asciviam et luxuriam," when, perhaps, the hypocritical
mandate arose from nothing but a desire in the coelibatists themselves to
get a sly peep at the neatly turned feet and ankles of the women. One
would almost think the old nursery song of

--"The beggar whose name was Stout,
He cut her petticoats all round about,
He cut her petticoats far above her knee, &c.,"

was written to perpetuate the mandate. Certainly a "Stout beggar was the
Papal church." "Consistent with modesty," "sicut decet verecundiam sexus;"
nothing can beat that bare-faced hypocrisy. So when afterwards the sex
shortened their petticoats, other Simon Pures start up and put them in the
stocks for immodesty. Poor women! Here was a wrong, Eusebius. Long or
short, they were equally immodest. Immodest, indeed! Nature has clad them
with modesty and temperance--their natural habit--other garment is
conventional. I admire what Oelian says of Phocion's wife.

"[Greek: Empeicheto de prote te sophrosune,
deuterois ge men tois parousi.]"

"She first arrayed herself in temperance, and then put on what was
necessary." Every seed of beauty is sown by modesty. It is woman's glory,
"[Greek: he gar aidos anthos epispeirei]" says Clearchus in his first
book of Erotics, quoting from Lycophronides. The appointment of
magistrates at Athens, [Greek: gunaikokosmoi], to regulate the dress of
women, was a great infringement on their rights--the origin of
men-milliners. You are one, Eusebius, who

"Had rather hear the tedious tales
Of Hollingshed, than any thing that trenches
On love."

I remember how, in contempt of the story of the Ephesian matron, you had
your Petronius interleaved, and filled it with anecdotes of noble virtue,
till the comment far exceeded the text--then, finding your excellent women
in but bad company, you tore out the text of Petronius, and committed it
to the flames. Preserve your precious catalogue of female worthies--often
have you lamented that of Hesiod was lost, of all the [Greek: Hoiai
megalai] Alcmena alone remaining, and you will not make much boast of her.
How far back would you go for the wrongs of women--do you intend to write
a library--a library in a series of novels in three volumes--what are all
that are published but "wrongs of women?" Could but the Lion have written!
Books have been written by men, and be sure they have spared
themselves--and yet what a catalogue of wrongs we have from the earliest
date! Even the