In the superiour ranks of life, every duty is done by deputies, as
if duties could ever be waved, and the vain pleasures which consequent
idleness forces the rich to pursue, appear so enticing to the next
rank, that the numerous scramblers for wealth sacrifice every thing to
tread on their heels. The most sacred trusts are then considered as
sinecures, because they were procured by interest, and only sought
to enable a man to keep good company. Women, in particular, all want
to be ladies. Which is simply to have nothing to do, but listlessly to
go they scarcely care where, for they cannot tell what.
But what have women to do in society? I may be asked, but to
loiter with easy grace; surely you would not condemn them all to
suckle fools and chronicle small beer! No. Women might certainly study
the art of healing, and be physicians as well as nurses. And
midwifery, decency seems to allot to them, though I am afraid the word
midwife, in our dictionaries, will soon give place to accoucheur,
and one proof of the former delicacy of the sex be effaced from the
language.
They might, also, study politics, and settle their benevolence on
the broadest basis; for the reading of history will scarcely be more
useful than the perusal of romances, if read as mere biography; if the
character of the times, the political improvements, arts, &c. be not
observed. In short, if it be not considered as the history of man; and
not of particular men, who filled a niche in the temple of fame, and
dropped into the black rolling stream of time, that silently sweeps
all before it, into the shapeless void called- eternity.
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