freedom and frolics, but he said but little to aid her in the restraints necessary to refinement. But in his essay on Love, Lord Bacon embodies the subject in a single sentence :-"Nuptial love maketh mankind; friendly love perfecteth it; but wanton love corrupteth and embaseth it."

But to conclude this chapter: If one would solve the mystery of woman's power he must be able first to measure the vast domain of love that is guarded by the countless and sleepless eyes of jealousy. As used in the Bible, this word denotes godly indignation against the diversion of love and service from their proper objects. In its dire perversions, jealousy has been denominated by the poets," a hag," 99.66 a monster," "an infernal fury," "a hell," "the pain of pains." With unsurpassed power and completeness, Shakespeare in Othello, has delineated this passion in its frightful intensity, and bitter miseries. His visions of light and darkness, of heaven and hell, of happiness and misery, in close proximity, are made startling realities. Othello is placed upon the verge of each condition to contemplate the deep and narrow chasm that divides the heaven which he can see, from "the spite of hell," which he cannot imagine. Without the possession of his wife in her purity, he impiously bewails life as a cruel delusion, and invokes oblivion as comparative bliss. In the scale of jealous love the weight of a single woman in her faithfulness is greater than God and heaven, the world and the universe. These are the extremes of exist

ence, and comprehend all the relations of life.

Jealousy has been called a disease, a malady of the mind. This is an error. It is confounding the abuse of the passion with its exalted objects. It is enumerated by naturalists as one of the instincts of Birds and Animals, and the history of its manifestations in works on Zoölogy and Ornithology is highly interesting and instructive. It illustrates the law upon which the continuance of the different species mainly depend. The ancients recognized it in their Mythology, and many of the cruel and wonderful achievements of the gods were instigated by its irresistible activity. When interpreted, however, by philosophy and religion, it is found to be an invulnerable shield to protect the sexes in their highest purity and dignity. It is seen to be the frenzy of all the passions united into one to guard in woman what belongs to man, and in man what belongs to woman. It is the spirit of love in its purity, of honor in its integrity, and of justice in its conceded rights. It is the sentinel of home consecrated by the loyalty of the sexes; the guardian of happiness made perfect by the constant observance of the natural laws. It lovingly confides without disguise, and nobly concedes freedom without meanness. What possession is to property, jealousy is to the soul. It grasps its own. All the faculties and instincts of mind have their appointed functions. These are governed by unalterable laws. Every faculty, sentiment and propensity, has each its own indestructible sphere in nature, and though they may be often violated,

they never can be abrogated. They all have a voice in jealousy. Man and woman have a joint existence. Whatever they think or do, should be for the good of both. Whatever they propose or desire, should be enjoyed together. Whatever they possess should be alike protected by the same laws. In this joint existence inhere all the duties, rights and privileges of life. The best good of one, is the best good of all. Human happiness, like the globe, is divided into two hemispheres, one for man and one for woman; but the sphere is complete only when both are united.

It may be asked:-What has the subject of woman, to do with democ racy? Much. More than can be written. As daughter, maiden, sister, lover, wife and mother,―numbering one-half of the human family; the peerless beauty of creation, the heart of affection, the soul of home; the first teacher of children, the life companion of man, the joyous refiner of society, woman stands at the fountain-head of all human joys, blessings and happiness. The gushing streams from this inexhaustible fountain are made pure by her filtering hand, and beauteous by the magic eloquence of her smiles and beaming eyes. Without her, democracy could have no beginning, and with her, democracy can have no end. God has so blended. her with man in the paths of love and duty, that both would be lost if one were to try the journey of life without the other.

But enough of prose. This subject belongs to the poet. Let TENNYSON close the chapter on woman:

He gain in sweetness and in moral height,

Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world;
She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care:

More, as the double-natured poet, each:

Till at the last she set herself to man,

Like perfect music unto noble words;

And so these twain upon the skirts of Time,

Sit side by side, full-summ'd in all their powers,

Dispensing harvest, sowing the to-be,
Self-reverent each, and reverencing each,

Distinct in individualities,

But like each other e'en as those we love.

Then comes the statelier Eden back to men,

Then reign the world's great bridals, chaste and calm;

Then springs the crowning race of human-kind!"

As the Duchess of Marlborough was a most prominent and active personage in the reign of Queen Anne, it is proper that some further attention should be given to the consideration of her character.

THE DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH.

The Duchess of Marlborough is entitled to some defence against the many aspersions cast upon her temper as a woman. History has not done her full justice. Horace Walpole speaks of her experience as of "sixty years of arrogance." The confidence of a superior judgment and of knowledge is not arrogance. If she had been a man, and had uttered the same language, the same opinions, the same sentiments, and urged them with the same energies, which all agree in attributing to her, she would have been numbered among the ablest statesmen of her time. A woman cannot use the manly language of a statesman, without misapprehension and disadvantage. Boldness is called insolence, promptness petulance, and impatience anger. According to Swift, the Duchess was the victim of "three furies which reigned in her breast, the most mortal of all softer passions, which were, sordid avarice, disdainful pride, and ungovernable rage." It was very difficult for Swift to see merit in political opponents. He would be slow to see virtue in frugal ambition, to discover noble aspirations in pride, or to discriminate between ungodly anger and righteous indignation. That the Duchess was a good manager of property, and had a commendable ambition to increase it with distinct motives to its uses;1 that she had great pride, in harmony with other faculties, and did not disguise it in all, her plans and purposes; that she had strong and active passions, which were easily and naturally excited under circumstances sufficient fully to explain and justify their unrestrained manifestation, no one, probably, acquainted with her history, would be disposed to doubt. But, with a husband, such as Lord Marlborough, the greatest character of the age; with an early position of influence within the circles of royalty, and of the courts of Europe; with an almost unlimited power of patronage, and unsurpassed influence which personal beauty ever commands;2 with an

1 The Duchess of Marlborough, who, of all her class, was the first to detect the fallacy of the South Sea Bubble. When the value of the stock rose to an unprecedented height, and the public were more than ever infatuated by false hopes, she saved her husband and her family from ruin, not only by her foresight but by her firmness. She left a legacy of ten thousand

pounds to Wm. Pitt, afterwards Lord Chatham, for the noble defence he made in support of the laws of England, and to prevent the ruin of his country.-Mrs. Thomson's Memoirs, VOL. II, pp. 311, 504.

2 Beautiful according to the opinion of her contemporaries, her beauty indeed appears in the portraits painted in her bloom of youth, to have been commanding as well as interest

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accurate knowledge of human nature, and keen perceptions of its follies and weaknesses, and of the necessary means to meet and master them; with a comprehensive judgment of the wants of a great nation, and of its limited and uncertain means of supplying them,-nothing less than an energetic action, a display of sentiments corresponding with high and pure motives, an ambitious spirit and lofty pride-would have been natural, or equal to the emergencies of her individuality. "Sordid avarice," is a mean spirit, with no motives beyond itself; "disdainful pride," is the insolence of vanity, and senseless; and "ungovernable rage," indicates the want of mind, the want of judgment. Such opinions are not applicable to the Duchess of Marlborough, whose marked qualities were almost of an opposite nature. Her love of property was mainly in view of its uses; her pride was a natural consciousness of her own great powers and cherished wishes; and her rage, but an undisguised expression of indignation at culpable wrong, or perhaps an inconsiderate contempt of unaccountable stupidity. She was called "a good hater," but no one accused her of liking what was bad, or of hating what was good. This quality was valued by Dr. Johnson as an evidence of principle. She was said to have been a tyrant over Anne, and her enemies accused her of ingratitude, arrogance and intrigue. The stream of such qualities is more likely to flow from the lesser to the greater capacity. But, if such charges were sustained by facts, in any degree, it could be asserted without hesitation, that no one of her time and standing, was more innocent of their meaning, or less chargeable with their application.2

It cannot be denied, however, that her participation in public affairs had

ing. Her figure is asserted to have been peculiarly fine, and her countenance was set off by a profusion of fair hair, which she is said to have preserved without its changing color, even at an advanced age, by the use of honey-water. Several years after she had become a grandmother, the freshness of her lovely complexion, and her unfaded attractions, caused her, even in the midst of four daughters, each distinguished for personal charms, to be pre-eminent among those celebrated and high-bred belles."-The Life of Colley Cibber.

1 She evidently understood her own peculiarities. In a letter to Mr. Schrope, she says," I am very glad that you like what I am doing, and though you seem to laugh at my having vapours, I cannot help thinking you have them sometimes your

self, though you don't think it manly to complain. As I am of the simple sex, I say what I think without any disguise; and I pity you very much for what a man of sense and honesty must suffer from those sort of vermin, which I have told you I hate, and always avoid."

2 It was more her judgment, than her pride or passion, that influenced her to exclude the Tories, as much as possible, from the presence of the Queen. In explaining her personal hostility to Lord Rochester, she declares "that she could have forgiven his lordship's ill-treatment of herself if she had thought that he had sought to promote the Queen's true interest. But the gibberish of that party," alluding to the Tory party, "about non-resistance, and passive obedience, and hereditary right, I

a tendency, in some degree, to change the delicacy and grace that give charms to woman into ruder habits of thought and action. This was her sacrifice or misfortune, and was the natural consequence of her constant and familiar intercourse with public men and on business in which her husband was deeply concerned, and which did not permit the exercise of those refining qualities so necessary to the perfection of character in the true woman, the wife and the mother. It proved to be her exalted mission and for which no one had more appropriate endowments, to represent the great principles of democracy under extraordinary tests and difficulties-and in a period marked by the unbounded schemes of an unprincipled party and reckless ambition. No man could have filled her place. She was the cherished bosom companion of royalty, a Tory Queen, whose chief counsellor was the gifted and brilliant Bolingbroke, the bright hope of Toryism itself. She was the wife and joy of the Great Duke of Marlborough who held in his hands the turning destiny of nations. Who, while he was moving the mighty armies of the Grand Alliance to establish peace and justice in Europe, and awake to the ready means of triumph in the field and cabinet abroad,-was blindly and confidently looking for aid and support from a Tory government at home. Who, but a loving and beautiful wife, nerved and elevated by "the pride of purity"-could teach the hardy soldier the mysteries of party and statesmanship against the influences of example and education? With no annoying apprehensions of ignorance or of doubt, and armed with the simple but mighty convictions and appliances of truth and duty,-she approached the outward forms and insignia of greatness with an instinctive courage and an unerring foresight that only can be found in that "desire of fame where justice gives the laurel." She demonstrated the immeasurable difference in woman between the prerogatives of royalty moved by the influences of error, and of the intellect and heart armed with the power of truth. With skill and wise discrimination she displayed the instructive contrast between the minds of a democratic woman and a Tory statesman. And, by the sway of deep affection and persistent reason,—she converted the capacious mind of the greatest military hero of the world from the delusions of toryism to the privileges of democracy.

could not think it foreboded any good to my mistress, whose title rested on a different foundation."-Conduct, p. 132. In another place she plainly admits, "I did speak very freely and very frequently to Her Majesty upon the subject of Whig and Tory, according to my conception of their different views and principles." This was counsel, not tyranny. In her last bitter inter

view with the Queen she boldly demanded to know the charges against her, and their authors. The Queen would give no answer. The Duchess gives an account of it in her own language, and says, "I shall make no comment upon it. Yet," she adds with magnanimity, "the Queen always meant well, however much soever she may be blinded or misguided."