The Press.
London, England, 1854-01-07 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

charming girls turn up their noses kNature having arranged that that
shall be an easy performance) at the Cottouville young men. At
watering-places, or on the Continent, or elsewhere, they meet with the
sprouts of good families ; in the county where Podger has bought a
slice of the land of a Jacobite family (he will ask the Whigs for the
attainted title, some day !) they come within the influence of an entirely
new set of ideas, and will not revere Podger. The youngest boy goes
to the navy, and is " cobbed " with a sword scabbard for proposing
Cobden's health, &e. &c. What is an old fellow to do

• Non ego hoc lemon, calithis juventil,

he might exclaim, had he any acquaintance with the writer who makes
the exclamation. But he is getting old, and ho must die with the
awful consciousness that he has been bestowing his warmth on the
hatching of a brood of aristocrats.

However, when women are Radicals, they go the entire animal.
Miss Piper, the poetess, the elderly authoress of " Letters on the
Human Anatomy" (that masterly confutation of Paley), is a frightful
example. All the Bloomers are examples. From the lady of Sir
Barnaby Crabs, M.P. (who writes leaders in the " Rasper," and is
constantly inserting a paragraph to the effect that we hear Sir
Barnaby Crabs, M.P., will be " offered the "—anything that is
vacant)—to the youngest Bloomer, the female agitators are more
violent than the male ones. Sproggs is opposed to capital punishment
(naturally enough), and would let the scoundrel live ; but Miss Piper
sees in him a "crushed humanity," a " dormant goodness," and would
substitute for his chains garlands of roses.
The Radical Female is sometimes a " thing of impulse," but the
commoner type is a woman of " strong good sense." She is an over-
done woman, or an under-done man. The Piper, for instance, is a very
good little girl, but she got her head turned by one of the geniuses
who turn the heads of the Radical Mystics. The Piper writes, and
with her feminine liveliness she adopted the antagonistic attitude.
She threw all her warmth into " new views." The plain meaning of
the Piperean view is simply this : she is a sentimentalist, and
raves about Reformers just as other girls do about music, poetry, ruins,
moonlight, or whatever their special rage may be. She is a lively,
soft-hearted girl, and if she chooses to call her quick apprehensions
" intuitions," why, where's the harm ? There is only ono event which
can be expected to make Miss Piper practical, and that, of course, is
—marriage. There was poor Margaret Fuller, a queenly woman in
her way : when she married and had little Angelo she became (as you
see by her biography) quite an intelligible woman, and capital wife
and mother. The fact simply is with regard to these high-flying
damsels, that. they see a great deal existing in the institutions of
Europe which is by no means so pleasant to contemplate as moonlight
or " Locksley Hall." They would like to abolish all evil out of the
world, and sprinkle it with rosewater ; and I would like to have straw-
berries for breakfast, only it is winter time, and I cannot get them.
For Miss Piper's reasonableness and practicality, then, I fear we
must wait till sh ois married. But she won't marry Nubibus, or any
of those speculative gentlemen whose writings she loves ; it being, I
remark, the invariable custom of those fellows to marry quiet, pretty,
girls, destitute of enlarged views, who adore them, and give way to
them, and make them very comfortable. So that Miss Piper will
probably " throw herself away " on some solid fellow, and make him
pay for a new edition of her " Poems " on the very finest paper.
The gifted Miss Seragg is the female Radical of another type,
You may see Miss Scragg, at the British Museum, fearlessly examining
huge books of anatomical plates. She would like, when she hears of
an abuse, to " put her foot " on it---and, between ourselves, if that .lid
not crush it I know not what would. I would rather be reverenced by
any man than by a Scragg—for they give you an extra " scrunch" on
the part of the oppressed sex. She writes leaders and reviews, and
goes to the office to correct a proof—like a man, in fact. She is a
man, indeed—a spoiled man ; a man not quite manly enough. It
was Miss Scragg who wrote those angry lelers to the " Vase " when
the affected Destriver published his " Sonnet to a Poppet." She over-
whelmed him with scorn ; repudiate/1 the vile homage of the man as
an insult to the " understanding "of the whole sex. The fact is, the
sonnet was not intended for Miss Scragg; it was no more her busi-
ness than it was Ben Caunt's to engage in the controversy. But she
has a perfectly just suspicion that the charms of her mind are not so
attractive as the graces of " that empty little goose " Miss Flowerbell.
And, indeed, I cannot see why Miss Scragg should expect to exercise
the rule both of man and woman too. She is a vigorous-minded woman
enough; but there are as clever people about as she ; and she is really
so like a man that I would almost as soon think of flirting with the
Pope as with her.

4