‘Lycurgus did not allow the Spartans to travel, lest they should be tainted by the manners of other nations.’ I do not chuse to name all the vices that have been imported into this country within the last fifty years by the aid of foreign travel. Vice is unfortunately of a very tenacious quality, and there is no quarantine against the epidemics of the mind. In return, however, we have learned to converse, to dress, and dance better than we used to do. ‘At Sparta, the poets could not publish any thing without a license; and all immoral writings were prohibited. A very wise man[22] said he believed, if a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who made the laws of a nation. The ancient legislators did not pretend to reform the manners of the people without the help of the poets.’ ‘The grave Romans did not allow a person of character to dance! It was a saying among them, no one dances unless he is drunk or mad.’ ‘In the old English laws, we find punishments for wanton behaviour, as touching the breasts of women, &c.—By the ancient laws of France, the least indecency of behaviour to a free woman, as squeezing the hand, touching the arm or breast, &c. was punishable by fire.’[23] What odd, sour, crabbed notions must have prevailed in those days! Not squeeze a lady’s hand! No—a much more agreeable latitude of behaviour is allowed at present: we are as much improved in our notions of gallantry as of liberty. The polite reader will not suspect me of a design to hold up the shocking manners of our ancestors as models of imitation in the present day; I only mention them to shew what a wide difference there may be in the notions of decency and propriety at different times!