Part 15

It has become a proverb, that none but a man of inferior abilities, will keep a school from choice—that it is a drudgery, in which no man of genius will engage, but from necessity,—or persevere in, but from pecuniary motives. Allow this repugnance to the business of instruction to proceed, as perhaps it does, from man's superior talents,—say, that it is not in accordance with the strong powers and stirring energies of his mind, to rest contented in the prison of a school-room; yet to women, less gifted with confidence in their own abilities, and having so few objects of pursuit, it would furnish an employment congenial as well as honorable. There is no branch of learning taught in our common schools which females would not be capable of teaching. They should also be employed, as assistants, in every school and seminary, where there are pupils of their own sex. One very important object to be effected by this arrangement, would be the saving of expense. Women can afford to teach for a less reward than men, even should they prove, as they often doubtless would prove, the more capable instructors. To make education universal, it must be afforded _cheap_. It is a false principle, which estimates the benefits of a privilege by the money it costs. If it were true, our Republican government would be a miserable one, in comparison with those of royal magnificence. It is, usually, the _abuses_ of our privileges, which form the largest item in their expense. Our nation has need of all the talents of its citizens, exerted in the most beneficial manner, to keep pace with the spirit of the age. Why then, refuse the assistance of female intellect, when it might be so usefully and appropriately exerted?—There are now, as it is reported, about ten thousand schoolmasters in the State of New York. One half of that number might, undoubtedly, be employed more profitably to the country, and pleasantly to themselves, in other business, and their duties, as teachers, better as well as cheaper, performed by intelligent women. There are many such to whom even a moderate compensation would be wealth, and would stimulate to unwearied exertion.

But above all, women should be at the head of establishments for the education of their own sex. If it be found necessary, let gentlemen be employed as teachers and lecturers occasionally,—but a lady should always preside as directress. This is invariably practised in every country, save America; and such a preposterous fashion, as that of committing the scientific education of young girls, mostly to men, cannot much longer continue here. Women will feel what is due to their own character and dignity, sufficiently to rouse themselves to the education, at least, of their own sex. The example of Mrs. Willard, Principal of the Troy Female Seminary, and that of Miss Catharine Beecher, not to mention others, demonstrate that ladies are capable of understanding the philosophy of the human mind, and of preparing works which facilitate the acquisition of knowledge. And then a lady, with talents and energy, unites those feminine accomplishments which men cannot know or teach.

In short, though there should be no encroachment on the prerogative or duties of the men, yet women should remember that they too have duties,—which they ought not, which they cannot, consistently with duty and delicacy, surrender. One of these duties, is the superintending the education of their own sex. This must not be abandoned. Then, should men commit to their care the tuition of boys, till the age of ten, twelve, or even later, they would probably find the effect very beneficial. The influence of a sensible, intelligent and pious woman, has a tendency to soften the turbulent dispositions, and foster the kindly affections of boys—to instil the love of virtue, and a horror of vice. Remember, the culture of the _heart_, as well as the _head_, is essentially necessary to make men good citizens of a Republic. A strong argument in favor of employing ladies as instructors of children, may be found in their purity of principles and feelings. A female advocating infidelity, or endeavoring to weaken the bonds of moral and social order, is a phenomenon. Can the same be said of the other sex?

Swift's “Liliputian Ode” is an imitation from Scarron. The French poet concludes a long tri-syllabic poetical epistle to Sarrazin, who had failed to pay him a visit, in the following words.

Mais pourtant Repentant Si tu viens Et te tiens Seulement Un moment Avec nous, Mon corroux Finira Et cætera.

{573}

_Editorial._

RIGHT OF INSTRUCTION.

In the article published by us this month, on the _Right of Instruction_, Judge Hopkinson has alluded to some opinions of Edmund Burke. It may perhaps be as well to copy here one or two of the paragraphs to which we suppose allusion is made.

In his speech in 1780, at the Guildhall in Bristol, _upon certain points relative to his parliamentary conduct_, we have what follows.

Let me say with plainness, I who am no longer in a public character, that if by a fair, by an indulgent, by a gentlemanly behavior to our representatives, we do not give confidence to their minds, and a liberal scope to their understandings; if we do not permit our members to act upon a _very_ enlarged view of things, we shall at length infallibly degrade our national representation into a confused and scuffling bustle of local agency.

Again, in the same speech—

What, gentlemen, was I not to foresee, or, foreseeing, was I not to endeavor to save you from all these multiplied mischiefs and disgraces? Would the little, silly, canvass prattle of obeying instructions, and having no opinions but yours, and such idle, senseless tales which amuse the vacant ears of unthinking men, have saved you from the “pelting of that pitiless storm” to which the loose improvidence, the cowardly rashness of those who dare not look danger in the face, so as to provide against it in time have exposed this degraded nation?

Again—

I did not obey your instructions. No—I conformed to the instructions of truth and nature, and maintained your interest against your opinions, with a constancy that became me. A representative worthy of you ought to be a person of stability. I am to look indeed to your opinions; but to such opinions as you and I must have five years hence. I was not to look to the flash of the day. I knew that you chose me, in my place, along with others, to be a pillar of the state, and not a weathercock on the top of the edifice, exalted for my levity and versatility, and of no use but to indicate the shiftings of every fashionable gale.

And farther—

As to the opinion of the people which some think, in such cases, is to be implicitly obeyed; near two years tranquillity, which followed the act, proved abundantly that the late horrible spirit was, in a great measure, the effect of insidious art, and perverse industry and gross misrepresentation. But suppose that the dislike had been much more deliberate, and much more general than I am persuaded it was.—When we know that the opinions of even the greatest multitudes are the standard of rectitude, I shall think myself obliged to make those opinions the masters of my conscience. But if it may be doubted whether Omnipotence itself is competent to alter the essential constitution of right and wrong, sure I am that such _things_ as they and I, are possessed of no such power. No man carries farther than I do the policy of making government pleasing to the people. But the widest range of this politic complaisance is confined within the limits of justice.... “But if I profess all this impolitic stubbornness I may chance never to be elected into Parliament.” It is certainly not pleasing to be put out of the public service. But I wish, in being a member of Parliament, to have my share of doing good and resisting evil. It would therefore be absurd to renounce my objects in order to obtain my seat.

In his speech, upon his arrival at Bristol, and at the conclusion of the poll in 1774, he says—

I am sorry I cannot conclude without saying a word on a topic touched upon by my worthy colleague. I wish that topic had been passed by, at a time when I have so little leisure to discuss it. But since he has thought proper to throw it out, I owe you a clear explanation of my poor sentiments on that subject. He tells you that the “topic of instructions has occasioned much altercation and uneasiness in this city,” and he expresses himself (if I understand him rightly) in favor of the coercive authority of such instructions. Certainly, gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative, to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion high respect; their business unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions to theirs; and, above all, ever and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiassed opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure—no, nor from the law and the constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you not his industry only, but his judgment, and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion. My worthy colleague says his will ought to be subservient to yours. If that be all the thing is innocent. If government were a matter of will upon any side, yours, without question, ought to be superior. But government and legislation are matters of reason and judgment, and not of inclination—and what sort of reason is that in which the determination precedes the discussion; in which one set of men deliberate and another decide; and where those who form the conclusion are perhaps three hundred miles distant from those who hear the arguments?

PINAKIDIA.

Under the head of “_Random Thoughts_,” “_Odds and Ends_,” “_Stray Leaves_,” “_Scraps_,” “_Brevities_,” and a variety of similar titles, we occasionally meet, in periodicals and elsewhere, with papers of rich interest and value—the result, in some cases, of much thought and more research, expended, however, at a manifest disadvantage, if we regard merely the estimate which the public are willing to set upon such articles. It sometimes occurs that in papers of this nature may be found a collective mass of general, but more usually of classical erudition, which, if dexterously besprinkled over a proper surface of narrative, would be sufficient to make the fortunes of one or two hundred ordinary novelists in these our good days, when all heroes and heroines are necessarily men and women of “extensive acquirements.” But, for the most part, these “_Brevities_,” &c. are either piecemeal cullings at second hand, from a variety of sources hidden or supposed to be hidden, or more audacious pilferings from those vast storehouses of brief facts, memoranda, and opinions in general literature, which are so abundant in all the principal libraries of Germany and France. Of the former species, the _Koran_ of Lawrence Sterne is, at the same time, one of the most consummately impudent and silly; and it may well be doubted whether a single paragraph of any merit in the whole of it may not be found, _nearly verbatim_, in the works of some one of his {574} immediate cotemporaries. If the _Lacon_ of Mr. Colton is any better, its superiority consists altogether in a deeper ingenuity in disguising his stolen wares, and in that prescriptive right of the strongest which, time out of mind, has decided upon calling every Napoleon a conqueror, and every Dick Turpin a thief. Seneca; Machiavelli;[1] Balzac, the author of “La Maniere de bien Penser;” Bielfeld, the German, who wrote, in French, “Les Premiers Traits de L'Erudition Universelle;” Rochefoucault; Bacon; Bolingbroke; and especially Burdon, of “Materials for Thinking” memory, possess, among them, indisputable claims to the ownership of nearly every thing worth owning in the book.

[Footnote 1: It is remarkable that much of what Colton has stolen from Machiavelli, was previously stolen by Machiavelli from Plutarch. A MS. book of the _Apophthegms of the Ancients_, by this latter writer, having fallen into Machiavelli's hands, he put them nearly all into the mouth of his hero, Castrucio Castricani.]

Of the latter species of theft, we see frequent specimens in the continental magazines of Europe, and occasionally meet with them even in the lower class of periodicals in Great Britain. These specimens are usually extracts, by wholesale, from such works as the “Bibliotheque des Memorabilia Literaria,” the “Recueil des Bons Pensées,” the “Lettres Edifiantes et Curieuses,” the “Literary Memoirs” of Sallengré, the “Melanges Literaires” of Suard and André, or the “Pieces Interressantes et peu Connues” of La Place. D'Israeli's “Curiosities of Literature,” “Literary Character,” and “Calamities of Authors,” have, of late years, proved exceedingly convenient to some little American pilferers in this line, but are now becoming too generally known to allow much hope of their good things being any longer appropriated with impunity.

Such collections, as those of which we have been speaking, are usually entertaining in themselves, and, for the most part, we relish every thing about them save their pretensions to originality. In offering, ourselves, something of the kind to the readers of the Messenger, we wish to be understood as disclaiming, in a great degree, every such pretension. Most of the following article is original, and will be readily recognized as such by the classical and general reader—some portions of it may have been written down in the words, or nearly in the words, of the primitive authorities. The whole is taken from a confused mass of marginal notes, and entries in a common-place-book. No certain arrangement has been considered necessary; and, indeed, so heterogeneous a farrago it would have been an endless task to methodize. We have chosen the heading _Pinakidia_, or Tablets, as one sufficiently comprehensive. It was used, for a somewhat similar purpose, by Dionysius of Harlicarnassus.

* * * * *

The whole of Bulwer's elaborate argument on the immortality of the soul, which he has put into the mouth of the “Ambitious Student,” may be confuted through the author's omission of one particular point in his summary of the attributes of Deity—a point which we cannot believe omitted altogether through accident. A single link is deficient in the chain—but the chain is worthless without it. No man doubts the immortality of the soul—yet of all truths this truth of immortality is the most difficult to prove by any mere series of syllogisms. We would refer our readers to the argument here mentioned.

* * * * *

The rude rough wild waste has its power to please,

a line in one Mr. Odiorne's poem, “The Progress of Refinement,” is pronounced by the American author of a book entitled “Ante-Diluvian Antiquities,” “the very best alliteration in all poetry.”

* * * * *

The _Turkish Spy_ is the original of many similar works—among the best of which are Montesquieu's _Persian Letters_, and the _British Spy_ of our own Wirt. It was written undoubtedly by John Paul Marana, an Italian, _in_ Italian, but probably was first published in French. Dr. Johnson, who saw only an English translation, supposed it an English work. Marana died in 1693.

* * * * *

The hunter and the deer a shade

is a much admired line in Campbell's _Gertrude of Wyoming_—but the identical line is to be found in the poems of the American Freneau.

* * * * *

Corneille's celebrated _Moi_ of Medea is borrowed from Seneca. Racine, in Phœdra, has stolen nearly the whole scene of the declaration of love from the same puerile writer.

* * * * *

The peculiar zodiac of the comets is comprised in these verses of Cassini—

Antinous, Pegasusque, Andromeda, Taurus, Orion, Procyon, atque Hydrus, Centaurus, Scorpius, Arcus.

* * * * *

Speaking of the usual representation of the banquet-scene in Macbeth, Von Raumer, the German historian, mentions a shadowy figure thrown by optical means into the chair of Banquo, and producing intense effect upon the audience. Enslen, a German optician, conceived this idea, and accomplished it without difficulty.

* * * * *

A religious hubbub, such as the world has seldom seen, was excited, during the reign of Frederic II, by the _imagined_ virulence of a book entitled “The Three Impostors.” It was attributed to Pierre des Vignes, chancellor of the king, who was accused by the Pope of having treated the religions of Moses, Jesus, and Mahomet as political fables. The work in question, however, which was squabbled about, abused, defended, and familiarly _quoted_ by all parties, is well proved never to have existed.

* * * * *

The word Τυχη, or Fortune, does not appear once in the whole Iliad.

* * * * *

The “Lamentations” of Jeremiah are written, with the exception of the last chapter, in acrostic verse: that is to say, every line or couplet begins, in alphabetical order, with some letter in the Hebrew alphabet. In the third chapter each letter is repeated three times successively.

* * * * *

The fullest account of the Amazons is to be found in Diodorus Siculus.

* * * * *

Theophrastus, in his botanical works, anticipated the {575} sexual system of Linnæus. Philolaus of Crotona maintained that comets appeared after a certain revolution—and Æcetes contended for the existence of what is now called the new world. Pulci, “the sire of the half-serious rhyme,” has a passage expressly alluding to a western continent. Dante, two centuries before, has the same allusion.

De vostri sensi ch è del rimanente Non vogliate negar l'esperenza Diretro al sol, del mondo sensa gente.

* * * * *

Cicero makes _finis_ masculine, Virgil feminine. Usque ad eum finem—_Cicero_. Quæ finis standi? Hæc finis Priami fatorum—_Virgil_.

* * * * *

Dante left a poem in three languages—Latin, Provençal, and Italian. Rambaud de Vachieras left one in five.

* * * * *

Marcus Antoninus wrote a book entitled Των εις εαυτον—Of the things which concern himself. It would be a good title for a Diary.

* * * * *

Lipsius, in his treatise “De Supplicio Crucis,” says that the upright beam of the cross was a _fixture_ at the place of execution, whither the criminal was made to bear only the transverse arm. Consequently the painters are in error who depict our Savior bearing the entire cross.

* * * * *

The stream flowing through the middle of the valley of Jehoshaphat, is called, in the Gospel of St. John, “the brook of cedars.” In the Septuagint the word is κεδρον, darkness, from the Hebrew Kiddar, black, and not κεδρων, of cedars.

* * * * *

Seneca says that Appion, a grammarian of the age of Caligula, maintained that Homer himself made the division of the Iliad and Odyssey into books, and evidences the first word of the Iliad, Μηνιν, the Μη of which signifies 48, the number of books in both poems. Seneca however adds, “Talia sciat oportet qui multa vult scire.”

* * * * *

The tale in Plato's “Convivium,” that man at first was male and female, and that, though Jupiter cleft them asunder, there was a natural love towards one another, seems to be only a corruption of the account in Genesis of Eve's being made from Adam's rib.

* * * * *

Corneille has these lines in one of his tragedies;

Pleurez, pleurez, mes yeux, et fondez vous en eau— La moitié de ma vie a mis l'autre au tombeau

which may be thus translated,

Weep, weep, my eyes! it is no time to laugh For half myself has buried the other half.

* * * * *

Over the iron gate of a prison at Ferrara is this inscription—“Ingresso alla prigione di Torquato Tasso.”

* * * * *

Hedelin, a Frenchman, in the beginning of the 18th century, denied that any such person as Homer ever existed, and supposed the Iliad to be made up ex tragediis, et variis canticis de trivio mendicatorum et circulatorum—à la maniere des chansons du Pontneuf.

* * * * *

The Rabbi Manasseh published a book at Amsterdam entitled “The Hopes of Israel.” It was founded upon the supposed number and power of the Jews in America. This supposition was derived from a fabulous account by Montesini of his having found a vast concourse of Jews among the Cordilleras.

* * * * *

The word _assassin_ is derived according to Hyle from Hassa, to kill. Some bring it from Hassan, the first chief of the association—some from the Jewish Essenes—Lemoine from a word meaning “herbage”—De Sacy and Hammer from “hashish” the opiate of hemp leaves, of which the assassins made a singular use.

* * * * *

“Defuncti injuriâ ne afficiantur” was a law of the twelve tables.

* * * * *

The origin of the phrase “corporal oath” is to be found in the ancient usage of touching, upon occasion of attestation, the _corporale_ or cloth which covered the consecrated articles.

* * * * *

Montgomery in his lectures on _Literature_ (_!_) has the following—“Who does not turn with absolute contempt from the rings and gems, and filters, and caves and genii of Eastern Tales as from the trinkets of a toyshop, and the trumpery of a raree-show?” What man of genius but must answer “Not I.”

* * * * *

The Abbè de St. Pierre has fixed in his language two significant words, viz: _bienfaisance_, and the diminutive _la gloriole_.

* * * * *

There is no particular air known throughout Switzerland by the name of the Ranz des Vaches. Every canton has its own song varying in words, notes and even language. Mr. Cooper, the novelist, is our authority.

* * * * *

Incidis in Scyllam cupiens vitare Charybdim

is neither in Virgil nor Ovid, as often supposed, but in the “Alexandrics” of Philip Gualtier a French poet of the thirteenth century.

* * * * *

Under a portrait of Tiberio Fiurilli who invented the character of Scaramouch, are these verses,

Cet illustre Comedien De son art traca la carriere: Il fut le maitre de Moliere Et la Nature fut le sien.

* * * * *

A curious passage in a letter from Cicero to his literary friend Papyrius Pætus, shows that our custom of annexing a farce or pantomime to a tragic drama existed among the Romans.

* * * * *

In Cary's “Dante” is the following passage—

And pilgrim newly on his road with love Thrills if he hear the vesper bell from far That seems to mourn for the expiring day.

Gray has also

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day.

* * * * *

Marmontel in the “Encyclopedie” declares that the Italians did not possess a single comedy worth reading—therein displaying his ignorance. Some of the greatest {576} names in Italian Literature were writers of comedy. Baretti mentions a collection of four thousand dramas made by Apostolo Zeno, of which the greater part were comedies—many of a high order.

* * * * *

A comedy or opera by Andreini was the origin of “Paradise Lost.” Andreini's Adamo was the model of Milton's Adam.

* * * * *

Milton has the expression “Forget thyself to marble.” Pope has the line “I have not yet forgot myself to stone.”