Such, dear Reader, is the manner in which, for my own part, I have always acted on those delicate occasions we are speaking of. However, I do not pretend to dictate to others the manner in which they ought to behave, nor insist upon any of the above circumstances in particular. All I intreat of you, is, by all means to forbear to use those sudden and harsh flagellations that were recurred to, by St. Edmund, St. Bernardin of Sienna, and Brother Mathew. Such a treatment savours too much of ingratitude: nay, to have recourse to it, is cruel in the extreme; it is heaping distress upon the distressed. Nor are you to expect that the Lady will love you the better for it afterwards, as was the case with St. Bernardin of Sienna; on the contrary, such a proceeding on your part, if it were once known, would irreparably destroy your reputation with the whole Sex, and you may depend, no proposal or application of the like kind would be made to you ever after. Now, though you may be ever so firmly determined to reject all proposals like these; yet, as every Lady will tell you, it is no unpleasing thing to have them made to you: besides that you do not know but you may afterwards alter your resolution. [103] He punished differently, on a certain occasion, a Roman Knight who had been guilty of the abovementioned fault. He sent him, without delay, to carry a letter to Africa; without allowing the time to call at his house, and take leave of his family. [104] _Gazetteer_--_Tuesday_, Dec. 20, 1774. The main circumstances of the same fact are also to be found in Dr. Burnaby’s _Travels through the middle Settlements of North America_, published in the year 1775. [105] _Causes célèbres_, Vol. IV. [106] Miss Gumley.--She became a few years afterwards, Countess of Bath. His Lordship, no doubt, boasted of the fact, as it seems to have made some noise at the time. [107] See Lord Molesworth’s _Account of Denmark_, IVth Edit. p. 108, 109. CHAP. XX. _The fondness of people for flagellations, gives rise to a number of incredible stories on that subject._ The supporters of the practice of flagellation did not confine their endeavours in recommending it, to setting the example of it, like Rodolph of Eugubio, or Dominic the Cuirassed, or to supporting it by arguments and voluminous writings, like Cardinal Damian; but they mixed their accounts with numbers of stories of an extravagant kind; whether their enthusiasm in favour of the practice in question, induced them to believe such stories to be true, or they thought that their very incredibility would be extremely fit to bring into credit with the vulgar, a doctrine in favour of which they were themselves so prepossessed.