ness, for purposes of manly resistance; but its suppleness and its tact move the children of sterner climates to admiration not unmingled with contempt. All those arts which are the natural defences of the weak are more familiar to this subtle race than to the Ionian of the time of Juvenal, or to the Jew of the dark ages. What the horns are to the buffalo, what the paw is to the tiger, what the sting is to the bee, what beauty, according to the old Greek song, is to woman, deceit is to the Bengalee. Large promises, smooth excuses, elaborate tissues of circumstantial falsehood, chicanery, perjury, forgery, are the weapons, offensive and defensive, of the people of the Lower Ganges. All those millions do not furnish one sepoy to the armies of the Company. But as usurers, as money-changers, as sharp legal practitioners, no class of human beings can bear a comparison with them.

His habit of antithesis (3) is to be found everywhere in his writings; and it frequently results in the sharpest epigram. Thus, he says of Charles I:

"One thing, and one thing only, could make Charles dangerous-a violent death. His subjects began to love his memory as heartily as they had hated his person; and posterity has estimated his character from his death rather than from his life."

The character of his mind was, like Burke's, essentially oratorical; and he always writes best, and with most animation and vigour, when he is attacking a person, a policy, or an opinion. He is the most pictorial prose-writer in our literature. Mr. Minto thus contrasts him with De Quincey: "In the quality of strength, Macaulay offers a great and obvious contrast to De Quincey-the contrast between brilliant animation and stately pomp. His movement is more rapid and less dignified. He does not slowly evolve his periods, 'as under some genial instinct of incubation :' he never remits his efforts to dazzle; and, in his most swelling cadences, he always seems to be perorating against an imaginary antagonist."

1.

CHAPTER XXVII.

WOMEN WRITERS.

T is not till a time that seems late in the civilization of a country, that women begin to give their time and thought to literature. A country must be safe against foreign attack; society in that country must be safe against revolution and disturbance, and must have learnt to grow and to enlarge its powers and change its laws in peaceful ways; and, above all, the HOME must be

sacred to quiet and peaceful thought and to literary culture,—before women can find the atmosphere in which alone their powers can tranquilly develop themselves, and find true and adequate expression. Hence it happens that it is not till the end of the eighteenth century that any women appear who are worthy to be mentioned among the notable writers in our literature. Before that time, one or two frivolous novelists and two or three mediocre playwriters gained some slight reputation; but it quickly passed away. The long and comparatively settled reign of George III. gave time for better minds to ripen; but the best prose and poetry contributed to our literature by women did not appear till the latter half of the nineteenth century.

2. We must take the ladies in chronological order. HANNAH MORE (1745-1833) was a friend of Garrick's, of Dr. Johnson, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Edmund Burke. She wrote several plays, one of which, called Percy, Garrick acted in, and it was very successful. She also wrote essays, poems, and novels, in which the moral was the chief point. The most popular was Calebs in Search of a Wife, ten editions of which sold in one year. She and her sisters were practical philanthropists, and did much to improve the moral and physical condition of several villages in their neighbourhood. She

earned more than £30,000 by her writings, and died at the age of eighty-eight.

3. JOANNA BAILLIE (1762-1851) was the daughter of a Scotch minister, was born at Bothwell, in Lanarkshire, and made her fame by writing plays. The title of her book was

A Series of Plays, in which it is attempted to Delineate the Stronger Passions of the Mind, each Passion being the Subject of a Tragedy and a Comedy.

It does not take much reflection to see that this theory of writing was essentially false-that it was beginning at the wrong end,— and that the dramatic result could not be successful. Hence it happened that only one of them ever was acted, and that none of them are now much read. What a dramatist requires is a central incident which produces complex and terrible results upon the persons around it, while these results lead up to another and more tragical incident, which closes the play. This, for example, is the case in Macbeth, Hamlet, and other plays. Sir W. Scott, who had a real esteem for Miss Baillie, thought her best play that on Fear. also wrote Fugitive Verses.

She

4. MARIA EDGEWORTH (1767-1849) was born near Reading in Berkshire, but spent most of her life in Ireland, and was the author of an Essay on Irish Bulls, and several novels. Her Irish characters are drawn with great power, vividness, and sympathy; and her stories had a wide popularity. Scott, whose friend she was, praised her Irish portraits for their "rich humour, pathetic tenderness, and admirable tact." She herself, when on a visit to Abbotsford, said of Scott one of the truest and most profound things: "You see how it is: Dean Swift said he had written his books in order that people might learn to treat him like a great lord. Sir Walter writes his in order that he may be able to treat his people as a great lord ought to do."

5. JANE AUSTEN (1775-1817) was born at Steventon, in Hampshire, a parish of which her father was rector. She wrote novels; and they are still strongly admired for the exquisite truth, the

absolute fidelity, and the careful skill of the portrait-painting in them. Her best works are

Sense and Sensibility,

Pride and Prejudice, and
Mansfield Park.

She works out the picture of a character by an infinite series of minute touches; and "her works, like well-proportioned rooms, are rendered less apparently grand and imposing by the very excellence of their adjustment."

6. CAROLINE BOWLES (1787-1854), afterwards SOUTHEY, is a poet of no mean type. She married Robert Southey that she might tend him in his last terrible illness—" with a sure prevision of the awful condition of mind [insanity] to which he would shortly be reduced." She published several volumes of poems. Among them the following lines are well known, and have in them noble and true thought and solemn music :

:

THE PAUPER'S DEATH-BED.

Tread softly, bow the head,

In reverent silence bow;
No passing bell doth toll,

Yet an immortal soul

Is passing now.

Stranger, however great,

With lowly reverence bow;
There's one in that poor shed,
One by that paltry bed,

Greater than thou.

Beneath that beggar's roof,

Lo, Death doth keep his state;
Enter-no crowds attend;

Enter-no guards defend

This palace gate.

That pavement, damp and cold,

No smiling courtiers tread;
One silent woman stands,

Lifting with meagre hands
A dying head.