Of this love of justice inherent in Women, a singular instance occurs in the Greek History. I mean to speak of the flagellations which Ladies, in Lacedæmon, who had reached a certain age without finding husbands, used to bestow, before the altar of Juno, upon such Men as continued past a certain time of life, to live in an unmarried state. These flagellations the unmarried Lacedæmonian Ladies (no doubt through the long use they had made of them) had at last converted into an express right; and the ceremony was performed every year, during a certain solemnity established for that purpose. Whether they flagellated all the unmarried Men without exception, who came within the words of the regulation on that subject, Historians have neglected to inform us: perhaps they served in that manner only a certain number, in order to shew the right they had of flagellating all the rest. Nor have Women of modern times less distinguished themselves than the Greek Ladies, by their love of justice, or paid less regard to elegance in their choice of the means they have employed to avenge the insults they may have received. In fact, we have seen in the present Chapter, that the persons who have raised the fabric of the Catholick Church, or rather Creed, persons who certainly were good observers of the manners of Mankind, have given the same inclination and the same attributes, to their female inhabitants of Paradise, as the Ancients had given to their Goddesses. And conclusions to the same effect may be derived from the works of imagination of a number of respectable modern Authors, who have all given to the Ladies of whom they had occasion to speak, the same elegant dispositions we mention, and made them act, when offended, upon the same principles as the Ladies in Lacedæmon: these works I do not scruple to mention as weighty authorities; for though they may be, as I said, works in appearance of imagination merely, yet it is well known that such great Authors, when they relate any stories, always allude to certain facts of which they have either been eye-witnesses, or received assured information. And to quote one or two on the subject, we find that the celebrated La Fontaine, in one of his Tales which he has entitled _The Pair of Spectacles_, makes certain Nuns, who, as they thought, had had a great affront put upon their Monastery, have immediate recourse to the elegant method of revenge here alluded to. The story is as follows.