These ascetic ideas may be consistent with the thankless superstition of the ancient Zenos, or the modern fanatics, who see neither beauty nor joyfulness in the works of the bounteous Lord of Nature; but the rational and fair-judging mind, which acknowledges “use and decency” in all the Creator’s works, while it turns from the pagan devotion which the libertine pays to his own body, regards that inferior part of himself with the respect which is due to it in consideration of its Maker and its purpose. “Reverence thyself!” says the philosopher, not only with relation to the mind which directs, but to the body which executes. God created the body, not only for usefulness, but adorned it with loveliness; and what he has made so pleasing, shall we disesteem, and refuse to apply to its admirable destination?--The very approving and innocent complacency we all feel in the contemplation of beauty, whether it be that of a landscape or of a flower, is a sufficient witness that the pleasure which pervades our hearts at the sight of human charms, was planted there by the Divine Framer of all things, as a principle of delight and social attraction. To this end, then, I seek to turn your attention, my fair countrywomen, upon YOURSELVES!--not only to the cultivation of your minds, but to maintain in its intended station that inferior part of yourselves, which mistaken gravity would, on the one hand, lead you to neglect as altogether worthless; and vanity, on the other, incline you too much to cherish, and egregiously to over-value. From this you will gather, that the PERSON of a woman is the primary subject of this discourse. Mothers, perhaps, (those estimable mothers who value the souls as the better parts of their daughters,) may start at such a text. But I call them to recollect, that it is “good all things should be in order!” This is a period when absurdity, bad taste, shamelessness, and self-interest, in the shapes of tire-men and tire-women, have arranged themselves in close siege around the beauty, and even chastity, of your daughters; and to preserve these graces in their original purity, I, a woman of virtue and a Christian, do not think it beneath my dignity to lift my pen. Dr. Knox will not refuse to be my auxiliary, as a grave auxiliary may be necessary to give consequence to a subject usually deemed so trivial. “Taste requires a congruity between the internal character and the external appearance,” says he; “and the imagination will involuntarily form to itself an idea of such a correspondence. First ideas are in general of considerable consequence; and I should, therefore, think it wise in the female world to take care that their _appearance_ should not convey a forbidding idea to the most superficial observer.”