Produced by Bryan Ness, David Wilson and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print project.) [Illustration: DEATH OF CLEOPATRA. Page 201.] SKETCHES OF THE FAIR SEX, IN ALL PARTS OF THE WORLD. TO WHICH ARE ADDED RULES FOR DETERMINING THE PRECISE FIGURE, THE DEGREE OF BEAUTY, THE HABITS, AND THE AGE OF WOMEN, NOTWITHSTANDING THE AIDS AND DISGUISE OF DRESS. BOSTON: THEODORE ABBOT, 388 WASHINGTON ST. 1841. Entered according to act of congress, in the year 1841, by THEODORE ABBOT, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts. In the following Pages, It is our design to present a pleasing and interesting miscellany, which will serve to beguile the leisure hour, and will at the same time couple instruction with amusement. We have used but little method in the arrangement: Choosing rather to furnish the reader with a rich profusion of narratives and anecdotes, all tending to illustrate the FEMALE CHARACTER, to display its delicacy, its sweetness, its gentle or sometimes heroic virtues, its amiable weaknesses, and strange defects--than to attempt an accurate analysis of the hardest subject man ever attempted to master, viz--WOMAN. It will be seen that we do not set down Woman as a cipher in the account of human beings. We accord to her her full share of importance in the world, and we have not attempted to relieve her from a sense of her responsibility as an accountable being. Above all, we have not failed to impress upon her the obligations she is under to CHRISTIANITY, whose benign influences have raised her to be the companion and bosom-friend of man, instead of his mere handmaid and dependant. It is religion that must form such a character as the following, which though applied by Pope to one of the most accomplished women of his time, is that of a CHRISTIAN WIFE in every age and station,-- "Oh! blest with temper whose unclouded ray Can make tomorrow cheerful as to-day: She who can love a sister's charms, or hear Sighs for a daughter with unwounded ear; She who ne'er answers till a husband cools, Or, if she rules him, never shows she rules; Charms by accepting--by submitting sways, Yet has her humor most, when she obeys."