PRINTED

FOR CHAPPLE AND SON, PALL-MALL;

ANDREWS, NEW BOND-STREET; J. BUMPUS,

HOLBORN; AND E. BARRETT, BATH.

Hamblin, Printer, Garlick-Hill.

PREFACE.

WOMEN form so prominent a feature in the history of the universe, that whatever respects their various ranks and conditions must be important and entertaining. They have been endowed with the possession of the milder virtues, and claim the protection of the stronger sex, whose legislators, in proportion as they have adopted a more liberal and enlightened policy, have raised them to their just rank in society. Philosophically considered, there is but little inequality in the conditions of the two sexes. They are born, sustained, and die in the same manner. Education makes a distinction, which is connected with the domestic duties to which the physical state of women is peculiarly liable. The superior force of the male is rather muscular than internal, since the average of longevities, where the impulses of nature are not prematurely forced, are in favour of the female; and it becomes a fair question with the unpreju

diced, whether, if all the integrity, patience, and benevolence, of the two sexes could be estimated as a sum total, the balance would not incline to the latter. In the belles lettres and sciences, they have of late years shone eminently conspicuous.

The following pages are much indebted to the information collected from the labors of enlightened travelers and navigators, as well as pious missionaries, whose arguments, drawn from revelation and the light of nature, have powerfully attacked the demons of Superstition and Terror, Polygamy, infanticide, and conjugal sacrifice, have been wounded by the shafts of reason and religion, and in endeavouring every where to render women more virtuous, they have taken an excellent method to make men more so. By consulting these intrepid adventurers in the cause of Christianity and of Science, a mass of observation has been embodied to which the personal efforts of no individual could ever hope to attain.

The interesting details connected with the age of puberty form a conspicuous feature