n
as to confess it to those who are kept in that state against their
wills; but sure the original of that misery is from the desire, not
the restraint, of marriage; let them but suppress that once, and the
other will never be their infelicity. But I must not be so unkind
to the sex as to think 'tis always such desire that gives them an
aversion to celibacy; I doubt not many are frightened only with the
vulgar contempt under which that state lyes: for which if there be no
cure, yet there is the same armous against this which is against all
other causeless reproaches, viz., to contemn it."

The esteem in which matrimony was held as the manifest destiny of the
fair sex is illustrated by all the social manners of the day. Women
had, however, the good taste to conduct themselves without reproach,
and not to invite attention even while they most appreciated it. In
a word, the young women of the eighteenth century were not coquettes,
and with them modesty was not a lost art. They were not masculine,
and indeed might have been regarded from the standards of to-day as
prudes. But the prudery of the British women excited the admiration of
foreigners, thoroughly satiated with the arts, the flaunting manners,
and the gilded charms of the young women of the European capitals.

One foreigner is found recording his astonishment at the diversity in
the manner of walking of the ladies, and sees in it an index of their
characters; for, says he, when they are desirous only of being seen,
they walk together, for the most part without speaking. He suggests
that the stiffness and formality of their demeanor when not thus on
dress parade are laid aside for greater naturalness. But he says that,
with all their care to be seen, they have no ridiculous affectations.
In former times, it was not customary for young women to go about
without the attendance of some older person, and a girl so doing was
brought under suspicion as to her character; but in the eighteenth
century, young girls went about freely with their fellows and without
any other company, and a writer of the period assures us that if a
young girl went out with a parent, unless such parent were as wild as
herself, she felt as though she was going abroad with a jailer. It was
not usual, however, for girls to go about unchaperoned.

It would be an unwarranted assumption to suppose that demureness was
any deeper than demeanor in the maidens of the eighteenth century,
for the feminine