state the soul was fond of dress, and brought this inclination with
it into a new body, I should listen to them with a half smile, as I
often do when I hear a rant about innate elegance. But if he only
meant to say that the exercise of the faculties will produce this
fondness, I deny it. It is not natural; but arises, like false
ambition in men, from a love of power.

Dr. Gregory goes much further; he actually recommends
dissimulation, 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 immodest. 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
conclusions which she little thinks of? Let the libertine draw
what inference he pleases; but, I hope, that no sensible mother
will restrain the natural frankness of youth, by instilling such
indecent cautions. Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth
speaketh; and a wiser than Solomon hath said, that the heart should
be made clean, and not trivial ceremonies observed, which it is not
very difficult to fulfill with scrupulous exactness when vice
reigns in the heart.

Women ought to endeavour to purify their hearts; but can they do so
when their uncultivated understandings make them entirely dependent
on their senses for employment and amusement, when no noble pursuit
sets them above the little vanities of the day, or enables them to
curb the wild emotions that agitate a reed over which every passing
breeze has power? To gain the affections of a virtuous man, is