Nor is what she styles "A Farewell to the ple of virtue to all the rest of the kingdom, beMuses" without its excellencies:

The prose of the duchess is bold but in-dy if it should present more than a day's acvolved, her thoughts and her style are peculiarly her own. We select a few of her most striking sentences; the mind continually active, could not fail at times to write something that was good:

with the company of their own sex; for if there be no man amongst them, they are very dull, and as mute as one would wish; unless it be at a gossipping, where a cup of good liquor runs about."

"All women are a kind of mountebanks; for they would make the world believe they are better than they are; and they do all they can to draw company; and their allurements is their dressing, dancing, painting, and the like; and when men are catcht, they laugh to see what fools they were to be taken with such toys: for women's ends are only to make men profess and protest, lie and forswear themselves in the admiration of them: for a woman's only delight is to be flattered of men; for they care not whether they love truly, or speak falsely, so they profess earnestly."

"Children should be taught at first the best, plainest, and purest of their language, and the most significant words; and not as their nurses teach them, a strange kind of gibbridge, broken language of their own making, which is like scraps of several meats heaped together, or hash'd, mixt or minced: so do they the purest of their language; as, for example, when nurses teach children to go, instead of saying Go, they say, Do, do; and instead of saying, Come to me, they say, Tum to me; and when they newly come out of a sleep, and cannot well open their eyes, they do not say, My child cannot well open his or her eyes, but My child tant open its nies; and when they should bid them speak, they bid them peak; and when they should ask them, if they will or would drink, they ask them if they will dinck; and so all the rest of the language they teach children is after this manner. . . . Likewise they learn them the rudest language first; as to bid them say, about into every dirty office, where the young "Some parents suffer their children to run such a one lies, or to call them rogues and the master must learn to drink and play at cards Jike names, and then laugh as if it were a witty with the kitchen boy, and learn to kiss his mojest. And as they breed them in their lan- ther's dirty maid for a mess of creain. The guage, so they breed them in their sports, pas-daughters are danced upon the knee of every times, or exercises, as to play with children at bo-peep, blindman's-buff, and cock's-hod."

"A gentleman ought to be skilful in the use of his sword, in the manage of horses, to vault, to wrestle, to dance: the first defends his honor and country; the next is for command in cavalry; the third makes him ready in the day of battle to horse himself; the fourth keeps him from being overcome by a clown or peasant, for the sleights in wrestling will overcome great strength; the fifth gives his limbs a graceful motion. His exercises should be masculine for better it were to see a gentleman shoe a horse, than to play on the viol or lute, virginal, or any other musical instrument; for that sheweth the command man hath over beast. Or to carry a burthen on his back, than to sit idly at cards or dice: for idleness is like the sluggish worm, that is neither able to help nor defend itself."

clown and serving man, and hear them talk scurrilous to their maids, which is their complement of wooing, and then dancing Sellinger's Round with them at Christmas time."

"Some say a man is a nobler creature than a woman, because our Savior took upon him the body of man; aud another, that man was the Holy Spirit took upon him the shape of a made first: but these two reasons are weak; for dove, which creature is of less esteem than mankind; and for the pre-eminency in creation, the devil was made before man.

Mrs. Piozzi gave a saffron color to her cheeks by painting. Thousands, by following a very foolish and pernicious fashion, had done the same before her.

"Painting the face, when it is used for a good "Some, in their praises of women, say, they is, perhaps, admissible; but in a widow, paintintent, as to keep or increase lawful affection, never speak but their words are too many in number for the weight of the sense: besides, widow ever. I am utterly against the art of ing is most disallowable-a widow once, a the ground of their discourse is impertinent, as painting, out of three respects; the first is daninquiries who dined and who supped at such a table; what looks, words, and actions passed gerous-for most paintings are mixed with among the company; what addresses such a mercury, wherein is much quicksilver, which man made to such a woman, and what en-will fall from the head to the lungs, and cause is of so subtle and malignant a nature, as it couragement they received in their courtships; consumptions, and is the cause of swelling then who was at court, who at church; or about the neck and throat. The next is, that slandering, or defaming one another; or brag-it is so far from adorning, that it disfigures: ging of themselves, what clothes they have or for it will rot the teeth, dim the eyes, and take will have; what coaches or lacqueys, what love-servants they have or may have; what men are like to die for love of them: what feast they made for such a company; who took them out to dance at such a ball; who ushered them out of church, and who they saw there; and not of what they heard there; and for their pastimes, say they are seldom at home but to receive visits. Neither are they pleased

way both the life and youth of a face, which the sluttishness of it, and especially in the preis the greatest beauty. Thirdly, and lastlyparatives, as masks of sear-clothes, which are not only horrid to look upon, in that they seem

"He to God's image, she to his was made,
So farther from the fount the stream at ran-
dom stray'd."
DRYDEN.

The twenty-first letter contains a sad character of her sex.

"I observe," she says, "that cards is one of the chief pastimes of our sex, and their greatest delight; for few or none of our sex loves or delights in poetry, unless a copy of verses made in their praise, wherein for the most part, is more flattery than wit." Neither

as dead bodies embowelled or embalmed, but the stink is offensive. Then the pomatum and pultis, which are very uneasy to lie in, wet and greasy, and very unsavory; for all the while they have it on it presents to the nose a chiandler's shop, or a greasy dripping-pan, so as all the time they fry, as it were, in grease; neither will their perfumes mend it, or their oils; and though I cannot say they live in purgatory, because they shun all hot places, for they doth our sex take much pleasure in harmonicannot have the comfortable heat of the fire,ous music, only in violins to tread a measure; and shun the natural heat of the sun, as they the truth is, the chief study of our sex is romust live always as if they were at the North mances, wherein reading, they fall in love with Pole, for fear the heat should melt away their the feigned heroes and carpet-knights, with oil, and oily drops can be no grace to their whom their thoughts secretly commit adulteface. Dry painting shrivels up the skin, so as ry, and in their conversation and manner, or it imprints age in their face, in filling it full of forms or phrases of speech, they imitate the wrinkles; wherefore paintings are both danromancy-ladies." gerous, ill-favored, and sluttish, besides the troublesome pains. But for other adornments in women, they are to be commended, as curling, powdering, pouncing, clothing, and all the

varieties of accoutrement."

jellies, and such strong drinks as hippocras and burnt wine, with hot spices, mulled sack, strong and high-colored ale, well spiced and stuffed with toasts of cakes. This should be read with Letter CII., where there is an account of a gossip meeting.

The forty-seventh letter is a long account of the pains that ladies take, and the cost they go to in getting, making, and buying fine and costly child-bed linen, swaddlingOne of the most interesting works of the clothes, mantles, and the like, their banduchess's composition is a large folio vol-quets of sweetmeats, cakes, wafers, biscuits, ume of Sociable Letters, for so they are styled, 211 in number. The odd eleven are for individuals with names, the 200 to some madame, evidently an admirer of the duchess and her writings. There is no such thing as a date throughout the work, and names are distinguished by initials, which, provokingly enough, are of frequent occurrence. The letters, however, seem to have been written wholly abroad, and the collection was printed at London in 1664. There is, of course, a complimentary copy of verses by the duke, and a letter of gratitude and extravagant adulation from the duchess, with a preface to all professors of learning and art, and another to the Mary.

Some of her descriptions are very graphic, such as that of the sanctified lady to whom black patches had become abominable, and fans, ribands, pendants, and neck laces, the temptations of Satan, and laced shoes and galoshoes, as so many steps to pride. (Lett. LI.)

"You were pleased, in your last letter," she writes (No. CXLVI.), "to request me to send you my opinion of Virgil and Ovid, as which I thought was the better poet. Truly, madam, "It may be said to me," she writes to her my reason, skill, or understanding in poetry lord, "as one said to a lady, Work, lady, and poets is not sufficient to give a judgment work-let writing books alone, for surely wiser of two such famous poets, for though I am a women ne'er writ one;' but your lordship here poetess, yet I am but a poetastress, or a petty bid me to work, nor leave writing, except when poetess; but, howsoever, I am a legitimate you would persuade me spare so much time poetical child of Nature, and though my poems, from my study as to take the air for my health; which are the body of the poetical soul, are the truth is, my lord, I cannot work, I mean not so beautiful and pleasing as the rest of her such work as ladies used to pass their time poetical childrens' bodies are, yet I am, neverwithal; but I am not a dunce in all employ-theless, her child, although but a brownet." ments, for I understand the keeping of sheep, and ordering of a grange, indifferently well, although I do not busy myself much with it, by reason my scribbling takes away most part of my time." "As for the present "The vulgar and plainer a voice is, the betbook of letters," she writes, "I know not, as ter it is for an old ballad; for a sweet voice, yet, what aspersion they will lay upon it, but I with quavers, and trilloes, and the like, would fear they'll say, they are not written in a mode be as improper for an old ballad, as golden style, that is, in a complimenting and roman-laces on a thrown suit of cloth, diamond buc tical way, with high words and mystical ex-kles on clouted or cobbled shoes, or a feather pressions, as most of our modern letter-writers on a monk's hood; neither should old ballads use to do." be sung so much in a tune as in a tone, which

Here is a very beautiful picture of the qualities required of a ballad singer :

tone is betwixt speaking and singing, for the
sound is more than plain speaking, and less
than clear singing, and the rumming or hum-
ming of a wheel should be the music to that
tone, for the humming is the noise the wheel
makes in the turning round, which is not like
the music of the spheres; and ballads are only
proper to be sung by spinsters, and that only
in cold winter nights, when a company of good
housewives are drawing a thread of flax."
(Lett. cc.)

Her admiration of Davenant's Gondibert is made the subject of a letter, (number CXXVII.), where she speaks with great discrimination when finding fault with the over-precision of his language and the compact closeness of his expressions," for the language is like so curious and finely engraven a seal as one cannot readily see the figure engraven thereon without a magnifying glass."

Her love for the writings of Shakspeare breaks out in two or three places, nor has it been hitherto noticed that the duchess was among the first who dared to publish their admiration:

66

might think they were well acquainted with them."-Pp. 245, 6, 7.

All this is excellent, but when the duchess tells us, some hundred pages on (p. 338), that her husband is as far beyond Shakspeare for comical humor, as Shakspeare is beyond an ordinary poet in that way, we love and respect the wife, but laugh outright at the silly weakness of the woman.

Here we stop, and in the belief, be it known, that our readers are as much in love with Margaret Lucas as Oliver Yorke is, or was old William Cavendish himself. For nothing here of vanity we see, "Is this a lady's closet? 't cannot be, Nothing of curiosity or pride, As most of ladies' closets have beside. Scarcely a glass or mirror in't you find, Excepting books, the mirror of the mind. Nor is't a library, but only as she Makes each place where she comes a library.'*

From the Dublin University Magazine.

LIFE AND WRITINGS OF DAVID HUME.

The Life and Correspondence of David Hume, from the papers bequeathed by his Nephew, Baron Hume, to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and other original sources. By John Hill Burton, Esquire, Advocate. 2 vols. 8vo. Edinburgh, 1846.

"I wonder," she writes, "how that person you mention in your letter could either have the conscience or confidence to dispraise Shakspeare's plays, as to say they were made up only with clowns, fools, watchmen, and the like." Shakspeare," she says, with admirable wit, "did not want wit to express to the life all sorts of persons, of what quality, possession, degree, breeding, or birth whatsoever; nor did he want wit to express the divers and different humors, or natures, or several passions in mankind; and so well he Or the life of Hume, his own memoir, hath expressed in his plays all sorts of persons, Adam Smith's letter to Strahan, and Mr. as one would think he had been transformed Ritchie's narrative, have hitherto been the into every one of those persons he hath described; and as sometimes one would think he principal accounts. In the course of last was really himself the clown or jester he year was published Lord Brougham's lively feigns, so one would think he was also the king sketch, with several of the letters which and privy counsellor; also as one would think are preserved in one of the public libraries he were really the coward he feigns, so one of Edinburgh, and which have been long would think he were the most valiant and ex-accessible to any person interested in the perienced soldier; who would not think he had

been such a man as his Sir John Falstaff? and subject. All these works, and especially who would not think he had been Harry the the first, are of considerable interest; still, Fifth? and certainly Julius Cæsar, Augustus something more was wanting. If corresCæsar, and Antonius did really never act their pondence is to be at all published, and is parts better, if so well, as he hath describ-referred to as authority, there is then the ed them, and I believe that Antonius and general fitness of at least as much of it beBrutus did not speak better to the people than ing given as in any way bears on the subhe had feigned them; nay, one would think that he had been metamorphosed from a man to a woman, for who could describe Cleopatra better than he has done, and many other females of his own creating? Who would not swear that he had been a noble lover? who could woo so well? and there is not any person he hath described in his book but his readers

ject, to illustrate which it is produced. Allusions, more or less distinct, have been repeatedly made to these letters, and to those of the Scottish divines with whom

* On the Duchess of Newcastle's Closet.

FLECKNOE'S Epigrams.

Hume lived in habits of friendliness, for sorcery or witchcraft was no pleasant to prove that the infidelity with which thing a century ago; and in later times, Hume was infected extended its taint to proceedings against a man for blasphemy them. If such fact can be established, or heresy were no joke. It would, we fear, (and we do not believe it,) it must be by be regarded even now as an insufficient deother evidence; for from the parts of the fence to such an accusation to be able to correspondence given by Mr. Burton, no show that Lord Brougham has affirmed the inference of the kind can be derived. first crime to be impossible, or to suggest That no such account of Hume as Scot- that it would not be easy to find a tribunal, land ought to have supplied to the general consisting of more than one individual, literature of the country should have be-likely to agree in what constituted the secfore appeared, is easily to be accounted for. ond. That a serious offence against socieTill of late years, the strong feelings which ty was committed by the publication of any discussion of his views on religious Hume's writings, was certainly the public subjects was sure to excite, would have feeling of the period in which they appearrendered the publication, in all probability, ed; and under what name society was to a losing concern, and at all events be re- punish it, was a matter that seemed of comgarded by a great portion of the public as parative indifference. Though the proan offence. The Edinburgh publishers ceedings against Hume were defeated in were not unlikely to remember the spirit in the General Assembly, yet that against the which, when in the General Assembly, a publishers of Kames failed only by the prosecution against Hume had failed, the death of the prosecutor. parties who were his most active assail- Of late years the total defeat and rout of ants immediately commenced proceedings speculative infidelity has rendered it possiagainst the publishers of an essay of Lord ble to reprint all such works with no other Kames's, which essay-so subtle was the danger than the unpleasant consequence of zeal of the prosecutors in detecting latent the sale being insufficient to pay the pubinfidelity was written for the purpose of lisher's expenditure. The result of inquiconfuting the principles, supposed to be in-ry has, in every instance, as far as we know, volved in Hume's doctrine, that we are un- been directly opposed to that which the able to discover any real connection be- alarm of zealous but ignorant men suggesttween cause and effect.* A prosecution ed. Hume's "Inquiry into the Doctrine

The title of Kames's book, which was prosccuted, was "Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion." Kames's theory is, that there is no real liberty to human beings, but that in our nature is implanted the feeling that we are free. It seems to be a statement, in the philosophical jargon of his day, of a doctrine that ought not to have been offensive to persons who would have, perhaps, been satisfied had the thought been expre sed in the language of the theological thought he was answering Hume, though there is no distinct allusion to any particular passage in his essay, nor is he mentioned by name; and that Hume so understood his courteous adversary there is no doubt. In a letter to Ramsay, written in the year in which Kames's book was published, we find the following passage:"Have you seen our friend Harry's essays? They are well wrote, [written,] and are an unusual instance of an obliging method of answering a book. Philosophers must judge of the question, but the clergy have already decided it, and say he is as bad as me! Nay, some affirm him to be worse-as much as a treacherous friend is worse than an open enemy. "Mr. Burton tells us, in a tone of grave humor, that "those who constituted themselves judges of the matter seem to have taken example from the stern father, who, when there is a quarrel in the nursery, punishes both sides, because quarreling is a thing not allowed in the house." Vol. VIII.-No. I. 42

schools. There can be no doubt that Kames

of Cause and Effect" led to those investigations in Germany which have ended in the total demolition of all the Babels which in Paris and Edinburgh had affronted high heaven. The "Inquiry into Miracles" has issued not only in the signal triumph of the defenders of revelation on the particular subject of controversy, but in what is of almost as much moment-in fixing attention to the fact, that what has been rashly assumed, and even expressed,* to be a violation of the laws of nature, is never, in any true sense, such, but is in reality a new phenomenon not within the range of our ordinary experience-most often the expression of some more general law, the constant operation of which would be perceptible, but for hindrances thus for a moment removed. There can, we think, never be danger in the full discussion of any subject of scientific inquiry. Of this how remarkable a proof is given in the fact that Butler's "Analogy" and Hume's "Trea

A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature."-Hume, Essays and Treatises. Edinburgh,

1793.