Among all the Slavon nations of Europe, wives and daughters have ever been kept in a state of exclusion. Brides are purchased, and instantly become slaves. Formerly sons were compelled by blows to marry, and daughters dragged by their hair to the altars; and the paternal authority is still unbounded. The lower classes are doomed to incessant labour, and are obliged to submit to the utmost indignities. [60] The picture of Russian manners varies little with reference to the prince or the peasant.... They are all, high and low, rich and poor, alike servile to superiors; haughty and cruel to their dependants, ignorant, superstitions, cunning, brutal, barbarous, dirty, mean. The emperor canes the first of his grandees; princes and nobles cane their slaves; and the slaves their _wives_ and _daughters_. [61] ITALY AND SPAIN. These two countries may be classed together, because the condition of the female sex is very similar in both: the education of woman is totally neglected, and they are not ashamed of committing the grossest blunders in common conversation. Such is their situation that they cannot intermeddle with the concerns of their husbands, without exciting their jealousy. Girls are in early years left to the care of servants who are both ill educated and immoral; the same may be said of their mothers, whose conversation and public conduct tend to perfect the growth of licentiousness in their uncultivated children. PORTUGAL. Young women in this kingdom are not instructed in any thing truly useful or ornamental; and even those who belong to respectable families, are often ignorant of reading and writing. Parents keep their daughters in the most rigid confinement, frequently not allowing them even to go abroad to church to hear mass, and never unattended. They are secluded from all young persons of the other sex, who are not permitted to visit families where there are unmarried females. The consequence of this austerity is an extended system of intrigue, for the purpose of evading all this circumspection--by which means they are full of cunning and deceit. TURKEY. Women, in Constantinople, are confined in seraglios for life, or shut up in their apartments. They are not permitted to appear in public without a vail, and can only obtain their freedom by devoting themselves to prostitution.