the
intoxication of the flatterer, and the adoration of the fashionable;
_can_ conquer the fondness for public distinction, _can_ resist the
temptations of that magic circle to which she is courted, and in which
she is qualified to shine--this is indeed a trial of firmness; a trial
in which those who have never been called to resist themselves, can
hardly judge of the merit of resistance in others.

These are the women who bless, dignify, and truly adorn society. The
painter indeed does not make his fortune by their sitting to him; the
jeweler is neither brought into vogue by furnishing their diamonds, nor
undone by not being paid for them; the prosperity of the milliner does
not depend on affixing their name to a cap or a color; the poet does not
celebrate them; the novelist does not dedicate to them; but they possess
the affection of their husbands, the attachment of their children, the
esteem of the wise and good, and above all they possess _His_ favor,
"whom to know is life eternal." Among these I doubt not I might have
found objects highly deserving of my heart, but the injunction of my
father was a sort of panoply which guarded it.

I am persuaded that such women compose a larger portion of the sex, than
is generally allowed. It is not the number, but the noise which makes a
sensation, and a set of fair dependent young creatures who are every
night forced, some of them reluctantly, upon the public eye; and a bevy
of faded matrons rouged and repaired for an ungrateful public, dead to
their blandishments, do not compose the whole female world! I repeat
it--a hundred amiable women, who are living in the quiet practice of
their duties, and the modest exertion of their talents, do not fill the
public eye, or reach the public ear, like one aspiring leader, who,
hungering for observation, and disdaining censure, dreads not abuse but
oblivion; who thinks it more glorious to head a little phalanx of
fashionable followers, than to hold out, as from her commanding
eminence, and imposing talents she might have done, a shining example of
all that is great, and good, and dignified in woman. These
self-appointed queens maintain an absolute but ephemeral empire over
that little _fantastic aristocracy_ which they call the
world--admiration besets them, crowds attend them, conquests follow
them, inferiors imitate them, rivals envy them, newspapers extol them,
sonnets deify them. A few ostentatious charities are opposed as a large