4.58 
the habitude of life? The woman 
who has only been taught to please, 
will soon find that her charms are 
oblique sun-beams, and that they 
cannot have much effect on her 
husband’s heart when they are seen 
every day, when the summer is past 
and gone. Will she then have suf- 
ficient native energy to look into 
herself for comfort, and cultivate 
her dormant faculties? or is it not 
more rational to expect that she will 
try to please other men: and, in the 
emotions raised by the expectation 
of new conquests, endeavour to for- 
get the mortification her love or 
pride has received? When the hus- 
band ceases to be a lover—and the 
time will inevitably come, ber desire 
of pleasing will then grow languid, 
or become a spring of bitterness: 
and love, perbaps, the most evan- 
escent of all passions, gives place to 
jealousy or vanity. 
I now speak of women who are 
restrained by principle or preiudice ; 
such women, though they would 
shrink from an intrigue with real 
abhorrence, yet, nevertheless, wish 
to be convinced, by the homage of 
gallantry, that they are cruelly ne- 
glected by their husbands; or days 
and weeks are spent in dreaming of 
the happiness enjoyed by congenial 
souls, till the healih is undermined, 
and the spirits broken by discontent. 
How then can the great art of pleas- 
ing be such a necessary study ? it is 
only useful to a mistress ; the chaste 
wife and serious mother should only 
consider her power to please as the 
polish of her virtues ; and the affec- 
tion of her husband as one of the 
comforts that render her task less 
difficult, and her lite happier.— But 
whether she be loved or neglected, 
her first wish should be to make 
herse)f respectable, and not to rely 
ANNUAL REGISTER, 1792. 
for all her happiness on a being sub- 
ject to like infirmities with herself. 
The amiable Dr. Gregory fell in- 
to a similar error. I respect his 
heart ; but entirely disapprove of his 
celebrated Legacy to his Daughters. 
He advises them to cultivate a 
fondness for dress, because a tond- 
ness for dress, he asserts, is natural 
tothem. Iam unable to compre- 
hend what either he or Rousseau 
mean, when they frequently use this 
indefinite term. If they told us that 
in a pre-existent state the soul was 
fond of dress, and brought this in- 
clination with it into a new body, 
I should listen to them with half a 
smile, as I often do when I hear a 
rant about innate elegance.—But if 
he only meant to say that the exer- 
cise of the faculties will produce this 
fondness,—I deny it; it is not natu- 
ral: but arises, like false ambition 
in men, from a love of power. 
Dr. Gregory goes much further; 
he actually recommends dissimula- 
tion, and advises an innocent girl to 
give the lie to her feelings, and not 
dance with spirit, when gaiety of 
heart would make her feet eloquent 
without making her gestures im- 
modest. In the name of truth and 
common sense, why should not one 
woman acknowledge that she can 
take more exercise than another? 
or, in other words, that she has a 
sound constitution ; and why, to 
damp innocent vivacity, is she darkly 
to be told that men will draw con- 
clusions which she little thinks of? 
—Let the libertine draw what in- 
ference be pleases; but I hope that 
no sensible mother will restrain the 
natural frankness of youth by in- 
stilling sach indecent cautions. Out 
of the abundance of the heart the 
month speaketh; and a wiser than 
Solomon hath said, that the heart 
should 
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