I do not mention the understanding,
because never having been exercised, its slumbering energies rest
inactive, like the lurking particles of fire which are supposed
universally to pervade matter.
Females, in fact, denied all political privileges, and not
allowed, as married women, excepting in criminal cases, a civil
existence, have their attention naturally drawn from the interest of
the whole community to that of the minute parts, though the private
duty of any member of society must be very imperfectly performed
when not connected with the general good. The mighty business of
female life is to please, and restrained from entering into more
important concerns by political and civil oppression, sentiments
become events, and reflection deepens what it should, and would have
effaced, if the understanding had been allowed to take a wider range.
But, confined to trifling employments, they naturally imbibe
opinions which the only kind of reading calculated to interest an
innocent frivolous mind, inspires. Unable to grasp any thing great, is
it surprising that they find the reading of history a very dry task,
and disquisitions addressed to the understanding intolerably
tedious, and almost unintelligible? Thus are they necessarily
dependent on the novelist for amusement. Yet, when I exclaim against
novels, I mean when contrasted with those works which exercise the
understanding and regulate the imagination.- For any kind of reading I
think better than leaving a blank still a blank, because the mind must
receive a degree of enlargement and obtain a little strength by a
slight exertion of its thinking powers; besides, even the
productions that are only addressed to the imagination, raise the
reader a little above the gross gratification of appetites, to which
the mind has not given a shade of delicacy.
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