Page:Queen Mab (Shelley).djvu/208

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REPLY, &c.

they would cut each other's throats, as fast as they destroyed the happiness of the female portion of society. Murder and debauchery would be the "twin fiends of desolation;" and the imagined paradise of Queen Mab, would become in verity the worst of hells.

Woman can never be raised upon the stage of this bustling world, into an equality with man. Her very virtues, her beauties, her excellencies, forbid it. Beauty is the universal object of desire; and what men desire, they will obtain, by any means in their power. Women have no intuitive knowledge to discover the truth of affection, from its dissembled counterfeit. Prone to believe "what seems but fair," how are they to detect the guile that lurks beneath the specious promise of the flatterer's tongue! What security have they for the reality of an affection? or if real, that it might last the passing of a single moon? It is proposed to hold out to every man, the idea of obtaining as many women as he could deceive; and of abandoning with impunity those whom he has betrayed into affection for so dishonourable a wretch. The author of Queen Mab complains of the state of society! It may be bad enough; but this method of