frigid plan of future comfort, I am disgusted. They may be good women,
in the ordinary acceptation of the phrase, and do no harm; but they
appear to me not to have those 'finely fashioned nerves,' which render
the senses exquisite. They may possess tenderness; but they want that
fire of the imagination, which produces _active_ sensibility, and
_positive_ _virtue_. How does the woman deserve to be characterized, who
marries one man, with a heart and imagination devoted to another? Is she
not an object of pity or contempt, when thus sacrilegiously violating
the purity of her own feelings? Nay, it is as indelicate, when she is
indifferent, unless she be constitutionally insensible; then indeed it
is a mere affair of barter; and I have nothing to do with the secrets of
trade. Yes; eagerly as I wish you to possess true rectitude of mind,
and purity of affection, I must insist that a heartless conduct is the
contrary of virtuous. Truth is the only basis of virtue; and we cannot,
without depraving our minds, endeavour to please a lover or husband, but
in proportion as he pleases us. Men, more effectually to enslave us, may
inculcate this partial morality, and lose sight of virtue in subdividing
it into the duties of particular stations; but let us not blush for
nature without a cause!

"After these remarks, I am ashamed to own, that I was pregnant. The
greatest sacrifice of my principles in my whole life, was the allowing
my husband again to be familiar with my person, though to this cruel act
of self-denial, when I wished the earth to open and swallow me, you owe
your birth; and I the unutterable pleasure of being a mother. There was
something of delicacy in my husband's bridal attentions; but now
his tainted breath, pimpled face, and blood-shot eyes, were not more
repugnant to my senses, than his gross manners, and loveless familiarity
to my taste.

"A man would only be expected to maintain; yes, barely grant a
subsistence, to a woman rendered odious by habitual intoxication; but
who would expect him, or think it possible to love her? And unless
'youth, and genial years were flown,' it would be thought equally
unreasonable to insist, [under penalty of] forfeiting almost every
thing reckoned valuable in life, that he should not love another:
whilst woman, weak in reason, impotent in will, is required to moralize,
sentimentalize herself to stone, and pine her life away, labouring
to reform her embruted mate. He may even spend