to Mrs. Grundy.
The approbation of that potentate may be a matter of indifference to
him, but it is of great importance to his wife. The man himself may
be above opinion, or may find sufficient compensation in the opinion
of those of his own way of thinking. But to the women connected with
him, he can offer no compensation. The almost invariable tendency of
the wife to place her influence in the same scale with social
consideration, is sometimes made a reproach to women, and represented
as a peculiar trait of feebleness and childishness of character in
them: surely with great injustice. Society makes the whole life of a
woman, in the easy classes, a continued self-sacrifice; it exacts
from her an unremitting restraint of the whole of her natural
inclinations, and the sole return it makes to her for what often
deserves the name of a martyrdom, is consideration. Her consideration
is inseparably connected with that of her husband, and after paying
the full price for it, she finds that she is to lose it, for no
reason of which she can feel the cogency. She has sacrificed her
whole life to it, and her husband will not sacrifice to it a whim, a
freak, an eccentricity; something not recognised or allowed for by
the world, and which the world will agree with her in thinking a
folly, if it thinks no worse! The dilemma is hardest upon that very
meritorious class of men, who, without possessing talents which
qualify them to make a figure among those with whom they agree in
opinion, hold their opinion from conviction, and feel bound in honour
and conscience to serve it, by making profession of their belief, and
giving their time, labour, and means, to anything undertaken in its
behalf. The worst case of all is when such men happen to be of a rank
and position which of itself neither gives them, nor excludes them
from, what is considered the best society; when their admission to it
depends mainly on what is thought of them personally--and however
unexceptionable their breeding and habits, their being identified
with opinions and public conduct unacceptable to those who give the
tone to society would operate as an effectual exclusion. Many a woman
flatters herself (nine times out of ten quite erroneously) that
nothing prevents her and her husband from moving in the highest
society of her neighbourhood--society in which others well known to
her, and in the same class of life, mix freely--except that her
husband is unfortunately a Diss