independent, frank, and fearless;* the nursling of free institutions and ever-advancing civilization is not to be sacrificed without an effort for his preservation,

The mistake is, that all classes unite in a struggle for the turn of tax-taking the Upper House' must give in: the young aristocracy must turn their education to account, and become whips' to the Age,' or 'Tally-ho: the commercial aristocracy come next into power; the college-educated chip of old Ledger has learned, like the Malayan bear, that the smack of champagne is worthy of preference, and the classical festivity of his discourse would point the school of Falstaff; but he is brought up to a genteel profession,' and his uncle has a seat in Parliament, or his father has influence; and thus a chief justice or attorney general is provided for the Colonies.

In fine, the sceptre of prerogative must be lopped of its modern circumstance, and all classes of liege subjects merge in that of the honest men who earn their living, or live on their fathers' earnings; for the necessary education for the community at large is a process of undoing patriotism and pot of beer, King and Church' and the poor rates, the heaven-descended' and the Corn Laws. Let the schoolmaster look to it, or the uneducated poor may proceed to chastisement.

G. S.

THE PROTECTIVE SYSTEM OF MORALS.

THROUGHOUT the whole range of language there is no word which calls up so beautiful and affecting an image to my mind as the word resignation. It has a spell of power to which tears have often answered. Robe Misfortune with it and how the eye feeds on her, adoring what it looks on!

Submission is for the slavish and the subtle; there is a parade about it which mocks the modesty it pretends to. Humility is for the feeble and the frail who sue pity upon the plea of poorness. It is the moral Conservative only, who, folding his arms upon the breast the pulses of which he cannot kill, but can command, stands aside in the meek majesty of resignation.

All these conceptions are peculiar, perhaps, to myself; the very words thus pregnant for me may bear a very different im. -port to others.

Language is so imperfect, or so imperfectly understood, that a thousand avenues are left open for imagination. In vain patient Philology, busy at the roots, turns the cold clay of Antiquity, and frowns upon the blossoms which Fancy finds upon the tree of language; Feeling is ever ready to twine them into wreaths, Ge

* A man running away from another was injured by a blow received from his pursuer; I was sympathizing with the sufferer, and accusing the man for giving a blow in the back; but a young lad said T'other's as bad as he-he shoudn't ha' let

him do it.'

nius to lend his letter of licence, Custom to give her countenance, and Philology, pale as the ghost of Horne Tooke, must e’en let Imagination gang her ain gate.'

Beautifully does Wordsworth assert the poetic power which endues mute nature with eloquence and character. Hear when his muse goes nutgathering:

Then up I rose

And dragged to earth both branch and bough with crush

And merciless ravage; and the shady nook

Of hazels, and the green and mossy bower,
Deformed and sullied, patiently gave up
Their quiet being.

I felt a sense of pain when I beheld

The silent trees and the intruding sky."

Those silent trees! how violence stands rebuked before them; how sympathy answers to the moral sentiment with which they seem imbued! They were defenceless, and they were wronged and ruined, and all this wrong and ruin is sacrilege-they were so pure, so unoffending. To me these trees embody the idea of humility—their fate, the world's usage of humility.

Could I wake the image of Humility in marble, it should be as a girl, just at that early point of time in which the sunny light of childhood passes away into the mist which an undefinable consciousness of change throws round her, and through the silvery atmosphere of which gleam trembling rays which make her tremble too.

In the life of a gentle, an amiable woman, humility is the first stage, submission the second, and resignation the last.

In the first I pity her, and weep in very agony of compassion, for she is at the mercy of those who can

drag to earth both branch and bough with crush And merciless ravage.'

In the next I lament over her; lament the inertness, the passiveness with which she suffers the turbulent tide of society, which by opposing she might conquer, to bury the treasure with which she is freighted. In the last I honour her; give her emotions of mingled respect and love as I see her hide, under smiles of benignant forgiveness and serene resignation, a lacerated heart, while she continues the toil of life for others, not for herself.

Long has woman been looked upon as the peculiar object of protection. A fashionable female writer of the present day says:

'One of the most simple associations in the mind of a man who loves is, that of being strong to defend and protect the loved one. He feels instinctively that she is the" weaker vessel;" and the woman who carries into her home the consciousness (real or fancied) of superiority, carries with her a poison which will imbitter the cup of life.'

First, I will dispose of the protection,' and then turn to examine the poison.'

The necessity which exists for protection to woman pronounces the severest libel upon man. From what is she to be protected? Wolves and tigers do not prowl upon the highways, and the progress of ingenious art has raised refuges against any sudden visitation of accident or the elements. From what then has man to protect woman? From himself; from his own violence, injustice, and rapacity. Often still is he enough of the wolf and the tiger to worry and destroy her, unless, availing herself of the institutions which he singly has made for both, she binds herself a slave to one to avoid becoming the victim of many. By means of a compact something like that by which bandit agrees to respect the appropriations of bandit, men have made among themselves, and for themselves, a code which breathes nothing of the divine morality that aims equally at the annihilation of slavery and tyranny.

When of the whole male world it may be said as the lady in the song says of the sons of Erin, there will be no talk of pro

tection.'

Lady! dost thou not fear to stray

So lone and lovely through this bleak way?

Are Erin's sons so good or so cold

As not to be tempted by woman or gold?

Sir Knight, I feel not the least alarm,

No son of Erin will offer me harm;

For though they love woman and golden store,
Sir Knight, they love honour and virtue more.

While men are barbarous, women will, in its popular sense, need protection; while men are men, and women are women, they will severally and mutually need moral protection-the sacred shelter-the holy refuge which spirit offers and yields to spirit in the moral conflicts, contingencies, and catastrophes, incident to humanity.

Do

There is such a spell in the appeal of weakness, there is such a joy in soothing, sustaining, restoring the wounded heart, that we can scarcely desire to see humanity exempt from the occasional frailties which so beautifully elicit from the stronger or more fortunately formed character, those healing affections, that holy ministry, which make the weak one well again and wiser. men imagine that they never make these appeals to the female heart? What are the pleadings of mere physical feebleness, compared with those of moral and mental weakness-the struggles of sinking energies-the vacillations of irresolute purpose the dawning aspirations which let

'I dare not wait upon I would?'

I as little desire to see any of the mixed relations of life divested of the softness, sweetness, sympathy, and trusting tenderness of devotion and affection, as Washington, when he rose for liberty, desired to see licentiousness.

The relation existing between men and women is formed upon the protective system, and out of it has grown so much necessity for the preventive service. It was the policy of Frederick the Great to do all for the people, nothing by the people-apparently a paternal, but really a despotic principle. It is only by generating a self-acting power that a people or an individual can be free,-effective to their own happiness, and useful in aiding the happiness of others.

The existing mode of social intercourse between the sexes, in its best form, is that of an adult and a child; in peculiar cases this is a happy and beautiful relation, but it is not the true one, aud in its general effects produces the mischief incident to everything that is false. It may be said of such a relation as it may be said of a monarchy, that to secure the permanency of the happiness which it may in particular instances bestow, some scheme to preclude the human contingencies of mortality and mutation must be devised.

As the sexes walk hand in hand during childhood, so should they walk arm in arm at maturity; even now there is no such great difference in their intellectual stature as to prevent this, and when equal education and equal freedom is the order of the day, still less may that be apprehended.

The characters which are formed upon the system which endows one party with power, and dooms the other to dependence, do not stand the wear and tear of the world's trials. It renders man irresponsible, and so tempts him to be unjust; it renders woman resourceless, and tempts her to be insincere: there are who resist both temptations, but are they the many?

And now a word about this same conscious superiority,' which, when it cleaves to woman, must, it appears, imbitter the cup of life. I suspect the sentiment meant by conscious superiority' is self-esteem, not that elevation which lifts a being above self, as above everything else merely selfish.

The higher a mind rises, the more it sees of the infinitude amid which it is hung,-the more it feels its distance from greatness and its alliance to littleness: it becomes incapable of inflating itself, or of insulting a littleness less than its own; it carries everywhere a Divine aspiration which lifts it above the petty pride of the world, but it also carries everywhere a sympathy which draws it towards its kindred clay. These feelings keep real superiority benignly floating in the genial atmosphere of social and domestic life, as the centripetal and centrifugal forces keep the planets to their course. But self-esteem (for real or fancied merits) is of the earth, earthy,' and may well, when overweening, be said to carry poison to the cup of life.

Real superiority, such as I have attempted to define it, may be carried either by man or by woman into a home, and it will assist to make that home a heaven. Self-esteem, allowing its cause to

be as real as possible, is very likely to produce pain to its possessor, and perhaps diffuse it. It does not float on that fine ether, it is not possessed of that elasticity by which real superiority rises above the vapours of the world, or recovers from the shocks it dispenses. Self-esteem often superciliously congratulates itself that it is not like unto the sinner or the fool; real superiority never, for it feels itself as sharing the degradation of every being who departs from the dignity of human nature, and it applies itself zealously to raise that nature with which it must. either rise or fall.

In a late number of the Journal of Education' it is observed: Females (the writer means women) must be taught from their earliest childhood that they will be required to live for others rather than for themselves; that their best happiness consists in ministering to the happiness of others.'

And are not men (or males, to adopt a corresponding phraseology) to be taught the same? Universally applied this precept is a fine truth, partially applied it is despicable cant, and like all cant has this consequence, it produces hypocrisy and imposture. Truth cannot minister at the altars of falsehood,-as little can women minister pure morality to men undeserving of it. The partial morality which corrupt and selfish power instituted enjoined all the virtues upon women, not merely in a state of greater perfectness than they were demanded of man, but it was also expected that those virtues should retain their brightness and purity amid the infected atmosphere of his infamy. Not only was this unscrupulously demanded, but the strength and constancy of mind the cultivation of mind necessary in any degree to fulfil such a requisition was denied and refused. The condition of the Israelite, of whom bricks were required, and the straw necessary to make them denied, forms but a poor parallel to this wholesale instance of injustice. I fancy I see the ghost of Pharaoh looking with a ghastly grin of satisfaction upon men, and forgiving all the obloquy they have heaped upon his name, in consideration of the eminent manner in which they have followed his example.

When we send an individual to sea, intending he should ride the ocean and brave the elements, do we embark him in a leaky and ill-furnished ship? Never. But men, it seems, thought that a weak and uncultivated understanding could carry a high morality. When we arrange a scheme of commerce, do we direct it to a place in which our commodities are not in demand, or if they be, where there is neither produce nor money for us to receive in exchange? Never. But men arranged a scheme of morality, proposing for its object that women should carry purity, prudence, patience, and every other virtue to bosoms insensible of their value; and as for the return, infidelity, indifference, insolence, neglect, and contempt, so far from being rejected, were to be thankfully, at least patiently, accepted.