The accurate observers of human nature will readily allow, that patience is most eminently the characteristic of woman. To what a sublime and astonishing height this virtue has been carried by beings of the most delicate texture, [p79] we have striking examples in the many female martyrs who were exposed, in the first ages of christianity, to the most barbarous and lingering torture.
Nor was it only from christian zeal that woman derived the power of defying the utmost rigors of persecution with invincible fortitude. Saint Ambrose, in his elaborate and pious treatise on this subject, records the resolution of a fair disciple of Pythagoras, who, being severely urged by a tyrant to reveal the secrets of her sex, to convince him that no torments should reduce her to so unworthy a breach of her vow, bit her own tongue asunder, and darted it in the face of her oppressor.
In consequence of those happy changes which have taken place in the world, from the progress of purified religion, the inexpressible spirit of the tender sex is no longer exposed to such inhuman trials. But if the earth is happily delivered from the demons of torture and superstition; if beauty and innocence are no more in danger of being dragged to perish at the stake—perhaps there are situations, in female life, that require as much patience and magnanimity, as were formerly exerted in the fiery torments of the virgin martyr. It is more difficult to support an accumulation of minute infelicities, than any single calamity of the most terrific magnitude.
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FEMALE DELICACY.
Where the human race has little other culture than what it receives from nature, the two sexes live together, unconscious of almost any restraint on their words or on their actions. The Greeks, in the heroic ages, as appears from the whole history of their conduct, were totally unacquainted with delicacy. The Romans in the infancy of their empire, were the same. Tacitus informs us that the ancient Germans had not separate beds for the two sexes, but that they lay promiscuously on reeds or on heath, spread along the walls of their houses. This custom still prevails in Lapland, among the peasants of Norway, Poland, and Russia; and it is not altogether obliterated in some parts of the highlands of Scotland and Wales.
In Otaheite, to appear naked or in clothes, are circumstances equally indifferent to both sexes; nor does any word in their language, nor any action to which they are prompted by nature, seem more indelicate or reprehensible than another. Such are the effects of a total want of culture.
Effects not very dissimilar, are, in France and Italy, produced from a redundance of it. Though those are the polite countries in Europe, women there set themselves above shame, and despise delicacy. It is laughed out of existence, as a silly and unfashionable weakness.
But in China, one of the politest countries in Asia, and perhaps not even, in this respect, [p81] behind France, or Italy, the case is quite otherwise. No human being can be more delicate than a Chinese woman in her dress, in her behavior, and in her conversation; and should she ever happen to be exposed in any unbecoming manner, she feels with the greatest poignancy the awkwardness of her situation, and if possible, covers her face, that she may not be known.
In the midst of so many discordant appearances, the mind is perplexed, and can hardly fix upon any cause to which female delicacy is to be ascribed. If we attend, however, to the whole animal creation, if we consider it attentively wherever it falls under our observation, it will discover to us, that in the female there is a greater degree of delicacy or coy reserve than in the male. Is not this a proof, that, through the wide extent of creation, the seeds of delicacy are more liberally bestowed upon females than upon males?