Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/219

Rh

ODESTY! Sacred offspring of enibility and reaon!—true delicacy of mind!—may I unblamed preume to invetigate thy nature, and trace to its covert the mild charm, that mellowing each harh feature of a character, renders what would otherwie only inpire cold admiration—lovely!—Thou that moothet the wrinkles of widom, and oftenet the tone of the ublimet virtues till they all melt into humanity;—thou that preadet the ethereal cloud that urrounding love heightens every beauty, it half hades, breathing thoe coy weets that teal into the heart, and charm the enes—modulate for me the language of peruaive reaon, till I roue my ex from the flowery bed, on which they upinely leep life away!

In peaking of the aociation of our ideas, I have noticed two ditinct modes; and in defining modety, it appears to me equally proper to dicriminate that purity of mind, which is the effect of chatity, from a implicity of character that leads us to form a jut opinion of ourelves, equally ditant from vanity or preumption, though by no means incompatible with a lofty conciounes of our own dignity. Modety, in the latter ignification of the term, is, that obernes of mind which teaches a man not to think more highly of himelf than he ought to think, Rh