ΤΟ NO ONE NOBODY, Esq., OF NO HALL, NOWHERE. DEAR SIR,-In dedicating these volumes to you, I acquit myself of a debt of gratitude to the only man whose integrity I have found unimpeachable, and whose friendship I have proved unvarying. Among the most deserving of my own sex I have, in many instances, found sincere and unchanging affection, united with those highest and rarest virtues, which, from adorning, reconcile us to human nature, though truth compels me to acknowledge that I have known others whose deep-rooted selfishness, puerile vanity, and vacillating weakness of character proved them to be "nature's worst anomalies"-masculine women! In enumerating the catalogue of your virtues, you cannot tax me with that servility of flattery which you are the only man in the world who would disdain. Since every one is aware it has even passed into a proverb, that Nobody is perfection. In your literary career you have neither evinced nor experienced envy; but then it is acknowledged on all sides that your WQR 19 FEB'36 gains excel that of Shakspeare, Milton, Byron, Bacon, Locke, Scott, and Moore; your learning exceeds that of Bayle, and your science that of Newton. In patriotism you go beyond the heroes of ancient Rome, and you are the only person whose politics would bear to be analyzed by the most chymical scrutiny. Yet here you have shared the lot of humanity and have been the victim of calumny; as it is only a short time ago that your friends, the Whigs, accused you of anticipating Lord Durham's speech, and sending it to the Times. The world, however, did not attach the slightest credence to the accusation; yet, with unceasing fidelity, you, and you only, continue to believe the Whigs honest! Your domestic virtues, if possible, exceed your public ones; you are an exemplary husband, and such a father! and with a generosity truly unparalleled, take upon yourself all the blame of all the mischief done in my house. Generally speaking, Folly's cap and bells are to be found as often, if not oftener, on the hoary head of age, as on the Hyperian curls of youth; but you are an exception, for you are the only man whom "flattery fools not" or interest does not warp; ay, even the small paltry interest of a dinner, a speech, a paragraph in a newspaper, or a tabouret in a demoralized and demoralizing coterie. "Such divinity doth hedge" the vices of men, that no man cares to expose or interfere with those of another; the protecting laws for infamy which them selves have made, they must not, of course, infringe, for, as Claudian truly says, "Patere legem quam ipse tulisti, Incommune jubes siquid censes ve tenendum, Therefore is it that whatever the injuries, outrages, and persecutions of we women may be, men invariably, whether from cowardice, coldness, craft, caution, self-interest, or selfishness, shrink from all interference in our legitimate ill-treatment; and, mark my words, dear sir, Sergeant Talfourd's Custody of Infants' Bill will never pass, for he is only likely to have your assistance, and with regard to our sex, men are members of nature's inquisition, whose profligacy can only flourish and be protected by keeping the instruments of torture in their own hands. As far back as 732, the cavalry of the Arabians, like that of their ancestors, the Parthians, was extremely formidable, and the Franks (not M. P.'s), whose armies were composed solely of infantry, found it difficult to resist the attacks of so versatile an enemy, or even to derive any permanent advantage from success. So it is with us women; our enemy is so versatile, consisting of law, science, and might, that we can only fight after the Parthian fashion, throw down our arrows, and fly; all our efforts for justice or redress must be unavailing, till, as a sex, we feel for and defend ourselves. Abstract and unorganized efforts never have and never will achieve a victory; to our individual struggles men may still answer like the fox in the fable, when the cat boasted her superior skill: "Tu prétends être fort habile, En sais tu tant que moi? J'ai cents ruses au sac, And their one trick, worth one thousand, is power. Knowing, dear sir, that you are always more busy than any one else, I will not trespass longer on your valuable time than to assure you that I am, and ever shall be, Your devoted admirer And much obliged servant, THE AUTHOR. CHEVELEY; OR, THE MAN OF HONOUR. CHAPTER I. "With all its sinful doings, I must say Who love to see the sun shine every day, And vines (not nail'd to walls) from tree to tree, Or melodrama, which people flock to see, In vineyards copied from the south of France." BYRON. FOR such as believe that love is and ought to be omnipotent, the following "tale" can have but little attraction; and, on the other hand, to those, the unmercifully virtuous, who deem that to "feel tempted is to sin," and who, in their notions of the perfectable capacities of human nature, go beyond Pythagoras and Plato, it will have still less: for to them, the many-languaged voice of the passions is the unknown tongue of St. Paul, requiring interpretation; they are, indeed, “righteous over much," yet wanting all "The fair humanities of old religion." Oh! how many uncanonized martyrs there are in every-day domestic life, hourly warring both with the flesh and the spirit (and literally taking up their cross daily); and this must ever be the case as long as men continue to enforce the laws of God grammatically, thereby assuming a wide difference between the masculine and feminine, which is nowhere to be found in the text! "C'est une triste métier que celle de femme," says the French proverb, and it says truly. In |