off their gaudy hereditary trappings; and if then women do not
resign the arbitrary power of beauty, they will prove that they
have LESS mind than man. I may be accused of arrogance; still I
must declare, what I firmly believe, that all the writers who have
written on the subject of female education and manners, from
Rousseau to Dr. Gregory, have contributed to render women more
artificial, weaker characters, than they would otherwise have been;
and, consequently, more useless members of society. I might have
expressed this conviction in a lower key; but I am afraid it would
have been the whine of affectation, and not the faithful expression
of my feelings, of the clear result, which experience and
reflection have led me to draw. When I come to that division of
the subject, I shall advert to the passages that I more
particularly disapprove of, in the works of the authors I have just
alluded to; but it is first necessary to observe, that my objection
extends to the whole purport of those books, which tend, in my
opinion, to degrade one half of the human species, and render women
pleasing at the expense of every solid virtue.

Though to reason on Rousseau's ground, if man did attain a degree
of perfection of mind when his body arrived at maturity, it might
be proper in order to make a man and his wife ONE, that she should
rely entirely on his understanding; and the graceful ivy, clasping
the oak that supported it, would form a whole in which strength and
beauty would be equally conspicuous. But, alas! husbands, as well
as their helpmates, are often only overgrown children; nay, thanks
to early debauchery, scarcely men in their outward form, and if the
blind lead the blind, one need not come from heaven to tell us the
consequence.