ANNE CLIFFORD,

COUNTESS OF DORSET, PEMBROKE, AND MONTGOMERY.

John Knox, during his second residence at Geneva, put forth "The first blast of the trumpet against the monstrous regiment* of women." It was aimed at that Mary of England who was persuaded by priests and other ill-disposed persons to attempt the re-establishment of what she conceived to be the CHURCH, by the exertion of her secular power. John Knox ought to have written "against the monstrous regiment of priests," which in kingdoms as in private families, is always most powerful over women, because women are more docile, more confiding, have a much greater yearning after Heaven than men. Moreover, they are almost sole patentees of the virtue of self-denial, and if once they can be convinced that humanity, pity, toleration, or what you will, is a self-indulgence, and a self-seeking, it follows as necessarily as U after Q, that cruelty, hard-heartedness, and intolerance, are a mortification of the flesh, meritorious exactly in proportion as it is painful.

The priests of some religions undertake, for a consideration, to bear the sins of such of the laity as put trust in them. They may perhaps find, at last, that they have spoken more truth than they meant to do. It is no small portion of the sins of the earth, of which priests shall bear the blame, and the whole blame; for the reluctant obedience of those who accepted them for the sake of the Lord, whose commission they had forged, shall not lose its reward. He that said that a cup of cold water, given for his sake, should not be given in vain, would take no exception, if for his sake, it were ignorantly given to Judas Iscariot.

We have been induced to sound this "Counter-blast" to the "first blast of the Trumpet," because we believe that women, when they do err, err far more frequently from superstition, than from passion, and that their worst errors proceed from too great a distrust of their common sense and instinctive feelings, and too great a reliance on men, or serpents, or priests, who promise to make them wise. Under the name priest, we comprehend all creatures, whether Catholic or Protestant, * i. e. Government.

clerks or laymen, who either pretend to have discovered a byeway to heaven, or give tickets to free the legal toll-gates, or set up toll-gates of their own; or, either explicitly or implicitly discredit the authorised map, and insist upon it, that no one can go the right way, without taking them for guides, and paying them their fees.

We then conclude, that the main disqualification of women to rule, arises from the easiness with which they are ruled, and their proneness to give the reins into dishonest and usurping hands; a fault so nearly allied to the christian virtues of humility, docility, and obedience, so germane to that gentle, confiding spirit, which is at once their safety and their peril, their strength and their weakness, that we doubt whether the defining power of words can fix the land-mark between the good and the evil. It must be "spiritually discerned."

But no good woman wishes to rule. Ambition, a far deadlier sin, than the world conceives, and a degrading vice into the bargain, makes worse havoc in a female heart than in a male's. For the graces of womanhood are all womanly,-shy, timid, apt to fly from the most distant approach of harm. In man, many virtues sometimes consort with a giant vice, as we read in the book of Job that there was a meeting of the sons of God, and that Satan came also among them. But in woman the dominance of any one evil passion is as the "abomination of desolation sitting where it should not ;" as the unclean spirit in the empty house that took seven spirits worse than itself, and dwelt with them. There are few instances in which ambitious women have even retained the conservative virtue of their sex. We do not recollect more than one virgin Queen in authentic history. But what is yet more fearful, ambition perverts, where it does not extinguish, the maternal affection, and makes the holiest of feelings a mighty incentive to crime. Semiramis, Agrippina, and Catherine de Medici, are not the only instances that might be adduced of women who have not merely scrupled no wickedness for their sons' advancement, but actually corrupted the minds of their offspring, and plunged them into excess of sensuality, that themselves might govern in their names. But we need not look so high to see the mischief at work. There is no situation on earth more undesirable than that of a portionless beauty with an ambitious mother. The manœuvres, the falsehoods, to which parents who are poor and proud, will sometimes condescend, in order to bring about what is called a great match for a daughter, (that is to say, a connection with a family by whom she will most likely be despised, even now, and in the good old times, might very probably have been poisoned,) far exceed the utmost ingenuity of novelists to devise. And though it is to be hoped that such intrigues and plottings are comparatively rare in the cultivated part of

society, yet how often is the happiness of young hearts sacrificed, and virtuous unions forbidden, on a vague expectation of a higher offer? Nor are the influences of ambitious women on their husbands less injurious. It is a hard thing for a married statesman to be honest, if a coronet may be obtained by tergiversation. If "Nolo episcopari," was ever sincerely uttered, it must have been by a celibate clergyman.

Yet, although the desire of ruling is thus pernicious to feminine goodness, it by no means follows, that when Providence imposes the duty of ruling on a woman, she is to shrink from the responsibility. When the law of succession or the course of events throws dominion into a lady's hands, the same ordaining Power that makes the duty can qualify the person for its performance. There is no intellectual unfit

ness for sway in the sex and whatever of moral or physical weakness may pertain to it, may be more than compensated by fineness of tact, purity of inclination, and the strength of good resolve. Indeed, when we consider how few women have attained sovereignty, aud how large a proportion of those few have been great sovereigns (we wish more of them had been good women), we might almost conjecture that the politic faculties of the women were greater than those of the men. But the apparent superiority arises from the greater necessity for exertion and circumspection which the sex imposes, and the impossibility of weak women, in dangerous junctures, keeping possession of the seat at all.

We trust not. At

Are these reflections irrelevant to Biography? least they were freely suggested by the portrait of that noble lady, whose character we are about to depict. She was one who, with many disadvantages of time and circumstances, after enduring in no slight measure the sufferings to which her sex is exposed from its dependency, during the long residue of her life, happily combined the graces and charities of the high born woman, with the sterner qualifications of a ruler; the faith and hope of a Christian crowning and harmonizing all. Her sway was little less than regal-we would rather say patriarchal; and long was she remembered in the vales of Westmorland, and among the cliffs of Craven, as a maternal blessing.

As the name of Clifford has so long been connected with the "North Countree," and brings along with it so many historical, poetical, and romantic associations, we shall enter somewhat more than usual into the annals of the family, which, as they must have formed no small part of the education, so are they an important portion of the history of the Lady Anne herself, who made a digest of the family records, with the assistance of Sir Matthew Hale. We regret to say, that from the specimen we have seen, the learned judge seems to have contrived to