. Those
who are most conversant with women of virtue and understanding, will be
always found the most amiable characters, other circumstances being
supposed alike. Such society, beyond every thing else, rubs off the
_corners_ that gives many of our sex an ungracious roughness. It
produces a polish more perfect, and more pleasing than that which is
received from a general commerce with the world. This last is often
specious, but commonly superficial. The other is the result of gentler
feelings, and more humanity. The heart itself is moulded. Habits of
undissembled courtesy are formed. A certain flowing urbanity is
acquired. Violent passions, rash oaths, coarse jests, indelicate
language of every kind, are precluded and disrelished.

Female society gives men a taste for cleanliness and elegance of person.
Our ancestors, who kept but little company with their women, were not
only slovenly in their dress, but had their countenances disfigured with
long beards. By female influence, however, beards were, in process of
time, mutilated down to mustaches. As the gentlemen found that the
ladies had no great relish for mustaches, which were the relics of a
beard, they cut and curled them into various fashions, to render them
more agreeable. At last, however, finding such labor vain, they gave
them up altogether. But as those of the three learned professions were
supposed to be endowed with, or at least to stand in need of, more
wisdom than other people, and as the longest beard had always been
deemed to sprout from the wisest chin, to supply this mark of
distinction, which they had lost, they contrived to smother their heads
in enormous quantities of frizzled hair, that they might bear greater
resemblance to an owl, the bird sacred to wisdom and Minerva.

To female society it has been objected by the learned and studious, that
it enervates the mind, and gives it such a turn for trifling, levity,
and dissipation, as renders it altogether unfit for that application
which is necessary in order to become eminent in any of the sciences. In
proof of this they allege, that the greatest philosophers seldom or
never were men who enjoyed, or were fit for, the company or conversation
of women. Sir Isaac Newton hardly ever conversed with any of the sex.
Bacon, Boyle, Des Cartes, and many others, conspicuous for their
learning and application, were but indifferent companions to the fair.

It is certain, indeed, that the youth who devotes his