dollars) for the benefit of others, without applying any of it to my private use. FEMALE LEARNING. I have been listening, to-night, to a very ingenious defence of unlearned women, by Miss *****. I had ventured to insinuate against her, as a fault, an indifference to books; a want of curiosity; and had chiefly insisted on this defect, not as disparaging her character in the eyes of others, but as depriving her of a source of occupation and amusement the most rational, commodious, and efficacious of all others. To this censure she replied by appealing to every one's experience, whether a passion for reading does not necessarily encroach upon, and impair that attention to domestic duties, and regard for personal decorum, without which, no woman can be either useful, happy, or respectable. It is infinitely better, she thinks, to have no taste but for domestic affairs, than to have no taste but for literature. It is impossible for human creatures to hit the true medium: to combine and compound various tastes and inclinations in such due proportions, that each shall be indulged to the exact extent, and at the very time which propriety allows. Books must either please us too much, and, of consequence, absorb our attention unseasonably and excessively, or they must fail to please at all. To say truth, this conversation arose from my observing my friend's indifference to a book which I had lent her. I expected to find her deeply engaged in it this evening, whereas she was quietly employed with her needle. It seems she had taken up the book, and after reading a few pages with little interest, had laid it aside for the needle, which pleased her much better. She maintains very strenuously, that if she had a stronger inclination to reading than to sewing, the latter employment, however enjoined by VOL. I....NO. IV. duty and necessity, would be neglected, and congratulates herself on finding pleasure in that to which propriety enjoins her to attend. There is surely a great deal of truth in these remarks of my friend. It is not, strictly speaking, impossible to combine business and study in just proportions; and some examples, no doubt there are, in either sex, of persons whom a passion for study never seduces a moment from the rigid line of their domestic and social duty. Though the possibility of such characters cannot be denied, I must aver that I never met with any such. I never saw man or woman, smitten with a passion for books, whose happiness and usefulness were not somewhat injured by it; but the injury is much greater, and more palpable The doin women than in men. mestic sphere being appropriated to the female, her inattention and unskilfulness produces the most injury; whereas her prudence and economy may obviate many inconvenient and disgusting effects of a studious disposition in the master of a family. A woman who hates reading, is not necessarily a wise and prudent economist; and this estimable character is sometimes, though rarely found in a woman of sound judgment, and liberal curiosity. This curiosity is not, however, in any case that I know of, just so ardent as to make books acceptable whenever there is leisure to attend to them. There are many hours in the life of such women, which drag on heavily or mournfully, for want of literary curiosity. I beseech you my friend, for it is probable you will sometime see this, not to consider this verdict as limited to you, or to your sex. It extends to all human beings, and I am half inclined to revoke the concession I just now made, that such a curiosity, as will fill up, and no more than fill up every truly leisure moment, can possibly exist. One of the most accomplished women of the last age (intellectually considered) was Lady M. W. Montague, but the stories of her personal indelicacies are well known. Women, like men, are known to the world at large, chiefly by their writings. Such, therefore, being obliged to handle the pen frequently, have some apology for inattention to other objects. Of that numerous class of females, who have cultivated their minds with science and literature, without publishing their labours, and who consequently are unknown to general inquirers; how many have preserved the balance immoveable between the opposite demands of the kitchen, the drawing room, the nursery, and the library? We may safely answer from our own experience, not one. ANTIQUES. I was shewn, to-night, a fragment of a coverlet, which once belonged to William Penn. The old lady who produced it, gave me a very circumstantial history of this relique. It seems, the coverlet, very old, and very ragged, was taken by a curious person from the very bed in which the patriarch of Pennsylvania lay, and was distributed in small strips among her particular friends. American antiquities, if any such things there be, chiefly relate to monuments of those nations who occupied America before the European discoveries. The most permanent, conspicuous, and remarkable of these, are undoubtedly the mounds or ramparts scattered over the western country. These have two qualities to recommend them, in the highest degree, to curiosity, and that is the remoteness of their origin, and the mysteriousness of their design. Other monuments consist of the weapons and domestic utensils, which are made of durable materials, and will probably continue to be found, or to be preserved, some thousands of years hence. The spirit of curiosity is exactly in proportion to the remoteness and the mysteriousness (and the latter is one of the consequences of the former) of the object: so that the reliques of Indian manners will go on acquiring value from age to age: a greater number will be busy in collecting and describing them : and a stone, tobacco-pipe, or arrowhead, will, in time, become of much more value than its weight in gold. Time will produce another species of antiques, in the reliques of those generations which have passed away since the colonization of America. Two centuries have almost elapsed, since our ancestors began to migrate hither, and this period will admit of a succession of ten generations at least. There are a great number of books, and of domestic utensils, which were manufactured in Europe, and were brought hither for their immediate accommodation, by the early colonists. These are greatly prized by their descendants. This city (Philadelphia) which was the earliest settlement of the English in this state, contains a great number of these reliques, and the antiquarian spirit glows very strongly in some bosoms. Besides the coverlet, Mrs. ***** shewed me a sampler worked by her great grandmother, in the year 1669, in Holburn; a silver spoon, with which all the children of the family have been fed, since the one that was born in the year 1687, on the passage from the Thames to the Delaware; and a Beza's Testament, which was one of the few of his moveables rescued by an ancestor of hers from the great fire of London, in 1665. Some people may smile at the spirit which affixes value to objects of this nature; and those in whom the sight of these monuments of times past, awaken no solemn or agreeable emotions, will naturally throw the sampier into the fire, the spoon into the crucible, and the Bible to the cook; but to me, and such as me, who cannot handle or view such articles as I have just described, without a thousand pleasing and elevating thoughts, they will always be precious and sacred. To become an antiquary, I only want the leisure and the opportunity required. For the Literary Magazine. THE TRAVELLER....NO. IV. of my own sex, to whom I was passionately attached. While yet an infant, I was attached to a goodnatured servant lad, who told m stories, taught me to find birds nests, and took me with him to hunt rabbits. At the age of eight, I was passionately attached to a boy of ten. We shouldered our wooden muskets together, and would have died in defence of each other, if there had been any knight or giant who wished the death of Attachment between persons of the either. These bonds were broken same sex. TO THE TRAVELLER. In reading your remarks in your last number, upon friendship, I could not forbear sending you a few thoughts of my own upon the same subject. The attachment between persons of the same sex, is called friendship; and perhaps can, strictly speaking, be said only to exist in relation to persons of the same sex. Friendship between man and woman, according to the above definition, must be love. Esteem for one of the opposite sex may influence to numberless friendly offices; but this is not what is meant by friendship. The affection which subsits between some brothers and sisters, is nearer to friendship; still it is distinct, and must be designated by the appellation of fraternal love. In the course of his life, a man generally feels the attachment of friendship, at different periods, towards several individuals of various characters, and dissimilar merit. If he is of a generous and ardent temper, he is, at no period, without some one favoured and favouring being, to whom he feels united, by the passion of friendship; yet it is often found that the objects of a man's early attachments, prove, after absence, or the lapse of time, to be such as the heart can no longer cleave to. I can remember no period of my life, at which, among many whom I loved, there was not one, by absence: I felt a pang, but immediately found another friend. During the time between the ages of nine and fifteen, I remember a succession of boys to whom I was sincerely attached, and with whom I had quarrels and reconciliations innumerable. With one I was engaged in reading the achievements of knights-errant; with another, in enacting plays; and with a third, in making pictures. From fifteen to eighteen, I had another attachment; though during this period I had at the same time a succession of love affairs, unknown to the objects, and only imparted to my friend, who I recollect was as cold to the charms of the other sex, as he was warm in his attachment to me. This union was broken by my departure for Europe. It was there the same; I immediately found a friend, from whom I was inseparable, and who sincerely loved me. On my return to America, after an absence of some years, I found some of the persons whom I had formerly loved, but they were no longer the same, and certainly I was no longer the same. I was pleased to see them, but my heart had again to seek a friend. Is this the picture of friendship, as others feel it, or am I singular in my temper or my fate? Be that as it may, such is the view of friendship, which my experience of life presents, but there is yet another trait. I married, and the passion of friendship was swallowed up in the passion of love. A husband and a father, my heart seeks not away from my own fire-side, a bosom to share its transports, or quiet its tumults. Is my mind less capable of friendship than at an earlier period of life? I think not. Though undoubtedly my eye is much quicker in discerning blemishes than at that time: yet my heart bounds towards every object which appears to wish its sympathy. I have now a number of persons whose friend I am, and whom I am proud to call my friends; but the sentiment which binds me to them, is not passion. I esteem A, B, C, D, E, F, and G, and I love H, I and K; but still the passion of friendship is swallowed up in the passion of love. W. D. For the Literary Magazine. R. How does thee do, my dear. I have been looking out for thee several days, but thee has disappointed me as usual. Thee is careless, I fear, of thy engage ments. L. Forgive me, madam. The weather has detained me; very much, I assure you, to my own disappointment; but, (taking up a book) I see you know how to beguile lassitude, and supply yourself with company. What have you got?" Men and Manners." What! a novel! I thought this kind of reading was prohibited by the canons of your faith. R. And so it is; that is to say, these rules, interpreted most strictly, and as they are usually interpreted by those who are deemed most conscientious and apostolical among us, absolutely forbid the reading of fictitious books. Time thus spent, is thought to be spent frivolously or perniciously. L. What then am I to infer? R. I understand thee. I am far from being so good a quaker as I ought to be. In many things I fall behind my own principles, but not on the present occasion. I am nowise scrupulous about reading either plays or novels. My duty requires that I should not bestow too much time upon them, and that I should carefully distinguish between the good and the bad. L. And does this novel justify your choice? R. I read it merely on the recommendation of a friend, who told me the story was well contrived, and that the hero was a quaker. L. Will you, on the same account, recommend it to me. R. Why, the story is not ill contrived, and the characters, in general, appear to be well enough supported, except the principal one, the quaker. In him I discover not a single feature that resembles my neighbours and relations, unless indeed, it be his benevolence. That, however, though characteristic of the true quaker, as it is of the true christian of any sect, is, I must reluctantly acknowledge, by no means characteristic of us as a sect; in that respect, we are neither better nor worse than other societies. L. Has the author failed, madam, in ascribing this property to his hero? R. Far from it, my dear. In this respect, he has given to Jonathan Parkinson no more than is due to many quakers. What I condemn, is, the dialect and manners which Jonathan adopts. L. My dear madam, I have read the work, and was so ignorant as to think Jonathan a very good portrait of a quaker. R. Thy ignorance, my dear, is very excusable, nay, unavoidable, since thee has told me, till thy introduction to me, thee never conversed with a friend. This was probably the case with our author. He must have somewhere heard, that the quakers use thou and thee, or, as we term it, the plain language, to single persons. This he has believed, and has inferred that the formal style of hath and doth ; and loveth and lovedst, and a phraseology, approaching, in all respeets, to the scriptural, were adhered to, with equal scrupulosity. Now the truth is, that thee may converse all thy life with friends, and never hear the pronoun thou uttered. The various forms of thou, thee and thy, have long ago degenerated among us, into the single thee, and experience proves that no obscurity arises from this circumstance. The termination, eth, and the expletives do and did, of which Jonathan Parkinson is so liberal, is just as seldom heard from us as from others. The use of thou in any familiar instance, would be deemed an intolerable affectation. L. My dear madam, is not this a little odd? I have heard that you has been objected to by the friends, as being, among other accounts, ungrammatical. Ř. I know, my dear, what thee would say, and certainly such objections are inconsistent. I, for my part, condemn it, not on that account, and I vindicate the disuse of thou, merely because it is the custom. It is plain enough how this custom arose. Thou appears to require the harsh correspondent endings of th and st, and we drop the first to get rid of the last. Instead of saying, "thou mistakest," or "thou dost mistake," we content ourselves with "thee mis takes." L. Pray madam, inform me wherein lie the peculiarities of a quaker's manners or speech. R. I will do it cheerfully, my dear. In the first place, a friend, either by principle or habit, and nine out of ten of those who are members of society, belong to the latter class, are to be known by having none of those airs and motions that are given by the dancingmaster. In saluting, they incline the head, perhaps, but never the back. They take not off their hat to their neighbours, and even, in entering an house, seldom think of this ceremony. Their dialect is utterly a stranger to Sir, Mister, and Madam. They use the christian name much more frequently than others, but they shew their respect, especially to elders, by putting friend, in place of Mr. and Mrs. L. Pray, madam, what language would you use on an occasion where I should employ such words as these: "Gentlemen and ladies, will you favour me with your company on Tuesday evening, and you, Mr. Blank, may I see you in June?" R. These would be my words: "Will you give me your company, friends, on third-day evening, and thee, friend Blank, shall I see thee in the sixth month?" Thee is probably aware that we always name the days of the week, and the months, numerically. I do not recollect any other peculiarities than those I have mentioned. other respects, my dear, “friends” are like others, and their language and deportment square with their temper, and is proportioned to their knowledge. In all L. According to this represen→ tation, madam, Parkinson talks in a very unnatural style indeed: how is it with his conduct? Has the au thor as much mistaken that as his speech? R. Why, my dear, the author, thee knows, tells us that Jonathan, though born a friend, had early laid aside the profession. That the sect was visible in nothing but his dialect. This is an ample apology, of course, for every thingg un-quaker-like in his conduct. As I said before, the conduct of quâkers is like that of the rest of tae world, neither worse nor better, unless, indeed, he be a sincere and conscientious quaker, and then his system of action, has, indeed, no parallell in any other sect, I do not mean in the degree,, but only in the modes of his benevolence. L. Have you ever met with the quaker truly described in books? R. Never in any books but their own, my dear, and especially never |