m on
any impropriety in their conduct. But if these worthy people happen to
be somewhat advanced in life, their contempt is then a little softened
by pity, at the reflection that such very antiquated poor creatures
should pretend to judge what is fit or unfit for ladies of their great
refinement, sense, and reading. They consider them as wretches utterly
ignorant of the sublime pleasures of a delicate and exalted passion;
as tyrants whose authority is to be contemned, and as spies whose
vigilance is to be eluded. The prudence of these worthy friends they
term suspicion, and their experience dotage. For they are persuaded,
that the face of things has so totally changed since their parents were
young, that though they might then judge tolerably for themselves, yet
they are now (with all their advantages of knowledge and observation) by
no means qualified to direct their more enlightened daughters; who, if
they have made a great progress in the sentimental walk, will no more
be influenced by the advice of their mother, than they would go abroad
in her laced pinner or her brocade suit.

BUT young people never shew their folly and ignorance more
conspicuously, than by this over-confidence in their own judgment, and
this haughty disdain of the opinion of those who have known more days.
Youth has a quickness of apprehension, which it is very apt to mistake
for an acuteness of penetration. But youth, like cunning, though very
conceited, is very short-sighted, and never more so than when it
disregards the instructions of the wife, and the admonitions of the
aged. The same vices and follies influenced the human heart in their
day, which influence it now, and nearly in the same manner. One who
well knew the world and its various vanities, has said, "The thing which
hath been, it is that which shall be, and that which is done is that
which shall be done, and there is no new thing under the sun."

IT is also a part of the sentimental character, to imagine that none but
the young and the beautiful have any right to the pleasures of society,
of even to the common benefits and blessings of life. Ladies of this
turn also affect the most lofty disregard for useful qualities and
domestic virtues; and this is a natural consequence: for as this sort of
sentiment is only a weed of idleness, she who is constantly and usefully
employed, has neither leisure nor propensity to cultivate it.

A SENTIMENTAL lady principally values herself on the