leading
us into sophistries. Cultivated men and women, who do not skim the cream
of life, and are attached to the duties, yet escape the harsher blows,
make acute and balanced observers. Moliere is their poet.

Of this class in England, a large body, neither Puritan nor
Bacchanalian, have a sentimental objection to face the study of the
actual world. They take up disdain of it, when its truths appear
humiliating: when the facts are not immediately forced on them, they
take up the pride of incredulity. They live in a hazy atmosphere that
they suppose an ideal one. Humorous writing they will endure, perhaps
approve, if it mingles with pathos to shake and elevate the feelings.
They approve of Satire, because, like the beak of the vulture, it smells
of carrion, which they are not. But of Comedy they have a shivering
dread, for Comedy enfolds them with the wretched host of the world,
huddles them with us all in an ignoble assimilation, and cannot be used
by any exalted variety as a scourge and a broom. Nay, to be an exalted
variety is to come under the calm curious eye of the Comic spirit,
and be probed for what you are. Men are seen among them, and very
many cultivated women. You may distinguish them by a favourite phrase:
'Surely we are not so bad!' and the remark: 'If that is human nature,
save us from it!' as if it could be done: but in the peculiar Paradise
of the wilful people who will not see, the exclamation assumes the
saving grace.

Yet should you ask them whether they dislike sound sense, they vow they
do not. And question cultivated women whether it pleases them to be
shown moving on an intellectual level with men, they will answer that it
does; numbers of them claim the situation. Now, Comedy is the fountain
of sound sense; not the less perfectly sound on account of the sparkle:
and Comedy lifts women to a station offering them free play for their
wit, as they usually show it, when they have it, on the side of sound
sense. The higher the Comedy, the more prominent the part they enjoy in
it. Dorine in the Tartuffe is common-sense incarnate, though palpably a
waiting-maid. Celimene is undisputed mistress of the same attribute in
the Misanthrope; wiser as a woman than Alceste as man. In Congreve's
Way of the World, Millamant overshadows Mirabel, the sprightliest male
figure of English comedy.

But those two ravishing women, so copious and so choice of speech, who
fence with men and pass their guard, are heartles