Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

Well timed, and well bred, the merriment was kept within due bounds, and set so gracefully upon its appropriate years that none could wish its absence or seek to abate it by any gloomy portents of the coming cares of maturity. On went the steamer ploughing the emerald waves, taking her freight safely round the far-famed lighthouse where visitors could seldom land on account of the steep ascent and inaccessible nature of the rock on which it reared its slender column. The solitary light-keepers looked out from their lonely watch tower and soon lost again the pleasant vision of human faces, and the sweet sounds of human happiness. Evening advanced and its quiet shades dispersed the merry laughers. As the vessel stayed to allow some strangers to visit a celebrated work of art on the way, others took the opportunity of procuring refreshment, and we descended to the cabin for some tea--but what a scene greeted us! There were the young gentlemen of the party, the patterns of propriety on the day they left school, the models of decorum at worship, the pinks of courtesy at social gatherings, stretched around the saloon, either sleeping off the effects of the wine they had imprudently taken, or pretending to be half bewildered by it, stuttering some coarse slang to the astonished steward. It was impossible to remain, and we decamped as speedily as practicable while the waiter himself "wondered how such nice lads could so degrade themselves."

We pitied the mortification of the pretty young ladies who had trusted to their escort, and now thankfully accepted the sober protection of less polished friends, who grieved at the discovery of such delinquency.

It is much to be regretted that the light literature of the present day portrays scenes, and details language, which cannot improve, though it may deteriorate, the taste of youthful readers; so that from admiring the wit couched in slang dialect, witless persons adopt the slang itself, and take a strange pride in hiding the poverty of their ideas, by terms borrowed from the horsejockey, or pickpocket. Wisdom it is said, "consists in the right application of knowledge." There are some things that should only be known that they may be avoided! Special circumstances may render it necessary to understand the lan

guage in which the ignorant and depraved of our community exchange their few notions, but it surely is not proper, or needful, that it should be introduced to those regions where knowledge at least is more abundant, or used by those whose vocabulary has been enriched by the contributions of classic Greece and Rome? Habit is second nature, and if a refined demeanor, and cultivated diction, be attractive in the drawing-room, it is highly important to avoid vulgarity and coarseness in private. Nothing is graceful in manner which is studied, and when obliged to think every moment about every action, it produces awkward failure, or stiff affectation; whereas the graceful simplicity of a well-bred young lady or gentleman, is the result of such unfailing propriety that it is no longer designed: indeed, any other conduct would feel unnatural!

Another consideration should have some weight with young people. A tree is known by its fruits, a foreigner is detected by his accent; and as out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh, we invariably form an estimate of the mental and moral character, by its outward demonstration of speech and behaviour. A great mind could not take pleasure in paltry puns, or equivocal jokes; a refined nature would shrink from drunkenness and impurity, an upright character would not practise deceit and double-dealing; a sincere heart could not trifle with the affections of another. A traveller to heaven, would seek assimilation to its atmosphere ere he was translated thither.

Now, my young friends what path will you choose? with whom do you wish to identify yourselves? with the spirits of just men made perfect, the general assembly and church of the first-born; or with Satan and all his angels in the abode of eternal woe? Choose, and act accordingly!

E. W. P.

WOMAN WITHOUT CHRISTIANITY.

LET us turn to India, and contemplate the abject misery to which the daughters of that land of idols are consigned, and listen to their inward longings for deliverance from the iron bondage which encircles them. Truly, the life of an Indian female, from the cradle to the grave, is one of misery. Misery

enough falls to the lot of the male population of that vast portion of our empire, where devotees, by thousands, inflict upon themselves unheard of cruelties, in hope of finding that absorption into Deity which is the summit of their highest breathings; but at least their sufferings are voluntary. Not so the miseries of their wives and daughters: stern, inveterate usage compels them to be miserable. Oftentimes have we heard the melancholy tale of the little one betrothed in early childhood to one who feels no interest in her, and on whom she looks only with awe; from her wedding-day compelled to live a poor, down-hearted, abject slave; not venturing to seat herself in the presence of her lord, not suffered to partake of the same meal with him, but waiting on him in silent and submissive servitude, performing every menial office for him without one syllable of thanks or comfort; and on that awful day when death removes her tyrant, compelled to burn with him—(oh! horrible prescriptive right!)—a living holocaust, or to sit down beside him in the tomb whilst the earth covers them above; or, failing this, to drag on for years a life of misery so insupportable that death itself were infinitely preferable-a life of helpless, hopeless anguish, looked on by all around her as a cursed thing, a grovelling, wretched creature, fit only to be spurned and trodden under foot of man. Such is the career of hapless woman wherever Brahminism India.

exerts its sway in

"Or again: have we not heard of India's daughter in the south, casting aside the feelings and the tenderness of womanhood, and acting the Pey-adi in their demon-worship, with all its horrible accompaniments, drinking the life-blood of the slaughtered victim even to intoxication, and whirling round in her unnatural frenzy till she sinks exhausted on the ground, herself the victim of her own wild and terrible imaginings, and of that evil spirit to which she has devoted her body and her soul? Oh, my brethren, what are the voices which proceed from India's debased, degraded daughter? True it is, her spirit is so fettered, and her intellect so chained, that she is scarcely conscious of her better calling. True, that when questioned as to the prospect of her soul, her vacant answer is, 'My soul, my mother? what soul have I? I am a woman ;'

or when still further pressed upon the subject, the constant repetition, 'No, my mother-no; I am but a woman.' Yet still there must be some inward yearnings that will not be repressed-that will rise at intervals against the downward pressure of habitual degradation; and what will be the utterance of those inward yearnings? Surely they will cry from the depths,-'Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me.'

"Once more: let us direct our eyes more eastward, to the teeming multitudes of China, that land of dwarfed and stunted promise: how is it with the female there? Oh! what a tale of woe does that single fact reveal, which meets us on the very threshold, which stares us in the face the moment we set foot upon her shores? I mean the prevalence of horrible infanticide, by which the female infant is consigned to death as soon as born, murdered without compunction, as the almost unavoidable necessity attaching to its sex. Where it is accounted a disgrace and a misfortune to be the father of a female childwhere two such children out of every four fall victims to this terrible delusion--what can we expect with reference to the lot of their survivors? For to what can we attribute the idea on which this systematic murder rests, but to a miserably low, unworthy estimate of female character, and of the place which woman ought to hold in relation to society? Thus debased, despised, counted unfit to live, a disgrace and reproach to the family of which she ought to be the ornament and honor, the Chinese female may be well described as joining her lament to those of her Mahometan and Indian sisters-Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me.'"-Dr. Vidal's Sermon for the Society for Promoting Female Education in the East.

THE CORNISH LADS, AND WHAT BECAME OF THEM.

IN the Minutes of the Committee of Council on Education,* is a deeply interesting account of an experiment made some years since in Cornwall, with a view to test the advantage of

1851-2. Vol. ii. p. 9. et seq.

adapting the school duties of a pupil to the probable circumstances of his after life-to give him, in fact, a special, rather than a general education. The result was eminently successful, though the scheme could hardly be said to have had a fair trial. We will, however, at once, put our readers in possession of the facts, and allow them to judge for themselves.

"If ever we are really to educate the laboring classes," says the Rev. H. Moseley, addressing the Lords of the Council, "it must, I am sure, be by teaching them to reason and understand about those things which are connected with their ordinary pursuits; the things which concern every man's health or comfort, or out of which he is compelled to delve his livelihood.

"With the laboring man these are things so engrossing that, whatever else we may teach him when a little boy, these will infallibly put them out of his head when he comes to be a

man.

"He labors on material things, it is his destiny,-and he is capable of reasoning and understanding the properties of such things, and of deriving pleasure from so reasoning and understanding.

"To teach him the secret of that pleasure, and the advantage there is in the practical application of that knowledge, is to raise him in the scale of moral and intelligent beings, andin as far as it depends on him-to contribute to the well-being of society.

"There are, it is true, departments of science, and there are forms of knowledge, in every department, which leave a man as far from practical results as the mere practical knowledge of the mechanic leaves him from principles; and I have met with men devoted to the study of science under such abstract forms, in whose estimation science, when applied, seemed to be science dethroned and desecrated.

"I attribute it to these prejudices that practical science, which appears in our time to be shaping out the future of society, as yet takes so feeble and inadequate a part in the business of education.

"I have to call your Lordships' attention to another example of the success of a course of instruction having a special direction to practical science.

« AnteriorContinuar »