"All our ARTS are employed to
gain and keep the heart of man:"--and what is the inference?--if
her person, and was there ever a person, though formed with
Medicisan symmetry, that was not slighted? be neglected, she will
make herself amends by endeavouring to please other men. Noble
morality! But thus is the understanding of the whole sex
affronted, and their virtue deprived of the common basis of virtue.
A woman must know, that her person cannot be as pleasing to her
husband as it was to her lover, and if she be offended with him for
being a human creature, she may as well whine about the loss of his
heart as about any other foolish thing. And this very want of
discernment or unreasonable anger, proves that he could not change
his fondness for her person into affection for her virtues or
respect for her understanding.
Whilst women avow, and act up to such opinions, their
understandings, at least, deserve the contempt and obloquy that
men, WHO NEVER insult their persons, have pointedly levelled at the
female mind. And it is the sentiments of these polite men, who do
not wish to be encumbered with mind, that vain women thoughtlessly
adopt. Yet they should know, that insulted reason alone can spread
that SACRED reserve about the persons which renders human
affections, for human affections have always some base alloy, as
permanent as is consistent with the grand end of existence--the
attainment of virtue.
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