In this extraordinary nation, in some points so laudable, in others so unfavourably peculiar, the character of their women is of such kind and impressiveness as to lead one of its popular writers to sketch the female excellence he delineates as combining great delicacy, cautious modesty, gentle manners, ⚫ a scrupulous fear of censure, a love of honour and reputation, with fixed principle and high-minded virtue.* In his own vember, 1835, detailing the destruction of the new city of Canton by fire: The alarm was given at eight o'clock in the evening, and the gates were closed. The wind freshened, and the flames spread south, east, and west, and raged all night. The streets of the suburbs were thronged by a dense crowd of people, conveying their goods, or guiding their females and aged relations. The clamour of men and clash of weapons as they cleared the way-the shouting, screaming, threatening, and complaining were horrible. At two o'clock it had burnt down the Chuhlan gate. At that time the females and children of many families were on the walls, sitting or lying on their furniture; while others were supporting and guiding their helpless, bedrid, aged, and blind relations. The behaviour of the women was particularly remarked; it was most admirable. No complaining; no screaming; no fainting; but calmness, resignation, and self-possession. The tones of their voices were watched, as they occasionally gave direction to their children or servants; and they were bland, subdued, and polite. The sight of a burning city is dreadful anywhere; but its horrors are multiplied in China."-Public Papers, 24 March, 1836. *As poets and novel writers, when they sketch human manners, usually draw from characters they are acquainted with, I consider the descriptions of the Chinese author of "The Fortunate Union" a representation of the Chinese ladies he most admired. His heroine was Shueypingsin. "Her eyebrows were like the slender leaflet of the willow in spring; and her whole aspect that of a delicate autumnal flower. Brought up tenderly in the retirement of the female apartments, she surpassed in delicacy a silken tissue. Still, however, when the occasion called for it, she possessed talents and resolution beyond many of the other sex."-Vol. i., p. 50. The sentiments ascribed to her, in her conversation with her uncle, who was unjustly persecuting her, are highly creditable to the female character of China in its most respectable class. "The violation of the laws to evil and cruel purposes," replied Shueypingsin, "may make the frail humanity of a worthy and exalted character tremble; but such natural feelings will never compel it to descend from its moral elevation: for, being governed by a fixed principle of rectitude, the presence of the emperor himself will never force such a character to degrade itself." On his further urging her to what she deemed wrong, she answered, "The proverb says well, the winter insect must not talk of summer: the ephemeris (the Hoeykoo) never knows spring and autumn. We are all best acquainted with the nature of our own situations. Let me beg of you, uncle, to mind your own affairs. Your niece knows that there are such things as propriety, virtue, reputation, and self-government. In comparison with these, happiness and misery are indifferent person he likewise ascribes the preservation of morality among his own sex to the influence of such examples,* and shows, by the verses which he adds on his heroine, that he felt what he delineates to be the natural beauty, as well as the cultivated excellence, of the female spirit.† Thus in every country the peculiar amiabilities of the female mind are felt to be distinguishing moral beauties to it; are valued as such, and are everywhere disclosing themselves. The male spirit, however entangled with other habits and absurdities, yet is interested by the more delicate and gentle, nature of his allotted companion, as long as she preserves her attracting virtues, undebased by what sullies and destroys them. She is, however, susceptible of such degrada tion; she may become all that is most odious and abhorrent. It is painful to find that such a perversion exists at present in to her. Pray, then, give yourself no uncalled-for anxiety on my account,” p. 235. "To die once is nothing in comparison with the loss of virtue," p. 248. -The Fortunate Union, translated from the Chinese original by J. P. Davis, 1829. * "Reason's highway is straight and plain; unlike The crooked, devious path of worthless men. Did not a faultless heroine sometimes shine, Virtue's great cause entirely would fail."-Ib., p. 82. "Her nature was ardent in the cause of virtue, Though the softness of her affections was easily influenced. To blend thus the warmth of passion with the rigidness of principle, Is the perfection of moral excellence."-Ib., vol. ii., p. 257. "Wonder not at this female, With slender waist and delicate hands. Her heart, though warm, was pure; Her temper chaste as ice; In the singleness of her purpose she relied upon herself; Unconscious of wrong, what need had she for distrust ?”—Ib., 251. "While her father's wish was yet undivulged, The daughter's heart already understood it." "Mildness, without yielding, constitutes true firmness : Would you seek an emblem of mildness and resistance combined? On being introduced to the emperor: "the son of Heaven turned his eyes upon her, and saw that she surpassed a flower or a willow in delicacy and grace." Her firmness in right conduct was the chief subject of his imperial commendation. "We know that the relative duties are most honoured by a strict ob servance under circumstances of difficulty. The excellence of virtue lies in continuing inflexible; particularly when secrecy affords opportunity."-lb., p. 205. the capital of a country whose females have been praised for their sprightliness, good feeling, and kind manners; but Spain needs great moral improvement :* yet all large cities have some lamentable anomalies; and we may class this among those of a different, but still deplorable description, which disgrace our own. But even for the existence of these we must accuse our own sex; for what are they but the victims of the men who, for their own selfish ends, have deceived and corrupted them? Their very sensibilities, then, make them both more miserable and more evil beings, increased by the utter hopelessness and despair of obliterating the past; of recovering their former rank or estimation; or of obtaining any creditable means of subsistence. To such wretchedness does the self-gratifymg deluder lead and consign the female spirit he seduces and betrays. The human ruin and misery of the suffering individual become in time so complete, that it can never be surprising that a temper half demoniacal should occasionally result from it. Nothing but the native good qualities of the female heart prevents this effect from following universally such a cause; but these are so generally indestructible, that even vice, remorse, famine, contempt, and disease cannot wholly or always overpower their instinctive operation. * An American traveller in Spain has given us the following account, published in 1830: "Perhaps there are no women in the world possessing characters more strongly marked with reckless crime than those of the lower class in Madrid, known by the name of Manolas. Unheeded by the police, and abandoned to their own vindictive passions, the barriers in which they live are the nightly scenes of violence and murder; and the only intimation which justice has of their crimes is when the dead bodies of the murdered of either sex, instead of being concealed, are thrust out into the street. As many of these women habitually carry open knives thrust through their garters, the means of dealing a death-blow is ever at hand."-Spain Revisited, by an American. LETTER XXII. The Aged Class of Society considered.-State and Proportion of them in England and Wales.-Review of their Character, Position, and Utilities in the Living World. MY DEAR SYDNEY, We find every population on the earth, and nearly every family, consisting of persons in the three succeeding stages of life-the young, the mature, and the aged; presenting to us at all times a living picture of the beginning, the middle, and the end of our designated earthly existence. The proportions of these to each other have been already noticed, and their mutual utilities likewise. I would now direct your attention for a short time to the consideration of the last division, whom we characterize as the aged portion of society. It has been a continual part of the Divine economy of our world that it should, in all its societies, contain a certain portion of this class of its human beings, intermingled with the rest, but varying in the length of their protracted duration. They have outlived all the causes of dissolution which have taken off the great bulk of those with whom they were coexisting; and have advantages, qualities, utilities, and purposes peculiarly connected with themselves, by which they are separated and distinguished from all the younger portion of the community. In 1821 the state of living society in England and Wales comprised ten millions and a half of both sexes. Of these the aged formed nearly a thirteenth part, if we date this class of seniority from the attainment of the sixtieth year of human life. At this period of it the character and qualities of old age begin to be most visible and operative; and those who had reached this duration formed at that time an amount of 791,997 individuals of both sexes; being in number, at the latter end of human life here, about half of those who were at its commencing period, or under five years of age.* *The males of sixty and above were 358,441; the females, 413,556.Rick, p. 37. Those under five were 791,579 males, and 774,689 females. -Ib. This aged portion of society were distinguished from each other by the differences of their respective seniority. Two sevenths of them were between seventy and eighty; not quite a twelfth between eighty and ninety. The first being equiv alent to almost one forty-fourth part of the whole population; the last being only a hundred and sixtieth portion. Only 5533 of both sexes were between ninety and one hundred years, being only 1 in 1903 of the whole community. The very few who had reached one hundred years and above were only 189; being but as 1 in 55,717 in a population of ten millions and a half. Of those enjoying this extreme longevity, two thirds were females. In all periods and states of society we find such a class existing; and in proportions, though not.so large as this, yet always of sufficient number to make it a distinct order and stage of every population. In conjunction with the mature, they form, as before remarked, the consolidating and stable body of all societies; presenting always a remarkable contrast to the interesting divisions of infancy and childhood, as well as to the ardent, fearless, vigorous, imaginative, enterprising, and restless youth. A distinct moral and intellectual character from these has been assigned to the aged members, and is generally acquired in some degree, and is most usually sustained by them. This, in its completeness, is such as they gradually and spontaneously form out of their accumulated knowledge, their yaried observation, their long-exercised judgment, their repeat experience of the results of earlier fancies, hopes, speculations, and pursuits, and their more solid reasoning and calmer wisdom thence arising. They are more convinced of the need of self-government by the sufferings they have endured from many unrestrained self-indulgences; and, by the changes in their bodily constitution, they are more able as well as willing to practise it. All these elements of wiser life bring with them a sedate ** Rickm, p. xliii. The numbers were→ |
