eir earliest youth; for few remain
unmarried till fifteen, and at thirty have a wan and faded look. _On ne
goute pas ses plaisirs icy, on les avale_[Footnote: They do not taste
their pleasures here, they swallow them whole.], said Madame la
Presidente yesterday, very judiciously; yet it is only speaking
popularly that one can be supposed to mean, what however no one much
refuses to assert, that the Venetian ladies are amorously inclined: the
truth is, no check being put upon inclination, each acts according to
immediate impulse; and there are more devotees, perhaps, and more
doating mothers at Venice than any where else, for the same reason as
there are more females who practise gallantry, only because there are
more women there who _do their own way_, and follow unrestrained where
passion, appetite, or imagination lead them.

To try Venetian dames by English rules, would be worse than all the
tyranny complained of when some East Indian was condemned upon the
Coventry act for slitting his wife's nose; a common practice in _his_
country, and perfectly agreeable to custom and the _usage du pays_. Here
is no struggle for female education as with us, no resources in study,
no duties of family-management; no bill of fare to be looked over in the
morning, no account-book to be settled at noon; no necessity of reading,
to supply without disgrace the evening's chat; no laughing at the
card-table, or tittering in the corner if a _lapsus linguae_ has
produced a mistake, which malice never fails to record. A lady in Italy
is _sure_ of applause, so she takes little pains to obtain it. A
Venetian lady has in particular so sweet a manner naturally, that she
really charms without any settled intent to do so, merely from that
irresistible good-humour and mellifluous tone of voice which seize the
soul, and detain it in despite of Juno-like majesty, or Minerva-like
wit. Nor ever was there prince or shepherd, Paris I think was both, who
would not have bestowed his apple _here_.

Mean while my countryman Howel laments that the women at Venice are so
little. But why so? the diminutive progeny of _Vulcan_, the _Cabirs_,
mysteriously adored of old, were of a size below that of the least
living woman, if we believe Herodotus; and they were worshipped with
more constant as well as more fervent devotion, than the symmetrical
goddess of Beauty herself.

A custom which prevails here, of wearing little or no rouge, and
increasing the native pale