Morning Star

True and False Delicacy

Above every other feature which adorns the female character, delicacy stands foremost within the province of good taste. Not that delicacy which is perpetually in quest of something to be ashamed of, which makes a merit of a blush, and simpers at the false construction its own ingenuity has put upon an innocent remark-this spurious kind of delicacy is as far removed from good taste as it is from good feeling and good sense-but that high-minded delicacy which maintains its pure and undeviating walk alike amongst women as in the society of men-which shrinks from no necessary duty, and can speak when required, with seriousness and kindness, of things at which it would be ashamed, indeed. to smile or to blush-that delicacy which knows how to confer a benefit without wounding the feelings of another: and which understands also how and when to receive one; that delicacy which can give alms without display, and advice without assuming, and which pains not the most humble or susceptible being in creation. This is the delicacy which forms so important a part of good taste, that where it does not exist as a natural instinct, it is taught as the first principle of good manners, and considered as the universal passport to good society. Nor can this, the greatest charm of female character, if totally neglected in youth, ever be acquired in after life.- When the mind has been accustomed to what is vulgar or gross, the fine edge of feeling is gone, and nothing can restore it. It is comparatively easy, on first entering upon life, to maintain the page of thought unsullied by closing it against every improper image; but when once such images are allowed to mingle with the imagination so as to be constantly revived by memory, and thus to give their tone to the habitual mode of thinking and conversing, the beauty of the female character may, indeed, be said to be gone, and its glory departed.

Mrs. Ellis' Daughters of England.