The traveller is struck with the various ways in which the relation of the sexes, that obtains throughout the East, has modified the manners, and customs, and the whole life, of the people. Female society is impossible. Women are not seen in the Mosks at times of prayer; and, we are told, are seldom known to pray at home, never having been taught the ceremonies requisite for prayer. One may walk through a crowded street and not see a woman among the passers by. A woman cannot, in the regular order of things, see the man who is to be her husband, or hold any converse with him, till the marriage contract is executed, and she has entered his house. Nor after marriage can she, with the exception of her father and brothers, have any social intercourse with men. One cannot but ask what it is that has given rise to manners, and customs, so opposite to all we deem wise and desirable in this matter. We see at a glance that they are the offspring of distrust and jealousy, and of a distrust and jealousy, which, though unfelt by ourselves, exist in a high degree among Orientals. What, then, is it that gives rise in them to these unpleasant feelings? It must be some fact which not only has the power of producing all this distrust and jealousy, drawing after them consequences of sufficient reach to determine the whole character of the relations of the sexes to each other, but it must also be something that is peculiarly their own. Now, all these conditions are fulfilled by polygamy, and by nothing else. The fact that a man may possess a plurality of wives, and as many odalisques as he can afford, and may wish to have in his establishment, is the one element in oriental life to which everything else must accommodate itself. Reverse the case, and, setting aside exceptional instances, consider what, on the ordinary principles of human conduct, would be the general working of the reverse of the practice. What would be the state of things, and the customs and manners, which would naturally arise, if the wife had to retain the affection of a plurality of husbands? Would not, in that case, each woman, supposing they had the power of establishing, and enforcing, what regulations they pleased, take very good care that their husbands should have as little as possible to do with other women? Would the singular wife allow the plural husbands to see, or converse with, any woman but herself? Would she not confine them in the men’s apartments? Would she allow them to go abroad unveiled? The distrust and jealousy the women, under such arrangements, would feel, have, under existing arrangements, been felt by the men. They have acted on these feelings, and hence have been derived the manners and customs of the East in this matter.