commodated
accordingly. Among other necessaries, as I have thought fit to appoint
storytellers to soothe the men, so I have allowed tale-bearers to
indulge the intervals of my female patients. But before I enter upon
disposing of the main of the great body that wants my assistance, it is
necessary to consider the human race abstracted from all other
distinctions and considerations except that of sex. This will lead us to
a nearer view of their excellences and imperfections, which are to be
accounted the one or the other, as they are suitable to the design for
which the persons so defective or accomplished came into the world.

To make this inquiry aright, we must speak of the life of people of
condition, and the proportionable applications to those below them will
be easily made, so as to value the whole species by the same rule. We
will begin with the woman, and behold her as a virgin in her father's
house. This state of her life is infinitely more delightful than that
of her brother at the same age. While she is entertained with learning
melodious airs at her spinet, is led round a room in the most
complaisant manner to a fiddle, who is entertained with applauses of her
beauty and perfection in the ordinary conversation she meets with: the
young man is under the dictates of a rigid schoolmaster or instructor,
contradicted in every word he speaks, and curbed in all the inclinations
he discovers. Mrs. Elizabeth is the object of desire and admiration,
looked upon with delight, courted with all the powers of eloquence and
address, approached with a certain worship, and defended with a certain
loyalty. This is her case as to the world: in her domestic character,
she is the companion, the friend, and confidante of her mother, and the
object of a pleasure something like the love between angels, to her
father. Her youth, her beauty, her air, are by him looked upon with an
ineffable transport beyond any other joy in this life, with as much
purity as can be met with in the next.

Her brother William, at the same years, is but in the rudiments of those
acquisitions which must gain him esteem in the world. His heart beats
for applause among men, yet is he fearful of every step towards it. If
he proposes to himself to make a figure in the world, his youth is
damped with a prospect of difficulties, dangers, and dishonours; and an
opposition in all generous attempts, whether they regard his love or his
ambition.

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