Nor have the Asiatics alone been addicted to this illiberality of thinking concerning the sex. Satirists of all ages and countries, while they flattered them to their faces, have from their closets scattered their spleen and ill-nature against them. Of this the Greek and Roman poets afford a variety of instances; but they must nevertheless yield the palm to some of our moderns. In the following lines, Pope has outdone every one of them:
“Men some to pleasure, some to business take;
But every woman is at heart—a rake.”
[p71]
Swift and Dr Young have hardly been behind this celebrated splenetic in illiberality. They perhaps were not favorites of the fair, and in revenge vented all their envy and spleen against them. But a more modern and accomplished writer who by his rank in life, by his natural and acquired graces, was undoubtedly a favorite, has repaid their kindness by taking every opportunity of exhibiting them in the most contemptible light. “Almost every man,” says he, “may be gained some way, almost every woman any way, can any thing exhibit a stronger caution to the sex?” It is fraught with information; and it is to be hoped they will use it accordingly.
[1] Xantippe, was the wife of Socrates, and the most famous scold of antiquity.
FEMALE SIMPLICITY.
Would we conceive properly of that simplicity which is the sweetest expression of a well-informed and well-meaning mind, which every where diffuses tenderness and delicacy, sweetens the relations of life, and gives a zest to the minutest duties of humanity, let us contemplate every perceptible operation of nature, the twilight of the evening, the pearly dew-drops of the early morning, and all that various growth which indicates the genial return of spring. The same principle from which all that is soft and pleasing, amiable or exquisite, to the eye or to the ear, in the exterior frame of nature, produces that taste for true simplicity, which is one [p72] of the most useful, as well as the most elegant lessons, that ladies can learn.
Infancy, is perhaps, the finest and most perfect illustration of simplicity. It is a state of genuine nature throughout. The feelings of children are under no kind of restraint, but pure as the fire, free as the winds, honest and open as the face of heaven. Their joys incessantly flow in the thickest succession, and their griefs only seem fleeting and evanescent. To the calls of nature they are only attentive. They know no voice but hers. Their obedience to all her commands is prompt and implicit. They never anticipate her bounties, nor relinquish her pleasures. This situation renders them independent of artifice. Influenced only by nature, their manners, like the principle that produces them, are always the same.