forswear both passion and intellect to call it henceforth mine. What a contrast we exhibit, to be sure! I wander up and down the earth incessantly, beseeching every god to take compassion on me, or soliciting the votes of my fellow-men, or laying up treasures against some possible season of calamity. But she, delicious vision! is already radiant with the divine smile, is quite indifferent to the votes of all mankind, and finds an exhaustless occupation in the sweet womanly tastes and activities which have their home in her own bosom."

Hence and hence only it is that woman becomes the wife, becomes raised to the fellowship or equality of man, and entitled to his tenderest homage. Not because of any claim based upon her natural equality with him, but purely because of a claim based upon her natural inequality with him. Her natural equality would have formed no claim to his spiritual regard; on the contrary it would have disclaimed it. Every man knows this experimentally. Every man knows that any great development of passion or intellect in woman is sure to prejudice his devotion. Daniel

Webster was a man of great passions and great intellect. Would any man fancy a woman after the pattern of Daniel Webster? Madame de Stael was a woman exactly after that pattern, with equal force of passion, and even greater variety of intellectual endowment. But Madame de Stael attracted the love of no man of woman born, except M. Rocca her second husband, who was a woman. She invariably repelled it. Schiller, after one or two interviews with her, was so impressed with her essential masculinity, so outraged by her unwomanly intrusion into his mind and conscience, that he expressed a dread of having committed the unpardonable sin, even in talking with her. No, the charm of woman is personal and infinite: it does not reside in her having the same passions, or the same intellect with man, but rather in her having such an inequality with him, in these respects, as enables her to exhibit her own distinctive endowments, and so fascinate his regard. And these distinctive endowments are all summed up, as we have said before, in her being primarily a form of personal affection, in the fact that she finds her life only in ministering to man. Thus her life is always a present one. She does not wait for better circumstances, for a heaven beyond the grave, in order to begin to live. She lives now, and brings forth the proper fruits of life. Hence the first woman was named Eve, that is, LIVING. And thus in early ages, and even now in barbarous countries where

we have our own early ages stereotyped to sight, children were reckoned an honor to woman, and barrenness a discredit. The power of producing offspring-of bringing forth life-that is the ineffaceable badge of woman, that has been in all ages her crown of honor. Such was the first and rudest recognition of the true poetry of her nature, such the first grand charm she exhibited to the imagination of man. But this original and coarse appreciation has been refining all along the stream of history, until we now reverence in woman not merely the mother of our children, but the fountain of the purest and best life known to society; the fountain of joy, of sweet contentment, of all that is refined in thought, of all that is generous and disinterested in affection, of all that is graceful and spontaneous and irresistible in manners. She is Eve, or living still, but with how much diviner a life than she ever knew before! She daily puts on a more expressive grace, and man's love and worship grow ever more tender and true. His heart fully confesses the truth which his intellect is all too slow to discover. For woman is only the outward presentation of whatsoever is profoundest and divinest in himself, and of whatsoever therefore is most unsuspected by his own lumbering intelligence; and his passionate adoration is only the instinctual or blind acknowledgment of the fact. She is the embodiment of his own ideal selfhood. She is his own better nature visibly incarnated. She is the expressive type or symbol of that lustrous life which shall one day redeem him from earth, and ally him with divinity. Because man himself is destined for union with God, because man himself is bound one day to love and serve God alone, and to exhibit a selfhood accordingly instinct with divine power and beauty, therefore it is that woman symbolically unites herself with him, loves and serves him as he will one day love and serve God, and exhibits a person instinct to his eyes with grace and enchantment. She is not passion, she is not intellect, she is not strength. He is all these things, and they do not satisfy him. On the contrary they consume and fatigue him. The more he has of them, unless he himself still be above them, the more restless and unhappy they make him. Unless I be superior to my passion, superior to my intellect, and superior to my brute strength, I must be their tool, and he that is the tool of these things, has not begun as yet to be man. To be the slave of passion, of knowledge, or of mere physical activity, what is it but an endless toil, what is it but an endless headache and heartbreak? Accordingly, from his pro

Now

foundest soul man aspires to be something more than these things, aspires after a selfhood which is not bounded by these categories, and which cannot be exhausted by their demands. He aspires, in short, after union with God, aspires to realize a selfhood which shall be divine. this selfhood stands naturally imaged to his sight in the sweet alluring form of woman. Woman is nature's revelation to man of his own God-given and indefeasible self. In that shrine of dazzling innocence, God has transfigured all that is inmost and ineffable in human destiny. Therefore it is that man naturally worships woman with deathless devotion, because she reveals him, as he will one day be, to himself. And therefore it is that when he aspires to her favor, it is not with a view to transient enjoyment, but permanent possession rather. He does not ask her to become his mistress, or the companion of his pleasures merely, but his wife, or the partner of his cares as well; and hence the inseparable bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.

For this reason, says the grand old book, man shall leave father and mother, and cleave only to his wife. That is the law of the union. The husband cleaves to the wife, not the wife to the husband. He was not created a help to her, but she to him. And what a help has she proved! How she has softened this rugged world to him by turning it into a delicious home, by peopling it in the first place, and so connecting him in sympathy with the remotest regions of space, and

then by garlanding it with every grace of her own melodious nature. What a worker she is, to be sure! How every stroke tells from that fairy hand! How every thing she touches suddenly buds and blossoms with beauty! The common air grows tonic with her presence, and the music of her cheerful feet is like the tinkling of bells which the traveller hears upon the necks of the kine descending into secluded Alpine valleys.

God makes man out of the dust of the ground, and his highest virtue therefore is humility. But he makes woman out of man, and the virtue of humility in him, accordingly, becomes in her refined into the peerless grace of modesty. Humility is the true badge of the manly nature, modesty of the feminine. Woman is a refinement of God's original handiwork. Man stands between her and the bare earth. She is a plant that springs exclusively out of a human soil, and she will therefore be precisely what that soil, by its own richness, permits her to be. If the soil be unimproved and wild, as in savage humanity or in early periods of history, she will be visibly degraded, the mere abject vassal and drudge of man. If the soil be enriched by culture, as in civilized humanity, she will flower more and more resplendently in all the attributes of wife, until finally, when man himself shall have become fully developed by the beneficent advance of science and art, she will put on the panoply of her accomplishments, and bring forth a fruit that is divine.

Americans who wish to talk Spanish and eat Spanish, may go to one of the last, La Noblesa Vascagonda, for instance; but the probabilities are, that after a day's experience of garlic and oil, they will complete their Castilian accomplishments by 'walking Spanish' into new quarters. In any house in Havana, public or private, Spanish, French, German, or American, enough vernacular conversation and cookery to satisfy any reasonable taste, may be had for the asking; and as the habits and character of the people can be closely observed without sharing ther bed and board-the bed being in fact a board-the traveller will find the equilibrium of his mind and body preserved, and no advantage lost by committing himself to the care of an American host.

When in our last number the reader and the writer stopped in their walk

through the narrow, dirty alleys which the Habaneros call calles, and which take the place of our broad and dirty streets, it was before the huge door of our hotel. As this building is a fair specimen of the better class of houses in Havana, being in fact the former residence of a wealthy Spaniard, let us look at it somewhat in detail. The gateway is vast enough for that of a fortress, and is surrounded with ornamental tracery, in which the influence of Moorish taste upon the builder is very evident. This gateway is, save a small window at its side, the only external aperture in the lower story, which is nearly twenty-five feet in height. It is closed by a huge bivalve door of treble mahogany, thickly studded with brass knobs, which are the heads of the bolts which bind it together. One leaf stands open; we enter, and find ourselves at one end of an oblong courtyard, paved with flat stones. On our left stands the high-wheeled volante, which is sure to be found in this part of the house of any person even 'well to do,' and behind it is the pallet on which the porter sleeps; for the ponderous gate admits of no latch key, and whoever comes in after ten o'clock at night must rouse the porter, who is generally a soldier upon half pay, well-used to disturbed slumbers. As we stand in the gateway, we see that the walls are between two and three feet thick, and are built not in layers, but with an irregular mixture of stones and mortar. At the end of the court-yard, half hidden behind an arch, are two horses, which have their stable, as we shall see, directly under the dining-room. Around the court-yard are the apartments of the negroes, and the store-rooms. From the middle springs a tall, slender catalpa tree, branchless, except near its top, which almost reaches that of the house, where its broad, thin leaves, cast their delicate shade upon the gallery which we see running round the court above our heads. Close by the tree is the mouth of a large cistern, long unused. We turn to the left, and ascend a broad stone staircase, with a heavy balustrade. On the first landing stands a puzzling piece of mahogany furniture; for it is too high for a refrigerator, and too low for a shower-bath. It is a filter. Opened, it discloses a large hemispherical stone basin, from the lower surface of which the water drips rapidly in great pellucid drops into an earthen vessel below. This natural filter far surpasses, in efficacy, any artificial contrivance for the same purpose; even those to which the "American Institute has awarded a gold medal." And the water, which is thus filtered, and which is brought into the city by an aqueVOL. I.-19

duct, is, to confess the truth, purer and more palatable than the Croton. Another flight of the staircase leads us to the floor of the balcony, upon which open all the principal apartments of the house. A broad platform before us has a floor of cement, hard enough to be polished like marble. On one side is a cane settee; on the other a huge Spanish arm-chair, with bottom, sides and back of unyielding leather; such a chair as the fortunate possessor of Pellicier's Don Quixote, published in Madrid in 1798, will find in the admirably characteristic illustrations of that edition. Here is the entrance to the drawing-room, a large apartment fronting on the street, and the full width of the house, about fifty feet, in length. Its floor is of tesselated marble. Its furniture seems penuriously meagre and mean to those who are accustomed to the overloaded rooms of the North. A pianoforte, a book-table, upon which no books are, a cane-bottomed sofa, a few ordinary chairs, and half a dozen or more. huge cane Boston-rockers, are the sum of its contents. Its lofty roof is unceiled. and shows beams rather fantastically carved. The windows, reaching from the floor nearly to the roof, open upon a balcony, which seems to overhang the middle of the narrow street. They are all open now; but we notice that they do not close with sashes, but with heavy shutters; in each of which, about six feet from the floor, is a glazed aperture about nine inches square. Such a thing as a glazed window sash does not exist in Cuba. Sleeping chambers open upon the gallery around the court, which we noticed from below; and on the side of the quadrangle. opposite to the drawing-room, is the dining-room, which is nothing more than a wide platform thrown across the court. and open to the air through arches. yond this, the gallery again leads to other sleeping rooms, to offices, and to the kitchen, where all the cooking is done with charcoal in small furnaces. Some houses have a lower gallery opening on the first landing of the staircase, and leading to other sleeping apartments. From the upper gallery, a steep flight of steps leads to the heavily-tiled roof, whence we asscend to the top of one of the square elevations we have already noticed. The furnishing of the bed-chambers is of the same meagreness as that of the drawingroom. A cot, or a simple four-post bedstead, upon the sack-bottom of which no bed is laid, but only a quilt or two, a wardrobe, a washstand, and the inevitable rocking-chair, all of rather homely materials, are what we find. This paucity and poverty of furniture is a Cuban trait, and

Be

is indicative of no frugality. The man whose volante and harness have a thousand dollars' worth of silver worked into their decorations, and whose calesero (coachman) carries enough of bullion about him to purchase his freedom, will not have so much, or so expensive furniture in his house as the New-Yorker who considers himself in very moderate circumstances. The very palace itself is no exception to this remark. And the reason is simply one of climate. A common cane-bottomed chair or sofa is more comfortable here than one with a stuffed damask, plush or hair seat. A bed or a mattress would be a nuisance; curtains, an abomination. Even the indispensable mosquito bar is oppressive. A carpet would soon be alive, and walk off the floor of itself. Every shelter for an insect is avoided. And yet, in spite of this care, a bit of cake left upon a table will, in a few minutes, swarm with ants; cockroaches, half a span long, trot through your bed-chamber; you cannot bathe without finding spiders upon your clothes when you require them again; and scorpions will wander up stairs, down stairs, and in my lady's chamber. They have ants here which eat down houses; others so large that they kill chickens by attacking them in the throat; indeed, this little insect, so much the favorite of moralists, swarms here to that degree, that one who had not the fear of Dr. Johnson before his eyes, might find in the fact a reason for calling Cuba the queen of the Anthilles. Here we have the small tarantula, and another spider almost equally venomous, whose huge and hideous body is about two inches in diameter; and although the body of the scorpion is hardly larger than a pigeon's egg, and its bite very rarely fatal, still they have an unpleasant way of seeking shelter in boots and shoes, and resenting with spirit any interference with their domiciliary arrangements.

As

to other insects of a more domestic character-household Macbeths, who murder sleep-I can say nothing. It was my good fortune to rest with undisturbed slumbers. One room escaped our attention as we passed from the staircase to the drawing-room, for our backs were toward it. It is a small oratory, which opens upon the platform at the head of the stairs. The door is richly carved and gilt, as is the little altar; over which is a well-colored virgin and child by some imitator of Murillo. But the house is in the hands of heretics now, and the oratory is made a place for the safe-keeping of valuable articles; among which, lies a set of harness loaded down with silver.

The houses in Havana are never more

than two stories high, and, as we before remarked, some of the finest are but one. The internal arrangements of these correspond very nearly to those of their loftier companions; the single floor in these being divided as the second is in those. As the drawing-room is always upon the street, and as that is always so narrow, the ponderous gratings which in these single-storied houses are necessary for the protection, not of the window sashes, for there are none, but of the inmates,seem to be made for their safe-keeping, rather than their comfort. The effect of these huge bars of iron bowed before windows which pierce massive walls, is very strange and somewhat unpleasant. They seem very inconsistent with the light color and otherwise gay appearance of the buildings they protect. In passing through one narrow street, the houses in which are chiefly of this structure, it seemed to me as if I were walking in a city of pea-green prisons. But the penitentiary look of these houses is not the most remarkable aspect which they present to the European or American visitor. Their inhabitants, when occupying the front rooms, seem to be living in the very street; and as far as privacy is concerned, they might as well do so. It must be remembered that the causeway is not wide enough for two persons to stand upon it abreast, that the wall of the house is invariably flush with the street, and that two, or three, or four huge windows open to the ground from the drawing

room.

Fancy yourself, then, taking an evening stroll through the city. You come at every step upon an open window, through which it is impossible that you should not see the innermost recesses of the lighted room. There is the little slipper, which the dark-eyed daughter of the house let lazily drop from her pretty foot as she lay upon the cane-bottomed sofa, eating dulces after dinner. Upon the table in yonder corner, is a small package of paper cigaritos in most annoying proximity to a fan and a black mantilla. The señorita who dropped the slipper, sits now in one of the double rows of rockingchairs which stretch away from the window, her little foot, bare of stocking as well as shoe; and the señora who will take up the cigaritos sits opposite. Both are rocking as if they were paid at so much the vibration, while they gaze listlessly but steadily into the street. If you are fresh from the North, and reasonably modest about intruding upon other people's privacy, you will be somewhat startled at thus finding yourself made one of the family, whether you will or no. But if you show your surprise, you will

be looked upon as ignorant or low bred; and should you turn away your head, the ladies will think you mean to slight them. If you wish to appear but civil, you should look respectfully but admiringly upon the señorita, as long as your pace leaves her within your sight. If you would be gallant, you may stop, lift your hat, and tell her in your very best Castilian that you cast yourself at her adorable little feet; and she will look pleased, and the señora will thank you and forgive the omission of usted in your speech. The least you can do is to go on about your business, as if your walk were by the side of a dead wall. It seems, indeed, very droll, to pass house after house, and looking into all as if you stood in the very room, see the family, more or less numerously represented, sitting in the eternal cane-bottomed Boston-rockers, in two rows which stretch at right angles with the street, from each side of the window far into the apartment, and all rocking as if a vibratory motion were a penance enjoined for original sin. This is the way in which the Habaneros pass their evenings. But, if you venture on compliment, although the lady should have no watchful dueña near, do not presume upon the gracious manner in which your gallantry is received, or even acknowledged; else, some fine evening as you pass the Campo Marte, you may feel the point of a stiletto between your ribs. If the lady wait for you to address her, be circumspect, let her manner be as gracious as it may; but if she begin the conversation, you may step in and finish it, and the manner of your reception will depend entirely upon your tact, the reasonableness of your expectations, and the kindness of her disposition.

You live at Havana, thus: You rise at six o'clock; to remain longer in bed would be to sacrifice the pleasantest part of the day. While you are dressing, a slave brings you coffee, which is drunk here three times a day. Drink it, even if you never drank it at home. Here, it is in fact not the beverage it is there, for you are not the same man. It is always safe, and generally agreeable, to assume the habits of life of the country in which you find yourself. Your coffee will be delicious, with but one drawback: its delicate aromatic flavor is deteriorated, vulgarized, by the sugar. Refined sugar is unknown in Cuba, where the best that is used has a coarse, impure taste, which you would gladly exchange for the flavor of the syrup in which, at home, you dip your double slice of buttered buckwheat cake. You wonder that the Habaneros do not refine their sugar. If you begin

the day thus wondering, you will go through it in a state of amazement. The Habaneros do nothing that they can do without doing. Your coffee and your toilet finished, you have your time till nine o'clock before you. All Havana breakfasts at nine o'clock. Before that hour, a good portion of the day's business is done, and the Habanero, who was probably in his office by six o'clock, goes home to breakfast, as we go home to dinner. The ladies go to Mass about half-past seven o'clock. At any of the numerous churches, you may always, at this hour, find a score of them upon their knees near the altar. As you walk around and look at the vile daubs of pictures, and the bones and teeth of saints preserved in alcohol, like two-headed snakes in an apothecary's shop, these devout ladies will gaze modestly, but calmly at you, with great black eyes, and give their little hands such a piquant flirt, as they tell their beads, that you cannot avoid admiring their dimpled prettiness, and the contrast between them and the black dress which every Havanese lady of position wears at church. On ordinary and saints' days, which occur once or twice a week, the attendance is much more numerous; and on these occasions, the young gallants of the city go,-not to church; for in Havana, no gentleman, unless he is a priest, goes to church,—but to the church doors, round which, as Mass is about finished, they cluster, and as the ladies come out, they hand them to their volantes. This is a courtsey which, in Havana, any gentleman may offer any lady. You encounter a lady whom you have never seen before, coming from her own house, from a church, or a shop, and about to step into her volante; you doff your hat, present your hand, conduct her to her seat, she thanks you graciously, and both of you go your ways, feeling the happier for the service rendered and the acknowledgment made. A lady in Havana takes every proffered courtesy kindly, and thanks you for it. She does not stalk up to your seat in public places, and, with sulky doggedness, silently demand that you should give up to her what you have paid for and secured, and after you have given it, take no more notice of you than if you were a cur which had been driven from her path. She does not, if you offer your hand or your arm to assist her, shrink within herself, and look at you as if you were a leper or a branded felon, because you have never been 'introduced." If she be pretty and you tell her so, she thanks you for admiring her; and I have yet to learn that this disposition on her part lessens her pleasure in receiving attention and admiration, or yours, in giving it.