As a sex, women are habitually indolent; and every thing tends to
make them so. I do not forget the starts of activity which
sensibility produces; but as these flights of feeling only increase
the evil, they are not to be confounded with the slow, orderly walk
of reason. So great, in reality, is their mental and bodily
indolence, that till their body be strengthened and their
understanding enlarged by active exertions, there is little reason
to expect that modesty will take place of bashfulness. They may
find it prudent to assume its semblance; but the fair veil will
only be worn on gala days.
Perhaps there is not a virtue that mixes so kindly with every other
as modesty. It is the pale moon-beam that renders more interesting
every virtue it softens, giving mild grandeur to the contracted
horizon. Nothing can be more beautiful than the poetical fiction,
which makes Diana with her silver crescent, the goddess of
chastity. I have sometimes thought, that wandering with sedate
step in some lonely recess, a modest dame of antiquity must have
felt a glow of conscious dignity, when, after contemplating the
soft shadowy landscape, she has invited with placid fervour the
mild reflection of her sister's beams to turn to her chaste bosom.
A Christian has still nobler motives to incite her to preserve her
chastity and acquire modesty, for her body has been called the
Temple of the living God; of that God who requires more than
modesty of mien.
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