The Mt. Sterling advocate. (Mt. Sterling, Ky.) 1890-current, 1891-06-16

safely apply 1t to our present subjec
Woman, as the whole machinery G
her being is more delicate aud NIGEL
adjusted than that of man, is likewis
the more sensitive to disarrangement
and more apt to show in immediat
and essential changes, the introduc
ton into her nature of each drop of
new ingredient. Should we see he
what we would have her. we SHOULD
seek her descent from those type
where there is at least grossness o
character and dizziness of sensibility
where there is fortitude but no
roughness strength, but not coarse
ness; and warmth and love and grace
and humility. speak not of an ordi
nary ideal, but of what / believe to bC
an exaltad reality and all that blood
can produce, and time and condition
round and complete, must aid me, if
explain on any reasonable ground Of
cause and effect, what / take to be the
unquestionable supremacy of the
female sex of the South.
1t is then with peculiar pleasure
that we find in the geneology of the
women of the South the seeds of her
development. The South was first
settled by the loyal subjects of Great
Britain and the Huguonots of France
and with little other inter- mixture,
the Southern people have survived
until to-day. l cannot say what i'm
press we have gained from the domin-
ion of Spain, once extended over a
large portion of the South; but it is
not impossible that our our people
have absorbed something Of the tradi-
tiOns and habits, something of that
soft Castilian gaicty, which may be
supposed to have come with Spanish
contact. But wherein could one ex-
pect to find more delightful combi-
nation of all qualities that add to
woman's charms than might result
from the union of the hearted,
dauntless, magnanimous and self
respecting sons of English Cavaliers,
and the warm, impulsive, sincere,
gracious, highly-strung, but submits
sive daughters of French Huguenots.
In the genial soil of the Atlantic
slope this lovely flower grew and bios
sou,oG xith ever increasing lovliness.
The rough surroundings of the first
settlements added no little to the
hardness of its growth and the dig
nifty of its appearance but did not
subdue that inbred refinement of
soul, and simplicity of heart, that gem
tleness Of bearing and fidelity to sex,
transmitted from an aristocratic
birth, and sustained by that true
nobility of character, which even in
the hour Of hardship, of solitude, or of
temptation, finds in itself its own best
protector.
1t is remarkable how, amidst the
cotton fields of Georgia, and the to-
bacco plantations of Virginia, there
existed even III the earliest days that
distinctive and peculiar home life
which gained for itself an honorable
place in the plots Of foreign roman
cists. Until the present day the South
has uniformly been the home of those
heroines of English writers who have
deigned to draw their characters from
the Western world, and some of the
highest delincations Of the Southern
womah-eVen if not the most liter
ally true to life-are to be found in
the creations of Thackeray, ofTrollope,
or Walter Scott; the las of whom, ii
is said, drew his Rebecca of
"Ivanhoe," from a prototype no less
beautiful, in our own native State.
1t is not my purpose TO draw an invid-
ious comparison with the women of
the North; but it is not the highest
compliment, that the most elevated
and critical of British novelists should
have expended their grace, their
pathos, all their force of idealization,
on the woman of the South
while the highly-finishcd, luxu-
riously endowed, and deliberately ed
ucated girl of Northern and Eastern
centres should have found a place
only in the pages of the humorist, or
with the acute and mcrciless satirist of
empty forms and hollow distinctions
Through the rotations ofcivilization
in the South, from pioneer to planter,
we find no conditions adverse to the
best development of the female char
acter; and in the latter time we see
many positive causes why it should
excel. The social life in the South be-
fore the war was intimately connected
with the cultivation of the soil. The
society was that of broad fields and
limited intercourse. Each manor the
centre of a wide domain, and sur