The Sun.
London, England, 1857-12-30 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

A Woman's Thoughts about Women. By the
Author of " John Halifax, Gentleman," &e.
Hurst and Blackett.
This is a very excellent and thoughtful work, by
a writer who has attained a high degree of cele-
brity, addressed chiefly to the single of her own
sex, offering them some reflections and suggestions
on subjects of the greatest importance. She does
not attempt to advise, so much as to sugges, to
bring before them some of those great moral and
vital truths which single women, without great
capacities or unusual education, are very likely to
forget. Her book is written in a frank and
fearless spirit, earnest in purpose and prac-
tical in tone. Some of the " Thoughts"
appeared originally in " Chambera's Journal,"
but it is well they have been issued in a col-
lected form, as it gives them an opportunity of
being more widely circulated, and they are more
likely to be useful than in fragmentary papers.
She takes twelve subjects in succession, connected
with female social life, and foremost among them
she places the necessity of " Something to Do."
On the subject of the common waste of time among
single women of the middle classes she says, with
force and truth :
"And so their whole energies are devoted to the
massacre of old Time. They prick him to death with
crochet and embroidery needles ; strum him deaf with
piano and harp playing--not music ; cut him up with
morning visitors, or leave his carcase in ten-minute
parcels at every friend's' house they can think of.
Finally, they dance him defunct at all sort of unnatural
hours ; and then, rejoicing in the excellent excuse,
smother him in sleep for a third of the following day.
Thus he dies, a slow, inoffensive, perfectly natural death ;
and they will never recognise his murder till, on the con-
fines of this world, or from the unknown shores of the
next, the question meets them, What have you done
with Time r —Time, the only mortal gift bestowed
equally on every living soul, and, excepting the soul,
the only mortal loss which is totally irretrievable.
"Yet this great sin, this irredeemable loss, in many
women arises from pure ignorance. Men are taught as
a matter of business to recognise the value of time, to
apportion and employ it : women rarely or never. The
most of them have no definite appreciation of the article
as a tangible divisible commodity at all. They would
laugh at a mantua-maker who cut up a dress-length into
trimmings, and then expected to make out of two yards
of silk a full skirt. Yet that the same laws of propor-
tion should apply to time and its measurements—that
yon cannot dawdle away a whble forenoon, and then
attempt to cram into the afternoon the entire business of
the day—that every minute's unpanctuality constitutes
a debt or a theft (lucky, indeed, if you yourself are the
only party robbed or made creditor thereof): these
slight facts rarely seem to cross the feminine imagina-
tion.
"It is not their fault ; they have never been accus-
tomed to business.' They hear that with men time is
money; but it never strikes them that the same com-
modity, equally theirs, is to them not money, perhaps,
but life—life in its highest form and noblest uses—life
bestowed upon every human being, distinctly and indi-
vidually, without reference to any other being, and for
which every one of us, married or unmarried, woman as
well as man, will assuredly be held accountable before
God.
" My young-lady friends, of from seventeen upwards,
your time, and the use of it, is as essential to you as to
any father or brother of you all. You are accountable
for it just as much as be is. If you waste it, you waste
not only your substance, but your very souls—not that
which is your own, but your Maker'a.
"Ay, there the core of the matter lies. From the
hour that honest Adam and Eve were put into the
garden, not—as I once heard some sensible preacher
observe—" not to be idle in it, but to dress it and
to keep it," the Father of all has never put one man
or one woman into this world without giving each
something to do there, in it and for it : some visible,
tangible work, to be left behind them when they die."
The duties of a mistress of a household are also
considered at length, and the chapters on
" Female Friendships and Gossip" may give some
useful hints to the thoughtless. The last chapter
is called " Women Growing Old," and iu it the
writer boldly faces the inevitable certainty that
most turn away from as a hopeless subject. She
draws a pleasant picture of what an " Old
Maid" may be.
" Yes, if women could only believe it, there is a won-
derful beauty even in growing old. The charm of expres-
sion arising from softened temper or ripened intellect,
often amply atones for the loss of form and colouring ;
and, consequently, to those who never could boast either
of these latter, years give much more than they take a way.
A sensitive person often requires half a lifetime to get
thoroughly used to this corporeal machine, to attain a
wholesome indifference both to its defects and perfections,
and to learn at last, what nobody would acquire from any
teacher but experience, that it is the mind alone which
is 01 any consequence ; that with a good temper, since-
rity, and a moderate stock of brains—or even the two
former only—any sort of body can in time be made use-
ful, respectable, and agreeable, as a travelling-dress for
the soul. Many a one, who was absolutely plain in
youth, thus grows pleasant and well-looking in declining
in
iyears.nd:
who You t
pi 1p h.auridyley,
ye vue
.ugly
findy
in a
pn
rbosodny
afnto.
rt umg
ildyd
le
life.
"So with the character. If a woman is ever so be
wise or sensible, the chances are that she will have
become so somewhere between thirty and forty. Her
natural -good qualities will have developed ; her evil
ones will have either been partly subdued, or have over-
grown her like rampant weeds; for, however we may
talk about people being ' not a whit altered just
the same as ever '—not one of us is, or can be, for
long together, exactly the same ; no more than that
the body we carry with us is the identical body we
were born with, or the one we supposed ours seven
years ago. Therein, as in our spiritual self which
inhabits it, goes on a perpetual change and renewal : if
this ceased, the result would be, not permanence, but
corruption. In moral and mental, as well as physical
growth, it is impossible to remain stationary ; if we do
not advance, we retrograde. Talk of too late to im-
prove'--'too old to learn,' &c. ! Idle words ! A
human being should be improving every day of a life-
time ; and will probably have to go on learning through-
out all the ages of immortality."
Further on, she speaks, in conclusion, of the
loneliness that so many dread as the companion
of their old age. Even for this prospect she has
a word of comfort.
" Yet there is a solitude which old age feels to be as
natural and satisfying as that rest which seems such an
irksomeness to youth, but which gradually grows into
the best blessing of our lives ; aid there is another soli-
tude, so full of peace and hope, that it is like Jacob's
sleep in the wilderness, at the foot of the ladder of angels.
All things are less dreadful than they seem.'
And it may be that the extreme loneliness which, viewed
afar off, appears to an unmarried woman as one of the
saddest of inevitable results of her lot, shall by that time
have lost all its pain, and be regarded but as a quiet,
dreamy hour between the lights f when the day's work
is done, and we lean back, closing our eyes, to think ib
all over before we finally go to rest, or to look forward,
in faith and hope, unto the coming morning.
,4" A finished life—a life which has made the best of all
the materials granted to it, and through which, be its
web dark or bright, its pattern clear or clouded, can
now be traced plainly the hand of the Great Designer;
surely this is worth living for 'I And though at its end
it may be somewhat lonely ; though a servant's and not
a daughter's arm may guide the failing step ; though
most likely it will be strangers only who come about the
that husband noovehrnstbhaendpoeovrerwkitihsesreedd,
adnydingdrbaewd, tchloesesthhreouedyeks
breast where no child's head has ever lain ' • still, such a
life is not to be pitied, for it is a completed life. It has
fulfilled its appointed course, and returns to the Giver
of all breath, pure as he gave it. Nor will Ha forget it
when He counteth up His jewels."
The work will well repay perusal, from the sim-
plicity and clearness of its style, and the sense
and moderation with which it is written ; but it
is intended for a higher purpose than • the mere
occupation of a leisure hour, and such it will,
no doubt, iu some measure, fulfil ; teaching the
desultory and careless the pressing importance of
the time they are wasting, warning the indiffe-
rent and worldly of the realities of life and
death, and speaking a word of encouragement to
the lonely and unaided workers in the hie,hways
of humanity and suffering.

The Ragged School Union Magazine. Partridge
and Co.
The importance and efficacy of Ragged Schools
as a means of educating and elevating the lowest
classes is now generally admitted. They obtained
a footing in the most distant localities, and their
numbers hare increased at a rate that has surprised
their projectors. While the question of national
education is being discussed with the deliberation
common to State questions, it is well for the poor
and neglected children who will one day form no
inconsiderable part of our adult population, that
there are those who devote themselves to searching
themout iu their wretched homes, to bestow on them
the blessing of plain moral and religious instruction
and to train them for some respectable employ-
ment. Those who are interested in this truly be-
nevolent undertaking will find much to gratify
them and arrest their attention in thi3 volume.
The Original and Selected Papers en various social
subjects, the reports of meetings, and the statistics
of the schools and their teachers are full of interest.
We trust that this work will be the means of
inducing many to aid the promoters of these
praiseworthy institutions.

Our Children's Magazine. Partridge and Co.
This excellent little volume is issued by the
Ragged School Union for the children attending
those schools. It is suited, however, to any child,
especially for those of the poorer classes, giving
them sketches of natural history, poetry, stories of
public buildings, lives of the English Kings, little
sermons, girls' pages of instruction in housework,
and numerous woodcuts. Two or three songs,
words and music, are also added, It is a very ac-