he temper of the times; and if the female sex have
lost any thing of the respect and esteem which ought to be paid to
them in society, they can scarcely expect to regain their proper
influence by concessions to the false and vitiated taste of those who
combine to treat them with neglect bordering upon insolence. If the
system of female education, if the system of female manners, conspire
to show in the fair sex a degrading anxiety to attract worthless
admiration, wealthy or titled homage, is it surprising that every
young man, who has any pretensions to birth, fortune, or fashion,
should consider himself as the arbiter of their fate, and the despotic
judge of their merit? Women, who understand their real interests,
perceive the causes of the contempt with which the sex is treated by
fashionable coxcombs, and they feel some indignation at the meanness
with which this contempt, tacitly or openly expressed, is endured.
Women, who feel none of this indignation, and who, either from their
education, or their circumstances, are only solicitous to obtain
present amusement, or what they think the permanent advantages of a
fortunate alliance, will yet find themselves mistaken by persisting in
their thoughtless career; they will not gain even the objects to which
they aspire. How many accomplished belles run the usual round of
dissipation in all public places of exhibition, tire the public eye,
and, after a season or two, fade and are forgotten! How many
accomplished belles are there, who, having gained the object of their
own, or of their mother's ambition, find themselves doomed to misery
for life! Those unequal marriages, which are sometimes called
_excellent matches_, seldom produce much happiness. And where
happiness is not, what _is_ all the rest?

If all, or any of these reflections, should strike the heart, and
convince the understanding, of an anxious, but reasonable mother, she
will, probably, immediately determine upon her own conduct in the
education of her daughters: she will resolve to avoid the common
errours of the frivolous or the interested; she will not be influenced
by the importunity of every idle acquaintance, who may talk to her of
the necessity of her daughter's being taken notice of in public, of
the chances of an _advantageous_ establishment, of the good fortune
of Miss Y----, or lady Angelina X----, in meeting with a coxcomb or a
spendthrift for a husband; nor will she be moved with maternal
emulation