life, and probably might be induced under the abuses of such practices

"Nature herself, though pure of sinful thought, Wrought in her so."

Or, can any practice having relation to the sexes out-Herod this other, which is involved in the foregoing professional quotation? A young creature is but a few months married before a strange man is sent for as a man-midwife; he arrives, is introduced, makes his bow of apparent but simulated respect, and is left alone with the patient.

"Mrs. Page. Why, he hath not been thrice in my company!

What should I say to him?"

Asking a few questions in a soft, simpering, insinuating manner, he then with the utmost politeness of professional assurance, and as a matter of course, slides his hand ****! Nor does the innocent creature thus assailed and outraged rebuke the mid-day act,

as the wife of Paulo Purganti rebuked him for what he did in his sleep dreaming of the wedding-ring,—

"Go, get along, you filthy bear,

You've thrust your finger-God knows where !"

Monstrous ! Apart from hymeneal rights, and in violation of them, those sacred limits where modesty should ever stand as sentinel, those outposts where sensitiveness should be ever ready to touch the chords of alarm which puts the heart and the mind upon guard and induces circumspection, have been approached, nay, passed, betrayed into the hand of the enemy by the password "man-midwife," when the watchword should have been "husband" only! Under cover of such approaches what can be expected other than that in very many cases every defence that modesty could raise, and which virtue ought to maintain, will be overthrown and demolished; and, in the end, the citadel

of virtue, by her own defection, be profaned and polluted. That this fatal catastrophe must have occurred in numerous instances, there can be but little doubt; as little that it would more frequently have been the end of such doings as described,

66

Had time cohered with place, or place with wishing."

There are women who are unceasingly solicitous to ascertain whether or not they are in a fructifying state. In this object, and possibly to such end, they either go to their midwife-doctor or send for him, some at six weeks after the supposed conception, others at two, three, four, five, six, or seven months (as is manifest from the foregoing quotation), to be resolved, or upon pretence of being so, one or other of the several points of interesting inquiry; whether they are actually in "the family way?" how far gone with child? whether the

child lies right? or whether they are in any danger of miscarrying? Such inquiries are of very common occurrence, and the doctor in such cases must do his best to satisfy anxious solicitude to whatever extent the scrutiny may extend.

The existence, under very pernicious influences upon society, both moral and social, of the laws of primogeniture and of entail to its present extent of lottery chances, induces possibly in many cases a solicitude founded upon anticipations of the "all hail, hereafter!" and the sanguine and impatient woman, the would-be mother, knows no inward rest until she becomes one, and presents to her husband (perhaps titled and àmbitious, with tens of thousands of "dirty acres" to "lord it over,") a son and heir;" nor is the father less solicitous probably than the mother.*

The law of Primogeniture seems strangely anomalous when it is remembered that the "first

Such motive of inquiry, however wayward and unnecessary, is excusable when compared with other impulses under which other women affect solicitude, make inquiry, and submit to the examinations. But whether under actual anxious solicitude as to progeny,

born" was a murderer and fratricide! The law of entail and the partiality for " heirs male,” the elder taking before the younger, arises possibly from a consideration that Cain was 66 a tiller of the ground," and therefore that the ground, in whole parishes of “landed estate,” must be reserved for Cain's representative, the eldest; whilst as Abel was a keeper of sheep," many of his representatives, the younger sons and detrimentals!-like him sufferers from primogenitive brotherhood-take the type of him unto whom "the Lord had respect" and become "shepherds of the flock" as parsons. To carry the fancy on, it may be remarked that there is a close following up of the original incident, for how many fratricides has the law of primogeniture made! The eldest takes estates ample for a dozen sons, some of the eleven go to the wars and are killed, and thus seeking the means of a livelihood in the place of that sufficiency they have seen descend in superfluity to their elder brother, against whom may