When young women enter into the world, there is an abfolute neceffity that they should be ftrongly fortified with religion; the pretence to virtue is but a mockery without it, and beauty without virtue is too notoriously the fource of misfortune and infamy: it will be no lefs an help to them against the weakness of youth, than a certain refuge and confolation against the inevitable miferies of old age but I would not however be underftood to recommend the practice of this great duty, as blended either with fuperftition or enthufiafm; no, my fentiments on this occafion are fuch as fill me with love and hope, fuch as give me a profpect of an happy futurity; in a word, fuch as reconcile all feafons and all accidents, fuch as enfure all the duties of life, and not only answer for me to myfelf, but are likewife my inviolable guarantees in regard to all my fellow

creatures.

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CHAP. IV.

Learning, in the latitude of that word, no part of female character; yet in one branch of it they may be very profitably inftructed: Cato's opinion of virtue and beauty; the efficacy of the cofmetick fuccefsfully founded on that opinion: virtue, as it is generally practis'd, either egregiously misunderstood, or contemn'd; the partial practice thereof allow'd to claim no more merit from thence, than one fine feature in a face can justly be allow'd to conftitute the effence of beauty, when all the reft happen to be extremely plain; the conftant ufe of the cofmetick changes deformity itself into beauty, corrects all the impertinent excrefcences of fashion and falfe tafte, both in dress and manners, and gives to native fimplicity and neatness no inconfiderable fhare in the power of female

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attraction.

Believe I fhall not appear to ftand fingle in my opinion, when I declare, that I think learning, in the extenfive fense of that word, is no part of a woman's character; the ftudy of what are called the fciences, or an application to mathematical, phyfical, or metaphyfical

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difquifitions, is, I think, as incongruous to the true character of a woman, let her rank in life be what it will, as if fhe fhould be unhappily infpired with the boisterous ambition of becoming a general-officer: much is certainly due to information, and likewife much to amufement; and yet, with all the efforts of experience and obfervations in my power, I am not able to discover, when the neceffary offices of life are punctually fulfilled, how a woman, of whatsoever rank or fortune, can have fufficient avocation for the indulgence of either, at leaft to fuch a degree in the literary way, as to render her anxious for the diftinctions of fame fuch improvements in wifdom as would make her perform those refpective offices to greater advantage, (from which in ftrictness no station is exempt) would be of infinitely greater importance, and a much more convincing proof of a folidity of judgment, which is the fummit that all men of fenfe fo ardently afpire at; and to female emulation here, I have not the leaft objection.

There is indeed one particular branch of learning, which, I think, may with infinite advantage be cultivated by the ladies; as it is eafily within the comprehenfion of all, whom the present Gothic C 5 mode

mode of education hath not left quite il literate; I mean the ftudy of morality: by a diligent application to this fingle branch, they will have no occafion to give themselves the trouble of reforting to difficult problems, to be convinced by mathematical demonftration of a truth which their looking-glaffes had but ten thoufand times before informed them of, viz. that all beauty arifes from fymmetry and proportion.

But unhappily for us, thefe tranfient experiments, however juft in themselves, reach not conviction; felf-love instantaneously adjufts and reconciles every obliquity that is the leaft unamiable, it foftens difproportion into beauty, and too often cruelly flatters beauty itself into real deformity, without our feeming to be fenfible of the fatal change: whereas the fci-ence I am now recommending to them, faithfully expofes all the delufions of felflove, refrains the fond excurfions of partiality, and fixes the standard of beauty, not indeed in the vague fancy of every undiftinguishing beholder, but fixes it, with the philofopher, in the juft rule of proportion, in that genuine beauty of cha racter that refults from a propriety of action.

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The wife, the venerable Cato, was fo ftrongly convinced of the force of this opinion, that he thought virtue had effentially in itfelf the furprifing power of changing all the horror of uglinefs into beauty; he thought that habits of goodness, as they ripened into perfection, by degrees made plain people grow extremely handsome, and the beautiful themselves quite angelic; he pronouced one of the -handfomeft men in Rome, whose life had been incorrigibly profligate, to be a monfter, frightful even to behold; for vice, he faid, had vifibly diftorted every native lineament of beauty into all the hideoufness of deformity..

Whether Cato could account phyfically for fuch a metamorphofis, I really am not philofopher enough to determine; but certain I am, from long obfervation, that a sweetness of manners, which refults from the practice of virtue, diffuses fomething fo amiable over the whole perfon, as very fuddenly changes the difadvantageous opinion we had conceiv'd at firft fight, and raises such a pleafing fafcination in the eyes of every fpectator, as foon fubftitutes elegance in the place of deformity; not unlike the agreeable fenfation we are apt to be affected with, when the genial power of C 6

the