feeling, is rather a principle, which, while it inspires the love of beauty in general, forgets not the beauty of fitness and order; and therefore can never sanction that which is grotesque or out of place. It teaches us, that nothing which offends the feelings of others can be estimable or praiseworthy in ourselves; for it is only in reference to her association with others, that woman can be in herself poetical. She may even nil a book with poetry, and not be poetical in her own character; because she may at the same time be selfish, vain, and worldly-minded.
To have the mind so embued with poetic feeling that it shall operate as a charm upon herself and others, woman must be lifted out of self, she must see in everything material a relation, an essence, and an end, beyond its practical utility. She must regard the little envyings, bickerings, and disputes about common things, only as weeds in the pleasant garden of life, bearing no comparison in importance with the loveliness of its flowers. She must forget even her own personal attractions, in her deep sense of the beauty of the whole created universe, and she must lose the very voice of flattery to herself, in her own intense admiration of what is excellent in others.
This it is to be poetical; and I ask again, whether it is not good, in these practical and busy times, that the Daughters of England should make a fresh effort to retain that high-toned spirituality of character, which has ever been the proudest distinction of their sex, in order that they may possess that influence over the minds of men, which the intellectual and the refined alone are capable of maintaining?
Let them look for a moment at the condition of woman wherever this high tone of character has been wanting, where she has been identified merely with material things, and, as a necessary consequence, regarded as a soulless and degraded being, essential to society only in her ministration
