Education. 293 



ture has raised everlasting barriers against such wild 

 and mischievous claims. To urge them is to re- 

 nounce reason; to contradict experience; to tram- 

 ple on the divine authority; and to diminish the 

 usefulness, the respectability, and the real enjoy- 

 ment of the female sex. 



Notwithstanding, however, the falshood and 

 mischievous tendency of the doctrines taught in 

 the Wollstonecraftian school, they have obtained 

 much currency, particularly in Great-Britain, 

 France and Germany; and have concurred with 

 the general progress of luxury and false refinement 

 to corrupt the morals and degrade the character of 

 the female sex, especially towards the close of the 

 period under consideration/ In proportion as prin- 

 ciples of this nature have been received, the becom- 

 ing modesty and reserve of the sex have been dimi- 

 nished or laid aside ; their peculiar duties have 

 been forgotten; and the comforts of domestic life 

 have experienced serious encroachments. 



It must also be acknowledged, that the in- 

 creased intelligence and the taste for reading, which 

 remarkably characterize the female sex of the pre- 

 sent day, compared with their condition a century 

 ago, are attended with some circumstances which 



/ It is not pretended that the Amazonian stile of dress and manners in 

 females was never known previous to the appearance of Miss Woll- 

 stonecraft's Higbts of Woman. Whoever looks into the Spectator ; the 

 Guardian, &c. and indeed into some of the essays written long before those 

 celebrated works, will see the unseemly dress and deportment of the wo- 

 men of those days severely lashed; and in language which, with scarcely 

 any alteration, would apply to the close of the eighteenth century. How 

 shall we account for the fact, that indecencies of this kind are continued 

 and extended, notwithstanding the severity of rebuke that has been uni- 

 formly directed against them ; and notwithstanding the abundant evidence 

 which is constantly presented, that they are viewed with disapprobation, 

 and even with abhorrence, by all the more estimable part of the other 

 sex ? It is difficult to find an answer to this question, which would not 

 reflect most severely, either on the understanding or the principles of many 

 modern females, or on both. It is to be lamented, that the evil com- 

 plained of, instead of declining with the increase of reading and cultivation 

 among the female sex, is increasing with still more rapid progression . 



