they must excuse me, at any rate, if I do not stop even at love of ease and want of maternal affection, and if I express my fear, that, superadded to the unjustifiable motives, there is one which is calculated to excite disgust; namely, a desire to be quickly freed from that restraint which the child imposes, and to hasten back, unbridled and undisfigured, to those enjoyments, to have an eagerness for which, or to wish to excite a desire for which, a really delicate woman will shudder at the thought of being suspected.

234.  I am well aware of the hostility that I have here been exciting; but there is another, and still more furious, bull to take by the horns, and which would have been encountered some pages back (that being the proper place), had I not hesitated between my duty and my desire to avoid giving offence; I mean the employing of male-operators, on those occasions where females used to be employed.  And here I have every thing against me; the now general custom, even amongst the most chaste and delicate women; the ridicule continually cast on old midwives; the interest of a profession, for the members of which I entertain more respect and regard than for those of any other; and, above all the rest, my own example to the contrary, and my knowledge that every husband has the same apology that I had.  But because I acted wrong myself, it is not less, but rather more, my duty to endeavour to dissuade others from doing the same.  My wife had suffered very severely with her second child, which, at last, was still-born.  The next time I pleaded for the doctor; and, after every argument that I could think of, obtained a reluctant consent.  Her life was so dear to me, that every thing else appeared as nothing.  Every husband has the same apology to make; and thus, from the good, and not from the bad, feelings of men, the practice has become far too general, for me to hope even to narrow it; but, nevertheless, I cannot refrain from giving my opinion on the subject.

235.  We are apt to talk in a very unceremonious style of our rude ancestors, of their gross habits, their want of delicacy in their language.  No man shall ever make me believe, that those, who reared the cathedral of ELY (which I saw the other day), were rude, either in their manners or in their minds and words.  No man shall make me believe, that our ancestors were a rude and beggarly race, when I read in an act of parliament, passed in the reign of Edward the Fourth, regulating the dresses of the different ranks of the people, and forbidding the LABOURERS to wear coats of cloth that cost more than two shillings a yard (equal to forty shillings of our present money), and forbidding their wives and daughters to wear sashes, or girdles, trimmed with gold or silver.  No man shall make me believe that this was a rude and beggarly race, compared with those who now shirk and shiver