Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 5.djvu/151

Rh direct you better, a task for which I take myself to be not ill qualified; because I have spent more time, and have had more opportunities than many others, to observe and discover, from what source the various follies of women are derived.

Pray observe, how insignificant things are the common race of ladies, when they have passed their youth and beauty; how contemptible they appear to the men, and yet more contemptible to the younger part of their own sex; and have no relief, but in passing their afternoons in visits, where they are never acceptable; and their evenings at cards among each other; while the former part of the day is spent in spleen and envy, or in vain endeavours to repair by art and dress the ruins of time. Whereas I have known ladies at sixty, to whom all the polite part of the court and town paid their addresses without any farther view, than that of enjoying the pleasure of their conversation.

I am ignorant of any one quality, that is amiable in a man, which is not equally so in a woman: I do not except even modesty and gentleness of nature. Nor do I know one vice or folly, which is not equally detestable in both. There is indeed one infirmity, which is generally allowed you, I mean that of cowardice; yet there should seem to be something very capricious, that when women profess their admiration for a colonel or a captain, on account of his valour, they should fancy it a very graceful becoming quality in themselves, to be afraid of their own shadows; to scream in a barge, when the weather is calmest, or in a coach at the ring; to run from a cow at a hundred yards distance; to fall into fits at the sight of a spider, an earwig, or a frog. At least,