, the finest and most perfect illustration of
simplicity. It is a state of genuine nature throughout. The feelings of
children are under no kind of restraint, but pure as the fire, free as
the winds, honest and open as the face of heaven. Their joys incessantly
flow in the thickest succession, and their griefs only seem fleeting and
evanescent. To the calls of nature they are only attentive. They know no
voice but hers. Their obedience to all her commands is prompt and
implicit. They never anticipate her bounties, nor relinquish her
pleasures. This situation renders them independent of artifice.
Influenced only by nature, their manners, like the principle that
produces them, are always the same.

Genuine simplicity is that peculiar quality of the mind, by which some
happy characters are enabled to avoid the most distant approaches to any
thing like affectation, inconstancy, or design, in their intercourse
with the world. It is much more easily understood, however than defined;
and consists not in a specific tone of the voice, movement of the body,
or mode imposed by custom, but is the natural and permanent effect of
real modesty and good sense on the whole behavior.

This has been considered in all ages, as one of the first and most
captivating ornaments of the sex. The savage, the plebeian, the man of
the world, and the courtier, are agreed in stamping it with a preference
to every other female excellence.

Nature only is lovely, and nothing unnatural can ever be amiable. The
genuine expressions of truth and nature are happily calculated to
impress the heart with pleasure. No woman, whatever her other qualities
may be, was ever eminently agreeable, but in proportion as
distinguished by these. The world is good-natured enough to give a lady
credit for all the merit she can possess or acquire, without
affectation. But the least shade or coloring of this odious foible
brings certain and indelible obloquy on the most elegant
accomplishments. The blackest suspicion inevitably rests on every thing
assumed. She who is only an ape of others, or prefers formality in all
its gigantic and preposterous shapes, to that plain, unembarassed
conduct which nature unavoidably produces, will assuredly provoke an
abundance of ridicule, but never can be an object either of love or
esteem.

The various artifices of the sex discover themselves at a very early
period. A passion for expense and show is one of the first they exhibit.
This