The Pulaski citizen. [volume] (Pulaski, Tenn.) 1866-current, 1874-03-05


pense of his ornithOlogy.
: As for st. Basil, who devoted himself
to improving the female mind and heart,
his opinion OF women puts her on the
level with those flies and gnats in the
midst of which st. Macerius passed
forty days and nights, by way of prin-
ishing himself for having killed gnat
that bit him. All the saints of the
church, let us make haste to say, are
not so trenchant and truculent. st.
Charles BoFromeo, than whom no nobler
! gentleman was ever canonized, had the
grace to own that but for the g dsYout
female SEX there would be no use IN
keeping open the churches !; and that
charming Bishop of Geneva, st. Francis
de Sales, whom no calumny could irri-
tate and no slander soil, founded the
Order of the Visitation, for women, out
of his profound respect for their natural
capacity of faith, hope and charity.
These, however, il will be observed,
are modern saints and as we come
down with ages and find men more con-
! siderate, civil and decent in their own
way of life, we meet at once with more
rosy eulogies and more exhaustive criti-
cisms on women. ''God, who repented
for example, "neVer repented of ma
king woman"
g Owoman lovely woman Nature made thee
To temper man we had been brutes without
you.
Angels are painted fair to look like you,
exclaims the pathStic and unfortunate
Otway.
Shakespeare, who saw all things too
/ clearly to make positive statements, or
! lay down general laws of anything, has
a great deal to say about particular wo-
men, but not a single decisive word
about women in the abstract. unless we
choose to-take Hamlet's passions for the
poets philosophy.
Alphonso of CASTLE, who had prac-
tical plan for regenerating mankind by
killing nine out of ten, and was sure
that If he had been consulted about the
making of the world it would have
been better made, disposes. of woman
! in these words She is a human being
who dresses, babbles, and undresses. ="
Rousseau, on the other hand, who
went about the world equally convinced
i of it chaotic condition, and equally
sure chat he conld "put it to rights,
| but was as sensitive as a plucked bird,
and always in hot water, declares that
! 90 women'a are the fairesb half OF erea-
! ton" He is forced, nevertheless, to
admit that sit is women who uniOOse
all the tempests which trouble the
world"
Chancellor Oxenstierne, who found
it easy to govern kingdoms, and bade
his son to go note at Paris chow little
wisdom sufIiced to rule the world,
frankly confessed that " a very little
woman may be very great burden"
Chesterfield, who looked on the whole
of life as a geLtlemanly game of whist,
considered women to be children of
larger growth, who have the faculty of
speech, and sometimes the quality of
wit. g In my whole life," he adds,
however, =" have never known one
woman who had common sense or the
reasoning faculty, or who could either
act or reason consistently for twenty
four hours at time. "
Victor Hugo, who has been at i'm
mense pains to popularlze himself as a
poet with the female sex, and was sad
Lothario In his youth, goes much fur
ther, because he goes much deeper,
than the most malignant saint in the
calendar in his physiology of women.
"a woman, observes this amiable heir
of the Provencal bards, I" a woman is
a highly improved kind of demon"
Casimer Deumas had already uttered
the same thought in another form
/" God may have begun to make woman,
but the serpent completed the work"
Cuias is worse than Alphonso OF Cas-
tile. 90 Woman" snarls this wretch,
{" are not properly TO be included in the
human species. e-#H tt...
Montesqueie was more civil ana more
temperate. " Woman" mildly say the
author of the LettTes Persdnes, :" has
heart of starch"
Moliere, who indeed had no great rea-
son to respect the sex to which the fair
Beiart belonged, thought the "whole
sex created Just to damn the world ;"
but CalderoD, who has shown in La Es-
fyeYa de lSdUiH0 how much Justice he
would do to womanly virtues, admits
that " women are @ dish worthy OF the
gods-when not seasoned by the devil.
Milton. whose dr. matte experience
was more varied than agreeable, inclines
20 the view of Aristotle, and pronounces
woman a g dramatic mistake of nature.
| BalZac, on the contrary, who studied
woman more profoundly than any man
who ever put pen TO paper, and who has
| frightened more women by sudden
| olimpses of their inner selves than any
I father eonfessor ever cOmforted, comes
| To the con tlusion that /" woman is the
most perfect of creatures, and transi-
torial being between the man and the
angel"
De Stendhal, who asked that it should
he inscribed on his tomb T'isSe, AnlO
Scrisse, and who has cFystallzed the
stuff of a hundred novels in his maxims
and reflections dc 2 amour, made up
his mind finally that woman is sim
ply a delicious musical instrument, OF
| which love is the bow, and man the
artist" 1t follows from this simile,
that, as a bad vioiinist will very soon
spoil the best Cremone, it is the men
who are really, after all, responsible
when he womsn get out OF time;
consideration worth pondering, alike
by the Judges of divorce courts and by
| those who have no desire TO make their
acquaintance
Alfred de Musset, whose glorious
genius burned itself out in disappoint-
ment and d5Silatlle, avenges his life upun
] himself by recording his doctrine that
woman is just the prettiest of all
known birds"
/ AIexander Dumas, the younger, with
! whom pulmonary consumption Is the
/ only female religion, as might be ex-
pected, has uttered q great many out
1 raqeous impertinences concerning w0-
men. " Heaven" he exclaims, " IN its
merciful providence, gave no beard %
] women because it knew that they could
not hold their tongues long enough to
7 be ShaNeu.
+" For the sake Of women" observed
| the same individual, fmen dishonor
themselves, ruin themselves, kill them
selves; and in the midst OF this univer-
sal carnage the creature who brings 1t
to pass has only one thought in her
I mind. which is TO decide whether she
shall dress herself 50 as to look like an
umbrella or like a dinner bell J.
Women themselves have not always
been very complimentary to their sex.
Their criticisms on woman indeed point
to the saying that "there is nothing
ixed, no duration, no vitality IN the
sentiments OF women foi each other.
They are mere pret Y bows of ribbon.
J Orestes and Ryindes have no sisters
n Madame Necker, the clever mother
of sflevsrer daughter, was cruelest inner
verdict when she meant to be kind; she
SAYS OF her sex: g Women ill mp the
intervals of conversation and Of life