Mr. Wilmot smiled and said: “The delicate and refined females of our favoured country, should feel peculiar thankfulness in comparing their happy lot with the degraded state of women in the politest ages of Greece. Condemned to ignorance, labour, and obscurity—excluded from rational intercourse, debarred from every species of intellectual improvement or innocent enjoyment, they never seem to have been the objects of respect or esteem. In the conjugal relation, they were the servile agents, not the endeared companions of their husbands. Their depressed state was, in some measure, confirmed by illiberal legal institutions, and their native genius was systematically restrained from rising above one degraded level. Such was the lot of the virtuous part of the sex. I forbear to oppose to this gloomy picture, the profligate renown to which the bold pretensions of daring vice elevated mercenary beauty; nor should I glance at this impure topic, but to remind my young cousins, that _immodesty_ in _dress_, _contempt_ of the _sober duties_ of _domestic_ life, a boundless appetite for pleasure, and a misapplied devotion to the arts, were among the steps which led to this systematic profession of shameless profligacy, and to the establishment of those countenanced corruptions, which raised the more celebrated but infamous Athenian women to that bad eminence. But, Ann, you are engaged with a fine historical subject.” “The death of Pericles, the Athenian general,” said Mrs. Spencer. “Will you kindly relate to them the particulars of it?” “Certainly,” replied Mr. Wilmot. “When Pericles was at the point of death, his surviving friends and the principal citizens, sitting round his bed, discoursed together concerning his extraordinary virtue, and the great authority he had enjoyed. They enumerated his various exploits, and the number of his victories; for, whilst he was commander, he had erected no less than nine trophies to the honour of Athens. These things they talked of, supposing that he attended not to what they said, but that his senses were gone. He took notice, however, of every word they had spoken, and thereupon delivered himself as follows: ‘I am surprised, that, while you dwell upon and extol those acts of mine, though fortune had her share in them, and many other generals have performed the like, you take no notice of the greatest and most honourable part of my character; that no Athenian, through my means, ever put on mourning.’” “Since you are talking of benefactors to their country,” said Mrs. Spencer, “allow me to relate a few particulars of Herodes Atticus, an Athenian citizen, whose munificent gifts would have been worthy of the greatest king.