fence the heart of woman, against vanity and its satanic legion? The only shield, I reply, capable of fencing any human heart against the perpetual, insidious, and ever-varying assaults of the tempter-sound moral principles, founded on religious knowledge, and a firm and humble faith in the truths of revelation. When these have not been early and sedulously inculcated, the Beauty is exposed, indeed, to great and peculiar dangers. But, is the ugly woman, on her part, more secure from those temptations, to which she also is peculiarly liable? Is vanity solely confined to the consciousness of personal attractions? Is there no such thing as conceit of sense, of talent, of taste, of goodness-nay, even of humility? There is conceit active, and conceit passive. That which plumes itself on being superior in such and such points, is, to my taste, less odious than the pharisaical cant, "Well! thank God, I am not so and so." Now, verily, I am inclined to believe, that of all modifications of this infirmity-this vice, if you will have it so, -that is most harmless which plumes itself on outward advantages, (I speak with exclusive reference to female beauties,) and in point of fact, have we not often occasion to remark, that a pretty, vain, giddy girl, one of the most apparently inconsiderate character, will settle down for life with a companion who deserves and possesses her respect and affection, into a domestic, prudent wife, a careful and tender mother, an exemplary mistress of a family, while some grave, demure-looking maiden, guarded at all points in the armour of ugliness, bristling all over with decorum, and pinched into the very pattern of primness and propriety, will (if occasion offer) launch out into such extravagances and indiscretions, as defy all calculations on probability and liability, and utterly confound the wise theories of all declaimers against the dangerous endowment of beauty. But, to sum up all-are there, in the class of beauties, fewer good wives, good mothers, good women, and good Christians, than amongst those of the sex, to whom nature has been more niggardly of outward adornments? An impartial observer will acknow ledge, that such characters are found, in pretty equal proportions, amongst the lovely and unlovely; but, reverting to minor considerations, from that higher ground of observation, I will venture to assert, that there is less vanity, or, perhaps, more properly speaking, less solicitude about personal appearance, in pretty than in plain women. The cause is obvious-the one is perpetually striving to make herself, what nature has made the other. Its frequent result is more perplexing. The exuberant self-complacency with which an ugly woman, in the full pomp and panoply of dress and decoration, seems, as it were, to inflate and expand her whole person; and if some solitary charm of form or feature, has been grudgingly bestowed upon her, what sedulous anxiety to exhibit it to the best advantage! How the malady concentrates itself, in a manner, in that peculiar part! Betrays itself, by an unnatural and perpetual distention of the mouth, if a set of white and even teeth is the seat of the disorder ;-is characterised by a delicate curve of the fingers, or graceful action of the hand, if that happens to be the part affected; or by a frequent protrusion of the foot, should the disease have possessed itself of the lower extremities. Good Heavens! in what thing, in what place, under what circumstances, will not vanity take root, and thrive? Stick it, like house-leek, on a bare wall, its fibres will insert themselves into the crevices, and the plant will prosper somehow. Strew it like mustard and cress over a few woollen threads in an earthen platter, and you may pick sallad to-morrow. Hang it up like the air plant, between heaven and earth, by a single thread, and, like the air plant, it will bud and blos som without other than ethereal nutriment. They are inexperienced na turalists, who affirm, that it flourishes only, or peculiarly, in soil or climate of such and such nature and tempera ture. But to all who persist in the belief that beauty is the forcing bed of this idle flaunting weed-to all parents who are really sincere in deprecating for their offspring, what they term so fatal an endowment,-I would compassionately suggest one simple expedient, calculated to strike at the very root of the evil. Let the pride of civilization, for once, condescend to adopt the practice of those unsophisticated savages, who (for very opposite purposes, it is true) flatten the noses, depress the skulls, and slit the lips and ears of their new-born females. The most progress of time, could hardly fail to obstinate charms, the most invete- be wholly obliterated; and in their rate beauty, must infallibly yield to stead, would arise a new standard of this early discipline; to which, for perfection, not less the object of a further security, may be added, a ge- dangerous worship, for being the very neral tattooing of the whole person, so reverse of a former idol. With the that no separate part or portion may custom of a savage nation, we may become a stronghold for that subtle adopt its tastes also; and thencefordemon, who can entrench himself in ward, a celebrated beauty of the Brithe hem of an ear, or the tip of a little tish Court, may be constituted such, finger. But whither, in its compas- by perfections similar to those that quasionate zeal for the relief of parental lify Hottentot Venus,-an Esquianxiety, whither tends my specula- maux pètite Maitresse, or a reigning tive genius? What might be the pro- toast of the Sandwich Islands; and bable result of the measures I sug- the first view of a squat nose, and flatgest? If adopted by a few leaders of tened pericranium, in his new-born rank and fashion, the universal rage babe, may strike into the heart of an for novelty and imitation would soon anxious parent, the same pious horror, make the practice general, and then, with which he now contemplates the indeed, a great and decisive conquest Grecian outline and delicate proporover beauty, might be confidently an- tion of the infant beauty, who smiles ticipated. But, with its utter extinc in his face, with such innocent uncontion in the land, might not our pre-sciousness of the fatal charms with sent conception of its component parts, which nature has endowed her. and general combinations, fade away to dim recollections? Those also, in A. SPAIN. THROUGHOUT the months occupied by the Duke of Angouleme's campaign, we have abstained almost entirely from touching on the subject of Spanish affairs. Long before that expedition commenced, nay, long before the House of Commons heard Mr Canning's most admirable exposé of the views of the British government in contemplation of it, we had said enough to convince our readers, that we had thoroughly made up our own minds as to the unjustifiable character of those principles, on which the Bourbon government of France had proclaimed themselves to be acting. Some months later, in the course of a Review of Mr Quin's Travels, we took occasion to be equally explicit in expressing our sentiments, touching the constitution promulgated by the Cortes of Cadiz in 1812, and re-established in Spain by the military insurrection of 1820. The result of the conflict between these two systems, with which we from the beginning had thus expressed our equal dissatisfaction, is now before all the world. The result, said we ?-No, not the final result, assuredly, but the primary one; and we conceive it is now time for us to lay the consequences by the VOL. XIV. cause, and clothe, in a few plain sen tences, what is our opinion, and what we take to be also the opinion of the great majority of the impartial public of England, in regard to the whole of this matter. Our opinion, then, to state the thing distinctly at the outset, is, that the Spanish Liberals and the French go vernment have all along, and throughout the whole business, been in the wrong; but that, compared with Ferdinand VII., notwithstanding, they have always been, and are now," whiter," both of them," than unsunned snow." The faults of the Spanish Liberals have been many. In the first place, they framed at Cadiz, in 1812, a constitution altogether unfit for the country where they meant it to be placed in operation, in regard to many of its most important provisions. In the se cond place, they, by false representations as to fact, made it pass for a time that this constitution had been really framed her presentatives of the Spanish nation-it having never been anything but the manufacture of one particular party, and having been openly disavowed from the beginning 4 Q by every part of the nation besides. Thirdly, they abandoned this constitution at the time of Ferdinand's restoration, in a manner altogether unworthy of the high principles on which they had professed to be acting. In the fourth place, they re-established it in 1820, in a manner equally at variance with those principles. And, in the fifth place, they have utterly and irremediably disgraced themselves by the pusillanimous exhibition with which they have just concluded their career. The sin of the French government, on the other hand, is one, and indivisible. It lies in the unjustified, and unjustifiable aggression, which has been made upon the Spanish soil. For the present, this interference has been crowned with apparent success-probably much more so than King Louis's ministers themselves had anticipated; but the whole business is rotten, and will come to nothing, or to worse than nothing, in the upshot. On both of these, therefore, we are of opinion, that a great burden of blame lies and must lie. Still, however, we must admit, that neither the conduct of the one party, nor that of the other, is to our minds irreconcilable with somethink like fairness of intention in the main. They may both have chosen false principles of action, but it is not quite apparent that either has done so knowingly-and the haughty rashness of the one side, need not, any more than the vacillating imbecility of the other, be taken as the clear and indubitable symbol of deliberate dishonour.-We can pardon much from any Spaniards striving against the cause of despotism, and we can also pardon much from any French government striving against the cause of Jacobinism; but the conduct of Ferdinand VII. has been consistent with no intelligible principle of any kind, that is worthy of being regarded with any species of tolerance. He has been guilty of the basest treachery to ALL and has stamped THE WHOLE of his own character with one dye of unrelieved blackness. The history of Spain has been, indeed, one seri... since the accession of Charles V. A few brilliant campaigns, and many magnificent foreign acquisitions, have for their respective seasons blinded the eyes of this proud race to their own condition; but that condition has, nevertheless, been uniformly and unbrokenly sinking. The crafty Charles, by alternate acts of swindling and robbery, deprived the nation of all that was really valuable in her political institutions. The glare of his conquests-the splendour of his name the imperial influence in Europe, and the American floods of wealthall these were considered by the Spaniards as things of their own, and they shut their eyes to the domestic misdeeds of their magnificent tyrant, just as the French of our own time did theirs, to those of a tyrant not his inferior in meanness, and certainly his superior in almost everything besides. The spirit of military adventure, and the lights of a beautiful literature, gilded over, in like manner, the superficies of the two ages that followed that of Charles V.; but all this while the elements of universal degradation had been working surely below, and it was not long ere all settled into the uniform and melancholy gloom of that intellectual night, the first lurid, uncertain, and stormy dawning from which, has just been fixing the hopes and the fears of Europe. The history of Superstition and the Inquisition in Spain, has been sketched by Mr Southey, in one of the late Numbers of the Quarterly Review, with the hand of a master-to that sketch we need add nothing here— it is complete so far as it goes; it will live as a chapter in the history of our species, long after the mass of contemporary writings shall have passed into oblivion. But Mr Southey has not brought the matter sufficiently down to our own time, nor, by consequence, sufficiently home to our feelings. On the contrary, the picture he presents, deriving evidently, and indeed confessedly, all its darkest touches from the congeries of a most laborious erudition, is a thing which ordinary observers are more apt to stare at, than to study-the impression it leaves is rather that of what has been, than of what is.―The appearance of Mr Blanco White's book, (Doblado's Letters,) was therefore a matter of greater immediate importance, and we regret exceedingly that Mr Southey has done no more than refer to that work, instead of drawing from its comparatively ephemeral pages the materials for a fuller and more satisfactory termination to his own luminous exposition. This gentleman is the son of an Englishman who settled in Spain. He was educated in a Spanish university, and became a priest of the Catholic church in Spain. In process of time, however, his eyes were opened to the degrading effects of that faith, more especially under the circumstances of Spanish management. He left Spain, came over to England, renounced Catholicism, and was received as a minister of the Protestant church, in whose service he has ever since continued to be surrounded with every species of respect. This is the person who has undertaken to describe the country of his birth and education, to that of his ancestry and his adoption; and it would certainly be no easy matter to devise a set of circumstances more like ly to prepare a man for the fit execution of such a task. Nobody, most assuredly, who has not read Mr White's book, can have anticipated anything like the impression which a careful perusal of it is calculated to leave behind. No English reader can easily believe that such a system has actually been subsisting in full vigour so near to ourselves, within our own time. There is such a gulf between-there is such a mixture of the ludicrous and the shocking in the whole picture, that it really requires a continual effort to remember, that it is not a picture of mere imagination. The monks -the lazy, ignorant, unhappy swarms of monks-the crafty, all-penetrating, all-ruling, all-corrupting confessors-the miserable victims of deceit withering in a thousand nunneries-the bold hypocrisy thundering in ten thousand pulpits, and alternately fawning and tyrannizing by as many millions of bedsides-the prostrate cowardice of a nation, King, Lords, and Commons, all alike lying bound beneath the influence of this black pestilence-the total uptying of mind and heart-the universal amalgamation of sin and fear the eternal multiform struggle, and the uniform gain -the whole is so loathsome, that every English eye shrinks back at the first glance with the same "incredulus odi." Revolting, however, as the bringing home of such a state of things may be to our imagination-the facts are clear and indisputable. The influence of this great soul-subduing machinery remained up to the period of which Mr White writesthat is, up to the beginning of the present century-in all its vigour, unchecked, unresisted, irresistible-an universal nightmare brooding over the intellect of this once spirited, chivalrous, and noble people. The ultraroyalist partizans of the English press turn round and tell us, that in spite of external appearances the system had lost its worst virus-and they dwell with especial triumph on the fact, that of latter times the Inquisition had become an almost harmless shadow of what it once was. Be it so: and what does this prove? To our view it proves nothing, but that the Inquisition had done its work so thoroughly that it had nothing more to do. When a country has been conquered to the core-when its inhabitants have lived for ages in the feebleness of contented subjection, one skeleton regiment keeps it in order more effectually, than a whole magnificent standing army could have done at the beginning. And so it was here. The very dream of resistance had been extirpated. The despotism had sat down secure and opaque. The work was accomplished. The mind had been trained to creeping-what need could there be "To trash for overtopping?" Hear what Mr White says of one (for it is only one) of the established instruments of this established thraldom -and consider who it is that speaks -it is one who had himself sat in the Confessional, as well as kneeled before it "Auricular confession, as a subject of theological controversy, is, probably, beneath the notice of many; but I could not easily allow the name of philosopher to any one who should look upon an inquiry into the moral influence of that religious practice, as perfectly devoid of interest. It has been observed, with great truth, that the most philanthropic man would feel more uneasiness in the ex pectation of having his little finger cut off, than in the assurance that the whole empire of China was to be swallowed up, the next day, by an earthquake. If ever, therefore, these lines should meet the eye of the public in some distant country, (for ages must pass before they can see the light in Spain), I entreat my readers to beware of indifference about evils from which it is their happiness to be free, and to make a due allowance for the feelings which lead me into a short digression. They certainly cannot expect to be acquainted with Spain without a sufficient knowledge of the powerful moral engines which are at work in that country; and they will, perhaps, find that a Spanish priest may have something to say which is new to them on the subject of confession. "The effects of confession upon ycung minds, are generally unfavourable to their future peace and virtue. It was to that practice I owed the first taste of remorse, while yet my soul was in a state of infant purity. My fancy had been strongly impressed with the awful conditions of the penitential law, and the word sacrilege had made me shudder on being told that the act of concealing any thought or action, the rightfulness of which 1 suspected, would make me guilty of that worst of crimes, and greatly increase my danger of everlasting torments. My parents had, in this case, done no more than their duty according to the rules of their church. But, though they had succeeded in rousing my fear of hell, this was, on the other hand, too feeble to overcome a childish bashfulness, which made the disclosure of a harmless trifle an effort above my strength. "The appointed day came at last, when I was to wait on the confessor. Now wavering, now determined not to be guilty of sacrilege, I knelt before the priest, leaving, however, in my list of sins, the last place to the hideous offence-I believe it was a petty larceny committed on a young bird. But when I came to the dreaded point, shame and confusion fell upon me, and the accusation stuck in my throat. The imaginary guilt of this silence haunted my mind for four years, gathering horrors at every successive confession, and rising into an appalling spectre, when, at the age of twelve, I was taken to receive the sacrament. In this miserable state I continued till, with the advance of reason, I plucked, at fourteen, courage enough to unburthen my conscience by a general confession of the past. And let it not be supposed that mine is a singular case, arising either from morbid feeling or the nature of my early education. Few, indeed, among the many penitents I have examined, have escaped the evils of a similar state; for, what a silly bashfulness does in children, is often, in after life, the immediate effect of that shame by which fallen frailty clings still to wounded virtue. The necessity of confession, seen at a distance, is lighter than a feather in the balance of desire; while, at a subsequent period, it becomes a punishment on delicacy-an instrument to blunt the moral sense, by multiplying the subjects of remorse, and directing its greatest terrors against imaginary crimes. "These evils affect, nearly equally, the two sexes; but there are some that fall peculiarly to the lot of the softer. Yet the remotest of all-at least as long as the Inquisition shall exist is the danger of direct seduction from the priest. The formidable powers of that odious tribunal have been so skilfully arrayed against the abuse of sacramental trust, that few are found base and blind enough to make the confessional a direct instrument of debauch. The strictest delicacy, however, is, I believe, inadequate fully to oppose the demoralizing tendency of auricular confession. Without the slightest responsibility, and, not unfrequently, in the conscientious discharge of what he believes his duty, the confessor conveys to the female mind the first foul breath which dims its virgin purity. He, undoubtedly, has a right to interrogate upon subjects which are justly deemed awkward even for maternal confidence ; and it would require more than common simplicity to suppose that a discretionary power of this nature, left in the hands of thousands-men beset with more than common temptations to abuse it will generally be exercised with proper caution. But I will no longer dwell upon this subject for the present, Men of unprejudiced minds will easily In justice to Mr White we must quote his Note." I must observe, that the degree of delicacy, or its opposite, in a confessor-besides the individual influence of virtue and good breeding-must greatly depend upon the general refinement of the people among whom he exercises his powers. Such is the state of manners in England, that few or none, I will venture to say, among its Catholic females, will probably be aware of any evil tendency in auricular confession. I would not equally answer for Ireland, especially among the lower classes. Since these Letters, however, would not have seen the light without my consent, I must here, once for all, enter my protest against the supposition of their being intended as an attack on the large and respectable portion of our fellow-subjects who profess the Roman Catholic faith. That I firmly believe in the abstract tendency which is here attributed to Catholicism, I cannot, will not deny. Yet we should not confound Catholicism in the rank luxuriance of full growth, with the same noxious plant gradually tamed and reclaimed under the shade of Protestantism. Thus, while I am persuaded that the religion of Spain, Portugal, and Naples is the main obstacle to the final establishment of liberty in those countries, I positively deny the inference that Catholics must necessarily, and in all possible circumstances, make a wrong use of political power.”Editor. |