Can husbands, in the face of hourly experience as to the actual effect of female charms upon the passions of men,

decent pictures," in the following just, though satirical manner:-" Mr.

has exhausted all possible varieties of ringlets, eye-lashes, naked shoulders, and slim waists; Mr. as a humorous painter, possesses very great comic feeling and skill: who sets them to this wretched work? -to paint these eternal fancy portraits, of ladies in voluptuous attitudes and various stages of dishabille, to awaken the dormant sensibilities of misses in their teens, or tickle the worn out palates of elderly rakes and roues? What a noble occupation! What a delicate task for an artist!

How sweet!' says miss, examining some voluptuous Inez, or some loving Haidee, and sighing for an opportunity to imitate her. How rich!' says the gloating old bachelor, who has his bedroom hung round with them, or the dandy young shopman, who can only afford to purchase two or three of the most undressed; and the one dreams of opera-girls and French milliners, and the other, of the splendid woman' that he has seen in Mr. Yates's last new piece at the Adelphi.

6

"The publishers of these prints allow that the taste is execrable which renders such abominations popular, but the public will buy nothing else, and the public must be fed."

need any thing further to startle them into a conviction of the dangers of Manmidwifery to awaken them from a repose of dangerous confidence,

There is a prone and speechless dialect,
Such as moves men."

MEASURE FOR MEASURE.

It is unquestionable that many women refer themselves to male examiners, and submit to such modes of examination as have been described in quotation in this chapter, when they are not actually with child at all; therefore such idle anticipators must necessarily undergo the strictest and most extended course of scrutiny, by reason that it is far more easy to ascertain the affirmative-if the fact is so-than it is the negative position of the case, however they may hope the one to be the fact or the other. Some women go at six weeks or two months, some at three months, to be examined, although it appears that not

until after four months can the examiner ascertain with certainty. Although such women evidently have assurance enough, it may yet be their object possibly,

"To make assurance doubly sure"

in the affirmative, by whatever opportunity may offer. But there are women more to be pitied, and perhaps more justifiable in motive, who submit to the examinations to assure themselves as to the consequences of error, or of crime. From whatever motive however, it is assuredly a very usual affair for women thus to yield their persons to examination; how execrable, how lamentable the defection of principle, the deficiency of modest feeling which leads them to do so! If virtuous women will still continue to place themselves in the hands of men-midwives for the mere sake of fancied safety of life, surely they must have some such "compunctuous visitings" of moral tendency as the following,

"There's something in me that reproves my

fault;

But such a headstrong potent fault it is,
That it but mocks reproof."

WHAT YOU WILL.

More modest however, more strictly virtuous would they be, if they could emulate the resolve of Isabella, wherein virtue shines in native integrity unalloyed by any compromise of principle at the shrine of expediency.

"Isabella. Were I under the terms of death, The impression of keen whips I'd wear as rubies, And strip myself to death, as to a bed,

That longing I have been sick for, ere I'd yield My body up to shame."

MEASURE FOR MEASURE.

CHAPTER V.

"Yet oft his heart, divine of something ill, Misgave him."

Felix quem faciunt aliena pericula cautum.

IN the progress of this dissertation hitherto, precursory, incidental, and relative matters only have been treated of; as introductory to the actual accouchement, and to those matters which relate to the birth of the child; which, of course, is the climax of the subject. To such point of consideration has the subject now advanced. If it be said that those fearful and appalling incidents, which the extracts from the Directory Work quoted disclose as necessary in extreme cases of peril only,