Imatges de pàgina
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position, presenting, in regard to the sex, other impressions. From the galaxy of female divinities (are there, in truth, any other?) no difficulty could have been found in selecting, as well from mythology, as from the poets and dramatists of all ages, many whose individual attributes - exemplifying every virtue— would, indeed, make Clytemnestra and Lady Macbeth appear as very devils in comparison-“ black and mid-night hags,”—prototypes of the Cimmerian darkness of human nature! for not only the Graces, but the Virtues, in female personification of loveliness and dignity, cheer and render happy the path of life, exalting human nature, and giving a foretaste of Elysium!

As it is not, however, the purpose of these pages, nor within the scope of the subject, either to flatter female vanity on the one hand, or to decry the nature or character of the sex on the other, but simply to take "Woman as she is,"

according to one novelist, or as "either angels or devils," according to another, it is not for the author to make the selection which his contemporary has omitted to present. The passage is quoted only to remind readers to what lamentable depths of infamy it is possible for women to fall by the influence of vice; and so reminding, to induce an anxious and salutary caution as to every, or any, tendency, which may prove the first stumbling-block in their path of virtue.

With this object in view, a warranty is afforded for suggesting a few further considerations in relation to the objectionable facts which have been disclosed, and the influences therefrom resulting, as incidental to the practice of man-midwifery, and which have been condemned as having tendency towards corrupting the moral and social state of society, by extending the vice of adultery; a vice which, as it poisons the source of do

mestic happiness and renders home hateful, may drive husbands to seek relief for wounded feelings and disturbed minds, in dissipation, and involve them. in consequent irretrievable ruin.

It is perhaps a moot point, and must remain so, whether of women who have proved adulteresses, those having had children are in number more or less than those who have never become mothers? When women prove adulteresses who are mothers (as unquestionably is far too frequently the case), their being so is always considered to be an aggravation of their crime; and the more numerous the children, the greater is the general astonishment and measure of condemnation ; and well it may be so, for the distressing consequences of their error is manifoldly and most mischievously extended! On the other side of the question, the absence of children is as generally admitted, in some measure, as an extenuation : and in "The Sacrifice" before quoted, is

the following passage, founded on such mitigatory circumstance:

"But Lady Singleton was not yet become criminal, though indifference had grown into disgust." (Towards her husband!) "She was without children, those safeguards of female virtue, that often fill up the void in the heart, and turn into a new channel its affections, begetting another feeling as tender and more pure."

If then such be, as no doubt it is, the natural influence of children upon a mother's affections, how unmitigated must be the depravity of a woman who has become a mother, when she proves to be an adulteress. In reason, or in nature, then, to what demoralizing influence can it be ascribed that mothers of many children in such frequent cases become shameless and infamous adulteresses!

It would be a curious and not uninteresting effort, to attempt an investigation of this most "foul and unnatural" "falling off;" but as it must be speculative only, failure might await the at

tempt as to arriving at any definite conclusion the most that could be done, would be to reason with discretion and sound judgment upon the probabilities attendant upon natural influences in connexion with relative circumstances. May not the cause of such rank offence be ascribed, however, with some show of reason, involving much of probability, to the demoralizing effects of man-midwifery!

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back they recoil'd, afraid

At first, and call'd me Sin,

* *

*

* * but familiar grown,

I pleas'd, and with attractive graces won

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It is neither unreasonable, nor contrary to the probable natural effect upon some constitutions, to assume as a conclusion, that the oftener some women may have been under the practice of men-midwives, the more prone they may become, by possibility arising from perverted feelings, to yield in gratification of them to the desires of men.

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