as women, than to fail as men? To shine, by walking
honourably in the road which nature, custom, and education seem to have
marked out, rather than to counteract them all, by moving awkwardly in a
path diametrically opposite? To be good originals, rather than bad
imitators? In a word, to be excellent women, rather than indifferent
men?

[1] THE author does not apprehend it makes against her GENERAL position,
that this nation can boast a female critic, poet, historian, linguist,
philosopher, and moralist, equal to most of the other sex. To these
particular instances others might be adduced; but it is presumed, that
they only stand as exceptions against the rule, without tending to
invalidate the rule itself.

ON
DISSIPATION.

DOGLIE CERTE, ALLEGREZZE INCERTE!
PETRARCA.

AS an argument in favour of modern manners, it has been pleaded, that
the softer vices of Luxury and Dissipation, belong rather to gentle
and yielding tempers, than to such as are rugged and ferocious: that
they are vices which increase civilization, and tend to promote
refinement, and the cultivation of humanity.

BUT this is an assertion, the truth of which the experience of all
ages contradicts. Nero was not less a tyrant for being a fiddler: He[2]
who wished the whole Roman people had but one neck, that he might
dispatch them at a blow, was himself the most debauched man in Rome; and
Sydney and Russel were condemned to bleed under the most barbarous,
though most dissipated and voluptuous, reign that ever disgraced the
annals of Britain.

THE love of dissipation is, I believe, allowed to be the reigning evil
of the present day. It is an evil which many content themselves with
regretting, without seeking to redress. A dissipated life is censured
in the very act of dissipation, and prodigality of time is as gravely
declaimed against at the card table, as in the pulpit.

THE lover of dancing censures the amusements of the theatre for their
dulness, and the gamester blames them both for their levity. She, whose
whole soul is swallowed up in "_opera extacies_" is astonished, that her
acquaintance can spend whole nights in preying, like harpies, on the
fortunes of their fellow-creatures; while the grave sober sinner, who
passes her pale and anxious vigils, in this fashionable sort of
pillaging, is no less surprised how the other can waste her precious
time in hearing sounds for which she has no taste, in a language she
does not u