I think I see you, my friends, smile, incredulous, at the last sentence. What gentlewoman, you exclaim, who is above the most abject pecuniary embarrassments, can ever have chance of being so apparelled? A desire of singularity is a sufficient answer. There is a race of women, who, priding themselves on their superior rank, or wealth, or talents, affect to despise what they deem the adventitious aids of dress. Their appearance, in consequence, is frequently as ridiculous as disgusting. When this folly is seen in female authors, or what is much the same thing, ladies professing a particularly literary taste, we can at once trace its motives,--a conceited negligence of outward attractions, and a determination to raise themselves in the opinions of men, by displaying a contempt for what they deem the vain occupations of meaner souls. Wishing to be thought superior to founding any regard on external ornament, they forget external decency; and by slatternliness and affectation, render what is called a learned woman, a kind of scare-crow to her own sex, and a laughing-stock to the other. This error is not so common now with bookish ladies as it was in the beginning of the last century. Then our sex did, indeed, show that “a little learning is a dangerous thing.” They did not imbibe sufficient to imbue them with a sense of its real properties, to show them causes and effects, to make them understand themselves, and close the book in humility. They, poor short-sighted creatures! exchanged the innocent ignorance of Eve for the empoisoned apple, which, under the cheat of displaying knowledge, fills the eater with a vain self-conceit, while it more openly exposes her mental nakedness to every eye. The absurdity of their deductions is so obvious, that one wonders how any woman could fall into such an error. Who among them but would think it the height of folly to place over the door of a museum, to which the proprietor wished to attract visitors, the effigy of a monster, so disgusting as to deter men from entering to see what might otherwise have afforded them much pleasure? Such effigies might the slip-shod muses of the days of Anne have given of themselves; but most of the modern female votaries of Minerva, aware of the advantages of a prepossessing appearance, mingle with their incense to the Goddess a few flowers to the Paphian Graces; and, that they gain by the devotion, none who have been admitted to the acquaintance of our British Sapphos and Corinnas, can deny.