Thus women were alternately tools and plotters, idols and slaves. The ornaments of a court became the scourges of a nation; their influence was an influence made up of falsehood, made up of cruelty, made up of intrigue, of passions the most unbridled, and of vices the most detestable, and it seems to the student of history, in this wild and dreadful era as if all that was generous, upright, noble, and benevolent--as if faith and honour, and humanity and justice, were foreign and unnatural to the heart of man. But let us turn to our author. "But the times were about to change. The great and stirring contests in religion and politics, which had given such scope to the deep fervour of the British character, subsided, as if the actors were breathless from their past exertions. The struggle for freedom sank into acquiescence in the dominion of the most worthless of mankind; and zeal for religion fled before the spirit of banter and sneer. The enthusiasm of 'fierce wars and faithful loves,' of piety and of freedom, were succeeded by the reign of profligacy and levity. "During that disastrous period, the sordid and servile vices seem to have kept pace with the wildest licentiousness; and the dark and stern persecutions in Scotland form a fearful contrast with the bacchanalian revels of the court. The effects on the character and estimation of the female sex, sustain all that has been said upon the connexion of their interests with the elevation of morals. It became the habit to satirize and despise them, and on this they have never entirely recovered. The demoralization which led to it was, indeed, too much opposed to the temper of the English to be permanent; but women, for a long time after, ceased to keep pace with their age. Notwithstanding the numerous exceptions which must always have existed in a free and populous country like England, where literature had made progress, it is certain, that in the days of Pope and Addison, the women, in general, were grossly ignorant.