is not the mere child of impulse. In her bosom-secret and shady as is that sacred recess feeling has grown up in the light of thought. Simple, indeed, is her heart, but wise in its simplicity; innocence sees far and clear with her dove-like eyes; unfaltering where'er they go, be it even among the haunts of sin and sorrow, may well be the feet of her who duly bends her knees in prayer to the Almighty Guide through this life's most mortal darkness; and greater far than she knows herself to be," is the young Christian Lady, who sees a sister in the poor sinner that in her hovel has ceased even to hope; but who all at once on some gracious hour, beholds, as if it were an angel from heaven, the face of one coming in her charity to comfort and to reclaim the guilty, and to save both soul and body from death. 66 Yes, Theodora has her duties; on them she meditates both day and night; seldom for more than an hour or two are they entirely out of her thoughts; and sometimes does a faint shadow fall on the brightness of her countenance, even during the mirth which heaven allows to innocence, the blameless mirth that emanates in the voice of song from her breast-even as a bird in Spring, that warbles thick and fast from the top-spray of a tree in the sunshine, all at once drops down in silence to its nest. A life of duty is the only cheerful life; for all joy springs from the affections; and 'tis the great law of Nature, that without good deeds, all good affection dies, and the heart becomes utterly desolate. The external world, too, then loses all its beauty; poetry fades away from the earth; for what is poetry, but the reflection of all pure and sweet, all high and holy thoughts? But where duty is, "Flowers laugh beneath her in their beds, And the most ancient heavens, through her, are fresh and strong." And what other books, besides her Bible, doth Theodora read? History, to be sure, and Romances, and Voyages, and Travels, and-POETRY. Preaching and praying is not the whole of Religion. Sermons, certainly, are very spiritual, especially Jeremy Taylor's; but so is Spenser's Faery Queen, if we mistake not, and Milton's Paradise Lost. What a body of divinity in those two poems! This our Theodora knows, nor fears to read them,-even on the Sabbath-day. Not often so, perhaps; but as often as the pious spirit of delight may prompt her to worship her Creator through the glorious genius of His creatures! And what may be the amusements of our Theodora? Whatever her own heart-thus instructed and guarded—may desire. No Nun is she-no veil hath she taken-but the veil which nature weaves of mantling blushes, and modesty sometimes lets drop, but for a few moments, over the reddening rose-glow on the virgin's cheeks. All round and round her own home, as the centre, expand before her happy eyes the many concentric circles of social life. She regards them all with liking or with love, and has showers of smiles and of tears, too, to scatter at the touch of joys or sorrows that come not too near her heart, while yet they touch its strings. Of many of the festivities of this world-ay, even of this wicked world—she partakes with a gladsome sympathy-and, would you believe it? -Theodora sometimes dances, and goes to concerts and plays, and sings herself like St Cecilia, till a drawing-room in a city, with a hundred living people, is as hushed as a tomb full of skeletons in some far-off forest beyond the reach of the voice of river or sea! Now, were you to meet our Theodora in company, ten to one you would not know it was she; possibly you might not see anything very beautiful about her; for the beauty we love strikes not by a sudden and single blow,-but-allow us another simile is like the vernal sunshine, still steal, steal, stealing through a dim, tender, pensive sky, and even when it has reached its brightest, tempered and subdued by a fleecy veil of clouds. To some eyes such a spring-day has but little loveliness, and passes away unregarded over the earth; but to others it seemeth a day indeed born in heaven, nor is it ever forgotten in the calendar kept in common by the Imagination and the Heart. Would you believe it?-our Theodora is fond of dress! |