rticular care is taken to instruct them in the
art of conversing with elegance and vivacity; some of them are also
taught to write, and the generality to read, so that they may be able to
read the Koran; instead of which they more frequently dedicate
themselves to tales and romances; which, painted in all the lively
imagery of the East, seldom fail to corrupt the minds of creatures shut
up from the world, and consequently forming to themselves extravagant
and romantic notions of all that is transacted in it.

In well regulated families, women are taught by heart some prayers in
Arabic, which at certain hours they assemble in a hall to repeat; never
being allowed the liberty of going to the public mosque. They are
enjoined always to wash themselves before praying; and, indeed, the
virtues of cleanliness, of chastity, and obedience, are so strongly and
constantly inculcated on their minds, that in spite of their general
debauchery of manners, there are not a few among them, who, in their
common deportment, do credit to the instructions bestowed upon them;
nor is this much to be wondered at, when we consider the tempting
recompense that is held out to them; they are, in paradise, to flourish
forever, in the vigor of youth and beauty; and however old, or ugly,
when they depart this life, are there to be immediately transformed into
all that is fair, and all that is graceful.

RELIGIOUS FESTIVALS OF THE GREEKS.

A cause, which contributed to make the religious festivals of the Greeks
appear as amusements and diversions, was that ridiculous buffoonery that
constituted so great a part of them: it would be tedious to enumerate
one half of these buffooneries; but let a few serve as a specimen. At a
festival held in honor of Bacchus, the women ran about for a long time
seeking the god, who, they pretended, had run away from them: this done,
they passed their time in proposing riddles and questions to each other,
and laughing at such as could not answer them; and at last often closed
the scene with such enormous excesses, that at one of these festivals,
the daughters of Minya, having, in their madness, killed Hippasus, had
him dressed and served up to table as a rarity. At another, kept in
honor of Venus and Adonis, they beat their breasts, tore their hair, and
mimicked all the signs of the most extravagant grief, with which they
supposed the goddess to have been affected on the death of her favorite
paramour. At another, in h