You had the misfortune to be deprived of your mother, at a time of
life when you were insensible of your loss, and could receive little
benefit, either from her instruction, or her example.--Before this
comes to your hands, you will likewise have lost your father.
I have had many melancholy reflexions on the forlorn and helpless
situation you must be in, if it should please God to remove me from
you, before you arrive at that period of life, when you will be able
to think and act for yourselves. I know mankind too well. I know their
falsehood, their dissipation, their coldness to all the duties of
friendship and humanity. I know the little attention paid to helpless
infancy.--You will meet with few friends disinterested enough to do
you good offices, when you are incapable of making them any return,
by contributing to their interest or their pleasure, or even to the
gratification of their vanity.
I have been supported under the gloom naturally arising from these
reflexions, by a reliance on the goodness of that Providence which has
hitherto preserved you, and given me the most pleasing prospect of
the goodness of your dispositions; and by the secret hope that your
mother’s virtues will entail a blessing on her children.
The anxiety I have for your happiness has made me resolve to throw
together my sentiments relating to your future conduct in life. If I
live for some years, you will receive them with much greater advantage,
suited to your different geniuses and dispositions. If I die sooner,
you must receive them in this very imperfect manner,--the last proof of
my affection.
You will all remember your father’s fondness, when perhaps every other
circumstance relating to him is forgotten. This remembrance, I hope,
will induce you to give a serious attention to the advices I am now
going to leave with you.--I can request this attention with the greater
confidence, as my sentiments on the most interesting points that regard
life and manners, were entirely correspondent to your mother’s, whose
judgment and taste I trusted much more than my own.
You must expect that the advices which I shall give you will be very
imperfect, as there are many nameless delicacies, in female manners,
of which none but a woman can judge.--You will have one advantage by
attending to what I am going to leave, with you; you will hear at least
for once in your lives, the genuine sentiments of a man who has no
interest in flattering or deceiving you.--I shall throw my reflexions
together without any studied order; and shall only, to avoid confusion,
range them under a few general heads.
You will see, in a little Treatise of mine just published, in what an
honourable point of view I have considered your sex; not as domestic
drudges, or the slaves of our pleasures, but as our companions and
equals; as designed to soften our hearts and polish our manners; and,
as Thomson finely says,
To raise the virtues, animate the bliss,
And sweeten all the toils of human life.
I shall not repeat what I have there said on this subject, and shall
only observe, that from the view I have given of your natural character
and place in society, there arises a certain propriety of conduct
peculiar to your sex. It is this peculiar propriety of female manners
of which I intend to give you my sentiments, without touching on those
general rules of conduct, by which men and women are equally bound.
While I explain to you that system of conduct which I think will tend
most to your honour and happiness, I shall, at the same time, endeavour
to point out those virtues and accomplishments which render you most
respectable and most amiable in the eyes of my own sex.