are quite contrary to all the maxims of delicacy, but prove at the same time the prodigious force of habit and custom. This is a thing undoubtedly wrong, and perhaps the women are rather more to blame than the men. In all general affairs, indeed, in all matters of consequence, the male sex must ever lead, and the other follow; but surely they have something in their power, were they to exert themselves. They ought never, by a silent approbation, to encourage looseness and profligacy among the men, and thus be accessary to the prostitution of numbers in the lower rank of their own sex; and if they have it not in their power to reform their gallants altogether, they can at least make them throw the mask of decency over their vices. There is another species of chastity, which may properly enough be stiled religious, and is equally obligatory on all ranks; but is only found among those nations where the Christian system is established. The founder of our religion was himself a bright and a shining pattern of this virtue, and he and his immediate disciples recommended and enforced it strongly, both by precept and example. It was this, chiefly, that, in the first ages of the church, filled the mountains and desarts with hermits of all sexes and ages; it was this that gave rise to the religious orders of monks and nuns, and the celibacy of the clergy, which still subsist in Popish countries. But these consequences were pernicious to the publick good, they discouraged marriage, and established that ecclesiastical tyranny, under which all Europe groaned before the reformation and the resurrection of letters. But as these precepts and examples are now applied in protestant countries, they are useful and proper; they are only applied to recommend conjugal fidelity and continence before marriage, and thus in some measure supply the deficiencies of the political chastity, among women of the lower rank, to whom that does not extend. And even though it were to be granted, that Christianity is no divine institution, yet, on account of this and several other excellent maxims it contains and strongly enforces, in common with other religions, its divine origin ought to be inculcated on the minds of those people who can believe it. But though this kind of chastity is more comprehensive, yet its influence, as experience shews us, is infinitely weaker than that of the other. I believe it may be said, with justice, that there are fewer unchaste women, even in proportion to their numbers, among those of rank and condition, than there are chaste among these of an inferior order, though the lives of the first are generally lazy and luxurious, and much the greatest part of their reading lies among modern plays, novels and romances, which, instead of curbing and restraining, have a manifest tendency to heighten and inflame their passions. All these circumstances shew the superior efficacy of the political over the religious chastity.