nd conduct, indulged, by a kind of general
consent, with every possible freedom, and, by the extraordinary state
of manners, are presented by their husbands with every possible facility
they could desire. A husband and wife in France have generally separate
apartments, or rather inhabit separate wings of their _hotel_. The
lady's bed-room is appropriated to herself alone. Its walls would be
esteemed polluted by any intrusion of the husband. It is there that, in
an elegant dishabille, she receives the visits of her friends. It is
secure against observation, or interruption of any kind whatever. It, in
short, is the sacred palladium of female indiscretion. Much of this
mischievous licence may, I think, be easily traced to the treatment of
the younger and unmarried women. They are confined under a
superintendance which is as rigorous, as the licence allowed to their
mothers is unbounded. All those affections which begin in their early
years to develope themselves--all those dispositions which are natural
to youth, the innocent love of pleasure, and the passion for the society
of those of their own age, are violently restrained by a system of
confinement. In their early years, they are either banished by their
parents to the seclusion of a convent, or are confined in their own
houses, under the care of a set of severe and withered old women, whom
they term _bonnes_. The consequence is, that the sullen influence of
these unkindly beings is reflected upon their pupils, and that when,
after their marriage, they are permitted to come forth from their
prison, and mingle in general society, all the sweetness and gentleness
of their original nature is gone for ever. But to return from this
digression upon the ladies, other strong points of resemblance might
easily be pointed out between the French and the native Indian
character. The same low cunning, the same restless spirit of intrigue,
the same gross flattery, the same astonishing command of countenance,
and invariable politeness before strangers, the same complete sacrifice
of every thing, character, principle, reputation, to the love of money;
all these strong and melancholy features are clearly distinguishable in
both. A servant who wishes for a place, a workman who is a candidate for
employment, a shopkeeper who is anxious for customers, all invariably,
as in India, pay money to some one who recommends them; and such is the
poverty of the higher orders, that they compromise t