iness; where
female armies marched under female captains, female farmers gathered the
harvest, female partners danced together, and female wits diverted one
another.

Yet several ages of antiquity have transmitted accounts of the Amazons
of Caucasus; and of the Amazons of America, who have given their name to
the greatest river in the world, Condamine lately found such memorials,
as can be expected among erratick and unlettered nations, where events
are recorded only by tradition, and new settling in the country from
time to time, confuse and efface all traces of former times.

To die with husbands, or to live without them, are the two extremes
which the prudence and moderation of European ladies have, in all ages,
equally declined; they have never been allured to death by the kindness
or civility of the politest nations, nor has the roughness and brutality
of more savage countries ever provoked them to doom their male
associates to irrevocable banishment. The Bohemian matrons are said to
have made one short struggle for superiority; but, instead of banishing
the men, they contented themselves with condemning them to servile
offices; and their constitution, thus left imperfect, was quickly
overthrown.

There is, I think, no class of English women from whom we are in any
danger of Amazonian usurpation. The old maids seem nearest to
independence, and most likely to be animated by revenge against
masculine authority; they often speak of men with acrimonious vehemence,
but it is seldom found that they have any settled hatred against them,
and it is yet more rarely observed that they have any kindness for each
other. They will not easily combine in any plot; and if they should ever
agree to retire and fortify themselves in castles or in mountains, the
sentinel will betray the passes in spite, and the garrison will
capitulate upon easy terms, if the besiegers have handsome swordknots,
and are well supplied with fringe and lace.

The gamesters, if they were united, would make a formidable body; and,
since they consider men only as beings that are to lose their money,
they might live together without any wish for the officiousness of
gallantry or the delights of diversified conversation. But as nothing
would hold them together but the hope of plundering one another, their
government would fail from the defect of its principles; the men would
need only to neglect them, and they would perish in a few weeks by a
civil war.