disorder alone arose, and could have arisen.

But Christianity passed from the vanquished to their conquerors; occasioning seas of blood to flow on the one hand, whilst, on the other, by subduing hatred, it was made the first foundation of mutual reconciliation. We then behold united together the vices of the Romans and the haughtiness of the barbarians; and from the corruption of the one and the ferocity of the other arose insensibly a new system of manners. It is to this æra that I assign the commencement of chivalry, considered as an institution. But the women (always women!) contributed very materially to this great change. Conciliating by nature, by their fascinating manners and by inclination, and always ready to seize with address the exact period which might emancipate them from slavery, they availed themselves of the weakness of the vanquished and of the heroism of the vanquishers, and contrived

a species of worship or love, honour and fidelity, and from a courage more refined than that of the first institution, which had suggested to them the idea of it. They cemented these powerful laws by all that religion held most sacred; and, uniting together all the virtues in this holy code, promised and awarded themselves as a recompence to those knights who, to merit them, were obliged to be at the same time loyal, religious, intrepid, virtuous and faithful.

But before we contemplate the spectacle which women, in this splendid æra of their history, present to us, let us examine the revolution produced by the religion of Mahomet, and in what manner his polity and his worship formed a perpetual slavery for this sex in so large a portion of the earth.

THE CONDITION OF WOMEN IN ASIA.

RELIGION OF MAHOMET.

Ar nearly the same time as the union of the first chivalric notions with the laws of Christianity presented to the women in Europe the assurance of a total change in their situation, a religion arose in Asia which confirmed for ever the domestic slavery of a sex which, even in oppressing them, the Orientals adore.

Whilst religious and political revolutions have successively changed the condition, the character, and the manners of women, it is to be remarked that the inhabitants of the East have uniformly remained in the same state. It is in vain that their country has often changed its master; that it has been by turns subject to the arms and the laws of different usurpers: not one of these conquerors has ever thought of bursting the shackles of an unfortunate sex,

or of abating in the least the rigour of its bondage.

If Mahomet did not, like Brahma, command the women to burn themselves on the funeral piles of their husbands; this prophet, whose policy was so profound, did not render them less the eternal victims of his ambition. Wishing to stifle all those passions which he thought sufficiently strong to counterbalance his influence on the mind, he felt that though he could restrain men from intoxication, by prohibiting, by his religion, the use of wine, he would in vain attempt to triumph over love; but knowing how he might skilfully oppose pleasure to it, he established the custom of shutting up the women; and shortly after, his laws opening, by a multiplicity of enjoyments, an unbounded field for all the desires, he left to beauty no longer any empire but over the passions; a power destitute of danger, a reign of very uncertain continuance, and the duration

of which extends no farther than that of the transports of love.

The genius of women has not been able to oppose itself to the genius of Mahomet. In those parts of the globe where his religion has prevailed, their condition has remained stationary. In other countries, and even among barbarians, it has been meliorated; their accomplishments and attractions have raised them to a controuling power; but, as I have above observed, in Asia alone have they submitted to slavery without hopes of relief; and, in order to discover some faint traces of their character, we can now only cite some secret intrigues, by which they endeavour, in the retirements of the seraglios, to ameliorate their destiny.

Some ambitious sultanas have, it is true, acquired a momentary power; but the condition of the sex at large has not been benefitted by any circumstance of this kind.

We ought, at all times, to do justice