(*Footnote. I am not now alluding to that superiority of mind
which leads to the creation of ideal beauty, when life surveyed
with a penetrating eye, appears a tragi-comedy, in which little can
be seen to satisfy the heart without the help of fancy.)
Besides, the reading of novels makes women, and particularly ladies
of fashion, very fond of using strong expressions and superlatives
in conversation; and, though the dissipated artificial life which
they lead prevents their cherishing any strong legitimate passion,
the language of passion in affected tones slips for ever from their
glib tongues, and every trifle produces those phosphoric bursts
which only mimick in the dark the flame of passion.
SECTION 13.3.
Ignorance and the mistaken cunning that nature sharpens in weak
heads, as a principle of self-preservation, render women very fond
of dress, and produce all the vanity which such a fondness may
naturally be expected to generate, to the exclusion of emulation
and magnanimity.
I agree with Rousseau, that the physical part of the art of
pleasing consists in ornaments, and for that very reason I should
guard girls against the contagious fondness for dress so common to
weak women, that they may not rest in the physical part. Yet, weak
are the women who imagine that they can long please without the aid
of the mind; or, in other words, without the moral art of pleasing.
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