grace, his elegance in compliment, his exquisite sarcasms. He writes thus of a young lady at a fashionable wateringplace of that day: "Cease, cease to ask her name, The crowned muse's noblest theme, Shall only sounded be. But if you long to know, Then look round yonder dazzling row, You may be sure 'tis she." Here are some rather severe lines upon another beauty: "When Lesbia first I saw, so heavenly fair, Forth from her coral lips such folly broke; Like balm the trickling nonsense heal'd my wound, We now come to the greatest wit of the age of Queen Anne, if not the greatest wit of all times-Dean Swift. This famous writer, like Steele, Sterne, Sheridan, Goldsmith, and Burke, was an Irishman by birth. In his youth he was poor but proud, ambitious but obscure. He was educated by the kindness of an uncle, whom he hated for not doing more for him than he was able. When he was twenty-one years old he entered the service of Sir William Temple as private secretary. He received a salary of £20 a year, and a place at the upper servants' table. With a spirit as proud as Lucifer's, and a genius vast and mighty, Swift was compelled to bow with humble respect before his patron, and listen to his tiresome and oft-repeated stories. But, it was while occupying this dependent position that Swift laid the foundation of his literary fame: he had access to Sir William's valuable library, and availed himself of it to accumulate the vast stores of knowledge which he afterwards used so well in his writings. Swift was one of those flowers that bloom late; he was thirty-four when his first book was published. This may account for the extraordinary vigor and mastery of style which distinguished his writings from the beginning. They display none of the glitter and tinsel of rhetoric; they possess neither the delicate and exquisite humor of Addison, the dazzling brilliancy of Pope, the splendidly harmonious periods of Bolingbroke, nor the dashing gaiety of Steele. His strength was in his keen and crushing wit, his withering and merciless satire. Wit and satire were his weapons-his twoedged sword, with which he destroyed his enemies and defended his friends. These mighty weapons raised him from obscurity and penury to fame and competence, from dependence and servitude to the companionship of the noble and great. Swift commenced his political career as a whig, but in 1708 became dissatisfied with that party, and joined the tories, and was soon writing as vigorously and as fluently for his new friends as he had done for his former patrons. He was courted and caressed by Oxford and Bolingbroke, for they wanted the aid of his matchless wit. Dr. Johnson says that Swift for a time dictated the political opinions of the English nation. He was the real ruler of England. He wrote pamphlets, poems, lampoons, and letters against the opposition; his tremendous wit and dreadful satire was the chief support of the government. They rewarded his important services with approving smiles and flattering familiarity. But when he looked for a bishopric, they had none to give him. The queen and her advisers would not confer the mitre on the author of such a book as "The Tale of a Tub," whose boon companions were free-thinkers and infidels, whose books were loaded with a disgusting indecency which would have shamed the dissolute Wharton. With all his great genius, with all his incomparable wit, with all his extraordinary talents, Swift fails to command our respect. This remorseless satirist, this Lucifer of Literature, was more feared than loved by all his acquaintance, except Pope, Bolingbroke, and one or two more of his particular friends. It seems strange that such a man as Swift, a cold, gloomy, misanthrope, could have won the devoted and enthusiastic love of two such women as Vanessa and Stella, one the most accomplished, the other the most beautiful woman of her age. His cruel selfishness caused one of them to die of a broken heart, and the other to suffer a long, lingering misery. The greatest production of the genius of Swift, and one of the most remarkable books ever written, is "Gulliver's Travels." Being a work of universal satire, it will be read as long as the corruptions of human nature renders its innumerable mimic and sarcastic strokes applica * Life of Swift. ble and intelligible to human beings; and even were the follies and baseness of humanity so far purged away that men should no longer need the sharp and bitter medicine of satire, it would still be read with little less admiration and delight for the wonderful richness of invention it displays, and the exquisite art with which the most impossible and extravagant adventures are related-related so naturally as to cheat us into a momentary belief in their reality. Swift was indeed a rarely gifted, prompt, and vigorous intellect; in his particular line of satire he is unequalled in literature; he did more, and more readily, what few besides him could have attempted; he played during his life a prominent and important part in the political drama of his country; and established himself by his writings among the prose classics of the world; but he was, as a man, heartless, selfish, unloving, and unsympathizing; as a writer, he degraded and lowered our reverence for the divinity of our nature; and as a statesman, he appears to have felt no nobler spur to the exertion of his gigantic powers than the sting of personal pique and the pang of disappointed ambition. Throughout the whole of his literary career, Swift never appears to have cared to obtain the reputation of a mere writer. The ruling passion of his mind was an intense and, arrogant desire for political power and notoriety; as he himself says, "All my endeavors, from a boy, to distinguish myself, were only for the want of a great title, that I might be used like a lord by those who have an opinion of my parts-whether right or wrong it is no great matter."* His was a great, an immense, but an evil genius: "Less than archangel ruined, and the excess We are done. Time does not permit us to say anything of Bolingbroke, whose stately and harmonious diction cannot be too highly commended, but whose infidel and atheistical sentiments cannot be too highly condemned; of Prior, so honored and celebrated in his day; and of Gay, the favorite of all the wits of the age of Queen Anne. * English Literature, by Thomas B. Shaw, p. 229. ART. IV.-1. Reports of various Trials in the principal Cities of the United States, from 1855 to 1865. 2. Women as they are, or the Manners of the Day. By Mrs. GORE. London. 3. Privileges of Women. By JONAH S. MARSTON. London. 4. The Poisoners of the Seventeenth Century. Edinburgh. 5. Remarkable Female Criminals. London. 6. Des Femmes avant le mariage, pendant le mariage et apres le mariage. Paris. THERE is nothing in which Americans differ from other enlightened nations more than in their treatment of woman. In general the comparison is in our favor; so far as our intentions are concerned, it is so in nearly all respects; but in certain circumstances none more grievously err. The sex cannot be too much respected; a country in which they are not highly respected cannot be said to be highly enlightened. But the difficulty with us is that we are too indiscriminate in our respect; not only do we call them all "ladies," but we claim for the good, bad and indifferent the same privileges, and the same immunities. This is wrong and unjust; its tendency, instead of being salutary, is pernicious. It is but a spurious gallantry that allows a woman to do what she likes with impunity merely because she is a woman; nor is it by any means a characteristic of a high civilization, as it is generally supposed. In no state of society is woman allowed more liberty than in the barbarous or semi-barbarous; and in no state of society is her husband more controlled by her. Even in countries where polygamy is established, the power of the favorite wife to do harm, by her influence on her husband, is proportioned to the degree of intelligence and enlightenment possessed by the latter, and vice versa. There is no more interesting or instructive chapter in M. Guizot's admirable work on "Civilization in Europe" than that in which he shows from various authorities, anciept and modern, that in the primitive state of society woman is regarded as possessed of supernatural power, and reverenced accordingly as a superior being. That, in general, she is worse treated by her husband than she would be likely to be in an enlightened state of society does not alter the fact. The ancient Germans of the time of Tacitus consulted their wives much more than their enlightened descendants do at the present day; nay, the Gallic women of the time of Cæsar had more control over their husbands than, the French women have at the present day. But neither race were indiscriminate in their respect or esteem; they made a wide distinction between the good and the bad, the worthy and the unworthy. While they dignified the former with titles, and allowed them to take part in their public deliberations, they inflicted on the latter all gradations of punishment, including that of death, according to the character of the crimes of which they were proved guilty. We will take some pains with this branch of our subject, because most of those jurors who think they ought to acquit a woman, no matter how revolting is the crime she has committed; no matter how much she has disgraced her own sex; do so under the impression that they exhibit superior enlightenment. It is, perhaps, reasonable enough that it is those who claim to be most in favor of what is called "woman's rights" that are the first to raise shouts of triumph when a woman is acquitted under any circumstances. Whether they may be sincere or not in this exultation is but a secondary consideration; in either case they are the enemies rather than the friends of the sex, simply because the tendency of their course is to degrade them. That they call themselves reformers, and in some instances really believe they are, is no more than might be expected; but the truth is that the effect of their teachings, if successful, would be to cause society to retrograde instead of advancing. Be it remembered that not one of the rights claimed for woman, if granted to-morrow, would be new; all had been possessed before by their ancestors, but set aside as derogatory or unsuitable, according as civilization advanced. It is sometimes claimed that our wives and sisters are capable even of leading armies, and ought to be placed in such positions, the same as men, when found qualified. But the ancient Britons, made a general as well as a queen of Boadicea, at a time when they used to paint their naked bodies, as the red men do at the present day, and, unlike the red men, used to sell each other into slavery. Nor was Boadicea wanting in courage; perhaps, few male generals or kings had more. But the question at issue is not whether a woman has more courage than a man, but whether the battle-field or the camp is as suitable for her as home. It may be said that since Boadicea wasa queen, what she did cannot be held to be a criterion of the course pursued in her time towards women |