over how we may, modesty in the word and grossness in the thought.  Farmers’ wives, daughters, and maids, cannot now allude to, or hear named, without blushing, those affairs of the homestead, which they, within my memory, used to talk about as freely as of milking or spinning; but, have they become more really modest than their mothers were?  Has this refinement made them more continent than those rude mothers?  A jury at Westminster gave, about six years ago, damages to a man, calling himself a gentleman, against a farmer, because the latter, for the purpose for which such animals are kept, had a bull in his yard, on which the windows of the gentleman looked!  The plaintiff alleged, that this was so offensive to his wife and daughters, that, if the defendant were not compelled to desist, he should be obliged to brick up his windows, or to quit the house!  If I had been the father of these, at once, delicate and curious daughters, I would not have been the herald of their purity of mind; and if I had been the suitor of one of them, I would have taken care to give up the suit with all convenient speed; for how could I reasonably have hoped ever to be able to prevail on delicacy, so exquisite, to commit itself to a pair of bridal sheets?  In spite, however, of all this ’refinement in the human mind,’ which is everlastingly dinned in our ears; in spite of the ‘small-clothes,’ and of all the other affected stuff, we have this conclusion, this indubitable proof, of the falling off in real delicacy; namely, that common prostitutes, formerly unknown, now swarm in our towns, and are seldom wanting even in our villages; and where there was one illegitimate child (including those coming before the time) only fifty years ago, there are now twenty.

240.  And who can say how far the employment of men, in the cases alluded to, may have assisted in producing this change, so disgraceful to the present age, and so injurious to the female sex?  The prostitution and the swarms of illegitimate children have a natural and inevitable tendency to lessen that respect, and that kind and indulgent feeling, which is due from all men to virtuous women.  It is well known that the unworthy members of any profession, calling, or rank in life, cause, by their acts, the whole body to sink in the general esteem; it is well known, that the habitual dishonesty of merchants trading abroad, the habitual profligate behaviour of travellers from home, the frequent proofs of abject submission to tyrants; it is well known, that these may give the character of dishonesty, profligacy, or cowardice, to a whole nation.  There are, doubtless, many men in Switzerland, who abhor the infamous practices of men selling themselves, by whole regiments, to fight for any foreign state that will pay them, no matter in what cause, and no matter whether against