Without taste, excepting of the lighter kind,
for taste is the offspring of judgment, how can they discover, that
true beauty and grace must arise from the play of the mind? and how
can they be expected to relish in a lover what they do not, or very
imperfectly, possess themselves? The sympathy that unites hearts,
and invites to confidence, in them is so very faint, that it cannot
take fire, and thus mount to passion. No, I repeat it, the love
cherished by such minds, must have grosser fuel!
The inference is obvious; till women are led to exercise their
understandings, they should not be satirized for their attachment
to rakes; nor even for being rakes at heart, when it appears to be
the inevitable consequence of their education. They who live to
please must find their enjoyments, their happiness, in pleasure!
It is a trite, yet true remark, that we never do any thing well,
unless we love it for its own sake.
Supposing, however, for a moment, that women were, in some future
revolution of time, to become, what I sincerely wish them to be,
even love would acquire more serious dignity, and be purified in
its own fires; and virtue giving true delicacy to their affections,
they would turn with disgust from a rake. Reasoning then, as well
as feeling, the only province of woman, at present, they might
easily guard against exterior graces, and quickly learn to despise
the sensibility that had been excited and hackneyed in the ways of
women, whose trade was vice; and allurement's wanton airs.
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