icular. I have not
Patience to proceed gravely on this abominable Libertinism; for I
cannot but reflect, as I am writing to you, upon a certain lascivious
Manner which all our young Gentlemen use in publick, and examine our
Eyes with a Petulancy in their own, which is a downright Affront to
Modesty. A disdainful Look on such an Occasion is return'd with a
Countenance rebuked, but by averting their Eyes from the Woman of
Honour and Decency to some flippant Creature, who will, as the Phrase
is, be kinder. I must set down things as they come into my Head,
without standing upon Order. Ten thousand to one but the gay Gentleman
who stared, at the same time is an House-keeper; for you must know
they have got into a Humour of late of being very regular in their
Sins, and a young Fellow shall keep his four Maids and three Footmen
with the greatest Gravity imaginable. There are no less than six of
these venerable House-keepers of my Acquaintance. This Humour among
young Men of Condition is imitated by all the World below them, and a
general Dissolution of Manners arises from the one Source of
Libertinism, without Shame or Reprehension in the Male Youth. It is
from this one Fountain that so many Beautiful helpless young Women are
sacrific'd and given up to Lewdness, Shame, Poverty and Disease. It is
to this also that so many excellent young Women, who might be Patterns
of conjugal Affection and Parents of a worthy Race, pine under unhappy
Passions for such as have not Attention enough to observe, or Virtue
enough to prefer them to their common Wenches. Now, _Mr_. SPECTATOR, I
must be free to own to you, that I my self suffer a tasteless insipid
Being, from a Consideration I have for a Man who would not, as he has
said in my hearing, resign his Liberty, as he calls it, for all the
Beauty and Wealth the whole Sex is possessed of. Such Calamities as
these would not happen, if it could possibly be brought about, that by
fining Batchelors as Papists Convict, or the like, they were
distinguished to their disadvantage from the rest of the World, who
fall in with the Measures of Civil Society. Lest you should think I
speak this as being, according to the senseless rude Phrase, a
malicious old Maid, I shall acquaint you I am a Woman of Condition not
now three and twenty, and have had Proposals from at least ten
different Men, and the greater Number of them have upon the Up