Why are girls to be told that they resemble angels; but to sink them
below women? Or, that a gentle innocent female is an object that comes
nearer to the idea which we have formed of angels than any other.
Yet they are told, at the same time, that they are only like angels
when they are young and beautiful; consequently, it is their
persons, not their virtues, that procure them this homage.
Idle empty words! What can such delusive flattery lead to, but
vanity and folly? The lover, it is true, has a poetic licence to exalt
his mistress; his reason is the bubble of his passion, and he does not
utter a falsehood when he borrows the language of adoration. His
imagination may raise the idol of his heart, unblamed, above humanity;
and happy would it be for women, if they were only flattered by the
men who loved them; I mean, who love the individual, not the sex;
but should a grave preacher interlard his discourses with such
fooleries?
In sermons or novels, however, voluptuousness is always true to
its text. Men are allowed by moralists to cultivate, as Nature
directs, different qualities, and assume the different characters,
that the same passions, modified almost to infinity, give to each
individual. A virtuous man may have a choleric or a sanguine
constitution, be gay or grave, unreproved; be firm till be is almost
over-bearing, or, weakly submissive, have no will or opinion of his
own; but all women are to be levelled, by meekness and docility,
into one character of yielding softness and gentle compliance.
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