I have promised to reason calmly; but I cannot repress the terror which I feel at the idea of my daughter’s becoming the friend of one of these women. Olivia’s letters are, I think, in the true heroine style; and they might make a brilliant figure in a certain class of novels. She begins with a bold exclamation on “the misfortune of being born a woman!--_the slave or the outcast of society, condemned to incessant hypocrisy_!” Does she mean modesty? Her manly soul feels it “_the most degrading punishment that omnipotent cruelty could devise, to be imprisoned in a female form_.” From such a masculine spirit some fortitude and magnanimity might be expected; but presently she begs to be pitied, for a broken spirit, and more than female tenderness of heart. I have observed that the ladies who wish to be men, are usually those who have not sufficient strength of mind to be women. Olivia proceeds in an ironical strain to envy, as “_the happiest of their sex, those who submit to be swathed by custom_.” These persons she stigmatizes with the epithet of _tideless-blooded_. It is the common trick of unprincipled women to affect to despise those who conduct themselves with propriety. Prudence they term _coldness_; fortitude, _insensibility;_ and regard to the rights of others, _prejudice_. By this perversion of terms they would laugh or sneer virtue out of countenance; and, by robbing her of all praise, they would deprive her of all immediate motive. Conscious of their own degradation, they would lower every thing, and every body, to their own standard: they would make you believe, that those who have not yielded to their passions are destitute of sensibility; that the love which is not blazoned forth in glaring colours is not entitled to our sympathy. The sacrifice of the strongest feelings of the human heart to a sense of duty is to be called mean, or absurd; but the shameless frenzy of passion, exposing itself to public gaze, is to be an object of admiration. These heroines talk of strength of mind; but they forget that strength of mind is to be shown in resisting their passions, not in yielding to them. Without being absolutely of an opinion, which I have heard maintained, that all virtue is sacrifice, I am convinced that the essential characteristic of virtue is to bear and forbear. These sentimentalists can do neither. They talk of sacrifices and generosity; but they are the veriest egotists--the most selfish creatures alive. Open your eyes, my dear Leonora, and see things as they really are. Lady Olivia thinks it a sufficient excuse for abandoning her husband, to say, that she found “_his soul was not in unison with hers_.” She thinks it an adequate apology for a criminal attachment, to tell you that “_the net was thrown over her heart before she felt her danger: that all its struggles were to no purpose, but to exhaust her strength_.”