This seclusion of women has an important effect in society; and the Orientals are accordingly, as has often been remarked, in a great degree strangers to the passion of _love_. It is thought indecent in company to speak much of women, and no man would venture to declare, that he had a preference for a particular woman, or intended to marry her. Social intercourse is thus rendered less vivacious and amusing, but numberless inquietudes are avoided. They who affirm, however, that nothing is sought from women, among the people of the East, but sensual gratification, seem to err. Why should a man, by having several women, necessarily become insensible to what is amiable or estimable in any individual among them? Or is individual character rendered absolutely indistinct by their being associated together? They are equally in error who assert, that women in the East are slaves. Perhaps it might correctly be said that they are treated as children; but, supposing this to be true, do not tenderness and affection operate towards children? They hold not the same rank as in Europe; and if they did, the intrigues carried on in the _harem_, would render their husbands and themselves miserable. In their present state, accidents of this kind are not without ill effects, but, in general, serve rather to minister a cause of diversion, than to produce any very serious evil. Of course they give much less disturbance than in Europe. The spirit of Chivalry, fostered by the Crusades, changed, in the heated imagination of the youthful hero, the lovely object of his desires, into a deity that was to be adored. The visible nature of the divinity fanned the flame of devotion. Whether the fair benignly smiled, or scornfully averted her countenance from the humble votary, her perfections were equally the subject of his eulogies, and her will of his propitiation. But all his services were sublimely disinterested, and were to remain without hope of remuneration, till giants should be immolated to her perfections, and widows and orphans chaunt forth in her presence the praises of their generous deliverer. These chaste amours, in which all was elevated, and all exquisitely unnatural, according to modern ideas, were yet the foundation of the rank women hold in modern Europe. This system, forced and contrary to nature, could not long have place, and perhaps the sex itself grew satiated with the frigid adulation of distant votaries, however flattering to its vanity. A more licentious gallantry then took place, and the charm was quickly dissolved. The intercourse between the sexes being at length reduced to the simple gratification of the sensual desire, society was almost in the same state in the West, as in the East, at the period when the seclusion of females first took place.