matters-namely, in point of for tune or connections. As these are things which have no sort of connection with inclination on either side, it sometimes happens that a marriage is agreed upon between the parents for some years before the girl's age will permit it to be consummated. A young lady of the highest rank, whose nuptials took place when I was in Paris, had been accustomed to say to her governess, who was an Englishwoman, "They tell me I am to be married at fifteen: I wish I knew to whom; I dare say I shall like him, don't you think I shall?" Girlish feeling prompts this anticipation of satisfaction, the awful contract for life is hailed for no better reason, than that it affords a prospect of escaping from the irksome restraints that have been already described,-the commands of the parents are signified and obeyed, and two persons come together whom no impulse of their own has brought together, who can have no well-founded confidence in each other, and whose minds are prepared before-hand to give ready access to levity and inordinate desires.

After marriage, the wife, young, and uninstructed in morals and duties, is at once emancipated from a state of severe restraint, and plunged into one of licentious liberty and unnatural power of which a few of the features are, a luxurious boudoir, full of couches and statues—separate bed rooms-8 lover in every visitor, and the customs of society opposed to cruelty to lovers. It is needless to deduce consequences from these their existence is sufficiently informing.

The system of married life in France, is one by which the lady en

joys a sort of artificial authority and influence, raising her to appearance much above the claims of her sex and relationship, but existing at the expence of that cordial con munication and heartfelt disinterested deference, which distinguish unions founded on a more judicious basis than that which I have been describing. She is installed in va rious prerogatives that look flattering and desirable, but they are chiefly favourable to the discharge of functions from which a true respect for her sex, cherished by the men, would entirely preserve her, and the enjoyment of gratifications which a proper self-respect on her own part would prohibit her from partaking.

The chief emblem and representation of this condition of married women, is the boudoir. It is a temple of separation and luxury. It belongs to the wife exclusively; the husband has neither property in it, nor power over it. If she were suspected of having a lover concealed within its mysterions enclo sure, that enclosure, nevertheless, must not be violated. What I mean is, that such is the rule of good manners in France, and the man who disregards it is esteemed a brute-an object of the general dislike and disgust of both sexes. The boudoir is the apartment, as I have before observed, that is most commonly complete in its elegance. The nursery for the children, in the houses of families of rank, contrary to the custom in England, is neglected, and crammed into some inconvenient corner; but the bou. doir for the mother, is rich in couches, in statues, in paintings, and flowers. It is a retreat in which Venus might be happy to recline, and is, in every respect,

calcu

calculated to inspire the sentiments which belong to the devotion in which that goddess delights.

One effect of what I have been describing is, that, amidst this general profligacy, the grosser fea tures of vice are not frequently seen. A woman who swerves from her sex's point of honour in England, is aware that she has committed an unpardonable offence, and the coarseness of de pravity ensues from the very consciousness of the enormity of her crime. But it is very different in France. A female there who has committed adultery, regards her self, and is regarded by others, as not more culpable than if she were a little too extravagant, or too ad dicted to play, or rather fond of going from home. Her mind, therefore, experiences little, if any alteration, in consequence of the violation of her person: it is but little, or rather not at all, worse than it was before. It must be admitted, that this is a better state of disposition and feeling than usually exists in union with a disregard of chastity in England; but how worthless is it as a general standard of the female heart-and is it not infinitely better to meet with instances of gross depravity, as disgusting exceptions to the general purity, than to find purity no where, and every where a disso luteness, insulting and confounding virtue by assuming the air of decency?

This leads me again to notice what I have before referred to namely, the boast of the French, that the appearance of vice in Paris is not so odious as in London. If it be allowed them that their wickedness is not so deformed, yet if their virtue is not so fair, the worst stigma will remain with

them.

Where women cominit adultery, and are allowed to continue in good society, the commou prostitutes will not in their beha viour shew themselves at variance with the observances of good society. Why should they? The crowd of unfortunate females in the lobbies and boxes of the English theatres, forming, as it certainly does, a display offensive to decency, is adduced sometimes as a contrast disgraceful to the nation, against the decorum of behaviour which profligacy_preserves in the public places of Paris. Be it observed, however, that no one attempts to say, that there is a less amount of profligacy collected together in the latter assemblies ;hut it assimilates itself more to the general manners, it lives on an easier and more communicable footing with all around it. Now the truth is, that, for all the interests of virtue, this is the most fatal public symptom of the two. The offensive shew in our theatres is highly disgraceful to the managers who build conveniences for this description of persons, that they may derive a profit from assisting the vicious intercourse in questionbut one of its most certain effects is to fill the breast of the youthful female, who is not corrupted, with horror, and to strengthen it against every seduction, which, by any possibility, might end in reducing her to so frightful a state of degradation. She sees the votaries of pleasure in an awful state of defor mity and abandonment, and if the Greeks found it efficacious, to confirm their young meu in babits of temperance, to expose slaves before them in the brutality to which drunkenness reduces, surely it must be still more admonitory and alarming to a young girl of delicate feel

ings and refined manners, to see her own sex exposed in loathsomeness and misery to the insolence and coarseness of the other.

The dangerous seduction is in Paris, where the harlot sits beside the girl of virtue, pretty, demure, attentive to the play, and coquetting with the surrounding heaux. The young lady is sensible that this woman does little more than ber mamma does, and she sees no difference in their carriage. The men behave alike respectfully to both; they are both, then, entirely on an equality to the eye, and pretty nearly so to the understanding.

It is, I repeat, most essential to the preservation of virtue, that the distinction between it and vice should be strongly marked. It certainly is not so in France: they unite with each other, and this is an union which must be entirely at the expence of the best party to it, and, at the same time, promote the extension, without lessening the mischiefs of the worst. In a country where the most respectable tradesmen's wives will put obscene prints into the hands of their customers where the insignia of filth and wickedness are every where displayed-where licentious conversation prevails at every tableand the young married woman who is without a paramour, is an exception to the general custom-we must not bear a word of its refine ment or of its delicacy.

However lenient society may be to the violator of the marriage bed, it is very resentful against those girls who marry without their parents' consent:—a blind deference to their authority is demanded, and it is observable, that this unqualified obedience, which some labour to represent as a binding duty, from

66

BRUTALITY.--Yesterday morning a horse and a mare, the property of two farmers, at Ivybridge, were started against each other, rode by their owners (men of heavy weight), to go from thence to the Seven Stars, St. Thomas, and back again, a distance of sixty-six miles, over a very billy road, for a bet of fifty guineas; they arrived at the above inn at half past eleven o'clock, nearly together, both apparently much distressed, having performed the distance up (thirty-three miles) in two hours and a quarter. After staying about ten minutes, they proceeded on their return, the mare taking the lead, and gaining fast on the horse; the latter, on ascending Haldon-hill, appeared nearly exhausted, but was continued to be forced on to the eight mile stone, when he suddenly dropped dead under his merciless rider. The mare reached Ivy-bridge in the course of the evening, but in such a dreadful state, that it is not thought she will survive. It is, indeed, much to be lamented, that the inhuman owners of these most useful animals cannot receive a punishment adequate to their deserts."

The