than quizzer or quizzing, should have been mentioned here, had they not been, beyond a doubt, words of frequent use in the mouths of detractors, and common weapons in the mean, useless, mischievous, unintellectual, heartless, and never-ending warfare of detraction.

I must now add in recapitulation, that I have given the Vocabulary of Detraction, or words used by detractors; and that I have found it useful to watch the effect of my own words and tones on myself, in speaking of others.

CHAPTER XII.

ON SOME OF THE MOST PROMINENT SUBJECTS OF DETRACTION, AUTHORESSES, BLUE-STOCKINGS, MEDICAL MEN, CONVERTS TO SERIOUS RELIGION.

HAVING now described the different classes of detractors and their vocabulary, I shall point out some of the most prominent OBJECTS OF DETRACTION; and though all persons who venture from the safe circles of private life into public competition, are liable to provoke envy and severity of observation, still, I believe that AUTHORESSES and BLUE-STOCKINGS are amongst the most favourite subjects of detraction in the private circles in which they move. I shall endeavour to pass as lightly as possible over the former subject, as I feel I am treading on difficult and dangerous ground; yet I must hazard a few observations.

An authoress I am, and must remain so; but, unlike the fox in the fable, who having lost his tail endeavoured to persuade his brother foxes to cut off theirs, on the false plea that he had found this loss a great convenience, I must frankly declare that had I known the pains and dangers which awaited me when I bec

a public authoress, nothing but a strong sense of duty, or the positive want of bread, could have induced me to encounter them.

"Never," said a highly-gifted though misguided French woman of mournful celebrity, "never had I the slightest intention of becoming an author. I perceived very early in life, that a woman who gained this title lost a great deal more than she acquired; men do not love her and women criticise: if her works be bad, she is ridiculed, and not without reason; if good, her right to them is disputed." I believe what she has here stated, to be a general rule, to which there are few exceptions. And what follows from the same enlightened mind, I would commend to the attention of those women of talents, who as yet, though strongly tempted, may not have ventured into the arena of public authorship. "Happy in having it in their power to improve their understanding, women are not bound to communicate what they acquire; what could they say that others do not know better than they? Their sex and their duties keep them equally under a veil, where they more certainly find happiness than in the midst of the illusions which lead them to show themselves.

Illu

sions indeed! if the object of the female writer be to increase her social happiness; for in no possible way can an increase of that be the result of her authorship.

If her object be to maintain the beloved relations dependent on her by the exertion of her pen, even then, though a sense of duty well fill

ed, may shed peace upon her pillow, she must work early and late, against her inclination as much as with it, and after all, gain only a hardearned and usually a scanty maintenance; and if fame be consciously or unconsciously the end in view, she may find, as I have before observed, that she has purchased it at the expense of peace. She has avowed a wish, and perhaps disdisplayed an ability, to obtain distinction, which have lifted her above the bounded sphere in which she moved; and neither the success nor the attempt are ever entirely forgotten or forgiven: and what degree of fame can make either man or woman amends for any curtailment of the safe and tender affection that exists for them in the bosom of their family and the scenes of their youth? And have not many of both sexes who have been called into public competition, been made to feel that their wreaths are combined of thorns as well as laurels, and that when they sought public distinction, they endangered their private peace?

How admirably has that charming writer, Felicia Hemans, expressed the comparative emptiness of woman's fame especially, and its want of power to confer happiness, in the concluding lines of her CORINNA AT THE

CAPITOL.

"Crown'd of Rome, O! art thou not
Happy in that glorious lot?

Happier, happier far, than thou,

With the laurel on thy brow,

She that makes the humble hearth

Happy, but to one on earth."

And again in her admirable Records of Woman, at the conclusion of her Joan of Arc in Rheims:

"Bought alone, by gifts beyond all price,
The trusting heart's repose, the Paradise,
Of home, with all its loves, doth fate allow
The crown of glory unto woman's brow."

But if the female writer who tries to amuse, and hopes to insinuate some serious moral truths through the medium of entertainment, be permitted to pass unavoided and unhated to her grave, it is far otherwise with those who endeavour to teach others; those who venture to drag besetting sins into the light of day, to call things by the right name, to denominate permitted worldly policy, the spirit and practice of lying, and to point out in all their deformity the obliquities of temper.

The author, but more especially the authoress, who presumes to do this, must prepare to be disliked, cavilled at, and depreciated; must be satisfied to be judged, without being even read through; must submit to be misquoted and misrepresented; and be deeply thankful, if she can find consolation under the trial inflicted, in the consciousness of having written from what she deemed the requirings of painful duty to her fellow creatures, and that the labours which have given her such mingled feelings of satisfaction and suffering, have bestowed unmixed pleasure on one whom she tenderly loved, and have also beguiled her