ABSTRACT
There is a time, as the wisest of men has said, for all things. There may be a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to be merry, and a time to be wise;7 but is there a time, when the heart is breaking, to mask the features with levity – and to conceal the throbbings of despair under the smile of courtesy and satisfaction? – The stoic has mastered his passions, from the generous idea of the nobleness of human nature. The Christian has met death, and smiled; but the / cause for which he suffered was to him of far more worth than his mortal existence. The patriot has bled for his country: but it was left for woman alone, without a cause, in the mere excess of vanity, to have appeared in all the excess of extravagance, and all the frivolity of fashion, on the very eve of the ruin in which she knew herself about to be lost for ever to the delights of that world, for which she had sacrificed so much. I could have sympathized in her feelings, had love impelled her; had disappointment, or resentment prompted the display; had it been to win a new, or regain an old lover; to avert misfortune, or to conciliate popularity; but the most / frivolous of her own sex surrounded her; and of mine, for the most part men, who, forgetting all that is noble and useful in their lot and destination, consumed all their day, not even amidst the seductions of vice, nor in the indulgence of passion, but in the fopperies of dress and the fooleries of affectation. And it was for such as these, (no wonder they are vain) that a woman like Lady Orville – a woman of superior intellect, heart, feeling, taste, was making an effort hardly to have been expected from a devoted patriot or a Christian martyr!
