avoid an irreconcilable quarrel. Never go so far, on the one side, as to declare that you have lost all love and esteem for your husband, nor say anything that it would be difficult to retract. You might break altogether the line that holds your fish. And, on the other side, when you are disposed to be gracious, never be quite satisfied, lest the man should grow careless and fancy himself quite perfect. In accepting with much gratitude and good-humor something that he has done right, you must accept it only as an instalment, and always have some little matter behind to complain or to call for. thing that gives a pungent acidity to one's intercourse, and takes off the flatness of it. It is your business, then, to temper these ingredients together so as to produce that agreeable compound which is necessary to gratify a man's taste for variety. Some men of obtuse palates will bear a good deal of acidity; while to others a very little will make their eyes water, and set their teeth on edge. But whenever you find you have overdone it, throw in plenty of sugar; and you will find this incalculably more acceptable than if you had given him nothing but sugar, sugar, sugar, all along. It is like the resolution of a discord in music. I dare say you may have observed that, in a person whose ordinary demeanor is cold and reserved, or harsh and morose, when some occasion occurs that he finds itulate such a delicate thing as a female characworth while to be very gracious, in order to get votes or to carry some other point, he will be received with open arms, and will run round your obliging, good-humored fellows, in popularity. However, due regard, as I have said, must be paid to the peculiar taste of the particular man you have to deal with. Only remember that some variety is necessary for all. Woman's charm is well known to consist, as the poet says, in her being "Uncertain, coy, and hard to please; By the light-quivering aspen made." And observe, in this admirable description, that "uncertain" is part of it. If your changes are regular-fits of good and of illhumor, of talking and silence, &c., coming at fixed intervals, or called forth by known circumstances, so as to be foreseen, it takes away all the amusing interest of variability. Never let the man know beforehand, with anything like certainty, what will please or what will displease you. But sometimes give him a sudden shower when he was calculating on fair weather; and sometimes treat him to a bright blue sky when he was apprehending a storm. Of course, however, you will remember, on the whole, to give him rather more sugar in his punch in proportion as he behaves well, and to let anything that crosses your inclinations always call forth more of the acid. But nothing should be done in extremes. It was, I think, one of the seven sages that gave it as a maxim, to consider your friends as persons who might hereafter be your enemies, and to treat your enemies as if they might some day be your friends. You should act on a somewhat corresponding maxim. Take care to Of course I need hardly tell you that your husband has no business to find fault with you on any occasion. To form and reg ter, is a task utterly unsuitable to the coarse and clumsy mind of a man. He might as well undertake to superintend your toilet; and if he has the love and admiration for you which he ought to have, he will never see any faults in you, even if you have any. He will rather be looking to his own, and trying to render himself less unworthy of you. But still you should always profess the most earnest desire to be instructed, and admonished, and told of your faults. You must always represent yourself as open to conviction, and glad of reproof; for any one who should question this, would be denying you credit for that modest diffidence and humility which are so characteristic of our sex, and so becoming. Your exemption, therefore, from censure and reproof should appear to arise not from your being unable to bear censure and reproof, but from your never needing any. Your husband's finding no fault with you is to be understood as proceeding not from your objecting to be told of your faults, but from your not having any. Now, some men are so stupid and perverse as not to understand all this; and when you talk much, as you ought to do, of your imperfections and of your great anxiety to have a faithful monitor at hand to point out your failings, the blockheads will have the impudence to take you at your word, and set to work in sober sadness to look out for, and tell you of, your imperfections, and instruct you, forsooth, how to improve your character! It requires some management to get rid of this impertinence without giving up your claim to that modest diffidence which I have just mentioned-without acknowledging, in short, that you don't like to be told of your faults. The general rule is, to acknowledge in general terms that you are a mere mass of inperfections, but stoutly to deny each particular charge. Every body knows that we are all "miserable sinners," and all quite ready to confess it cheerfully, but any one particular instance of sin is a charge to which most people vehemently plead not guilty; and, as a general rule you must go on this plan. Your ordinary course must be to maintain that such and such a particular ault is just the very one you are most incapable of; and that in this or that particular instance you were perfectly in the right. This plan, however, will not do to be acted on exclusively. You must often resort to other modes of procedure to put a stop to this impertinent censorship. One way is to take every admonition, however calmly given, as the result of personal resentment. For it is plain that no one who loves and admires you as he ought, would ever find fault with you. Anything therefore, which your husband may blame, you may consider him as viewing in the light of a personal offense. You must express your sorrow for having made him angry with you, implore his forgiveness, and lament your want of power to give him satisfaction. On this point you must make a resolute stand, whatever may be his disavowals of anger and his calmness of demeanor, which you are to set down, without hesitation, as feigned. This will probably cure him of his dream of playing the monitor, censor, instructor, critic, counsellor, &c., for your benefit, and at your request. When he finds that every admonition or censure is sure to be set down to selflove, as originating in resentment at some personal annoyance to himself, and is supposed to be given for his own sake, and not for yours, he will probably desist. Another good plan is to understand him always as meaning much more than he says. If he object, for instance, to your having made some imprudent purchase, what he means is, of course, that he has no confidence at all in your judgment in anything, and regards you as a fool, not fit to be entrusted with money or business. If he make any remark on your having advanced some unsound opinion, or let out something before company which had been better not mentioned, he means that you and all other women are chattering simpletons, who had better never talk about anything but the weather. If he remonstrate with you for being snappish or sulky on some occasion, his meaning is that he considers you as ill-tempered and altogether dis agreeable. If he thinks some dish at dinner ill dressed, his meaning is that there is never anything at his table fit to eat, and that you starve him. And so in other cases. You remember, I dare say, the fairy-tale of the princess whom her cruel step-mother intended to scourge most severely, and who was preserved by a beneficent fairy, who converted the rods, unperceived, into a bunch of feathers; so that when the savage dame thought her victim was flayed, she was barely tickled. Now suppose some malignat fairy could play a contrary trick on a tender mother, and secretly change the twigs with which she was gently chastising her child into a cat-o'-nine-tails, or Russian knout, so that she could not give the gentlest tap without fetching streams of blood, she would, of course, be obliged to give up whipping altogether. This must be your plan. And when your husband finds that the gentlest admonition is always understood as a most severe rebuke, and a charge of high crimes and misdemeanors, and that no disavowal of his will ever be listened to, he will give up the game. And to strengthen your interpretation of his meaning, you may sometimes represent him as saying a little more than he really did say; because you are inwardly sure that if he did not utter those very words, they were in his mind. To put in or leave out some little word, such as "always," or "never," will make anything that he may have said as unjust and offensive as it ought to be made to appear. And as for denying his words, why, if they passed in a téte-à-tête between you two, your assertion is as good as his. As for the charges themselves thus brought against you, it will often have an amiable appearance if, instead of strenuously denying them, you meekly submit to his hard opinions, only lamenting that he should think so very ill of you, and compassionating his sad lot in being tied to a wife so incapable of making him happy, and wishing yourself dead that he may unite himself to a more suitable companion. This delicate hint that he wishes you dead, will put a stop, if he have not a heart of rock, to all complaints and fault-finding hereafter; especially if you throw in some allusions to your friends, Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so, how happy a couple they seem to be, and how gratifying it must be to her to find that she can give her husband satisfaction. And she, perhaps, will be, at the very same time, making a similar use of you and your husband; pointing you out to of wild hawks, by skilful training-how they are taught to come when they are called, and to do as they are bid-you must never despair of taming a husband. With your female friends in private, how-in ever, you may have much useful conversation. You may compare notes as to your respective private grievances, and set forth your claims to the praise of self-denying patience in bearing and doing so much in carrying on the difficult business of managing such a (comparatively) selfish and perverse animal as a man. And you may take lessons from each other as to the right conduct of curtain lectures, and all other means that are to be used for polishing down, by rougher or gentler friction, the asperities of the male character. The task is a hard one, certainly; on account of the coarser material of which man is formed. For man, you know, was "made of earth, and woman was made of man ;" and the signs may still be seen of this original coarseness. But when you see how much may be made of horses and dogs, and even But I must remind you, in conclusion, that conversation with your female friends, and with your own relatives, and indeed with all, it must never be forgotten that your husband is your own exclusive property, and that no one else is to be allowed either to blame or to praise him but yourself. Any disparagement of him by another is to be resented most vehemently, inasmuch as he is a part of yourself, and the very man you have chosen out of all the world; and any commendation of him is to be understood as a covert censure of yourself—as an insinuation that you are not worthy of so good a husband. Whatever you may think proper to say to him, or of him, yourself, you must not allow others to be so impertinent as to bring him under their jurisdiction, by presuming either to find fault with him or to commend him. He belongs to you; and no one must be permitted to encroach upon your undoubted prerogative. From Blackwood's Magazine. SIR ASTLEY COOPER. Life of Sir Astley Cooper, interspersed with Sketches from his Note-Books of Distinguished Contemporary Characters. By BRANSBY LAKE COOPER, Esq., F. R. S. 2 vols. London. 1843. PART I. SIR ASTLEY COOPER died in his seventythird year, on the 12th of February, 1841that is, upwards of eight years ago and with him was extinguished a great light of the age. He was a thorough Englishman; his character being pre-eminently distinguished by simplicity, courage, good nature, and generosity. He was very straightforward, and of wonderful determination. His name will always be mentioned with the respect due to signal personal merit, as that of a truly illustrious surgeon and anatomist, devoting the whole powers of his mind and body, with a constancy and enthusiasm which never once flagged, to the advancement of his noble and beneficent profession. His personal exertions and sacrifices in the pursuit of science were almost unprecedented; but he knew that they were producing results permanently benefitting his fellow-creatures, at the same time that he must have felt a natural exultation at the pre-eminence which they were securing to himself over all his rivals and contemporaries, both at home and abroad, and the prospect of his name being transmitted with honor to posterity. What an amount of relief from suffering he secured to others in his lifetime! not merely by his own masterly personal exertions, but by skilfully training many thousands of others* to-go, and do likewise, furnished by him with the principles of sound and enlightened surgical, anatomical, and physiological knowledge! And these principles he has embodied in his admirable writings, to train "Sir Astley Cooper has, on one occasion, stated in his memoranda that he had educated eight thousand surgeons !"—Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 426. succeeeding generations of surgeons, so as to assuage agony, and avert the sacrifice of life and limb. Let any one turn from this aspect of his character, and look at him in a personal and social point of view, and Sir Astley Cooper will be found, in all the varied relations of life-in its most difficult positions, in the face of every temptation-uniformly amiable, honorable, high-spirited, and of irreproachable morals. His manners fascinated all who came in contact with him; and his personal advantages were very great. Tall, well proportioned, of graceful carriage, of a presence unspeakably assuring; with very handsome features, wearing ever a winning expression; of manners bland and courtly, without a tinge of sycophancy or affectation, the same to monarch, noble, peasant-in the hospital, the hovel, the castle, the palace. He was a patient, devoted teacher, during the time he was almost overpowered by the multiplicity of his harassingand lucrative professional engagements! Such was Sir Astley Cooper; a man whose memory is surely entitled to the best exertions of the ablest of biographers. Oh, that a Southey could do by Astley Cooper as a Southey did by Nelson! "No one, observes Mr. Cooper, the "From the period of Astley's appointment to Guy's," says Dr. Roots, in a communication to the author of this work, (vol. i., p. 315,) until the moment of his latest breath, he was everything and all to the suffering and afflicted; his name was a host, but his presence brought confidence and comfort; and I have often observed that on an operating day, should anything occur of an untoward character in the theatre, the moment Astley Cooper entered, and the instrument was in his hand, every difficulty was overcome, and safety generally ensued." 66 nephew of Sir Astley, and author of the work now before us; has hitherto attempted to render the history of any surgeon a matter of interest or amusement to the general public.' We cannot deny the assertion, even after having perused the two volumes under consideration, which are the production of a gentleman who, after making the remark just quoted, proceeds truly to observe, that "no author has had so favorable an opportunity"-i. e. of rendering the history of a surgeon a matter of general interest-as himself, "for few medical men in this country have ever held so remarkable a position in the eyes of their countrymen, for so long a period, or endeared themselves by so many acts of conduct, independent of their profession, as Sir Astley Cooper."t Mr. Bransby Cooper became the biographer of his uncle, at that uncle's own request, who also left behind him rich materials for the purpose. We are reluctantly compelled to own that we cannot compliment Mr. Cooper on the manner in which he has executed the task thus imposed upon him. He is an amiable and highly honorable man, every way worthy of the high estimation in which he was held by his distinguished kinsman, and whose glorious devotion to his profession he shares in no small degree. He is also an able man, and a surgeon of great reputation and eminence. He must, however, with the manliness which distinguishes his character, bear with us while we express our belief that he cannot himself be satisfied with the result of his labors, or the reception of them by the public. He evidently lacks the leading qualities of the biographer; who, at the same time that he has a true and hearty feeling for his subject, must not suffer it to overmaster him; who, conscious that he is writing for the public at large, instinctively perceives, as himself one of that public, what is likely to interest and instruct it-to hit the happy medium between personal and professional topics, and to make both subordinate to the development of THE MAN, so that we may not lose him among the incidents of his life. It is, again, extremely difficult for a man to be a good biographer of one who was of his own profession. He is apt to take too much, or too little, for granted; to regard that as generally interesting, which is so only to a very limited circle; and, often halting between two opinions-whether to write for the general or the special reader-to dissatisfy both. From one or two passages in his "Introduction," Mr. Cooper seems to have felt some such embarrassment,* and also to have experienced another difficultywhether to write for those who had personally known Sir Astley, or for strangers.t Mr. Cooper, again, though it may seem paradoxical to say so, knows really too much of Sir Astley, that is, has so identified himself with Sir Astley, his habits, feelings, character, and doings, as boy and man, as the affectionate admiring pupil, companion, and kinsman, that he has lost the power of removing himself, as it were, to such a distance from his subject as would enable him to view it in its true colors and just proportions. These disadvantages should have occasioned him to reflect very gravely on the responsibility which he was about to undertake, in committing to the press a memoir of Sir Astley Cooper. He did so sadly too precipitately. Within sixteen months' time he had completed his labors, and they were printed, ready for distribution to the public. This was an interval by no means too short for a master of his craft-a ready and expererienced biographer, but ten times too short for one who was not such. A picture for posterity cannot be painted at a moment's notice, and in five minutes' time; which might perhaps suffice for a gaudy daub, which is glanced at for a moment, and forgotten forever, or remembered only with feelings of displeasure and regret. Mr. Cooper felt it necessary to put forward some excuses, which we must frankly tell him are insufficient. Professional duties, engagements, and other circumstances of a more private nature," cannot "be accepted as an apology for the many defects to be found in these volumes." A memoir of Sir Astley Cooper, by Mr. Bransby Cooper, ought never to have stood in need of such apologies. If he had not sufficient time at his command, he should have considerably delayed the preparation of the Memoir, or committed his materials to other hands, or subjected his performance to competent revision. As it is, we look in vain for discrimination, and subordination, and method. Topics are introduced which should have been discarded, or handled very, very differently. Innumerable communications from friends and associates of Sir Astley are incorporated into the work, in their writers ip+ Ibid. 66 * Introd. pp. x. xi. Introd. pp. xv. xvi. |