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Read Ebook: Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad Vol. 1 (of 3) With Tales and Miscellanies Now First Collected by Jameson Mrs Anna
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Ebook has 490 lines and 54798 words, and 10 pages
f others. They accepted the telescopes which the gentlemen, particularly some young Englishmen, pressed on them when any distant or remarkable object came in view, and repaid the courtesy with a bright kindly smile; they were natural and easy, and did not deem it necessary to mount guard over their own dignity. Do you think I did not observe and feel the contrast?
MEDON.
If nations begin at last to understand each other's true interests--morally and politically, it will be through the agency of gifted men; but if ever they learn to love and sympathize with each other, it will be through the medium of you women. You smile, and shake your head; but in spite of a late example, which might seem to controvert this idea, I still think so;--our prejudices are stronger and bitterer than yours, because they are those which perverted reason builds up on a foundation of pride; but yours, which are generally those of fancy and association, soon melt away before your own kindly affections. More mobile, more impressible, more easily yielding to external circumstances, more easily lending yourselves to different manners and habits, more quick to perceive, more gentle to judge;--yes, it is to you we must look, to break down the outworks of prejudice--you, the advanced guard of humanity and civilization!
Every feeling, well educated, generous, and truly refined woman, who travels, is as a dove sent out on a mission of peace; and should bring back at least an olive-leaf in her hand, if she bring nothing else. It is her part to soften the intercourse between rougher and stronger natures; to aid in the interfusion of the gentler sympathies; to speed the interchange of art and literature from pole to pole: not to pervert wit, and talent, and eloquence, and abuse the privileges of her sex, to sow the seeds of hatred where she might plant those of love--to embitter national discord and aversion, and disseminate individual prejudice and error.
ALDA.
Thank you! I need not say how entirely I agree with you.
MEDON.
ALDA.
Me?
MEDON.
Cry you mercy!--I did but jest, so do not look so indignant! But have you then traced the cause and consequences of that undercurrent of opinion which is slowly but surely sapping the foundations of empires? Have you heard the low booming of that mighty ocean which approaches, wave after wave, to break up the dikes and boundaries of ancient power?
ALDA.
I? no; how should I--skimming over the surface of society with perpetual sunshine and favouring airs--how should I sound the gulfs and shoals which lie below?
MEDON.
Have you, then, analysed that odd combination of poetry, metaphysics, and politics, which, like the three primeval colours, tinge in various tints and shades, simple and complex, all literature, morals, art, and even conversation, through Germany?
ALDA.
No, indeed!
MEDON.
Have you decided between the different systems of Jacobi and Schelling?
ALDA.
You know I am a poor philosopher; but when Schelling was introduced to me at Munich, I remember I looked up at him with inexpressible admiration, as one whose giant arm had cut through an isthmus, and whose giant mind had new modelled the opinions of minds as gigantic as his own.
MEDON.
Then you are of this new school, which reveals the union of faith and philosophy?
ALDA.
If I am, it is by instinct.
MEDON.
Well, to descend to your own peculiar sphere, have you satisfied yourself as to the moral and social position of the women in Germany?
ALDA.
No, indeed!--at least, not yet.
MEDON.
ALDA.
O no! you have mentioned things which would require a life to study. Merely to have thought upon them, to have glanced at them, gives me no right to discuss them, unless I could bring my observations to some tangible form, and derive from them some useful result.
MEDON.
Yet in this last journey you had an object--a purpose?
ALDA.
I had--a purpose which has long been revolving in my mind--an object never lost sight of;--but give me time!--time!
MEDON.
ALDA.
"Thou hast the most unsavoury similes!"
MEDON.
Take a proverb then--"Bisogna coprirsi bene il viso innanzi di struzzicare il vespaio."
ALDA.
MEDON.
Good! I love a little enthusiasm now and then; so like Britomart in the enchanter's palace, the motto is,
"Be bold, be bold, and every where be bold!"
ALDA.
MEDON.
Well, then, I return once more to the charge. Have you been rambling about the world for these six months--yet learned nothing?
ALDA.
On the contrary.
MEDON.
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