She had a horror of
sentimentalism, and of the love of notoriety, and saw how likely
women, in the early stages of culture, were to aim at these. Therefore
she bent her efforts to recommending domestic life. But the methods
she recommends are such as will fit a character for any position to
which it may be called. She taught a contempt of falsehood, no less in
its most graceful, than in its meanest apparitions; the cultivation of
a clear, independent judgment, and adherence to its dictates; habits
of various and liberal study and employment, and a capacity for
friendship. Her standard of character is the same for both sexes,--
Truth, honor, enlightened benevolence, and aspiration after knowledge.
Of poetry, she knows nothing, and her religion consists in honor and
loyalty to obligations once assumed--in short, in "the great idea of
duty which holds us upright." Her whole tendency is practical.
Mrs. Jameson is a sentimentalist, and, therefore, suits us ill in some
respects, but she is full of talent, has a just and refined perception
of the beautiful, and a genuine courage when she finds it necessary.
She does not appear to have thought out, thoroughly, the subject on
which we are engaged, and her opinions, expressed as opinions, are
sometimes inconsistent with one another.
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