THE SECOND consideration is this. Those moments of weakness of spirit, and infirmity to which the labor-pains subject the women may, in some of naturally the weakest of them be, liable to leave impressions in favor of a man-midwife, the less suspected of harm, and consequently the more dangerous for their being suggested by that gratitude for his imaginary[27] contribution to their deliverance, which is itself a virtue, though the object of it is so miserably mistaken by them. Let any one image to himself what must often happen in Nature, a woman sinking under her pains, her mind all softened and overpowered with her present feelings, and looking up for _relief_ to the _man_, employed, as she imagines, to procure it her, though the real fact oftenest is, that he will not have enough prevented her pain, or perhaps greatly occasioned its increase. Of this however she knowing nothing, sees him in the amiable light of her deliverer from her actual and intolerable state of pain. In the mean time, those aukward uncouth endeavours of his to relieve and deliver her, even though they should aggravate her torture, pass upon her for master-pieces of art or skill. “Who would be without a man-midwife?” At length, Nature sometimes, even in spite of all his omissions, or bungled operation, proceeds in her favorite task of delivery, that is to say, if he has not hurried or made tragic work of it, with his mispractice or his instruments. The patient then is rid of her burthen, and what are then her feelings? Those of exquisite delight, from the comparison with what she was induring but the instant before. It is a transport of joy, not unmingled with gratitude, to the person to whom she fancies herself in any measure obliged for it. The ugliest wretch on earth, so he could but be imagined the cause of such a delivery, would, in those instants, assume in her eyes the form of Loveliness itself. Even with the greatest innocence of heart she could hug, she could kiss him in the ebullitions of her joy and gratitude. Let no one imagine these expressions are over-strained. Such a rapture of felicity, in the sudden case of being taken as it were down from a rack, is not of a Nature to know any bounds of moderation, nor can be conceived but by those who have felt it. Her gratitude would even extend to inanimate things, much more to the dear Doctor, to whom she conceives she owes so much. She eyes him with all the intense eagerness of a gratitude so fond, that its transiency into a passion of another nature would not appear such a prodigy, to those who consider how apt passions of tenderness are to confound motives and run into one another. The melting-softness of those moments of infirmity and weakness of spirit, affords a susceptibility of impressions, which may not afterwards be so soon worn out, and of which the usual affection from the difference of sexes, in the parties, may sooner or later come in for its share. Dr.