True genuine sentiment may be so connected with the virtue of action, as
to bestow on it its brightest lustre, and its most captivating graces.
And enthusiasm under these circumstances is so far from being
disagreeable, that a portion is indispensibly necessary in an engaging
woman; but it must be of the heart, not of the senses.--It must grow up
with the feeling mind, and be cherished by a virtuous education, not
compounded of irregular passions and artificially refined by books of
unnatural fiction, and improbable adventure.
But this dangerous merit cannot be too rigidly watched, as it is very
apt to lead those who possess it into inconveniencies from which less
interesting characters are happily exempt.
Strong sensibility may carry a very amiable temper into the most
alarming extremes.---The taste of those so actuated are passions. They
love and hate with all their hearts, and scarcely suffer themselves to
feel a reasonable preference, before it strengthens into a violent
attachment.
When an innocent girl of this open, trusting, tender heart, happens to
meet with one of her own sex and age, whose address and manners are
engaging, she is instantly seized with an ardent desire to commence a
friendship with her. She feels the most lively impatience at the
restraint of company and the decorums of ceremony.--She longs to be
alone with her--longs to assure her of the warmth of her tenderness, and
generally ascribes to the fair stranger all the good qualities she feels
in her own heart, or rather all those which she has met with in her
reading, dispersed in a variety of heroines.--She is persuaded that her
new friend unites them all in herself, because the carries in her
prepossessing countenance the promise of them all.
If hints of her defects are given, she mistakes the voice of discretion.
At first she listens to them with a generous impatience, and afterwards
with a cold and silent disdain, and despises them as the effect of
prejudice, misrepresentation, or ignorance.
Yet this trusting confidence, this honest indiscretion, is, at this
early period of life, as amiable as it is natural; and will, if wisely
cultivated, produce at its proper season, fruits infinitely more
valuable than all the guarded circumspection of premature, and therefore
artificial prudence. Nay, if the younger part of the sex are sometimes
deceived in the choice of a friend, they enjoy even then an higher
degree of satisfaction than if they never trusted--For to be always clad
in the burthensome armour of suspicion is more painful and inconvenient,
than to run the hazard of suffering, now and then, a transient injury.
These observations chiefly respect the inexperienced; for it is a
certainty that women are capable of as faithful and as durable
friendship as any of the other sex. They can enter not only into all the
enthusiastic tenderness, but into all the solid fidelity of attachment.
* * * * *