Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/99

Rh that a certain opulent lady intended to have given 10,000l. towards erecting a sort of college for the education and improvement of the female sex; and as a retreat to those ladies who preferred retirement and study to the noise and hurry of the world. Bishop Burnet, hearing of the design, went to the lady, and powerfully remonstrated against it, telling her it would look like paving the way for popish orders, and that it would be reputed a nunnery; in consequence of which, the design was relinquished.

I do not find that for seven years after she printed any thing, except ''An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex. In a Letter to a Lady. Written by a Lady.'' Yet she was as intent on her studies, during that time, as ever; and when she has accidentally seen needless visitors coming, whom she knew to be incapable of conversing on useful subjects, she would look out at the window, and jestingly tell them, Mrs. Astell was not at home.

By this time she was become intimately acquainted with many classic authors. Those she admired most were Xenophon, Plato, Hierocles, Tully, Seneca, Epictetus, and M. Antoninus.

In the year 1700, she published a book entitled Reflections on Marriage, occasioned, as it is said, by a disappointment she experienced in a marriage-contract with an eminent clergyman. However that might be, in the next edition of her book, 1705, she added a preface, in answer to some objections, which perhaps is the strongest defence that ever appeared in print, of the rights and abilities of her own sex.

Observing, as she thought, the pernicious artifices of the sectaries, she attacked them with vigour, and for a considerable time engaged the attention of the public by