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a passing trivial circumstance. These words eventually assume such importance as to form a part of common conversation. A member of the North Carolina Legislature, from the County of Buncombe, by his pertinacity in speaking for his constituents, introduced a most expressive word into the English language. A century hence it may puzzle a philosopher to discover its origin. A match, used for lighting gas burners, gave its name to a long-dominant political organization of this country. When the future historian writes our history, he may give a very comical meaning to this long-used word in its application to politics. The late war, among other horrors, has given us the word skedaddle. It is not altogether beyond the bounds of possibility, that a future rambler among words may assign its origin to the Greek verb, skedao, which has an identical signification.

These preliminary remarks seemed necessary upon the language whose history it is proposed to examine. As a living, spoken language, none is more potent than the English. It has attained to an antiquity greater than any other important modern language, so far, at least, as any tangible form is concerned. The Keltic and Basque are, in this respect, its superiors. None of its cognates of the Teutonic family of languages can compete with it, and the Romance tongues, the basis of which is the Latin, are confessedly more modern. It is used by the mightiest of earth's nations. It is now spoken by one-tenth of the inhabitants of the globe, and the one most extensively circulating. The influence it is at this moment exerting over the destinies of the human race is sublime. It is proclaimed from the pulpit, its power is acknowledged in the utterances of our orators and statesmen. In its accents a tender mother sings her lullaby, a kind father admonishes, and a loving sister holds communion. It is our mother-tongue, and is endeared to us by a thousand associations which have been carried with us from infancy to this present moment.

VIII.

MADAME RÉCAMIER.

WHO was the most beautiful woman that ever lived?

One said Cleopatra, another Phryne.

No, no. I do not mean those who have come to us through the tradition of poets and sculptors.

Mary, queen of Scots, was named; after her La Vallière, and a variety of others. At last all united upon that virtuous coquette and rare beauty, Madame Récamier-Ballanche's idol, Chateaubriand's love, and Madame de Staël's friend.

During all her long life, this remarkable woman commanded not only the admiration, but the friendship and love of the great men and women who surrounded her; and it is said that at her death-which occurred only a few years ago-the younger Ampère-who was young enough to be her grandson, by the way-felt existence so blank without her, that he was very willing to have the book of life closed at once.

When she was over forty, Ballanche, who was her most intimate associate from young womanhood to old age, wrote:

"If Plato had known you, he would not have needed so much subtle metaphysics to express his ideas; your beauty would have made visible that truth which was always a mystery to him."

"In you," cried the infatuated philosopher, "revery, grace, taste, every thing agree. I am carried away by a harmony so perfect."

Although Madame Récamier possessed such marvelous physical loveliness, her exquisite good breeding, kind heart, total forgetfulness of self, and the absence of vanity and selfishness in her disposition, contributed the greater part to that indefinable attractiveness which set the stamp of immortal celebrity on her.

David tried to paint her beauty and failed; his sketch is in the Louvre. Gérard was bolder, and made a finished portrait, but this hardly did her justice; and Canova sculptured her as Dante's Beatrice, with but indifferent success.

The truth is, her charms did not depend alone upon her exquisitely moulded features and form, nor on the perfect texture and hue of her skin-although these, of course, had to be counted in the sum-but upon the loveliness of her character. Ballanche testified to this, when he said her beauty, after all, was the reflection of her soul.

She is said to have had one of the sweetest tongues in the world, which put her friends not only in a good-humor with themselves, but with their fellows; and to have possessed in the highest degree the power "to truth it in love"-to tell agreeable truths lovingly-le désir de plaire, as her well-bred language calls it-and beauties rarely possess this gift.

The constant, unceasing stream of adulation too, which was poured over Madame Récamier from youth to old age, seemed to leave her unharmed. When we read how incessantly she was bathed in this perilous current of flattery, and see how unblemished her almost perfect character remained—indeed, only seeming the brighter-we liken her to a beautiful marble Venus standing in the center of a fountain flood, such as we saw once in a royal garden in South Italy, whose loveliness shone resplendent through the crystal stream.

"You are an angel of goodness and beauty," was the universal ejaculation of the great men and women who came in contact with her, and not once can it be seen that she accepted these words as arising from her own merit or deserving.

Madame de Staël's tribute to Madame Récamier's charms is famous:

"If I could possibly envy one whom I love, it would be you. I would give all that I am to be you. With a beauty that is unequaled in Europe, a reputation without a stain, a high-toned and generous character, what a fortune of happiness you possess in this sad life, where so many walk despoiled!"

Yes, she was almost a perfect type of perfect womanhood, and held her kingdom through true womanliness-by being modest, self-forgetting, and above all, by keeping in her own sphere.

She lived in a period of feverish excitement, when women were as prone as they are now to throw themselves into the

heated arena, where the noisy races of politics, progress, and public reform are run, and where, as now, they grew so besmirched and begrimed with the dust and the soil of the games, that we might hardly care to own them as sisters.

For we are not of those who hold that women have a need to vote, have offices, and harangue men.

If woman has any great thing to say or do, it can be said or done much more efficiently in her own clear atmosphere. Woman is not fitted by nature to act positively in the solution of the great problems of social and religious life which are agitating the world. Her development is for specialties; she is emotional and nervous, governed by her impulses and feelings, and not by her reason; and acts most happily on her muscular practical mate, man, through the influence of those qualities which should be the reigning ones in her nature -trust, tenderness, truthfulness, and generosity.

We do not intend to enter on this vexed subject of "woman's sphere," for our gifts and powers are those of a very woman-unconnected, illogical, and unreasoning, but not unreasonable;-although a few words on the minority side of this great topic may sound somewhat refreshing by force of contrast and rareness.

Love of notoriety, vanity, and want of real useful occupation, often lie at the bottom of this eager desire shown by women to assume duties and responsibilities quite out of their province; "often," remember, we say, for we believe there are some estimable and truly conscientious ones-misguided, we think-filled with this unprofitable wish.

Very few women are Récamiers, but every woman can cultivate the greatest and loveliest charms of this celebrated Frenchwoman, and perform in her own sphere more useful work than if occupying the masculine station aspired to.

There is public work, too, for women; but when they do it, would it not be well to act more quietly, more as individuals, not in large bodies with officers, and aping all the paraphernalia of masculine management? Indeed, it is a question whether this habit, which men have, of "herding together and making a noise," in their works of progress, is the right one.

Woman is not limited in action by holding to her own

sphere. In her province there are as many departments as in the one coveted, and even similar, though there is a commendable difference. Labor and the active life are as necessary now to woman's happiness and goodness, as in "the days of homely pastoral." The mystic theology of the ancients said that Minerva could not create without Vulcan's help.

Those to whom "circumstance, that unspiritual god," has denied home and family duties, and those who cannot take rank among the opulent-minded ones to whom the expression nascitur non fit applies, can find enough work in the vast field of education, science, self-culture; but, greatest of all, in quiet, unobserved, unknown acts of charity and mercy. Then that "restless demon," which drives them forth to find mischievous and unprofitable labor, will be silenced and appeased.

We remember to have read in some place, it matters not where, that Cupid, being once on a time asked by his mother Venus why he did not assail the Muses with his arrows of vanity and torch of folly, answered that he found them so neat, fair, wise, sweet, learned, and discreet, so courteous, virtuous, and so continually busied and occupied, that, approaching near unto them, he unbent his bow, shut his quiver, and extinguished his torch, through mere shame and fear that, by mischance, he might do them some hurt or prejudice. Also, be put off the fillet wherewith his eyes were bound, to look them in the face, and see their charms as well as hear their melody.

So far was he from assaulting them or interrupting their employments, that he took the greatest pleasure in the world in being near them, and many times he was transported with their beauty and pretty behavior, and even charmed asleep by the divine harmony of their conduct.

What progress might not man make, if woman only held to her own fair fields, and lived so as to please divine Love and the Muses!

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