From Volney, vol. ii. p. 481, we have the following:--"In Asia the women are rigorously secluded from the society of men; constantly shut up in their houses, they have no communication but with their husband, their father, their brother, or at most their cousin german. Carefully _veiled_ in the streets, they dare hardly speak to a man, even on business. Everybody must be strangers to them; it would be indecent to fix your eyes on them; and you must let them pass you as if there were something contagious in their nature. The situation of the women among the Orientals, occasions a great contrast between their manners and ours. Such is their delicacy on this head, that they never speak of them; and it would be esteemed highly indecent to make any inquiries of the men respecting the women of their family. They are unable to conceive how our women go with their faces uncovered; when, in their country, an uplifted veil is the mark of a prostitute, or the signal for a love adventure." Pitt's account coincides with the above. "At Algiers, if there are two, three, or four families in one house, as many times there happens to be, yet they may live there many years and never see one another's wife." p. 63. "The women wear veils, so that a man's own wife may pass him in the street and he not have the least knowledge of her. They will not stop to speak with men, or even with their own husbands in the street." p. 67. Niebuhr says, p. 44. "A man never salutes women in public; he would even commit an indecency if he looked at them steadily. An Arab lady who met us in a wide valley of the desert of Mount Sinai, went out of the way, gave her camel to be led by her servant, and walked on foot till we were passed; another, who met us in a narrow way, and who was on foot, sat down, and turned her back towards us." We see by the above, the importance attached to this part of female dress in the East. The females of the Jewish nation, as referred to above, in the case of Rebekah, wore the veil as a token of modesty, reverence, or _subjection_ to their husbands. Chardin also says, (_Voyage en Perse_) speaking of a peculiar sort of veil, "Only married women wear it; and it is the mark by which it is known _that they are under subjection_ or power." I will not enlarge further upon the subject, but leave it to your readers to draw their own conclusions. JOSEPH TEMPLE E----K. * * * * * THE SKETCH-BOOK. * * * * * A NIGHT IN A SEDAN CHAIR. _From the German of Theodore Koerner._ (_For the Mirror._)