"The penitent, but ever to forgive, But this petty cunning and deceit, which superficial people have declared to be inherent in women, is to be found in all weak animals, not only among the human race, but throughout all animated nature; the fox and the monkey are sly and mischievous creatures, while the lion and the horse possess noble and generous natures. Ignorance is the most deplorable weakness, and while men keep women in darkness, and in ignorance, can it be expected that they will not be sly, and cunning, and petty, and deceitful? Who more cunning and fraudulent, and deceitful than the courtier, the exciseman, the attorney, the apothecary, and the little retailer of commodities, generally known by the name of huckster? And why? but because these animals are, always, weak, and ignorant, and barbarous. Imbecility, knowing its own want of hardiesse, and self-depending power, seeks to compensate for its insignificance by a petty rascality of deceit, which sometimes imposes on great minds, that, confiding in their own stability and power, do not suspect in others that dissimulation, to which they themselves scorn to stoop. An intellectualized female disdains all the meanness of petty cunning and deceit, as much as the ablest and most exalted of men can do; she knows and feels what a real, and essential, and intrinsic, and durable power her understanding gives her, infinitely superior to the momentary and fallacious appearance of potentiality, derived from the villainy of deceit; and 'till you deprive her of her senses, you could never so hood-wink her reason, as to prevail on her to bow down to the folly of fraud and lying. Let a man take unto himself an enlightened help-mate, and he may, then, safely say, "Favor'd of heaven who finds "One virtuous, and wise, full often found, "That in domestic good combines: "Happy that house! his way to peace is smooth: "For virtue, which breaks thro' all opposition, "And all temptation can remove, "Most shines, and most is acceptable above." ESSAY CX. ON WOMEN. IT has, also, been objected to women, that they pay more attention to, and are more enamoured of the beauty of their body, than the strength of their mind; because, say some sapient men, "Nature on her bestow'd "Too much of ornament in outward show, "For well we understand, in the prime end "The character of that dominion given but the propensity to be vain of beauty proceeds from the same principle, which engenders vanity on account of any other extrinsic and adventitious ornament, ignorance, which so blinds their understanding, that they prefer the shadow to the substance, spend all their care and pains upon an object, which a scratch, a pimple, a sun-beam, a little indisposition, a single moment of time, can deface, destroy, and annihilate; while they neg lect that, which no external accident can ruffle, no time can impair, but which the storms of fate, and the lapse of ages serve, only, to purify, to brighten, and invigorate; yet all ignorant people, men as well as wo men, unfortunately, not having sense enough to perceive their own true interest, not only, follow the fleeting vision of appearance, instead of reposing on the solid form of internal stability, and worth, "But they,,so perfect is their misery, "Not once perceive their foul disfigurement, But boast themselves more comely than before. And this folly is not confined to women, for all ignorant and silly men are equally enamoured of any part of their own sweet persons, which they imagine to be well-made or handsome; who looks oftener in the glasst to admire his dear pretty face, or well turned leg, than the petit-maitre parson, the perfume besprinkled officer in the King's guards, the powder-pated courtier, and the lavender water-washed man-milliner? As for the very sagacious reasoning, that women are vain of their beauty, because they were made inferior to men, and not so much like the image of God, I confess, that it is too sublime for my comprehension; that men and women were created for each other's mutual felicity, I can readily imagine, and really believe to be the fact; but whether she is more or less like the form of her Maker than man is, as I am not exactly, able, to define and mark out in my mind's eye the image and figure of the Almighty, I cannot tell; it is very pretty to give full play to the imagination, and much more easy to assign a bare assertion, than to offer any valid argument; but as I profess to admit nothing in these essays, dedicated to the service of women, but strict reasoning, and undertake to prove, that all power is, essentially lodged in intellect, and that wo men are not inferior in mental capacities to men, I can, never allow any importance to a whimsical deduction drawn from a fanciful |