Why are girls to be told that they resemble angels; but to sink
them below women? Or, that a gentle, innocent female is an object
that comes nearer to the idea which we have formed of angels than
any other. Yet they are told, at the same time, that they are only
like angels when they are young and beautiful; consequently, it is
their persons, not their virtues, that procure them this homage.
Idle empty words! what can such delusive flattery lead to, but
vanity and folly? The lover, it is true, has a poetic licence to
exalt his mistress; his reason is the bubble of his passion, and he
does not utter a falsehood when he borrows the language of
adoration. His imagination may raise the idol of his heart,
unblamed, above humanity; and happy would it be for women, if they
were only flattered by the men who loved them; I mean, who love the
individual, not the sex; but should a grave preacher interlard his
discourses with such fooleries?
In sermons or novels, however, voluptuousness is always true to its
text. Men are allowed by moralists to cultivate, as nature
directs, different qualities, and assume the different characters,
that the same passions, modified almost to infinity, give to each
individual. A virtuous man may have a choleric or a sanguine
constitution, be gay or grave, unreproved; be firm till be is
almost over-bearing, or, weakly submissive, have no will or opinion
of his own; but all women are to be levelled, by meekness and
docility, into one character of yielding softness and gentle
compliance.
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