Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/181

Rh The air of fahion, which many young people are o eager to attain, always trikes me like the tudied attitudes of ome modern prints, copied with tateles ervility after the antiques;—the oul is left out, and none of the parts are tied together by what may properly be termed character. This varnih of fahion, which eldom ticks very cloe to ene, may dazzle the weak; but leave nature to itelf, and it will eldom digut the wie. Beides, when a woman has ufficient ene not to pretend to any thing which he does not undertand in ome degree, there is no need of determining to hide her talents under a buhel. Let things take their natural coure, and all will be well.

It is this ytem of diimulation, throughout the volume, that I depie. Women are always to eem to be this and that—yet virtue might apotrophize them, in the words of Hamlet—Seems! I know not eems!—Have that within that paeth how!—

Still the ame tone occurs; for in another place, after recommending, without ufficiently dicriminating delicacy, he adds, 'The men will complain of your reerve. They will aure you that a franker behaviour would make you more amiable. But, trut me, they are not incere when they tell you o.—I acknowledge, that on ome occaions it might render you more agreeable as companions, but it would make you les amiable as women: an important ditinction, which many of your ex are not aware of.'

This deire of being always women, is the very conciounes that degrades the ex. Excepting with&ensp;