The imprisonment of the women not only occasions the deterioration of the moral feeling of the community at large but that of the sex as well. The injury is mutual, and gradually becomes permanent, so that the mere opening of the prison doors would not at once restore the natural influence of the gentle sex. This indefinable grace and influence of women for good and its restraining effects upon the most hardened sinner is exquisitely portrayed by Milton in his well-known passage on the first meeting between Satan and Eve—of course here in its highest possible instance:—
“Her every air
Of gesture or least action, overaw’d
His malice, and with rapine sweet bereav’d
His fierceness of the fierce intent it brought:
That space the Evil One abstracted stood
From his own evil, and for the time remain’d
Stupidly good; of enmity disarm’d
Of guile, of hate, of envy, of revenge;—