persons, while the proportion is large of men of leisure, education, and fortune, who keep themselves aloof from government and party, and openly and roundly condemn or approve the transactions of the day, according to the dictates of reason and conscience. It is true that servility, folly, and crime prevail there in a higher degree; but it is from radical and pervading causes for which no sufficient antidote can be provided. At Athens, the comic poet was a universal satirist--he aimed his keen shafts at what was peccant or vulnerable both in the mass and in conspicuous individuals. Aristophanes spared not the Athenians, any more than their corrupters and idols. Socrates and his disciples chastised by reprehension and ridicule, in the streets, both public and private follies and obliquities. Orators, such as Phocion and Demosthenes, probed the people, the rulers, and the demagogues, to the quick; they used the language of severe inquiry, reprimand, and exhortation, with the freedom and earnestness of acknowledged guardians or masters. Rome was lectured also, from various sources; yet, it should be added, both republics were, on the other hand, abundantly flattered and beguiled; and to this, the historians have ascribed in part, their degeneracy and destruction. A great writer has observed

"What might we not expect from the human heart in circumstances preventing apprehension on the subject of fortune, and under the influence of a steady and general opinion, that human felicity does not consist in the indulgences of animal appetite, but in those of a benevolent and spirited heart; not in fortune or interest, but in the contempt of this very object, in the courage and freedom which arise from this contempt, joined to a resolute choice of conduct directed to the good of mankind, or the good of that particular society to which the party belongs?"

The want of moral courage, that is, of the energy to do right often occasions a morbid boldness in doing

wrong. Men are intrepid and shameless in degrading themselves, who are still cowards in yielding conscience to temporary advantage-in sacrificing the better parts of their nature to vulgar propensities and narrow calculations. It is an immemorial remark that those who are lavish of their health, in youth,—who sin against temperance and caution,-are subject, in old age, to correspondent pains and penalties. This observation may be extended to early moral delinquency; to any sacrifices of the principles and habits of truth, honour, and self-respect:-they may seem to succeed and to procure the advancement and lucre for which they are made: but they deteriorate and embitter the later years—they darken and disorder the autumn: it is found that the consciousness of a life invariably scrupulous and upright is the only true support and the greatest final gain.

The American may be strictly affirmed to be in circumstances that forbid the apprehension of want; and for this reason alone, he ought to be more under the influence just mentioned, than the inhabitant of Europe; but, whatever the case may be in the comparison, he is not yet, nor will he ever be, mainly governed by it. Still, though we may despair of perfect and universal elevation and intrepidity of sentiment and deportment, we can deplore the fact that those qualities are less common than they might be, and endeavour, by complaint and exhortation, reasoning or ridicule, to bring them into greater frequency and esteem. The true theory is brilliantly expressed in the following conclusion to one of Sheridan's speeches.

"And, after all, it is not wealth nor power; it is not genius,—it is not oratory—it is not the charm of unexpected throes of language, nor the rapt gaze after new sublimity in ideas-No, it is Nature !-it is Truth! that we should most revere-it is from duties well donefrom privileges well asserted-from the steady maintenance of every

thing right, and from the strong impeachment of all who are wrong, that we can satisfy the claims of existence and responsibility !—-decorate ourselves with the only ennobling quality, worth-and transmit the memory of ourselves, and the very name of our country, with common honour to our children."

FEMALE EXAMPLE.

CASE OF QUEEN CAROLINE, OF ENGLAND, AS WRITTEN SOON AFTER HER DECEASE.-IN THREE ARTICLES.

I.

We should not undertake the case of Queen Caroline, instructive and remarkable as it is, had we not seen in public journals for which we feel much respect, elaborate essays concerning her, wherein she is represented rather as a victim to be compassionated, than as a beacon to be shunned ;-almost entirely as an object of pity and sympathy. In the opposition which we cannot refrain from making to this unsuitable strain of lament, we shall endeavour to occupy as little space, consistently with our purpose of inquiring what are the true titles of a woman and a Queen to the admiration and regrets of her own sex, and to the esteem and honour of the world. The conduct of Caroline merely as a Queen, could be of no importance, and consequently would be an idle or barely speculative historical topic, in a country in which no female is destined to wear a diadem; but it is impossible to separate the question of her demeanour as such, from that of her course as a lady in polished life; sympathy for her in the one capacity, will serve to endear and exalt her memory in the other, and inversely; and her advocates and panegyrists have considered and held her forth, not

so much in her royal as in her general female character and in the ordinary domestic relations.

Waving the point of her absolute guilt, according to the accusation that led to her trial—a point upon which we have never entertained a doubt, and very few, we believe, are able to decide in their secret judgments, in the negative, we shall content ourselves with adverting to traits in her history, which are now incapable of denial, and have never been directly questioned.

She was at an early period after her marriage, open to suspicion by the levity of her carriage; subjected to a formal scrutiny into her domestic life, and though acquitted of the graver imputations, pointedly reproved and admonished on the score of levity, by favourable and elevated judges. Whoever has read "The Delicate Investigation," will, after he has made every allowance for the corruption of her accusers and the malignity of her enemies, agree with us in thinking that enough of real fact and uncoloured circumstance is to be found in the evidence, to convict her of something more than étourderie. There was that made apparent in her private deportment, at which any husband of a delicate and proud mind would almost shudder and tremble in his wife, or brother in a sister. As female virtue is something absolute, and independent of external accident, of the estrangement and disloyalty of partners, or the tyranny or laxity of relatives, so is female decorum: both are obligatory in themselves, as well as indispensably due to society at large; and there can be no real purity and dignity of mind where undue familiarity and lightness of manner prevail.

The sex has from nature, a specific moral character, internal and external-chastity, virginal or connubial, is enjoined by the Divine Author of the human economy

upon woman, not only in its common acceptation and as a law for the heart and spirit, but for the whole outward conduct in the observances of delicacy throughout every word and action in social intercourse. This dispensation has been insensibly imitated and enforced, in the standard of propriety which is fixed for female conduct in every cultivated and refined community-at least it is received as the true theory in regard to the preservation generally of public and private morals, whatever deviations in practice may be suffered to go unrebuked; and at all events such deviations are on all hands admitted to be bad in themselves and of evil influence, and to be always deserving of reprehension, whatever amiable qualities may be possessed by those who abandon the distinctive reserve and modest dignity prescribed to them thus at once by nature and convention.

The remark of the Roman-" Cæsar's wife should not even be suspected," has a meaning and application much beyond the particular instance. Upon general principles, it was not too severe a rule even for the Roman system of social life; and with greater reason may it be deemed just in its utmost significancy, in the modern and Christian order of things. That beautiful pattern of female excellence under persecution, the Queen Katherine of Shakspeare, does not boast emptily and uninstructively, when she says of herself

"A woman (I dare say without vain glory)

Never yet branded with suspicion."

One of the chief motives to the first inquiry into Queen Caroline's conduct, was the report and charge that she had given birth, illicitly, to a boy who was called William Austin, and who passed as the son of a poor washer-woman. The commission of inquiry acquitted her of the maternity, but this acquittal did not constitute a dispen