Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World.: To which are added rules for determining the precise figure, the degree of beauty, the habits, and the age of women, notwithstanding the aids and disguise of dress. — John Shaqi
Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World.: To which are added rules for determining the precise figure, the degree of beauty, the habits, and the age of women, notwithstanding the aids and disguise of dress.Anonymous
History
Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World.: To which are added rules for determining the precise figure, the degree of beauty, the habits, and the age of women, notwithstanding the aids and disguise of dress.
Anonymous
Women
"Men some to pleasure, some to business take;
But every woman is at heart--a rake."
Swift and Dr Young have hardly been behind this celebrated splenetic in
illiberality. They perhaps were not favorites of the fair, and in
revenge vented all their envy and spleen against them. But a more modern
and accomplished writer who by his rank in life, by his natural and
acquired _graces_, was undoubtedly a favorite, has repaid their kindness
by taking every opportunity of exhibiting them in the most contemptible
light. "Almost every man," says he, "may be gained some way, almost
every woman any way, can any thing exhibit a stronger caution to the
sex?" It is fraught with information; and it is to be hoped they will
use it accordingly.
[1] Xantippe, was the wife of Socrates, and the most famous scold
of antiquity.
FEMALE SIMPLICITY.
Would we conceive properly of that simplicity which is the sweetest
expression of a well-informed and well-meaning mind, which every where
diffuses tenderness and delicacy, sweetens the relations of life, and
gives a zest to the minutest duties of humanity, let us contemplate
every perceptible operation of nature, the twilight of the evening, the
pearly dew-drops of the early morning, and all that various growth which
indicates the genial return of spring. The same principle from which all
that is soft and pleasing, amiable or exquisite, to the eye or to the
ear, in the exterior frame of nature, produces that taste for true
simplicity, which is one of the most useful, as well as the most elegant
lessons, that _ladies_ can learn.
Infancy, is perhaps, the finest and most perfect illustration of
simplicity. It is a state of genuine nature throughout. The feelings of
children are under no kind of restraint, but pure as the fire, free as
the winds, honest and open as the face of heaven. Their joys incessantly
flow in the thickest succession, and their griefs only seem fleeting and
evanescent. To the calls of nature they are only attentive. They know no
voice but hers. Their obedience to all her commands is prompt and
implicit. They never anticipate her bounties, nor relinquish her
pleasures. This situation renders them independent of artifice.
Influenced only by nature, their manners, like the principle that
produces them, are always the same.
Genuine simplicity is that peculiar quality of the mind, by which some
happy characters are enabled to avoid the most distant approaches to any
thing like affectation, inconstancy, or design, in their intercourse
with the world. It is much more easily understood, however than defined;
and consists not in a specific tone of the voice, movement of the body,
or mode imposed by custom, but is the natural and permanent effect of
real modesty and good sense on the whole behavior.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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