Page:Vindication Women's Rights (Wollstonecraft).djvu/305

Rh My imagination darts forward with benevolent fervour to greet thee amiable and repectable groups, in pite of the neering of cold hearts, who are at liberty to utter, with frigid elf-importance, the damning epithet—romantic; the force of which I hall endeavour to blunt by repeating the words of an eloquent moralit.—'I know not whether the alluions of a truly humane heart, whoe zeal renders every thing eay, is not preferable to that rough and repuling reaon, which always finds in indifference for the public good, the firt obtacle to whatever would promote it.'

I know that libertines will alo exclaim, that woman would be unexed by acquiring trength of body and mind, and that beauty, oft bewitching beauty! would no longer adorn the daughters of men! I am of a very different opinion, for I think that, on the contrary, we hould then ee dignified beauty, and true grace; to produce which, many powerful phyical and moral caues would concur.—Not relaxed beauty, it is true, nor the graces of helplenes; but uch as appears to make us repect the human body as a majetic pile fit to receive a noble inhabitant, in the relics of antiquity.

I do not forget the popular opinion that the Grecian tatues were not modelled after nature. I mean, not according to the proportions of a particular man; but that beautiful limbs and features were elected from various bodies to form an harmonious whole. This might, in ome degree, be true. The fine ideal picture of an exalted imagination might be uperiour to the rials&ensp;