Excepting with a lover, I must repeat with emphasis,
a former observation,- it would be well if they were only agreeable or
rational companions.- But in this respect his advice is even
inconsistent with a passage which I mean to quote with the most marked
approbation.
'The sentiment, that a woman may allow all innocent freedoms,
provided her virtue is secure, is both grossly indelicate and
dangerous, and has proved fatal to many of your sex.' With this
opinion I perfectly coincide. A man, or a woman, of any feeling,
must always wish to convince a beloved object that it is the
caresses of the individual, not the sex, that are received and
returned with pleasure; and, that the heart, rather than the senses,
is moved. Without this natural delicacy, love becomes a selfish
personal gratification that soon degrades the character.
I carry this sentiment still further. Affection, when love is out of
the question, authorises many personal endearments, that naturally,
flowing from an innocent heart, give life to the behaviour; but the
personal intercourse of appetite, gallantry, or vanity, is despicable.
When a man squeezes the hand of a pretty woman, handing her to a
carriage, whom he has never seen before, she will consider such an
impertinent freedom in the light of an insult, if she have any true
delicacy, instead of being flattered by this unmeaning homage to
beauty. These are the privileges of friendship, or the momentary
homage which the heart pays to virtue, when it flashes suddenly on the
notice- mere animal spirits have no claim to the kindnesses of
affection!
Wishing to feed the affections with what is now the food of
vanity, I would fain persuade my sex to act from simpler principles.
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