gestions, that not much protection is really given
anywhere to this particular class as a whole. Everywhere in Europe the
restrictions are of caste, not of sex. Even in Turkey, travellers tell us,
women of the humbler vocations are not much secluded. It is not the object
of the "European plan," in any form, to protect the virtue of young women,
as such, but only of young ladies; and the protection is pretty effectually
limited to that order. Among the Portuguese in the island of Fayal I found
it to be the ambition of each humble family to bring up one daughter in a
sort of lady-like seclusion: she never went into the street alone, or
without a hood which was equivalent to a veil; she was taught indoor
industries only; she was constantly under the eye of her mother. But in
order that one daughter might be thus protected, all the other daughters
were allowed to go alone, day or evening, bareheaded or bare-footed, by the
loneliest mountain-paths, to bring oranges or firewood or whatever their
work may be--heedless of protection. The safeguard was for a class: the
average exposure of young womanhood was far greater than with us. So in
London, while you rarely see a young lady alone in the streets, the
housemaid is sent on errands at any hour of the evening with a freedom at
which our city domestics would quite rebel; and one has to stay but a short
time in Paris to see how entirely limited to a class is the alleged
restraint under which young French girls are said to be kept.

Again, it is to be remembered that the whole "European plan," so far as it
is applied on the continent of Europe, is a plan based upon utter distrust
and suspicion, not only as to chastity, but as to all other virtues. It is
applied among the higher classes almost as consistently to boys as to
girls. In every school under church auspices, it is the French theory that
boys are never to be left unwatched for a moment; and it is as steadily
assumed that girls will be untruthful if left to themselves, as that they
will do every other wrong. This to the Anglo-Saxon race seems very
demoralizing. "Suspicion," said Sir Philip Sidney, "is the way to lose that
which we fear to lose." Readers of the Bronte novels will remember the
disgust of the English pupils and teachers in French schools at the
constant espionage around them; and I have more than once heard young girls
who had been trained at such institutions say that it was a wonder if they
had any truthfulne