'ral propenfity to refinement, elegance, and love. I fear, for our curfe, that this affertion is too true. Heaven help us! where, as the world goes, can this propensity be gratified! Surely not by a fex who, when they mean to be refined, always pay us the involun'tary compliment of becoming effeminate, whole elegance is always foppery, and who, inftead of love (O shame to proffitute the word?) value themselves, with much animal importancè, on a grofs, capricions, felfith paffion, totally devoid of fentiment, and a stranger to conftancy, friendship and affection! But we are told that 'the men would be all we could with, if we would but borrow a little from the loofe ones of our fex, and that they (good creatures!) love 'not vice, but only feek for happiness-Mr. Y. thy argument is as falfe as, I fear, thy heart is fenfual-I deny your affertion, and I appeal to facts, whether we 'do not fee many inftances of the greatest elegance of person, and exact attention to the ornaments of dress, thrown away on the dulleft infenfibility, nay poftponed and neglected, to kulk in corners in the embraces of uglinefs, dirt and difeafe-and for a noble reafon, well worthy of a man, because the firft was united to virtue and good fenfe in the person of a wife, and the other recommended by one fingle charm'tis true, but that an irrefiftable one, the charm of vice, whofe characteristic it is to quit a heavenly banquet, and prey on garbage. Nor is it merely by drefs and tenderness that thefe lordly creatures are governed, for The un generous dominion of the forew is often very effectual, provided it be joined with the charm aforefaid; nay) I have heard of many inftances where the baftinado has been very fuccefsfully applied, and very gracefully crouched Q crouched to. These are the beings for whom we hould wear the Ceftus, for whofe amusement every hour of our lives fhould be employed, and our reason left uncultivated. This is the creature who calls up'on all God's works to view him, to examine, to explore, confider, and study him as their standard of perfection! Were fuch hearts to be opened, I fear Pandora's box would be the leffer.evil. This Gentleman, who really feems to lament that custom does not admit us to a perfonal obfervation of the scenes of vice, requests us, with great delicacy, to fupply the place by raising our imaginations to the fubject. But his emotions are of such a kind, and he is to violently entranced, that I will neither follow him, nor look longer at this paragraph left I lose my temper-Pride and ambition I allow him we have, both given us for the noblett purposes, to raise and animate our conduct to pursuits worthy of rational beings, and to court, above all applaufe, even the unerring applaufe of MAN, that of the monitor within our own bofoms. My pride is that I am a woman and can do this; my ambition, that I may ever be able to do so. How candid,.wife, honeft, delicate, and confiftent are the Lords of the Creation! They breed us up in ignorance, and then make it their favourite subject of ridicule,; if, in fpite of all their endeavours, any ray of genius break out, then all the wretched fenfations of that most despicable paffion, envy, are raised, and they labour to expofe the reverse of that folly which they laughed at before. They themselves are oracles of wifdom; one would imagine that to fuch, good sense would be very pleafing. No-to captivate WisDOM, we must drefs, and paint, and patch, and lifp, and giggle, and amble-We must fmile, and we must frown, 19H frown, and the lefs reafon for either, the more a trac. tive it will be to WISDOM. Even the finest faces among us if they have any meaning but a certain one, are denied to have beauty. Our very imperfectionsTM have a pleafing prettiness in them, because they keep us farther from the dreaded equality, and the fil lier, the emptier, the more childish, the more truly ridiculous we are, the greater favourites we are of WISDOM, and the greater is our ascendancy over it. Our principles too must be strictly delicate, or, by the book of cuftom, eftablished by their authority, infamy and the feverest penalties attend us; yet we are told in the fame breath, that there is a curfed infipidity in virtue, and that we ought always to make the adepts in vice our models of behaviour, if we mean to delight the delicacy of thefe worthy legislators. I dont know, Mr. FLYN, whether I am exceeding the bounds of your paper; or not.. You know it is not easy to stop a woman's pen any more than her tongue. My ideas are very far from being exhausted, for ten thousand things croud upon me for utterance, as varicus and as variable as the tempers of those who are my subject. Lam quite aware with what a fcornful, yet jealous eye, a female production will be read. At, the first glance there will be a fhrug and a half look of pity; then it will be pronounced not to be raillery but, railing, trifling, low, unconnected, rambling, flimfy, Ale, no method, no Louth in it; nay, the blunders of you or your workmen will be charged against my orthography. Quite eafy am I at all this, and comfort ed by one reflection that every man who reads it (if he understands it) will be galled, for it is TRUTH, Though the Lion in the fable had not been thaught to draw pictures, yet he could growl, and had the means, Q.2 t when. when provoked, to convince the man of his natural fuperiority. Adieu, Sir, for the prefent, you shall probably hear from me again. Your's THALESTRI S. No. 32. Thursday, July 12, 1770. Abjentem qui reait amicum ; Qui non defendit, alio culpante; folutos T HOR. AKING a walk the other evening up the. river-fide, I came fuddenly on two young... men who were dreffing themselves after * fwimming, and were in very loud and earneft difcourfe. One of them feemed to be extremely agitated, and had diftrefs ftrongly painted on as ingenuous a countenance as I ever faw. What, cried he, and are we then loft to each other? Is the friendfhip of feventeen years deftroyed by an absence of a few months? But I defire to hold no friend againft his will-Part we muft-Yet, for the fake of what is paft, I beseech you this once to act as a man ; alledge fome fact, fome colour of a fact, that I may have the pleasure of doing myself juftice before we feparate for ever-You cannot-Your mind has been, 1.3 • been poisoned almost infenfibly to yourself, and the cursed detractive loquacity of your new affociate, ❝ whom I never offended has undone me.'—The reply died away on my ear, and I could only perce've, by the founds, a fubmiffive conceffion of an inability; to answer the demand, joined to a fixed unfeeling tenacity of opinion. I found, in fhort, that a worthy man had loft the friend whom he tenderly loved, merely from being depreciated, without being accused, and that his happiness had been gradually undermined by a conftant re-iteration of litle calumnies, which collectively could not form a fingle propofition against his merit. Turning homeward on this incident, I fell into a train of very uneafy reflection on this unhappy pro-. penfity of mankind Swarm is my love for human. nature, that it severely hurts me to meet with any thing that feems to degrade it, and I therefore always endeavour to deduce its most unfavourable fymptoms from fome principle. originally amiable, though perverted and difguifed by frailty or paffion. A mindpoffeffed with this kind of beaevolent enthufiafin will. be generally pretty successful, and be able to trace most of the faults, perhaps, the.. crimes, of fociety, to the fame fources from which the most valuable actions take their rife. My thoughts on this occafion took their ufual turn, and I began to exert my best skill in moral heraldry to find out an honourable genealogy for DETRACTION. By this I mean not only the paffion for unprovokedly. hurting, but even of leffening, one man in the opinion of another; of turning every little fhade of character into a blemish; of fwelling with a cruel zeal every, pigmy foible into a gigantic fault, giving the worst Q3 poffible |