he person of AEneas, gives an example of
piety to the Gods, he sings the pious AEneas. In the same
manner, in the memoirs of Sir Cha. Grandison you propose an
example of benevolence, and in Pamela of chastity; you
celebrate the benevolent Grandison and the chaste Pamela.
I have already, in the two foregoing articles, given my
opinion sufficiently of the first, and shall here say
somewhat more of the latter, and enquire a little into the
nature of chastity.

The influence of custom, habit, and education, over human
minds is prodigious and inconceivable. It is so great and
extensive, that perhaps it is utterly impossible to
determine what principles or conceptions we receive from
nature, and what from the other sources. All women of honour
and condition among civilized nations imagine, that what are
called virgin delicacy and reserve, female chastity and
modesty, are not only fit and proper, but natural and
inherent in their sex. Fit and proper they certainly are, as
the universal consent of all ages and nations shews; and
besides, that fitness and propriety is founded on the nature
of things, but natural and inherent they are not, as is
equally manifest from experience. In ancient Greece, where
the women were remarkable both for continence before
marriage, and fidelity after it, customs prevailed
diametrically opposite to all our most established notions
of modesty and delicacy. It was customary among them, for
the women to perform the offices of rubbers, sweaters, and
cuppers to the men, when bathing; nor was this the
employment of the servants, or female slaves, but of young
ladies of the highest rank and quality. Thus, in the third
Odyssey, when Telemachus is entertained at Nestor's palace,
his youngest daughter,

_Sweet Polycaste, takes the pleasing toil,_
_To bathe the prince, and pour the fragrant oil._

How would Clarissa's delicacy have been shock'd and
disgusted, had brother James laid his commands upon her to
rub down Mr. Solmes! nor would that office have been in the
least less disagreeable, had she been to perform it on the
handsome person of Bob Lovelace; she would have sooner died,
than have done it to either. Again, in the sixth Odyssey,
when Ulysses, awakened by the noise which Nausicaa and her
nymphs make at their sports, comes quite naked out of her
hiding place; the nymphs, indeed, run away, not at the sight
of a naked man, but for fear of an enemy, while the princess
stays, and, without