The precepts of prudery are often steeped
in the guilt of contamination, which blasts the expectations of
better moments. Truth, and beautiful dreams--loveliness, and delicacy
of character, with cherished affections of the ideal woman
--gentle hopes and aspirations, are enough to uphold her in the storms
of darkness, without the transferred colorings of a stained sufferer.
How often have we seen it in our public prints, that woman occupies
a false station in the world! and some have gone so far as to say it
was an unnatural one. So long has she been regarded a weak creature,
by the rabble and illiterate--they have looked upon her as an
insufficient actress on the great stage of human life--a mere puppet,
to fill up the drama of human existence--a thoughtless, inactive being
--that she has too often come to the same conclusion herself, and has
sometimes forgotten her high destination, in the meridian of her glory.
We have but little sympathy or patience for those who treat her as
a mere Rosy Melindi--who are always fishing for pretty complements
--who are satisfied by the gossamer of Romance, and who can be
allured by the verbosity of high-flown words, rich in language,
but poor and barren in sentiment. Beset, as she has been, by the
intellectual vulgar, the selfish, the designing, the cunning, the hidden,
and the artful--no wonder she has sometimes folded her wings in despair,
and forgotten her HEAVENLY mission in the delirium of imagination;
no wonder she searches out some wild desert, to find a peaceful home.
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