Against the grosser faults of immorality and indecency Steele and Addison preached. But even they were insensible to an elevated view of the relations between men and women. Such a view was, however, taken by Defoe; a man whom Steele and Addison, as well as the polite world in general, looked upon as an adventurer, and one whose opinions on social subjects they disdained. "We reproach the sex every day," wrote Defoe, "with folly and impertinence, while I am confident, had they the advantages of education equal to us, they would be guilty of less than ourselves. * * * I cannot think that God ever made them so delicate, so glorious creatures, and furnished them with such charms, so agreeable and so delightful to mankind, with souls capable of the same enjoyments as men, and all to be only stewards of our houses, cooks, and slaves."[129] Defoe stands almost alone in his remonstrance against the neglect of female education. But he stands more isolated still in his appreciation of womanly virtues, and in the enthusiasm with which he could speak of them. "A woman well-bred and well-taught, furnished with the additional accomplishments of knowledge and behavior, is a creature without comparison. Her society is the emblem of sublimer enjoyments; she is all softness and sweetness, love, wit, and delight; she is every way suitable to the sublimest wish; and the man that has such a one to his portion, has nothing to do but to rejoice in her and be thankful."[130] Love was hardly distinguished from mere animal desire. The poets wrote of it coldly and conventionally, as of a thing which existed only in name. The lover could only beg his mistress "to ease his pain." But the conventionality which extended through all thoughts and expressions relating to the higher emotions of the human soul, had no effect in diminishing the coarseness of thought and conversation. Men were conventional as regards the nobler sentiments of life, but they were not conventional in the spirit which excludes from conversation and literature the gross and the immoral. Chesterfield wrote to his son of honor, justice, and so forth, as qualities of which he should know the names, but of no consequence compared to "manners, good-breeding, and the graces." If a man blushed, it was not at his own indecency, nor at his own vice, but at the supposition that he could be so weak as to be influenced by sentiments of delicacy. Coarseness is, of course, quite separate from immorality, although the two are usually found together. In the earlier part of the eighteenth century there was a marked distinction between them. Swift's Stella, a woman of refinement, was highly indignant at remarks being made before her of a licentious character, but she herself used expressions of the grossest description without a thought of impropriety. The same distinction is seen in the essays and novels of the time. Swift, Defoe, Fielding, Richardson, all