nner consistent with religion and piety; because they follow the
advice given them by their priests, who are the expounders of the will
of God. Such as are wrought on by these persuasions, either starve
themselves of their own accord, or take opium, and by that means die
without pain. But no man is forced on this way of ending his life; and
if they cannot be persuaded to it, this does not induce them to fail in
their attendance and care of them; but as they believe that a voluntary
death, when it is chosen upon such an authority, is very honourable, so
if any man takes away his own life, without the approbation of the
priests and the Senate, they give him none of the honours of a decent
funeral, but throw his body into a ditch.

Their women are not married before eighteen, nor their men before
two-and-twenty, and if any of them run into forbidden embraces before
marriage they are severely punished, and the privilege of marriage is
denied them, unless they can obtain a special warrant from the Prince.
Such disorders cast a great reproach upon the master and mistress of the
family in which they happen, for it is supposed that they have failed in
their duty. The reason of punishing this so severely is, because they
think that if they were not strictly restrained from all vagrant
appetites, very few would engage in a state in which they venture the
quiet of their whole lives, by being confined to one person, and are
obliged to endure all the inconveniences with which it is accompanied.
In choosing their wives they use a method that would appear to us very
absurd and ridiculous, but it is constantly observed among them, and is
accounted perfectly consistent with wisdom. Before marriage some grave
matron presents the bride naked, whether she is a virgin or a widow, to
the bridegroom; and after that some grave man presents the bridegroom
naked to the bride. We indeed both laughed at this, and condemned it as
very indecent. But they, on the other hand, wondered at the folly of the
men of all other nations, who, if they are but to buy a horse of a small
value, are so cautious that they will see every part of him, and take
off both his saddle and all his other tackle, that there may be no
secret ulcer hid under any of them; and that yet in the choice of a
wife, on which depends the happiness or unhappiness of the rest of his
life, a man should venture upon trust, and only see about a
hand's-breadth of the face, all the rest of the