My Last Duchess.

W. M. THACKERAY.

     To be doing good for some one else, is the life of most good women. 
     They are exuberant of kindness, as it were, and must impart it to
     some one.—­Henry Esmond.

     Who ever accused women of being just?  They are always sacrificing
     themselves or somebody for somebody else’s sake.—­Pendennis.

I think it is not national prejudice which makes me believe that a high-bred English lady is the most complete of all Heaven’s subjects in this world.  In whom else do you see so much grace, and so much virtue; so much faith, and so much tenderness; with such a perfect refinement and chastity?  And by high-bred ladies I don’t mean duchesses and countesses.  Be they ever so high in station, they can be but ladies, and no more.  But almost every man who lives in the world has the happiness, let us hope, of counting a few such persons amongst his circle of acquaintance,—­women, in whose angelical natures there is something awful, as well as beautiful, to contemplate; at whose feet the wildest and fiercest of us must fall down and humble ourselves, in admiration of that adorable purity which never seems to do or to think wrong.—­Pendennis.

     What kind-hearted woman, young or old, does not love
     match-making?—­The Newcomes.

Who does not know how ruthlessly women will tyrannize when they are let to domineer?  And who does not know how useless advice is?...  A man gets his own experience about women, and will take nobody’s hearsay; nor, indeed, is the young fellow worth a fig that would.—­Henry Esmond.

Stupid!  Why not?  Some women ought to be stupid.  What you call dullness I call repose.  Give me a calm woman, a slow woman,—­a lazy, majestic woman.  Show me a gracious virgin bearing a lily; not a leering giggler frisking a rattle.  A lively woman would be the death of me....  Why shouldn’t the Sherrick be stupid, I say?  About great beauty there should always reign a silence.  As you look at the great stars, the great ocean, any great scene of nature, you hush, sir.  You laugh at a pantomime, but you are still in a temple.  When I saw the great Venus of the Louvre, I thought,—­Wert thou alive, O goddess, thou shouldst never open those lovely lips but to speak lowly, slowly; thou shouldst never descend from that pedestal but to walk stately to some near couch, and assume another attitude of beautiful calm.  To be beautiful is enough.  If a woman can do that well; who shall demand more from her?  You don’t want a rose to sing.  And I think wit is as out of place where there’s great beauty; as I wouldn’t have a queen to cut jokes on her throne.—­The Newcomes.

And so it is,—­a pair of bright eyes with a dozen glances suffice to subdue a man; to enslave him, and inflame him; to make him even forget; they dazzle him so that the past