The young boy, or rather merely a child, of whom I made mention from M. RAST, was, as has been remarked, seduced into that vice by a maid-servant. The English collection of cases of self-pollution is full of the like examples; and I could produce many instances of young plants blasted and lost through the villainy of the gardeners intrusted with their cultivation: and, in that light, there are such gardeners of both sexes. What remedy, will it be said, is there for such evils? The answer is out of my sphere; I shall then make it a short one. The most scrupulous attention ought to be given to the choice of a preceptor; nor ought the care to end at that, but a watchful eye be kept over him and his pupil; that sort of watchful eye, which belongs to a sensible and careful father of a family, and which discovers the most hidden doings in every corner of the house; that eye, I say, which discovers those antlers of the stag, which escaped all other eyes, a penetrative vigilance, in short, from which nothing can be concealed, and which it is possible to have, when one is in earnest in it. _Docuit enim fabula Dominum videre plurimum in rebus suis._ PHÆD. Young persons ought never to be left alone with masters liable to any suspicion; and all intercourse should be forbidden with the servants. It is not long since that a girl of about eighteen years of age, who had enjoyed a very good health, fell into an astonishing weakness; her strength decayed daily; she was all the day stupified with a kind of dozing, and all night tormented with a want of sleep, her appetite was gone, and œdematous swellings spread over her whole body. She consulted an able surgeon, who, having satisfied himself of there having been no disorder in the menstrual flux, suspected self-pollution. The effect of his first question confirmed to him the justness of his suspicion, and the confession of the patient converted it to a certainty. He made her sensible of the danger of this practice, a cessation of which, and some remedies, stopped, in a few days, the progress of the evil, and even produced some amendment of health. Besides self-pollution, manual or instrumental, there is another defilement, or contamination, which may be termed _clitoridian_, of which the known origin is traced up to the second Sappho. _Lesbiades, infamem quæ me fecistis, amatæ._ A vice too common among the Roman women, from that epoch at which the general dissoluteness of morals began, and which was more than once the object of the epigrams and satires of those times. _Lenonum ancillas posita Laufella corona_ _Provocat, et tollit pendentis præmia coxæ._ _Ipsa Medullina frictum crissantis adorat._ _Palmam inter Dominas virtus natalibus æquat._[53]