THEN it is that a sensible woman would, in defence of her own life, or of any life that she holds dear to her, in the case of needing the aid of midwifery, view with equal disdain, with equal horror, either the rough manly[45] he-midwife, that in the midst of his boisterous operation, in a mistimed barbarous attempt at waggery or wit, will ask a woman, in a hoarse voice, “if she has a mind to be rid of her burthen,” or the pretty lady-like gentleman-midwife, that with a quaint formal air, and a gratious smirk, primming up his mouth, in a soft fluted tone, assures her, and lies all the while like a tooth-drawer, that his instruments will neither hurt nor mark herself nor child but a little, or perhaps not at all. (See p. 448.) THIS last character, if less brutal than the other, is not perhaps the least dangerous, since the practice being at bottom the same, pregnant consequently with the same mischief, the gentleness of the insinuation gives the less warning, and paves the way for the admission of a handling not the less rough for the smoothness of the address. But is there any such thing as polite murder? is mischief the less mischief for being perpetrated with an air of kindness? well considered it is but the more provoking. The male-practitioners then are not quite in the wrong, to presume as they do upon the weakness of the women’s understanding, since they can so grossly pass upon them their needless cruelties, under so inconsistent and false a color as that of a tender compassion. Thus to all the rest of the shame to which they put them, they add that of so palpable an imposition in that flimsy cover of the mean interest, which is so probably the real motive at bottom of their taking up a function, to which they were never called by Nature, nor by any necessity, unless, perhaps, of their own. IN the mean time, the truth is, that, in vain, would the men, by way of sparing the women the terror of their masculine figure, upon those delicate occasions of officiating, and to appear the more natural in the business, aim at an occasional effemination of their dress, manner and air. They can never in essentials atone for their interested intrusion into an office, so clearly a female one, that, if but only as to the manual discharge of it, not even the qualifying them for the opera, would, perhaps, sufficiently emasculate them. CONCLUSION of the SECOND and LAST PART. HERE, confessing my just apprehensions of not having fulfilled the promise of my title-page; there will not, I hope, to that reproach of my deficient powers in the performance, be added the undeserved ones of vanity or injustice in the design or conduct of my feeble essay.