"Many are in each region passing fair As the noon sky; more like to goddesses Than mortal creatures." MILTON. Or can she see him without consciousness that, as well by touch as by sight, he knows her in person already too intimately? The man's being a profes sional cannot obliterate the idea in her breast that he is nevertheless a man, nor alter his consciousness that she is a lovely woman! Those natural sensations therefore, to which it is no more in our power to be insensible, than to "add one cubit to our stature," must occur; for your actual anchorite is as much a rara avis as the phoenix, unknown as the unicorn or the mermaid, and as difficult to be authenticated as the American sea-serpent; nor is every woman either a Lucretia. It cannot, therefore, be admitted as a general conclusion, because it is not believed in the aggregate, that it is possible for a man in health to view the loveliness of form 66 and beauties of person, and to range over the body of a woman internum" and "externum," as the phrases are, and not be moved by desires; especially, as may possibly be the fact, "Before the present object languishing With like desire ;" PARADISE LOST. chambered with a woman of youth and beauty, knowing that no person dare intrude; she also in the same confi dence; first taking one course of examination, then another; now standing is perhaps best for the facial scrutiny, then a reclining posture on a couch is preferable for the posterior investigation, for these pages have disclosed that "the touch" is performed each way; "Or paddling in your neck with his damn'd fingers," HAMLET. -to be unmoved is incompatible with the aptitudes of our nature! "Ford. I do not misdoubt my wife; but I would be loth to turn them together." MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. Assuming then a conclusion which in reason and according to nature cannot be avoided, or confuted as erroneous, that the passions of the man are thus by sight and touch liable to be excited; can it be imagined but that in cases it may happen that a man-midwife, agitated himself, may seek to agitate the woman into an excitement of like desire? If he should chance to be a man of strong passions and infirm mind, he can scarcely help doing so, for in the excess of inflamed impulse he is hardly a free agent. Nor is ignorant how to accomplish his intent, not he:-" expert in amorous arts" his professional knowledge teaches him where to place his finger upon the clitoris, which is the masterkey to the accomplishment of his desires. Unlike the courtier in Hamlet who protested to the "noble Dane" that he could not play upon the recorder which played upon, would "discourse most eloquent music," the man midwife knows every touch, and all variety in fingering. Under pretence then that it is necessary to touch before he can properly decide on the situation of pregnancy of a woman, or to digitate to dilate the passage, however afar off may be the hour of delivery, the woman is in the power of a libertine who intent on his vile purpose may continue his digitating process, and 66 forbore not glance or toy Of amorous intent, well understood Of Eve, whose eye darted contagious fire :" till infallible symptoms (des sympathies adoucissantes, as the magnetisers say,) leave him no room for doubt that her free agency is at length as fully subverted as his own was previously superseded by the force of his desires. "Both in subjection now "He led her, nothing loth." Women seem to be blind to this danger : husbands surely must be. Strange! that either women or men can need to be reminded of what parts they are composed, with what excitability of temperament possessed, when even our chastest pas sions are as 66 Counsellors That feelingly persuade me what I am." AS YOU LIKE IT. When a libertine chooses thus to use his opportunity, thinking himself safe in doing so, putting fire to those combustibles of nature to which he is, as a man-midwife thus foolishly invited and given access, it is next to impossible for a woman of warm temperament to preserve her virtue; provided he be not so hasty as to betray his sinister object, and arouse her consciousness of it, before by the influence of her delirium of excitement she is in the situation he would wish, that is to say, fully in his power; oft have they violated The temple PARADISE REGAINED. |