you (saving the reverence due to a
lady-authoress, and speaking as one reasonable being to another) choose
such a threadbare subject?

ALDA.

What do you mean?

MEDON.

I presume you have written a book to maintain the superiority of your
sex over ours; for so I judge by the names at the heads of some of your
chapters; women fit indeed to inlay heaven with stars, but, pardon me,
very unlike those who at present walk upon this earth.

ALDA.

Very unlike the fine ladies of your acquaintance, I grant you; but as to
maintaining the superiority, or speculating on the rights of
women--nonsense! why should you suspect me of such folly?--it is quite
out of date. Why should there be competition or comparison?

MEDON.

Both are ill-judged and odious; but did you ever meet with a woman of
the world, who did not abuse most heartily the whole race of men?

ALDA.

Did you ever talk with a man of the world, who did not speak with levity
or contempt of the whole human race of women?

MEDON.

Perhaps I might answer like Voltaire--"Helas ils pourraient bien avoir
raison tous deux." But do you thence infer that both are good for
nothing?

ALDA.

Thence I infer that the men of the world and the women of the world are
neither of them--good for much.

MEDON.

And you have written a book to make them better?

ALDA.

Heaven forbid! else I were only fit for the next lunatic asylum. Vanity
run mad never conceived such an impossible idea.

MEDON.

Then, in a few words, what is the subject, and what the object, of your
book?

ALDA.

I have endeavoured to illustrate the various modifications of which the
female character is susceptible, with their causes and results. My life
has been spent in observing and thinking; I have had, as you well know,
more opportunities for the first, more leisure for the last, than have
fallen to the lot of most people. What I have seen, felt, thought,
suffered, has led me to form certain opinions. It appears to me that the
condition of women in society, as at present constituted, is false in
itself, and injurious to them,--that the education of women, as at
present conducted, is founded in mistaken principles, and tends to
increase fearfully the sum of misery and error in