Mary Wollstonecraft's Original Stories

lip and the Rose.-The Nightingale

u why-they are only beautiful. Listen to my distinction;-good features, and a fine complexion, I term bodily beauty. Like the streaks in the tulip, they please the eye for a moment; but this uniformity soon tires, and the active mind flies off to something else. The soul of beauty, my dear children, consists in the body gracefully exhibiting the emotions and variations of the informing mind. If truth, humanity, and knowl

they received their friends, was dark and inconvenient. Apply this observation to mere personal attractions. They may, it is true, for a few years, charm the superficial part of your acquaintance, whose notions of beauty are not built on any principle of utility. Such persons might look at you, as they would glance their eye over these tulips, and feel for a moment

the fine tints fade, the smell is grateful to those who have before contemplated its beauties. I ha

erson of taste listens for the modulated sounds which proceed out of her mouth, to be improved and pleased. It is conscious worth, truth, that gives dignity to her walk, and simple elegance to her conversation. She has, indeed, a most excellent understanding, and a feeling heart; sagacity and tenderness, the result of both, are happily blended in her countenance; and taste is the polish

ivides His gifts, and amongst the feathered race the nightingale (sweetest of warblers, who pours forth her varied strain when sober eve comes on) you would seek in vain in the morning, if y

render her person more alluring. At last she caught the small-pox-her beauty vanished, and she was for a time miserable; but the natural vivacity of youth overcame her unpleasant feelings. In consequence of the disorder, her eyes becam

had made in a fine face. Not expecting or wishing to be observed, she lost her affected airs, and attended to the conversation, in which she was soon able to bear a part. In short, the desire of pleasing took a different turn, a

actuated her, when her equals were the objects she thought most of, and whose approbation she sought with such eagerness. And what had she sought? To be stared at and called handsome.

had acquired the habit of employing her time to the best advantage, and could make many things herself. Besides, she did not implicitly fol

ntrance of a visitor interrupted the conversation, and t