is supposed feelings, by a
want of sympathy, made me dissemble, and do violence to my delicacy. What
a task!

"Those who support a system of what I term false refinement, and will
not allow great part of love in the female, as well as male breast, to
spring in some respects involuntarily, may not admit that charms are as
necessary to feed the passion, as virtues to convert the mellowing spirit
into friendship. To such observers I have nothing to say, any more than
to the moralists, who insist that women ought to, and can love their
husbands, because it is their duty. To you, my child, I may add, with a
heart tremblingly alive to your future conduct, some observations,
dictated by my present feelings, on calmly reviewing this period of my
life. When novelists or moralists praise as a virtue, a woman's coldness
of constitution, and want of passion; and make her yield to the ardour of
her lover out of sheer compassion, or to promote a frigid plan of future
comfort, I am disgusted. They may be good women, in the ordinary
acceptation of the phrase, and do no harm; but they appear to me not to
have those 'finely fashioned nerves,' which render the senses exquisite.
They may possess tenderness; but they want that fire of the imagination,
which produces _active_ sensibility, and _positive_ virtue. How does the
woman deserve to be characterized, who marries one man, with a heart and
imagination devoted to another? Is she not an object of pity or contempt,
when thus sacrilegiously violating the purity of her own feelings? Nay,
it is as indelicate, when she is indifferent, unless she be
constitutionally insensible; then indeed it is a mere affair of barter;
and I have nothing to do with the secrets of trade. Yes; eagerly as I
wish you to possess true rectitude of mind, and purity of affection, I
must insist that a heartless conduct is the contrary of virtuous. Truth
is the only basis of virtue; and we cannot, without depraving our minds,
endeavour to please a lover or husband, but in proportion as he pleases
us. Men, more effectually to enslave us, may inculcate this partial
morality, and lose sight of virtue in subdividing it into the duties of
particular stations; but let us not blush for nature without a cause!

"After these remarks, I am ashamed to own, that I was pregnant. The
greatest sacrifice of my principles in my whole life, was the allowing my
husband again to be familiar with my person, though to this cruel act of
sel