be no word of objection to this mould for the ideal woman. As things are now, indeed, her lot would not be enviable, unless she were born a sort of mental and moral jelly, and a very mild jelly too. There must be no wine in it, or the spirit would hardly be as amenable as the case requires. Few of our lady friends, we may venture to observe, would be prominent in desiring to become ideals, on these terms; still fewer, perhaps, would furnish the requisite material.

The female character we have indicated enjoys, and very naturally, a popularity as old as Methuselah, perhaps dating as far back as Adam and Eve, if we may believe Milton, who praises "sweet compliance" in woman, and extols headship in man, con amore. But as times change, manners change with them, and the need of a new ideal woman, fitted to our new state of things in the new world, has already begun to be felt. The quotations as to hands, feet, voice, and so forth, remain as before, with, perhaps, a shade more delicacy, even at the expense of health, comfort, and usefulness. But the American man, working with every nerve, muscle, tissue, fibre, and particle in a state of highest tension, under the burning sun of prosperity and the mad typhoon of competition, has no time to be cheered, consoled, or amused. Woman's active duties towards him in those respects are now wholly excused and omitted. Business is first, last, and without end. A wife's voice, even though "silvery" up to the regulation standard, has no music for ears so weary that silence itself, if "eloquent," would be importunate. Even a "clear, ringing laugh" will not be missed. American woman might be stricken with dumbness, and American man would scarcely discover it. beauty is but half prized, for admiration is fatiguing. Dress is important, because it has something to do with "business;" it is thought to prove property, and so helps to make more. As to female grace, according to the standard of the moment it consists solely in repose: rest-restrest first, second, third requisition, now, of the American husband. Only don't talk to him-don't ask him to go out in the evening-don't inquire "the news down town"-don't let the baby cry, or the boys study aloud;-muffle the doorbell at 7 P. M.-have all your hinges and locks well oiled; keep out the mosquitoes -touch the cat softly with your foot if she purrs too loud; and you may easily fill the place of the model American woman of our present time, a transition state let us hope.

Even

We are yet to require and have some

thing else, something better. The old ideal—the purely sentimental one, has gone out of date, and as to the transitional one, there is a nothingness about it that proves its contravention of all the laws of nature and Providence, since nothing was made to be nothing. That it should ever have become customary to praise woman negatively, shows how thoroughly we are sophisticated. "Calling light darkness, and darkness light; putting bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter," is nothing to this larger insult to the order and symmetry of the universe. Shining in the milky way may be very well for stars; but it is poor business for women, who resemble stars only in a few particulars, such as "raining influence," and the like. There has always been a woman starting up here and there, and insisting on being somebody; but these exceptional cases have not been received with hearty goodwill and welcome. Nor do we say they should have been, exceptional cases having always in some degree the effect of monstrosities. The aborigines of San Salvador looked upon a ship, one of the most beautiful and graceful objects, as a hideous winged creature, because they thought it came on an errand of destruction. They saw it through their prejudices. We would not insinuate that a learned woman seems to us thus; but only that the world has seen too few specimens to be able to class her satisfactorily. Men in general view her as a Camanche would a locomotive, should he meet it unawares, whizzing past him on his hunting-ground. The sensation is not agreeable. The Indian might be conscious of a threatened disparagement of his own legs; and men-well, men think it just as well that woman should keep in her own "sphere." (We hope the ladies will give us credit for candor.)

one.

So we are not for learned ladies, as such; but we insist that the Ideal American woman of our day must be one with every faculty cultivated, every power in use. This may seem so obvious as to deserve the name of a truism or platitude, but earnest, practical acceptance would cause a revolution-not a bloody, but a happy The world has seen a great variety of women. There have been, as was just observed, learned ladies; there have also been fashionable ladies and sentimental ladies. There is many a drudging, good soul, who, without the least necessity, is a mere upper servant in her own house, under a mistaken idea of duty; there are also women so very "refined" that in no supposable emergency could they be persuaded to help themselves, or to be of any earthly use to others. We have had delicate women and masculine ones;

"nervous" and "strong-minded" ones; coquettes and prudes; devotees and (pah!) free-thinkers; some too poor-spirited to maintain any place at all, and others sighing, or rather striding, after nothing short of pantaloons and legislation. All these different orders of women are more or less at enmity one with the other; secret dislike or genteel scandal in the well-bred, blazing out into hard words and defamation in the unbred. Every one of them sees her neighbor's deficiencies and feels her own, and no love grows in such disturbed ground. There is no common object; no concert in the attainment of any thing, only rivalry and real isolation under the mask of conventional intercourse. Candid women own this; they confess that there is very little common feeling among them. Men, having regular and combined employment, are bound together at least by professional ties, or esprit de corps; but women are totally without the feeling, and the strength and improvement that belongs to it. It is for want of it that they do so little for the wretched, the unemployed, and the fallen of their own sex They will give months of sewing, and thousands of dollars toward the equipment and support of young men at college, or as missionaries, while destitute women go from their doors unrelieved. Why is this? Because having no combination among themselves, they are instinctively impelled to throw their individual efforts and gifts into the hands of men, who have combination, and can produce results. Look at any large neighborhood or coterie. You may find there a specimen of every class we have named, and more besides, condemned to each other's propinquity by the inexorable laws of time and space; and some, perhaps the best, of them, will be living in seclusion; others in tattling and fluctuating friendship, so called; some in ceaseless householdry, which entitles them to roll up their eyes at others who write sonnets to the moon when they should be darning stockings. What is wanting to bring all these jarring elements into one harmonious circle? A hearty, intelligent, habitual pursuit of knowledge, not pedantic, nor finical, nor sectarian, nor showy, nor by any means sought only in books. Our Ideal Women must be "globed," if we may borrow a word from higher quarters; mind and body cultivated and accomplished, until no duty is too high or too low, no society barren or foreign, no solitude dreary, no crowd dissipating. The American woman being of no class, needs all the powers and qualities that up to our day have been divided among various classes. She must be able not only to

She

grace a splendid costume, but to shape and decorate it with her own hands, if circumstances render such exercise of taste and industry desirable; not only to preside at her dinner table, and be its light and warmth, but to cook the dinner and serve it too, on an emergency, and never feel that she has sacrificed an iota of dignity or a shade of refinement. may read Shakspeare and rock the cradle, and the baby be no whit the worse cared for. If fickle fortune frown, she is by no means to let die any of the graces that adorned her prosperity, if wealth roll in upon her poverty, a contingency which well deserves to be provided for in these United States, she must not scorn or forsake the lowlier mood in which it was sweet to watch and toil for those she loved, but remember that affluence of heart is by no means compensated by affluence of pocket. Why should one power cripple or smother another? Why should accomplishments throw into the shade the useful arts? and why should household skill, the Art of Home, oh, blessedest and finest of all arts! scorn the aid of the acquired powers and graces which dignify and cheer harassing occupations, soothe and elevate the mind, and afford innocent amusement for thoughts and hands, protecting virtue by leaving no vacant, weary hours for vicious wishes?

There is no complaint more common that of the intense dulness of our ordinary society. This is so well understood that no one is surprised at hearing an invitation spoken of as an infliction, and the acceptance of it as a thing to be eluded by any and every social art and fiction. We venture to say that ours is the only country under the sun where this is the case. And the reason is but too obvious; it is, that as a general thing, unless there are people hired to amuse in some way, there is absolutely nothing expected at a social gathering but dress and display, for which not every one has means or inclination. Nobody goes into company intending to contribute in the smallest degree to the pleasure of others, and so the whole thing is vitiated and hollow. There will be many Mrs. Potiphar's balls this winter! Would we might live to see the end of them!

Do we mean, then, to say that American women, as they are, are not accomplished? Let us summon all our courage -nay, all our benevolence, and confess that that is just what we do mean. (We have thrust sticks into a hornet's nest before now, on purpose to pull it down and get at some lovely pears that were growing above.) We do say,-and let our unhappy bachelorhood take the blame if we are

wrong that American ladies, spite of thousand-dollar boarding-schools and immensely mustached teachers of every thing, are not practically furnished forth with the knowledge and skill for which their parents have paid so much; do not carry with them into their married homes, habits which demand the exercise of talent, taste and perseverance, with the single object of pleasing those with whom they live, and making home the centre and natural theatre of their best graces. We do say, and with a deeper sorrow than the subject may seem to some to warrant, that music, dancing, and French are the only accomplishments, technically so called, cultivated to any considerable extent, and that the first of these is so entirely perverted from its divine uses, that no young lady plays in company for the sole purpose of giving pleasure, or without an idea of competition or display. "No young lady!" we hear some indignant voice exclaim; alas! dear reader, have patience-if there be exceptions they are too few to be considered. Ask any splendid singer of your acquaintance to sing an old-fashioned song, one popular twenty or thirty years ago, and not yet "revived" by some musical prodigy in public, and you will be convinced. Ask your daughter to play for your country cousin, and see if she will play any but the most difficult music, such as is mere confusion to uninstructed ears. Request the young lady who sang very sweetly last evening in a company where there were only ordinary performers, to oblige you again to-night, when her rival at Madame -'s has astonished the room. But this is a little aside from our theme. What we ought rather to say is, see how large a proportion of the fifty married ladies of your acquaintance who have had a musical education, play and sing at all, after two or three years' housekeeping. Music is no longer a home accomplishment, a family treasure, a lifelong joy. There is a delusion about it, which an Ideal Woman will see through and live down. But enough.

Dancing is not worth many words. It is, properly, the joyous expression of youthful hilarity and strength, and dies a natural death as soberer hours creep on, and the muscles have enough to do otherwise. Let it take care of itself, under the sweet guidance of delicacy and grace. We have no quarrel with it, so long as it keeps its place.

The study of the French Language is, in most cases, a mere mania of the day, in many a spending of time and money without intelligent end or aim, since it finishes with the school days and never had any intended use as a key to French

literature. If here we seem to make rash assertions again, we desire to be put to a test similar to the one proposed just now. Ask the six most intelligent married ladies of your friends how many French authors they have read in the original since they left school. Would we then discourage the study? Far from it; we would only continue it through life; we would never undertake it without meaning to do so. The only other feasible object of so much toil would be the chance of marrying one of our numerous foreign ambassadors or chargés, who would certainly be made much more respectable in the eyes of people abroad if even their wives had this indispensable competency for the position.

As to drawing, that lovely home-talent, in the exercise of which British ladies so generally excel, how small a proportion of ours who know any thing about it! A lady artist is almost a lusus naturæ among us, and even a tolerable skill in sketching from nature is extremely rare. Of all the educated American women we know, and that includes a goodly number, encountered in the course of our wanderings, there are not six who can make a drawing they are willing or ought to be willing to show. Why is this? Let us not enter on the ungracious exposition. Let the ladies answer the question for themselves.

We have said enough about what are popularly called accomplishments, and shall pursue the topic no further at present. But our Ideal American Woman is but half indicated as yet. We have implied her outline by contrast and comparison; let us now be a little more direct. Having confessed that neither the grub nor the butterfly is to our taste, we would further observe that an enlightened and elegant woman gives her own character to her occupations. As she feels, believes and is, so will her work be, in kitchen or parlor. That shrewd beauty, Lady Mary Wortley Montague, a duke's daughter, saw this and said it, a hundred years ago. "Meubler une chambre," she says, (we quote from memory,) "ce n'est pas meubler une chambre; c'est orner un endroit où j'attends mon ami. Ordonner un souper," &c. The thing is what we

make it.

One of the great Dutch painters represents the Holy Family after a courageous fashion; Joseph planing at a carpenter's bench, with shavings falling all about him; Mary, with a basket of family mending, plying the needle industriously; and the Saviour, a youth of fourteen, meekly sweeping the floor with a broom. More could hardly have been done for the dignity of household labor.

We shall, therefore, as we hope, not shock any body by saying that, to our thinking, our ladies of fortune show bad taste by their studious avoidance of those household occupations which their sisters without fortune are in duty bound to practise daily. This brings these occupations-necessary for the comfort and happiness of every human family, from the palace to the hut, and therefore proper objects to every one having a human heart and sympathies-into disrepute and contempt. We contend that domesticity is the honor and glory of a woman, whatever her fortune and abilities; and that when she performs all its duties by means of hirelings, she is untrue to herself and her birthright. Nature's revenge is severe enough, for, the loss of real pleasure and interest is incalculable, and there is no computing the ennui, inanity, and illhealth that come of the error. But the punishment is seldom recognized as such, certain as it is. The lady becomes "nervous," and accuses her cruel stars; or "dyspeptic," and talks of her stomach till she turns every one's else; or consumptive, and goes down to the grave in the prime of life by what is called a "mysterious dispensation." But she never believes, nor can you persuade her, that the dulness and monotony of an objectless and wasted life has any thing to do with these sad results. She would laugh at you, if she could yet laugh, should you tell her that the woman who, with no choice in the matter flies from the needle to the churn, from the broom to the pie-board, and from putting the children to bed to knitting stockings for them, is far happier and better off, and would be still more blessed if, in addition, she had the cultivation, the taste, and the abundant means thrown away upon her idle sister, without losing her own activity and the habit of various employment.

"Want of time" is much talked of, as if from the shortness of life we could wisely attempt but little. But this is a great error. The complaint is oftenest made by the idle and inefficient. It has been proved a thousand times that those who have most to do have the most effective leisure-i.e., that they are the people to apply to if you need aid unexpectedly. Our working hours are carefully reckoned by the clock, those that slip by unprofitably do so unrecorded. There is time for the highest cultivation and the highest usefulness; those who doubt it accuse Providence, as if powers were meant to run to waste. The languor of too much rest is not repose but imbecility; the intervals of intense action are sweet and

full of life and promise. The excitements of a true woman's life, under favorable circumstances, are gentle, but they are incessant. She has no occasion for severe labor, she has no excuse for wilful idleness. Our ideal woman will not think idleness lady-like.

We

The Ideal American Woman-would that her time were come!-will govern her children, which certainly the American woman of to-day does not. We will venture to say that so many utterly uncurbed children are not to be found any where as in the United States; perfect nuisances to every body who is unhappy enough to come in contact with them-an expression perhaps suggested by the fact that we are still black and blue from the kicks of a little boy whom his mamma very complacently allowed to assault us repeatedly during a long stage-ride this last summer. should perhaps have been more indignant if the good lady had not been kept in countenance by all the American mothers we encountered during a pretty long tour. It is hardly possible to exaggerate in describing the behavior of American children to their parents, their nurses, their unhappy teachers, and why is this so little noticed? In conversation it is a never-failing topic, especially among travellers, who experience its effects in every steamer, car, and carriage. Ask our teachers to what extent parents aid them in the government of children. If they dare, they will tell you sad stories.

Now, begging pardon of all the dear, good women of our acquaintance who allow their children to treat them with disrespect, there is pitiable weakness in this, and our ideal woman will put it to shame by the firmness with which she will insist on her rights, and the tenderness with which she will grant her children theirs. She will not, for the sake of seeming amiable, let them grow up in unchecked insolence, which, in the end, she is as unwilling to bear as other people. She will neither be the tyrant of her children, nor allow them to lord it over her; she will not harass them by incessant governing, nor permit them to despise proper restraints. We are not writing a treatise on education, so we forbear further comment. What we have written we have written, and we shall be truly glad to be controverted.

On the whole, we may as well rest our case for the present, reserving for a future day a wider exposition of our notion of the "Whole Duty of Woman," in completing the portrait of the Ideal Woman of our time and country.

NOT

OT what Shakspere might, could, would, or should have written, but what he did write, is the only admissible object of the labors of his editors and verbal critics. In a previous paper, we took the position that the only source of any authority for the text of Shakspere is in the original folio, which was published in 1623 by his friends, fellow-actors, and business partners: that when that text is utterly incomprehensible from the typographical errors which deform it, and then only, we should seek emendations: that those emendations should be first looked for in the quartos, because they were contemporaneous with Shakspere: that only such corrupted passages as the quartos do not make clear are proper subjects for the exercise of conjecture; and that such of these as conjecture does not amend, in a manner at once consistent with the context, with common sense, and with the language and customs of Shakspere's day, should be allowed to stand untouched; because the experience of a century and a half has taught us that when the original text seems incomprehensible, the difficulty may possibly be with ourselves; but chiefly because it is better to have in the works of Shakspere an obscure text which may be Shakspere's, than one which is clear, but with the light of another mind than his.

With regard to conjectural or arbitrary emendations we adopted the decision of the judicious Malone, that all are arbitrary which are "made at the will and pleasure of the conjecturer, and without any authority," and that all readings "not authorized by authentic copies, printed or manuscript, stand on the same footing, and are to be judged of by their reasonableness or probability." The soundness of all these positions is self-evident; but we established it by an examination of the history of Shakspere's text from its first publication to the present day.

With regard to the MS. corrections in Mr. Collier's copy of the second folio, an overwhelming weight of internal evidence compelled the conclusion that they have not the least shadow of authority, but are the fruits of arbitrary conjecture, and made not earlier than about 1670; at which time speculative emendation could

King Henry IV., Part I., Act II, Sc. 3. have no advantages which it does not possess at the present day, except in the possible survival of a few modes of expression which have since become obsolete; and this the MS. corrections, by the numerous evidences which they furnish that the maker or makers of them did not understand phrases and words which are perfectly understood by English scholars of the present day, prove to have been no advantage at all. But though these MS. corrections have no semblance of authority, and though at least one thousand and thirteen, out of the one thousand three hundred and three, are unworthy of a moment's further consideration, still, to repeat the words of our previous article, "the discovery of this corrected folio will prove to be of material service to the text of Shakspere." Its corrections, nevertheless, are to receive only the consideration due to them as arbitrary and conjectural, and must be "judged of by their reasonableness and probability." With the thousand and thirteen, new and old, before mentioned, we have of course nothing further to do. Of the remaining two hundred and ninety, one hundred and seventy-three have been a part of the received text for more than a quarter of a century; and these obviously present no claims for present examination. But in the one hundred and seventeen still undisposed of, there are a few which assert at once an unquestionable claim to be received into the text, and many which are at least worthy of careful consideration before they are rejected. We propose to glance at the inherent merits of the more important of the latter number-the one hundred and seventeen.

TEMPEST.

The only plausible correction proposed in this play is of a passage in Act V., Sc. 1, which stands thus in the original folio: * "His Mother was a Witch, and one so strong That could controle the Moone; make flowes and ebs, And deale in her command, without her power."

The MS. corrector changed "without her power," to "with all her power," an alteration which appears more than plausible, until we recollect that 'power' is used for 'legitimate authority' to this day. Thus, we say that an officer 'exceeded his powers.' Mr. Charles Knight