I mean when the heart has really been
rendered susceptible, and the taste formed; for I am apt to
conclude, from what I have seen in fashionable life, that vanity is
oftener fostered than sensibility by the mode of education, and the
intercourse between the sexes, which I have reprobated; and that
coquetry more frequently proceeds from vanity than from that
inconstancy, which overstrained sensibility naturally produces.
* Men of these descriptions pour it into their compositions, to
amalgamate the gross materials; and, moulding them with passion,
give to the inert body a soul; but, in woman's imagination, love alone
concentrates these ethereal beams.
Another argument that has had great weight with me, must, I think,
have some force with every considerate benevolent heart. Girls who
have been thus weakly educated, are often cruelly left by their
parents without any provision; and, of course, are dependent on, not
only the reason, but the bounty of their brothers. These brothers are,
to view the fairest side of the question, good sort of men, and give
as a favour, what children of the same parents had an equal right
to. In this equivocal humiliating situation, a docile female may
remain some time, with a tolerable degree of comfort. But, when the
brother marries, a probable circumstance, from being considered as the
mistress of the family, she is viewed with averted looks as an
intruder, an unnecessary burden on the benevolence of the master of
the house, and his new partner.
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