Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/170

164 Were we, indeed, only created to flutter our hour out and die–why let us then indulge enibility, and laugh at the everity of reaon–Yet, alas! even then we hould want trength of body and mind, and life would be lot in feverih pleaures or weariome languor.

But the ytem of education, which I earnetly wih to ee exploded, eems to preuppoe what ought never to be taken for granted, that virtue hields us from the caualties of life; and that fortune, flipping off her bandage, will mile on a well-educated female, and bring in her hand an Emilius or a Telemachus. Whilt, on the contrary, the reward which virtue promies to her votaries is confined, it is clear, to their own booms; and often mut they contend with the mot vexatious worldly cares, and bear with the vices and humours of relations for whom they can never feel a friendhip.

There have been many women in the world who, intead of being upported by the reaon and virtue of their fathers and brothers, have trengthened their own minds by truggling with their vices and follies; yet have never met with a hero, in the hape of a huband; who, paying the debt that mankind owed them, might chance to bring back their reaon to its natural dependent tate, and retore the uurped prerogative, of riing above opinion, to man.

ermons have long made a part of a young woman's library; nay, girls at chool&ensp;