All, however, have not lovers to lose, or husbands to displease, or friends to affront; and if the women, in compliance with our self-revolving egotism, affect to prostrate themselves, and undervalue one another--do the men allow it to this extent? Do not the Germans most justly boast, that in their land arose the first feeling of veneration for women, the result of the Christian dispensation, grafted on the old German manners? Do they not point to their literature and their institutions, as more favourable to your sex than any other? Does not even Madame de Staël exalt the fine earnestness of the German feeling towards you, infinitely above the system of French gallantry?--that flimsy veil of conventional good-breeding, under which we seek to disguise the demoralization of one sex, and the virtual slavery of the other? Have I not heard you say, that it is the present fashion among the poets, artists, and writers of Germany, to defer in all things to the middle ages? Are not the maxims and sentiments of chivalry ready on their lips, the forms and symbols of the old chivalrous times to be traced in every department of literature and art among them?
All this is true; and I will believe that all this is something more than mere theory, when I see the Germans less slovenly in their interior, and less egotistical in their domestic relations. The theme is unwelcome, unpleasant, ungraceful,--in fact, I can scarcely persuade myself to say one word against those high-minded, benevolent, admirable, and "most-thinking people;" so I will not dwell upon it: but I must confess that the personal negligence of the men, and the forbearance of the women on this point, astonished me. I longed to remind these worshippers of the age of chivalry of that advice of St. Louis to his son--"Il faut être toujours propre et bien proprement habillé, afin d'être _mieux aimé de sa femme_;" the really good-natured and well-bred Germans will, I am sure, forgive this passing remark, and allow its truth: they _did_ at once agree with me, that the tavern-life of the men, more particularly the clever professional men in the south of Germany, (another remnant, I presume, either of the age of chivalry, or the Bürschen-sitten--I know not which,) was calculated to retard the social improvement and refinement of both sexes. And, apropos to chivalry, the fact is, that the institutions of a generous but barbarous period, invented to shield our helplessness, when women were exposed to every hardship, every outrage, have been much abused, and must be considerably modified to suit a very different state of society. That affectation of poetical homage, which your strength paid to our weakness, when the laws were not sufficient to defend us, we would now gladly exchange for more real honour, more real protection, more equal rights. I speak thus, knowing that, however open to perversion these expressions may be, _you_ will not misapprehend me; you know that I am no vulgar, vehement arguer about the "rights of women;" and, from my habitual tone of feeling and thought, the last to covet any of your masculine privileges.