bush. The little bow-wow dogs give up their brass collars that they may shine upon her snowy neck. She goeth forth conquering and to conquer. Man-poor devil-is restricted to the same cut of clothes from generation to generation. What with his odious chimney-pot hat, and his horrid trowsers, and his neverchanging coats-always made of the same material, the wool of the congenial sheep-he is a mere collection of cylinders, and his garments seem to be contrived for the express purpose of enhancing his native ugliness and making him still more ridiculous. In all particulars, both ceremonial and sumptuary, he therefore is doomed to ignominious inferiority, and must not dare to emulate the splendor of the angelic sex. So much for what may be termed "externals," but in affairs of graver import, splendid, indeed, are the advantages of being a woman. Who toils? who suffers all hardships? who endures all inclemencies of weather? who bears the burden and the heat of the day? who the rigor and the darkness of the night? Man,-the unlucky rascal, man. Who is the last to leave the blazing house? Man. Who stands upon the bridge of the sinking ship and goes down with her into the abysses of the ocean, never, never to be seen again? Man; still man. And when war breaks forth, who fights? who bleeds? who dies? Who should it be, but man, the unluckiest of rascals? Meanwhile, woman, bless her sweet heart! remains at her cozy fireside, safe, warm, and comfortable. Thus let it ever be, for our arms should be her protection, and her arms our reward. Only, I want to show what a grand and blessed thing it is to be a woman, and what cause for gratitude that human being has who is thus sublimely privileged. Nor is it in times of danger alone that she has the advantage. Whether in war or peace, she has still, as the homely phrase goes, "the longer end of the stick." What can be more irksome, duller, more monotonous than the life of a man? What gayer, brighter, more delightful than that of a woman? A man goes out in the morning, and it may be for six, eight, or ten hours afterwards, he is immured within four walls. It signifies nothing by what name you may dignify his prison, whether as study, studio, shop, office, law-chamber, library or counting-house, it is still to all intents and purposes a prison, and his jailer's name is "Business." There he toils and moils all day long, in inexorable captivity. But no sooner has he left his house after breakfast than his wife is at liberty to wander where she pleases. She gives with a sweet smile an order or two to her servants, and for the rest of the day she is queen of herself, that heritage of joy. She sallies forth on her butterfly career to see the shops, to spend her husband's money, to run about upon castors like a table, to visit her friends, and "each change of many-colored life" to view. Moreover, she may let her hair grow to the length of her waist. We must have ours cut once a month. Oh! who would not be a woman. Yet another privilege belongs to the sex, and to them alone, the priceless privilege of Weeping. When any trial, real or imaginary, arises to warp their temper, they can have " a good cry," and all is over. This celestial solace is denied to man. His heart may be bleeding at every pore. There let it! He must not dare to shed a tear. If he do, the finger of derision is pointed at him, and he never more may call himself a man. "Women," says Saville, "have more strength in their looks than we have in our laws, and more power by their tears than we have by our arguments." Let the tears but rise to woman's eye, and all is over with "that other animal, man." Be his cause however righteous, he has nothing for it but to lick the dust : "Oh! too convincing,-dangerously dear, In woman's eye the unanswerable tear! These are but a few of the splendid advantages of being a Woman, The best of everything; their own way; and the last word in every argument, such are the rights of Woman. For my own poor part, I have never ceased to regret that I am not one, and the mother of nine children, to boot. IT THE ADVANTAGES OF BEING UGLY. would largely conduce to the greater comfort of the world that men and women should be brought to understand how preferable is Ugliness to Beauty. The practical and universal recognition of this great fact would destroy self-conceit and its concomitant evils, and disenchant us all of a thousand illusions injurious to our peace of mind. It is quite time that Beauty should be brought to task for her manifold offences against the welfare of society, and that the claims of Ugliness on the admiration of mankind should be fearlessly set forth. Trace back the history of that unfortunate being Man, from the earliest period to the present hour, and you shall find that in all ages and in all climes he has been tormented and be-fooled by Beauty. In that most perfidious of sirens he has invariably found a pitiless despot, a remorseless enslaver. For Beauty men have again and again disregarded the bonds of kindred, violated the fondest obligations of friendship, and set at naught all laws divine and human. At her bidding they have committed heinous crimes, cherished deadly animosities, and plunged into the most unrighteous wars. In fact, as all geometry may be reduced to a point, even so may all the miseries of life be reduced to Beauty as to their first principle. "What a delightful life we should all have had in the garden of Eden if we had never been born!" exclaimed the O'Finnigan the other day in a transport of philosophy and punch. And so we should. When Adam was a bachelor he had a pleasant time enough of it in the asphodel bowers of Paradise, till in an evil hour he became enamored of Beauty in the form of Eve. So he laid him down to rest-poor wight-and, as has been said all too truly, his first sleep became his last repose. Solomon, reputedly the wisest man the world ever saw, grew infatuate of Beauty, and all his wisdom was of no avail against her enchantments. We know full well how Samson fared at the hands of Dalilah. Troy, the very site whereof has utterly disappeared, might now be a flourishing city, and Greeks and Trojans might be living to this hour in perfect amity had it not been that they all went mad for love of a fair-haired girl named Helen. Orlando lost his senses for the sake of Angelica; Antony for Cleopatra. Herod, the Tetrarch, went clean out of his wits for a pretty dancing-girl, and the King of Bavaria did the like for Lola Montes. King Richard might possibly have been a prosperous gentleman, though not as straight as a poplar, but that he, too, went daft about Beauty, as he pathetically assured the object of his idolatry- "Your beauty was the cause of that effect, The ancient philosophers were at great pains to warn their disciples against the cozening devices of Beauty. Aristotle declares that a graceful person is a more powerful recommendation than the best letter that can be written in your favor; so that it comes to this, that an elegant form supersedes the necessity for a good character. Plato desires the possessor of Beauty to consider it as a mere gift of nature and not any perfection of his own; but, inasmuch as no handsome human being of either sex ever so accounted it, Plato might as well have kept his breath to cool his porridge. Socrates calls Beauty "a short-lived tyranny," which it unquestionably is and Theophrastus denominates it "a silent fraud," because it imposes on us without the help of language. "Beauty," says Lord Bacon, "is as summer fruits which are easy to corrupt and cannot last; and for the most part it makes a dissolute youth and an age a little out of countenance." To understand the utter worthlessness of Beauty we must bear in mind first its capricious and fantastic organ, and secondly the ridiculous brevity of its existence. "Every eye makes its own beauty," says the proverb. This being so it follows. |