Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/267

Rh gave lutre; nay, I doubt whether pity and love are o near akin as poets feign, for I have eldom een much companion excited by the helplenes of females, unles they were fair; then, perhaps, pity was the oft handmaid of love, or the harbinger of lut.

How much more repectable is the woman who earns her own bread by fulfilling any duty, than the mot accomplished beauty!—beauty did I ay?—o enible am I of the beauty of moral lovelines, or the harmonious propriety that attunes the paions of a well-regulated mind, that I bluh at making the comparion; yet I igh to think how few women aim at attaining this repectability by withdrawing from the giddy whirl of pleaure, or the indolent calm that tupifies the good ort of women it ucks in.

Proud of their weaknes, however, they mut always be protected, guarded from care, and all the rough toils that dignify the mind.—If this be the fiat of fate, if they will make themelves inignificant and contemptible, weetly to wate 'life away' let them not expect to be valued when their beauty fades, for it is the fate of the fairet flowers to be admired and pulled to pieces by the careles hand that plucked them. In how many ways do I wih, from the puret benevolence, to impres this truth on my ex; yet I fear that they will not liten to a truth that dear bought experience has brought home to many an agitated boom, nor willingly reign the privileges of rank and ex for the privileges of humanity, to which thoe have no claim who do not dicharge its duties. Rh