The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1839-06-21 00:00:00

BY LADY LYTTON BULWER.

FEMALE MARTYRS.—Oh ! how many uncanonised mar-
tyrs there are in every day domestic life, hourly warring both
with the flesh and the spirit, and literally taking up the cross
daily : and this must ever be the case so long as men continue
to enforce the laws of God grammatically, thereby assuming
a wide difference between the masculine and the feminine,
which is nowhere to be found in the text. C'est une triste
metier que cnlie de femme, says the French proverb, and it
says truly. In society the worst conducted women generally
fare the best, because their provocations to misconduct are
often most humanely and charitably allowed, while the really
virtuous almost invariably find coolness andinsensibility, or
want of temptation, the only merits conceded to them.
COMPARISON.—There was in her manner a kindness and
cordiality which, when united with perfect good breeding,
enhances the effect of the latter, just as much as a warm
background throws out and gives a tone to the most finished
picture.
AN ADMONITION.—Let a man beware how he forms a
friendship for a married woman, whose first feelings towards
her is admiration, and his next compassion !
EFFECTS OF ILL TREATMENT IN A WOMAN.—A woman
may be so brutalised, and subdued by ill treatment from the
one who should be the last in the world to be guilty of such
inhumanity towards her, as to become grateful for the civility
of a sweep who movrs out of her way In the street.
WHY IS RELIGION OUR RESOURCE IN AFFLICTION ?
Alas ! alas ! Why is it that so many of us must be rejected
of earth, ere we can think of heaven ? Why is it that reli-
gion is so often resorted to as an elixir for worldly disappoint-
ments ? Why is it that we follow the example of the hea-
then Agrippa, who, when Augustus refused to accept of the
dedication of the Pantheon, then, and not till then, conse-
crated it to all the Gods of Olympus ? What a pantheon is
the human heart ! rejected by one, only to be filled with in-
numerable, still vainer idols ; and at last, perhaps, in the best
stage, mistaking the gorgeous and poetical forms ; the Ca-
tholicism of the passions, for the pure and undefiled Chris-
tianity of the soul.

A PROFESSION.—He is the mostpromisiny young man of
the—of his age, for his promise and professions are bound-
less; but if you only wanted him to walk across the street,
he would fail you. These sort of professors are to the moral
world what Bahr-bella-ma, the waterless sea of the Lybian
Dessert, is to the geological one, which has all the appearance
of a large ocean, without containing a single drop of water ;
they want nothing but reality to satisfy one.
LIBERAL POLICY.—Your true liberal deals with the peo-
ple, as Charles XI I. did with the Rusgians : under the guise
of protection and redress he uses all his dexterity and adroit-
ness, to turn their own arms against them, and instruct him
how to become their conqueror ; when too late they find
their mistake, in exchanging the harmless inertness of a King
Log for the active destructiveness of a King Stork.
TALENTS OF WOMEN.—Clever men have a thousand ways
of making their talents available—science, politics, law, war,
literature, all are open to them ; but a woman has but one
sphere wherein to employ her talents—society. It may be
urged that literature is generally open to them, as to the other
sex. Not so ; for, generally speaking, women have either
fathers, brothers, or husbands, who would shrink from having
an authoress for a daughter, sister, or wife ; and the reason
is obvious—it arises from a fear that they might either dis-
grace or distinguish themselves—two results equally dis-
tasteful to the pride of man.
THE FIRST LOVE LETTER.—What a mysterious feeling
is that which we experience upon beholding, for the first
time, the writing of the person we love, addressed to our-
selves ! However commonplace the subject and words may
be, yet, to us, they have a meaning and a mystery which the
same words never had before, and never will again. They
are looked upon again and again, in every possible direction;
we long to discover if our own names are written more clearly
and tremblingly than the rest, and in either case our hearts
are satisfied with the omen. Even the paper is scrutinised
to the very edges, as though 'we had never seen a sheet of
paper before, or as if that- sheet of paper must of necessity
be different or superior to any thathad been previously made;
like characters traced in, milk, which are weak and invisible
till exposed to the heat of the fire, each time we gaze on this
mysterious paper the warmth of our imagination brings out
a force and meaninc, that was imperceptible before.
A CAUTlON.—Afounded pride is a necromancer that con-
verts the strongest love, and the strongest and most impla-
cable hate ; let no man, therefore, be surprised, when he has
shapened a woman's heart on the whetstone of insult, if it
become a two-edged sword, and is pointed against himself.
MINOR ANNOYANCES.—It is the petty envyings, the low
hypocrisies, and the smallest deceptions—in short, the in-
sects of life that sting and irritate one out of a healthy equa-
nimity of mind. For every calamity brings with it a cer-
tain degree of dignity sufficient for its support ; to say no-
thing of their being of rare occurrence; and if one might be
allowed to choose one's own misfortune, I think there are
few, if any, who would not prefer being torn to pieces by a
lion, to being stung to death by gnats.
A FACT.—The economy of fathers and sons has always to
be atoned for by the economy, privation, and self-denials of
mothers and daughters.
DEPRIVATION BY MEN OF THE INTELLECT OF WOMEN.
—Englishmen politely banish rational conversation in female
society, as beingbeyond the comprehension of their protem-
pore companions ; and at twenty years the generality of
grown persons invariably spoke to children as if they thought
them fools, and thus often made them that which they had
supposed them, the same effect from the same cause (despite
the march of intellect) may sometimes be produced upon
adults now. If a woman ventures to evince any esprit de
corps, and in defence of the depreciated intellects of her sex,
triumphantly brings forward the names of an Edgeworth, a
De Steel, a More, a Carter, a Martineau, a Gore. &c., some
supercilious pedant of the other sex constantly tries to silence
her by a contemptuous smile, and an " all very clever, cer-
tainly, but women want that profundity which must ever pre-
vent their advancing to any eminence in science."