“Only observe,” said Darcy, breaking silence, after a long pause, and without any apparent link of connexion between their last topic of conversation and the sage reflection he was about to launch—­“only observe,” and, as he raised himself upon his elbow, something very like a sigh escaped from him, “how complete, in our modern system of life, is the ascendency of woman over us!  Every art is hers—­is devoted to her service.  Poetry, music, painting, sculpture—­all seem to have no theme but woman.  It is her loveliness, her power over us, that is paraded and chanted on every side.  Poets have been always mad on the beauty of woman, but never so mad as now; we must not only submit to be sense-enthralled, the very innermost spirit of a man is to be deliberately resigned to the tyranny of a smooth brow and a soft eye.  Music, which grows rampant with passion, speaks in all its tones of woman:  as long as the strain lasts we are in a frenzy of love, though it is not very clear with whom, and happily the delirium ends the moment the strings of the violin have ceased to vibrate.  What subject has the painter worth a rush but the beauty of woman?  We gaze for ever on the charming face which smiles on us from his canvass; we may gaze with perfect license—­that veil which has just been lifted to the brow, it will never be dropt again—­but we do not gaze with perfect impunity; we turn from the lovely shadow with knees how prone to bend!  And as to the sculptor, on condition that he hold to the pure colourless marble, is he not permitted to reveal the sacred charms of Venus herself?  Every art is hers.  Go to the theatre, and whether it be tragedy, or comedy, or opera, or dance, the attraction of woman is the very life of all that is transacted there.  Shut yourself up at home with the poem or the novel, and lo! to love, and to be loved, by one fair creature, is all that the world has to dignify with the name of happiness.  It is too much.  The heart aches and sickens with an unclaimed affection, kindled to no purpose.  Every where the eye, the ear, the imagination, is provoked, bewildered, haunted by the magic of this universal syren.

“And what is worse,” continued our profound philosopher—­and here he rose from his elbow, and supported himself at arm’s length from the ground, one hand resting on the turf, the other at liberty, if required, for oratorical action—­“what is worse, this place which woman occupies in art is but a fair reflection of that which she fills in real life.  Just heavens! what a perpetual wonder it is, this living, breathing beauty!  Throw all your metaphors to the winds—­your poetic raptures—­your ideals—­your romance of position and of circumstance:  look at a fair, amiable, cultivated woman, as you meet her in the actual, commonplace scenes of life:  she is literally, prosaically speaking, the last consummate result of the creative power of nature, and the gathered refinements of centuries of human civilization.  The world