Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/255

Rh this imperfect tate, mut arie from well regulated affections; and an affection includes a duty. Men are not aware of the miery they caue, and the vicious weaknes they cherih, by only inciting women to render themelves pleaing; they do not conider that they thus make natural and artificial duties clah, by acrificing the comfort and repectability of a woman's life to voluptuous notions of beauty, when in nature they all harmonize.

Cold would be the heart of a huband, were he not rendered unnatural by early debauchery, who did not feel more delight at eeing his child uckled by its mother, than the mot artful wanton tricks could ever raie; yet this natural way of cementing the matrimonial tie, and twiting eteem with fonder recollections, wealth leads women to purn. To preerve their beauty, and wear the flowery crown of the day, that gives them a kind of right to reign for a hort time over the ex, they neglect to tamp impreions on their hubands' hearts, that would be remembered with more tendernes when the now on the head began to chill the boom, than even their virgin charms. The maternal olicitude of a reaonable affectionate woman is very intereting, and the chatened dignity with which a mother returns the carees that he and her child receive from a father who has been fulfilling the erious duties of his tation, is not only a repectable, but a beautiful ight. So ingular, indeed, are my feelings, and I have endeavoured not to catch factitious ones, that after having been fatigued with the ight of inipid grandeur and the lavih ceremonies&ensp;