Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/13

Rh very eence of enuality has been extracted to regale the voluptuary, and a kind of entimental lut has prevailed, which, together with the ytem of duplicity that the whole tenor of their political and civil government taught, have given a initer ort of agacity to the French character, properly termed finee, and a polih of manners that injures the ubtance, by hunting incerity out of ociety.—And, modety, the fairet garb of virtue! has been more groly inulted in France than even in England, till their women have treated as prudih that attention to decency, which brutes intinctively oberve.

Manners and morals are o nearly allied that they have often been confounded; but, though the former hould only be the natural reflection of the latter, yet, when various caues have produced factitious and corrupt manners, which are very early caught, morality becomes an empty name. The peronal reerve, and acred repect for cleanlines and delicacy in dometic life, which French women almot depie, are the graceful pillars of modety; but, far from depiing them, if the pure flame of patriotim have reached their booms, they hould labour to improve the morals of their fellow-citizens, by teaching men, not only to repect modety in women, but to acquire it themelves, as the only way to merit their eteem. Rh