It is worthy of attention, how much ingenuity is displayed in bringing about that moral temperament, which is necessary for the meridian of Fashion. The rake, who is debauching innocence, squandering away property, and extending the influence of licentiousness to the utmost of his power, would (if fairly represented) excite spontaneous and universal abhorrence. But this result would be extremely inconvenient; since raking, seduction, and prodigality, make half the business, and almost all the reputation, of men of Fashion. What, then, must be done?—Some qualities of acknowledged excellence must be associated with these vicious propensities, in order to prevent them from occasioning unmingled disgust. We may, I presume, refer it to the same policy, that in dramas of the greatest popularity, the worthless libertine is represented as having at the bottom some of those properties which reflect most honour upon human nature; while—as if to throw the balance still more in favour of vice—the man of professed virtue is delineated as being in the main a sneaking and hypocritical villain. Lessons such as these are not likely to be lost upon the ingenuous feelings of a young girl. For, besides the fascinations of an elegant address and an artful manner, the whole conduct of the plot is an insidious appeal to the simplicity of her heart. She is taught to believe, by these representations, that profligacy is the exuberance of a generous nature, and decorum the veil of a bad heart: so that having learnt, in the outset of her career, to associate frankness with vice, and duplicity with virtue, she will not be likely to separate these combinations during the remainder of her life.
To enter further into the minute details of a Fashionable education, would only be to travel over ground which has been often and ingeniously explored by writers of the greatest eminence. Enough has been said to show, that the system of education adopted by this people, like every other branch of their economy, is adapted to qualify the parties for that polite intercourse with each other, which seems to constitute the very end of their being. And if it be considered, of what nature that intercourse is, it will occasion no surprise, that the education which prepares for it should be expressly adapted to confound the distinctions of virtue and vice; and to inculcate, with that view,—duplicity in religion, and prevarication in morals.