OLD FACES IN NEW MASKS. FISHWIVES. "La langue d'une poissarde Parisienne coupe au vif comme un glaive à d'eux tranchant.”—VADE. "All mad to speak and none to hearken, They set the very dogs a barking; No chattering makes so loud a din As fishwives o'er a cup of gin."-SWIFT. Ir is both interesting and instructive to trace the professional and moral lineaments on the great family of mankind, and to see how habits, and modes of thinking and acting, are transmitted from nation to nation, and from generation to generation, without scarcely any discrepancy or variation. The soldier, the sailor, the lawyer, the merchant, the physician, the author, the comedian, the poet, the critic, and the painter, have all some peculiarities connected with their respective avocations, which neither time nor place materially changes. We recognize the same mental and social physiognomy in every age, and under every clime. And the same thing may be traced, though with somewhat less distinctness, in all the professional walks of life, however humble or unobtrusive. This moral fixity in manners is the basis of the laws of our inward nature. It is the principle on which we B frame declarations, and rules, and judgments, and conclusions respecting human life and character. Were there nothing indelibly imprinted on society, nothing could be useful or interesting respecting its past history. All would be like the surface of the ocean, where every movement is isolated and transitory, and nothing is left as a permanent record of past agitation and change. The fishwomen of all ages have faithfully preserved their general habits, and phases of character. They have been noted for their eloquent vulgarity, their sturdy independence, their unscrupulous extortion, their superstitious feelings, and their clannish attachments. The causes of these fixed features in their intellectual and moral character are various, but may be chiefly referable to the uncertainty connected with the supply of their vendible commodities; the perishable nature of these commodities; the luxurious and dainty light in which they are in several countries and seasons viewed as articles of food; and the risk and dangers to which a fisherman's life is perpetually exposed. These, collectively and individually, may be considered as the efficient, if not the proximate, causes of that distinct unity of character of this race of grondeuse from the earliest times till the present hour, in every nation and clime. The constant habit of intermarrying among each other, so invariably adhered to in fishing communities, both in this and other countries, has excited the attention of some modern writers and philanthropists; and they have been led to suggest that, if this custom were broken in upon, a more decided improvement and change would be effected in the general deportment of fishwomen. They would be more refined, domesticated, cleanly, and polite in their ordinary conversation and intercourse with the world. This is not a new idea. More than three centuries ago, if not further back than that, similar schemes were suggested in Italy for the attainment of the same ends. We have an Italian fable on the subject, published at Venice, which gives us the pith of the matter in few words, and shows us how the question did then stand, and does now, in reference to this attempted improvement among a certain class of European society. The fable runs thus:: "A man of fashion and distinction, in rambling one day through a fishing village, accosted one of the fishermen with the remark, that he wondered greatly that men of his line of life should chiefly confine themselves, in their matrimonial connections, to women of their own caste, and not take them from other classes of society, where a greater security would be obtained for their wives keeping a house properly, and rearing a family more in accordance with the refinements and courtesies of life. To this the fisherman replied, that to him, and men of his laborious profession, such wives as they usually took were as indispensable to their vocation as their boats and nets. Their wives took their fish to market, obtained bait for their lines, mended their nets, and performed a thousand different and necessary things which husbands could not do for themselves, and which women taken from any other of the labouring classes of society would be totally unable to do. The labour and the drudgery of our wives,' continued he, ' is a necessary part of our peculiar craft, and cannot by any means be |