How far the condition of women has been mitigated among the Bedouins and other races by Mohammedanism is an open question. According to the Koran, the Arabs were accustomed to treat them with great cruelty, while one of the chief features of Mohammed’s teaching is the high position accorded to them. In permitting polygamy, Mohammedan law accommodates itself to the habits of an earlier stage of social progress, and tends to perpetuate many of its objectionable features. As remarked by Lord Kames, polygamy is intimately connected with the treatment of woman as a slave to be purchased even in marriage. But, great as are the evils attending that custom, they depend in great measure on special circumstances, and they are capable, as Mohammedan teaching shows, of considerable mitigation. Probably the practice of polygamy has never, among a civilised people, been accompanied by more baneful results than it exhibits in modern Egypt, if we can accept the testimony of Miss Martineau. This lady somewhat unjustly remarks that, “if we are to look for a hell upon earth, it is where polygamy exists; and that, as polygamy runs riot in Egypt, Egypt is the lowest depth of this hell.” Polygamy has not in India so degrading an effect, but, of the six qualities ascribed to woman by the code of so-called Gentoo laws, all are bad ones. A really good wife is, however, so highly esteemed that, if a man forsake her of his own accord, he is to receive the punishment of a thief. Perhaps the scarcity of such wives accounts for the fact mentioned by Bishop Heber, that throughout India anything is thought good enough for women, and that “the roughest words, the poorest garments, the scantiest alms, the most degrading labour, and the hardest blows, are generally of their portion.” No doubt women of the lower castes are here referred to, and it cannot be supposed that all women are thus treated. The Abbé Dubois, indeed, affirms that among the Hindoos the person of a woman is sacred, and that, however abject her condition, she is always addressed by every one by the term “mother.” If we may believe the Abbé, who lived for thirty years among the natives, the position of Hindoo women is far superior to what Europeans in general believe. He says, “To them belong the entire management of their household, the care of their children, the superintendence over the menial servants, the distribution of alms and charities. To them are generally entrusted the money, jewels, and other valuables of the family; to them belong the care of procuring provisions and providing for all expenses; it is they also who are charged, almost to the exclusion of their husbands, with the most important affairs of procuring wives for their sons, and husbands for their daughters, and in doing it they evince a nicety of attention and wisdom which are not certainly surpassed in any other country; while in the management of their domestic business, they in general show a