equal pleasure and admiration. If women are in general feeble both
in body and mind, it arises less from nature than from education.
We encourage a vicious indolence and inactivity, which we falsely
call delicacy; instead of hardening their minds by the severer
principles of reason and philosophy, we breed them to useless arts,
which terminate in vanity and sensuality. In most of the countries
which I had visited, they are taught nothing of an higher nature
than a few modulations of the voice, or useless postures of the
body; their time is consumed in sloth or trifles, and trifles
become the only pursuits capable of interesting them. We seem to
forget, that it is upon the qualities of the female sex, that our
own domestic comforts and the education of our children must
depend. And what are the comforts or the education which a race of
beings corrupted from their infancy, and unacquainted with all the
duties of life, are fitted to bestow? To touch a musical
instrument with useless skill, to exhibit their natural or affected
graces, to the eyes of indolent and debauched young men, who
dissipate their husbands' patrimony in riotous and unnecessary
expenses: these are the only arts cultivated by women in most of
the polished nations I had seen. And the consequences are
uniformly such as may be expected to proceed from such polluted
sources, private misery, and public servitude.

"But, Selene's education was regulated by different views, and
conducted upon severer principles; if that can be called severity
which opens the mind to a sense of moral and religious duties, and
most effectually arms it against the inevitable evils of
life."--Mr. Day's "Sandford and Merton," Volume 3.)

But should it be proved that woman is naturally weaker than man,