CHAP. I. On Saint Gregory of Nyssa, and his Panegyric on Virginity.

I RETURN from the chaste and pious poets to the prosaic encomiasts of virginity. On examining the ecclesi­astical writers who have merited this title, I find they are such a host, that I fear the attention of my reader would desert me, if I attempted to enumerate and de­scribe [Page 2] them. I shall now, therefore, con­fine myself to four succeeding fathers of the church, who are entitled to our regard by the highest reputation for sanctity and eloquence; and from these I shall only se­lect, as briefly as I can, such passages as seem to throw a particular light on the sister­hood, and are at the same time remarkable for strength and originality either of thought or expression.

The first of the four is St. Gregory of Nyssa, a younger brother of the great St. Basil, and a friend and correspondent of the poetical St. Gregory, who formed the prin­cipal subject of our last chapter. The St. Gregory of whom I am now to speak, was ordained bishop of Nyssa, in Cappadocia, by his brother St. Basil, in 372; in 385 he preached the funeral sermon of the empress Placilla; and by a late writer he is said to have died in 396, with the venerable title of Father of he Fathers.

The panegyric which this saint composed on virginity is the more remarkable, as we [Page 3] have positive evidence that he was himself a married man. This circumstance, however, is very far from having rendered him a lan­guid advocate for the excellence of a single life; on the contrary, he begins his enco­mium by declaring, ‘that whoever ambi­tiously hopes to bestow such praise on vir­ginity as is adequate to its merit, resem­bles a person who foolishly supposes that he may encrease the magnitude of the ocean by a drop of his own sweat ^*.’

The sisterhood will, I hope, excuse in their holy advocate the indelicacy of this expression, for the flattering energy of the sentiment.—But to proceed with St. Gre­gory.

Having asserted the dignity of this celes­tial excellence, he laments his own grovel­ling condition, in being precluded by mar­riage from a share of this glory. ‘A know­ledge [Page 4] of the charms that belong to celi­bacy, is to me,’ says St. Gregory, ‘what food is to the ox, when, turned to a full rack, he is prevented from reaching it by his harness.’ —Having forcibly descri­bed his own mortifications by this striking image, he enlarges on the various evils that arise trom matrimony, which he considers as a great source, not only of unhappiness, but of guilt.—"Look," says he, ‘at the pas­sing scene—marriage is the general pro­logue to all the tragedies of life.’ —After painting the conjugal state in the most gloomy colours, he delineates, with a bril­liant pencil, the pure delights of virginity, which he represents as a certain art and power of eluding all the vexations of earth, and attaining, even on this side the grave, the beatitude of heaven.

Having declaimed against wedlock with much freedom, or rather contempt and scorn, the saint seems to apprehend that his zeal for chastity has carried him too far, and [Page 5] he makes the following remarkable apo­logy.

"Let no one," says he, ‘imagine that I intend to censure the establishment of marriage; for I am aware that it has not wanted the approbation of God: but, since nature sufficiently instigates mankind to people the world by this connection, it would be superfluous labour to compose an encomium on marriage, which finds, in the alluring voice of pleasure, an eter­nal advocate and patron; while virginity is in some measure the antagonist of na­ture ^*. My sentiments on matrimony,’ continues the saint, ‘are these:—we ought to prefer to it the care of our celestial in­terest, and yet not to despise the person who makes a wise and temperate use of this institution.’

Though the saint, in the preceding sen­tence, has consulted his own personal credit [Page 6] as a married man, he very candidly proceeds to declare, that ‘although marriage may be regarded as a kind of safe port against the tempests of licentious passion, yet vir­ginity affords a securer refuge, and a more tranquil harbour.’

He contends, that man, as originally created, was perfectly free from all animal desires; and, instead of receiving pleasure from the gratification of sensual appetite, delighted only in the contemplation of his Maker. He alledges, it is evident from scripture ^*, that Adam had no connubial in­tercourse with Eve till after their expulsion from Paradise, when woman was con­demned to the pains of child-birth, as a pu­nishment for disobedience. "Therefore," continues the saint, ‘as we lost Paradise by the sensual offence of our first parents, it is in our own power to regain it by a vo­luntary sacrifice of all, sensual pleasures. As the persons who have wandered from [Page 7] their own country, and wish to return to it, begin by quitting the place to which they have strayed; in the same manner, since marriage was the last step which completed our separation from Paradise, I would advise those who are ambitious of returning thither, to begin by relinquish­ing marriage, the last stage ^*, as it were, in the road between earth and heaven.’

St. Gregory proceeds to prove the do­minion of virginity over death, which he accomplishes by a singular mode of reason­ing:—"The production of children," says he, ‘does not minister so much to life as to death, since their birth only leads to their dissolution; but they who devote their persons to virginity, place themselves as a kind of isthmus between life and death, to stop the fury of the latter. The devasta­tion of death is thus prevented; for, as the power of fire cannot subsist without fuel, so the force of death cannot prevail, unless marriage supplies him with his prey.’

[Page 8]The saint now enters on a more minute description of virginity; which does not, he says, consist merely in personal purity, but in discharging all the duties of a tranquil and spotless mind. He borrows, on this occa­sion, from his brother St. Basil the remark­able simile, which I have already mentioned, of the successive circles produced in water by the impulse of a single stone; an image which he uses to illustrate the agitation pro­duced in a peaceful mind by the admission of any one inordinate desire.— ‘Let virgi­nity,’ says the saint, ‘be the foundation on which the works of virtue are raised; for, excellent and honourable as it is, if this purity of person is not united to inte­grity of mind—if the whole life of a virgin does not correspond to this professed ex­cellence—if she is blackened by inconti­nence of spirit—her virginity is but an ear­ring in the nose of a sow, or a pearl trod­den under the feet of swine ^*.’

[Page 9]I must not omit the whimsical conceit with which St. Gregory asserts the honour of Miriam, the sister of Aaron, as the pri­mitive model of true virginity. Having de­scribed her dancing with a timbrel in her hand, after the miraculous passage through the Red Sea, he imagines that this musical instrument is mentioned in scripture as a symbol of her chastity, on account of the similarity, which he discovers between vir­ginity and the timbrel—a wonderful simi­larity! which Gregory has explained in language that I forbear to copy, lest the chaste eyes of the modern sisterhood should be shocked by the expressive images of this fanciful saint.

In a former part of my work I had occa­sion to remark, that Miriam was not entitled to this distinction, as she, in all probability, was a married woman. The genius and ta­lents of this fair Hebrew seem, indeed, to have operated like those of a modern fine lady, who, eclipsing her husband by the brilliancy [Page 10] of her spirit, reduces him to such insignifi­cance, that he is rarely mentioned.

But to conclude this brief account of St. Gregory. In the subsequent part of his dis­course, he endeavours to settle the just me­dium between luxury and extreme absti­nence, as he is far from being a friend to that rigorous discipline by which the health of many a monastic recluse has been destroyed. The twenty-fourth and last chapter of his treatise is very remarkable; for, instead of declaiming, like most of the fathers, against the depravity of the times, he speaks of his own age as abounding in good examples.— "Sanctity," says he, ‘is now, if ever, in so flourishing a state, that it wants but little to reach the summit of perfection.’ —He concludes, by recommending it to those who wish to lead a virgin life, to put them­selves under the guidance of an experienced and venerable conductor.

CHAP. II. On St. Ambrose, and his several Compositions in Praise of Virginity.

THE Latin fathers of the church were by no means inferior to the Greek, in the zealous veneration which they paid to virginity. The chaste devotees of Italy found an ardent, indefatigable advocate and patron in the celebrated St. Ambrose, who was unexpectedly raised, by the voice of the people, from a civil station to the rank of an archbishop; and, having filled the epis­copal throne of Milan about twenty years, ended his active and glorious life in that city at the age of 57, in the year 394.

This eminent writer devoted several dis­tinct performances to the consecrated vir­gins. There are three of his productions that particularly claim our attention, and of these I shall speak as they occur.—The first, [Page 12] and most elaborate, is a Treatise on Virgins, divided into three books, and addressed to his sister Marcellina; who, hearing that he had preached with singular eloquence on this interesting topic, and being unable to attend his public discourses, requested from her brother the particulars of his doc­trine.

Saint Ambrose begins his treatise with singular humility, in comparing himself to the speaking ass of Balaam. He then takes occasion, from the festival of St. Agnes, to celebrate the excellence of that virgin mar­tyr, a Roman damsel, distinguished by her rank and beauty, who, with miraculous for­titude, at the age of thirteen, preferred the tortures of persecution to the rich offers of a Pagan lover, and perished by the sword in the beginning of the fourth century. It may be worth remarking, that the merits of this infant martyr have given rise to many the most spirited of pious panegyrics; and that her name has been extolled by a suc­cession of bishops, saints, and poets, from [Page 13] the vehement Ambrose to the tender and elegant Massllon, bishop of Clermont, whose works contain a most beautiful and pathetic sermon on the festival of this lovely martyr.

From the praise of Agnes, St. Ambrose proceeds to a general encomium on chas­tity, which was unknown, he says, or imper­fectly preserved, through all the nations of the heathen world.—"But how," says the saint, very candidly, ‘can the human un­derstanding comprehend what nature has not included in her laws ^*?’ —He then endeavours to prove, that celibacy is an in­stitution of God, and heaven the true coun­try of virgins. He expressly asserts that the preservation of chastity makes an an­gel, and the loss of it a devil ^†. He com­pares the condition of the wife, condemned [Page 14] to the pains of child-birth, with the happy freedom of the consecrated maiden. He makes a very subtle and powerful address to parents, persuading them to atone for their own offences, by the early consecration of their virgin daughters; an exhortation which must have contributed very cruelly to in­crease the number of wretched and invo­luntary Old Maids, as many superstitious and selfish parents were undoubtedly ready to make their own peace with Heaven, at the expence of their unfortunate off­spring.

Saint Ambrose mentions, with exultation, the swarms of pious damsels that hastened to receive the veil from his hand, not only from the neighbouring cities of Italy, but from the distant regions of Mauritania. He exhorts the young virgins to disregard all domestic impediments to their religious de­sires, and to embrace a monastic life in ex­press opposition to the authority of their pa­rents. He endeavours to justify this bold advice by a remarkable anecdote, which [Page 15] concludes the first division of his treatise, and which I shall copy, to render my fair readers acquainted with the singular style of this saint.— ‘If you believe not the words of Heaven,’ cries Ambrose, ‘yet be­lieve examples. In our memory, a dam­sel, once noble by her worldly rank, and now more ennobled by her attachment to God, being urged to marriage by her parents and relations, fled for refuge to the altar; and where can a virgin seek a better asylum, than that holy spot where the sacrifice of virginity is presented? But even here she was troubled with im­pious importunity. She stood by the altar of God as the offering of modesty, as the victim of continence. 'Why are you so anxious for my nuptials?' she exclaim­ed to her relations—'I am betrothed al­ready. You offer me a husband, but I have found a better. Exaggerate the riches, boast the nobility, proclaim the power, of the party you propose; I have [Page 16] chosen Him to whom no one can be com­pared; rich in the world, powerful in dominion, pre-eminent in heaven. If you have such to offer, I do not refuse the option; but if you find not such, your conduct towards me is rather envious than provident.'—One of her relations, observing the rest were silenced, abruptly said, 'What if your father were living, would he suffer you to remain unmar­ried?'—The virgin answered, with new religious fervour, and more temperate piety, 'On this account, perhaps, he died, that he might not prove an impe­diment to the sanctity of his daughter.'— This reply concerning her father proved a kind of prophecy to her relation, as he also expired soon after it, and the vir­gin succeeded in her holy purpose. Ob­serve, ye maidens, this reward of devo­tion! Beware, ye parents, of a similar of­fence!’

Saint Ambrose, having thus magnified the excellence of virginity in the first divi­sion [Page 17] of his discourse, proposes, in the second, to instruct the young virgin in the particu­lars of her duty; and, to guard himself from the imputation of arrogance, he offers to his fair disciples, not a collection of severe pre­cepts, but of splendid examples. Having exhorted them to imitate the humility of the Virgin Mary, and the fortitude of the mar­tyr Thecla, he relates a recent instance of female chastity and resolution in the in­teresting adventures that befel a young and beautiful virgin of Antioch, who, on her re­fusal to worship the Pagan Divinities, was dragged into a public brothel, where her chastity was exposed to the most imminent danger, but was happily preserved by the fervour of her eloquence, and the sincerity of her virtue. She made a convert and a friend of the heathen soldier who had taken an active part in the outrage she endured, and inspired her persecutor with such pity and esteem, that he attempted, at the hazard of his own life, to preserve the purity which he had designed to violate. By an exchange [Page 18] of dress, he contrived the escape of the vir­gin, but was himself condemned to die for the pious deception. The heroic virgin bravely rushed from her concealment to in­tercept the fate of her generous deliverer. They mutually contended for the glory of dying for each other. Their religious he­roism was derided by the barbarity of perse­cution, and the only indulgence they ob­tained, was that of perishing together.

It is remarkable, that this pathetic little story has employed the pen of a famous French poet, and of an English philosopher of equal eminence. The Theodore of Cor­neille, as he informs us himself, was found­ed on this anecdote related by St. Ambrose; and, among the juvenile works of our great Boyle, we find the martyrdom of Theodora and Didymus. But the tragedy of the su­blime poet, and the narrative of the benevo­lent philosopher, are both sunk into simi­lar neglect; a circumstance sufficiently ac­counted for by a lively remark of Voltaire, who observes, very justly, on this play of [Page 19] Corneille, that ‘he chose the subject be­cause he had more genius than taste;’ an observation, perhaps, as applicable to the English philosopher as to the French poet; and certainly still more applicable to the Latin saint; for Ambrose has related these adventures in a quaint and conceited style, full of indecency and affectation. I have therefore declined a translation of the pas­sage, from the persuasion that my readers would be more entertained by a shorter and more simple recital of this affecting story. I shall add to it the curious remarks which Corneille has made on St. Ambrose, to con­sole himself for the ill success of his tragedy. —"^* Certainly," says this great, though unequal poet, ‘we may congratulate our­selves [Page 20] on the purity of our theatre, in see­ing that a story, which forms the most beautiful ornament in St. Ambrose's se­cond book upon virgins, is found too li­centious to be endured. What would they have said, if, like that great doctor of the church, I had exhibited Theodora in a house of infamy, if I had described the various agitations of her soul while she remained in that scene, if I had ex­pressed the trouble that she felt in the moment when she saw Didymus enter? It is here that this great saint displays the triumph of his eloquence, it is for this spectacle that he particularly invites the virgins to open their eyes.’

[Page 21]Such are the reflections of Corneille, in the epistle dedicatory to his unfortunate Theodora; and doubtless it was a consola­tion to the poet, in his recent disgrace, to recollect that he was infinitely more delicate than the canonized archbishop of Milan.

In truth, the ancient fathers of the church were so free in their anecdotes and expres­sions, that, in giving the most guarded ac­count of their discourses, I am not without fear of sometimes offending my more dainty readers; but if that misfortune should hap­pen to me, I earnestly conjure them to let their censure fall, not on the humble undig­nified author of this Essay, but on those high and hallowed prelates, whose compositions on this nice topic I thought myself obliged to review. I would not willingly admit into this chaste work a single expression that could force even the prudes to blush; but if those ladies of nice imagination should ever find me betrayed into such an offence, I intreat them, instead of censuring me, to congratulate themselves on the happy re­finement [Page 22] of the times, in which it is impos­sible to transcribe the compositions of many a saint, without incurring the charge of in­delicacy.

The third book of St. Ambrose opens with a recital of many pious precepts, delivered to Marcellina, the sister of our saint, by the pope Liberius, on the day when she re­ceived the veil from his hands. The points which the pontiff particularly recom­mended were, temperance and taciturnity the latter is perpetually enjoined by the fa­thers, as one of the capital perfections in a consecrated virgin. St. Ambrose pays his sister the compliment of acknowledging, that her virtue had not only equalled, but even exceeded, the discipline of Liberius, and specifies her great merit in the articles of abstinence and prayer. Yet, notwithstand­ing the extreme sanctity of her character, he presents to her a long admonition concern­ing the dangers that attend the gaiety of nuptial entertainments, and the wanton enormity of dancing. He then answers a [Page 23] question of Marcellina's, on a very delicate topic, Whether the religion which forbids self-destruction, allows the virgin to destroy her own life for the preservation of her faith and her virginity? St. Ambrose de­cides the point, by the example of Pelagia, a virgin of Antioch, who, at the age of fifteen, threw herself into a river to escape from licentious persecution. The particulars of Pelagia's death are singularly striking, and the flourishes of St. Ambrose, in relating her story, not less so. The spirit of this young martyr induced her virgin sisters, and even her mother, to share her fate. St. Am­brose describes this heroic family advancing, hand in hand, to the brink of a torrent, with their persecutors behind them; and he makes these undaunted females address the river in the following expressions:— ‘Be­hold the water! who forbids us to be baptized? Let the water receive us, which is the source of regeneration—let the water receive us, by which virgins are made — let the water receive us, [Page 24] which opens heaven, closes hell, hides death, and produces martyrs ^*.’ —The saint relates, that they added to this address a short prayer for the decent preservation of their bodies; "after which," says he, ‘unbinding their garments, so as to guard their modesty, and yet leave their steps free, and then joining hands, as if to lead a dance, they plunged together, into the deepest part of the flood ^†.’

Besides the example of Pelagia, St. Am­brose reminds his sister of the resolution displayed by a chaste female of their own [Page 25] family, who perished, he says, in the severest tortures without a groan or a tear.

In the close of his elaborate treatise, St. Ambrose enters into a long and very warm vindication of his own conduct. He had been accused, it seems (and certainly with justice) of alluring young maidens to relin­quish the natural idea of settling them­selves in marriage, and to take the monastic vow. Instead of denying, he glories in the charge. "Can that conduct," exclaims the saint, ‘be considered as a crime in me, which has always reflected honour on the priesthood, to sow the seeds of perfection, and promote an attachment to virginity?’ —He then proceeds to examine, whether his doctrine can be censured, either as dis­honest, or new, or unprofitable; and his reasoning on these three points is highly cu­rious:—"If you call it dishonest," says the saint, ‘you must also apply that appella­tion to the life of the angels; for they neither marry, nor are given in marriage. Can it be condemned as a novelty? I [Page 26] consent to abjure all things as novelties, which are not taught us by Christ; but does he not deliver the same doctrine, when he says, 'There are eunuchs which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven ^*.' Virginity is therefore sanctified by a celestial voice, and recommended by the precepts of our Lord.—But since we have thus proved, that the doctrine of continence is neither dishonest nor new, let us enquire if it can be reckoned unprofitable. I have heard many people exclaim, that the world is perishing—that the human race will be­come extinct — that wedlock is ruined. I only ask, in reply, did ever any man seek a wife without being able to find one?—If any one thinks that the human race will be diminished by the consecra­tion of virgins, let him consider, that where there are few virgins, there are fewer men. Where the devotion to vir­ginity [Page 27] is frequent, there the number of men is much greater. Observe what multitudes are annually admitted to the veil in the churches of the East, and of Africa. The men born in this country, are fewer than the virgins that are conse­crated there ^*.’

With the citation of this curious fact, I shall close my account of St. Ambrose's larger treatise on virgins, as the residue of that work consists only of passages from scripture very whimsically united.

The second composition of our illustrious saint, on this interesting topic, is entitled, "An Exhortation to Virgins." It was written as a compliment to Juliana, an opulent widow, who, having devoted her whole family, con­sisting of a son and three daughters, to a re­ligious life, employed her fortune in build­ing [Page 28] a church at Florence, which she re­quested St. Ambrose to consecrate. Upon this ceremony the saint introduces Juliana in his discourse, extolling to her children the excellence of virginity in opposition to marriage. He makes her declare, that al­though she had a good husband, she la­ments that she was ever married; and that nothing can console her for having forfeited, in her own person, the grace of virginity, but the hope of proving the mother of holy virgins. But the most remarkable passage in this singular work is a very whimsical pun. St. Ambrose, deriving the word nu­bere, to marry, from nubes, a cloud, pursues his conceit with great solemnity, and gravely demonstrates the similitude between a mar­ried woman and a heavy exhalation ^*. The discourse contains many sentiments and pre­cepts, [Page 29] exactly similar to those of the preced­ing treatise, and concludes with an encomi­um on the piety of Juliana.

The third work, which St. Ambrose de­voted to the holy sisterhood, has two differ­ent titles, being sometimes called The Insti­tution of a Virgin, and sometimes, A Dis­course on the perpetual Virginity of the Virgin Mary, which St. Ambrose very zealously supported against Bonosus, a bishop con­demned by the council of Capua, for the opposite opinion. The saint alledges six arguments in favour of the point which he intends to prove; but, as the Catholic cri­tics justly observe that some of these argu­ments have more wit than solidity, I shall decline an account of them, from a reve­rence to the hallowed personage of whom they speak.

CHAP. III. On St. Chrysostom, and his Panegyric on Virginity.

IF the pious virgins of Italy had reason to admire the zeal which the holy Am­brose displayed in their behalf, those of Constantinople enjoyed a patron and pastor yet more admirable in the famous St. Chry­sostom, who equalled the archbishop of Milan in his enthusiastic veneration for ce­libacy, with the insinuating advantage of a superior eloquence. This talent, from which he received the appellation of Chry­sostom, or the golden mouth, had raised him from the condition of a sequestered monk, to preside over the clergy of the Eastern em­pire: but his elevation, though propitious to his glory, was fatal to his peace. The austerity of a hermit was ill suited to the manners of a corrupt metropolis. The in­flexible [Page 31] prelate engaged in a dangerous quarrel with the empress Eudoxia, and, af­ter sustaining his episcopal office nine years, under the vicissitudes of triumph and dis­grace, he expired in 407, at the age of sixty, and in the midst of hardships inflicted on him as a persecuted exile.

I have already had occasion to quote some passages from this accomplished saint, in speaking of the unorthodox cohabitation of priests and virgins; a licentious, or at least an offensive custom, which Chrysos­tom had the honour of suppressing, by his eloquent invectives. In these we have seen, that the holy father bestowed on virgi­nity the most magnificent praise; but I am yet to give an account of a long and regular panegyric, which he composed expressly on this favourite topic.

He opens this elaborate treatise with a se­vere condemnation of all heretical virgins, whom he sinks to a condition below that of the Christian adulteress. He uncharitably represents the Pagan Old Maid as an imme­diate [Page 32] minister of the devil; nay, he will not allow that she could be a virgin; for, al­though her person was pure, yet her soul, the more important part, was corrupted:— "And what," cries the animated saint, ‘what is the advantage, if the temple be demolished, that the vestibule stands en­tire?’

He proceeds, with great subtlety, to shew, ‘that he who condemns marriage, dimi­nishes the glory of true virginity; and that he who praises wedlock, does the highest honour to celibacy: for that which is considered as good, on a com­parison with evil, may be not eminently good; but that which is better than a blessing of universal estimation, must be supremely excellent; and in this light,’ continues the saint, ‘we recommend vir­ginity. Matrimony is good; and on this account virginity is marvellous, because it is better than good ^*; and, if you wish [Page 33] it, I will inform you how far it is better; as much as heaven is better than earth, and angels than men.’

In this comparison, St. Chrysostom only echoes the sentiment and expression which we have already seen in more than one of his predecessors: but this eloquent enco­miast of virginity was of a spirit too ani­mated to content himself with a servile re­petition, and we accordingly find him pur­suing this idea, with address and vigour pe­culiar to himself.

After saying, that virginity is as much su­perior to wedlock, as angels are to men, he exclaims, ‘Or, to speak with just energy, yet more; for the angels, if they neither marry nor are given in marriage, are not compounded of flesh and blood; they have no settlement on earth, they feel not the perturbations of desire. They neither hunger nor thirst, they have no organs which can be softened by music or fasci­nated by beauty; but, as the meridian sky, where no clouds are collected, ap­pears [Page 34] pure, so their nature, unclouded by mortal passions, must of necessity be clear and lucid.’

The saint proceeds to shew, that virgins, under the disadvantage of mortality, engage in a successful competition with these celes­tial spirits, and equal them in purity and perfection.—"But this," he exclaims with indignation, ‘this, touches not you, ye worldlings, who waste this lovely trea­sure!—the portion of the unprofitable servant is reserved for you: but to the virgins of the church, many and great re­wards shall be allotted, such as neither eye nor ear can perceive, nor human under­standing comprehend.’

He then attempts to refute the objections which have been urged against celibacy, by affirming, that marriage is by no means ne­cessary for the preservation and continuance of the human race; and, as a proof of this, he asserts (what other saints have also main­tained) that Adam had no connubial inter­course [Page 35] with Eve, till after their expulsion from Paradise.

He goes yet farther, and affirms, it is not virginity, but sin, that has a tendency to di­minish and destroy the human species, and supports his remark by the history of the deluge.

The saint proceeds to make many severe reflections on those who treat virginity with contempt. He expatiates on the excel­lence and the merits of the maidenly condi­tion. He dwells on the severe bondage of wedlock, and particularly on the hard case of that wife who may wish to live in a state of continence, and yet cannot lawfully refuse those caresses to which she has no inclina­tion. He contrasts the single and the mar­ried life in every point of view, and uni­formly decides in favour of the first.

CHAP. IV. On St. Jerom, and his various Compositions in Praise of Virginity.

I SHALL close my catalogue of holy panegyrists with the mention of a saint who was equal, and perhaps superior, to all his sainted brethren, in extent of learning, in vigour of genius, and, above all, in ve­hemence of zeal for the support of virgi­nity. I mean the passionate and the witty St. Jerom, who passed a great part of his sin­gular life either in struggling with his own turbulent desires in a lonely wilderness, or in preaching continence to the devout and rich ladies of a luxurious city. He was born about the year 345, on the confines of Dal­matia, received his education at Rome, and travelled into Gaul. He then proposed to settle in the metropolis of Italy, but the religious activity of his spirit soon hurried [Page 37] him into the East; and, having visited the most hallowed places of that country, he de­voted himself to a state of severest mortifi­cation in the deserts of Syria. Sickness drove him to Antioch; from thence he was led to Constantinople by his desire of con­versing with St. Gregory Nazianzen. Ec­clesiastical business now carried him to Rome, and it was at this advanced period of his life that he became the favourite pre­ceptor of many Roman ladies, who, while they attended his exhortations to chastity, were very wantonly censured for their de­vout familiarity with this eloquent enthusi­ast. The attachment of his female disciples, though probably very innocent, was un­doubtedly very strong, as some of them followed him into the Holy Land, where he ended an unquiet but illustrious life, at the age of fourscore. Among these disciples, a widow, whose name was Paula, attracted the notice of the world by her rank and for­tune, and still more by the fervency of her devotion. The ardent friendship which [Page 38] St. Jerom professed for this lady had a con­siderable influence on his life and writings. What he suffered, and what he enjoyed, in the pious connection, he has himself very forcibly described, in a letter addressed to Asella, a religious maiden of peculiar sanc­tity. In speaking of the Roman ladies, he says, ‘^*I lived among them almost three years, and was frequently surrounded by a croud of virgins. To some I often explained the scripture. My lectures produced attention — attention, famili­arity—and familiarity, confidence. But let them say if they ever observed in me any thing unbecoming a Christian. I ac­cepted, indeed, the money of some; their presents, whether small or great; I did [Page 39] not despise; yet nothing was ever al­ledged against me except my sex, and even that was never alledged against me, till Paula travelled to Jerusalem. Before I became familiar with the house of the holy Paula, I had gained the general ap­plause of the whole city; and by the judgment of almost all, I was regarded as worthy the highest rank in the church. I was called a saint, I was called humble and eloquent. — Did I ever enter the doors of any gay or wanton lady? Were silk and jewels, a painted face, and a pro­fusion of gold, any attractions to me?— There was no matron of Rome who [Page 40] could conquer my mind, except her dis­tinguished by mourning and mortifica­tion, coarse in her attire, and almost blind with weeping—whom the sun often finds imploring, through successive nights, the mercy of her God—whose songs are psalms—whose conversation, the gospel —whose luxury, continence—whose life a fast. No woman could delight me, ex­cept her whom I never beheld in the act of eating: but as soon as I began to es­teem, to revere, and look up to her for the merit of her chastity, from that mo­ment all my own virtues forsook me.’

The saint proceeds to vent his indigna­tion against the envy and malice of those [Page 41] who had accused him of a criminal intrigue with this devout lady; and he closes his let­ter with all the animation of injured inno­cence, professing, in spite of the censorious world, an everlasting attachment both to the widow Paula, and her maiden daughter Eustochium. To the latter he has ad­dressed one of his most remarkable com­positions; and of this I shall now give a brief account. It is intitled, "An Epistle on the Preservation of Virginity."— ‘I do not intend in this discourse,’ says the saint to his fair disciple, ‘to rehearse to you the praises of that maidenly condition, which you have found to be most excel­lent, nor to enumerate the troubles of matrimony. There will be no adulation in this little treatise, no rhetorical pomp of language, which may invest you with the dignity of an angel, and, by describ­ing the beatitude of virginity, lay the world at your feet. I do not wish that the life you have embraced should in­spire you with pride, but with caution: [Page 42] travel, laden with treasure, it is there­fore your business to avoid a thief ^*.’

After this friendly admonition, the saint proceeds to speak of the incessant danger to which virginity is exposed; and, to alarm his tender pupil in the highest degree, he says, with a temerity of language which his zeal, I think, can hardly excuse, ‘Though God is all powerful, he cannot raise up a virgin that is ruined. He is able, indeed, to deliver her from punishment; but he will not bestow a crown on the cor­rupted ^†. Virginity,’ continues the saint, ‘may even perish by the simple offences of the mind, and be lost only by har­bouring a licentious idea.’ —St. Jerom is very candid, in adding to this rigid maxim a striking history of his own turbu­lent [Page 43] and wanton thoughts in the wilderness to which he retired. In spite of the severe mortifications by which he there endea­voured to subdue the propensities of nature, in the midst of fasting, solitude, and prayer, his ardent imagination, he confesses, hur­ried him from the silent desert to scenes of Roman luxury, and the society of girls. From this honest confession, he draws a forcible argument in favour of temperance. —"If they," says the saint, ‘who reduce their bodies by abstinence, are thus tor­mented by their fancy, what must the damsel suffer, who is indulged in every delicacy? If, therefore, I have any right to advise, if you can credit experience, this is my first admonition, this my most earnest intreaty, that the consecrated vir­gin may fly from wine as from poison.’ —The saint expatiates on the necessity of abstinence, both as to food and liquor; and he concludes his advice on this topic with these remarkable expressions: — ‘It is not that Heaven is delighted with the [Page 44] rumbling of our intestines, but chastity cannot otherwise be safe ^*.’

This caution is followed by a very strik­ing picture of the dissolute manners which prevailed in that age. The ladies and the clergy are treated with equal severity by the indignant Jerom; their vices are de­scribed with that singular vehemence of angry wit, that energy of metaphor, by which the writings of this eloquent father are peculiarly distinguished: ‘I am ashamed to say,’ exclaims the animated saint, ‘how many virgins are daily ruined! what illustrious maidens are lost from the very bosom of our mother church! over what fallen stars the proud enemy rears his throne ^†!’ He proceeds to strike at [Page 45] the cohabitation, that I have mentioned be­fore, between the priests and the canonical virgins: "How was this pest," cries the angry Jerom, ‘introduced into the church? whence are these harlots, who confine themselves to a single man? They are contained in the same house, in one chamber, aye, and often in one little bed, and yet call us suspicious if we suppose any thing ^*.’

The saint proceeds to contrast with these licentious manners the extreme purity of his young disciple, in which he exhorts her to persevere with various precepts; he dwells chiefly on abstinence and nightly prayer. He recommends to her several authors, who had written on virgins—Tertullian, St. Cy­prian, his friend Damasus the Roman pon­tiff, who celebrated virginity both in prose and verse, but, above all, the treatise of St. [Page 46] Ambrose, of which I have given an ac­count, and which St. Jerome extols as a master-piece of eloquence. He cautions her, at the same time, against all profaner stu­dies, and particularly the amusement of poetry.

There is a very pleasing peculiarity in this generous saint; I mean, his custom of relating a little history of his own frailties, to form a more forcible lesson for the use of his disciple. Of this we have already seen one example, in the narration of his wanton thoughts in the desert. A second now oc­curs, on the subject of profane literature He confesses to his fair pupil, that, after spending some time in his sacred studies, in fasting and prayer, he used to amuse him­self with the comedies of Plautus, which delighted him so much, that when he re­turned to the perusal of the prophets, he found them insufferably dull. A fever at­tacked him, and, at the height of his dis­temper, he was transported, in a vision, be­fore the tribunal of a judge, who, upbraiding [Page 47] him for his attachment to the literature of the Gentiles, commanded him to be scourged. The conscious Jerom acknow­ledges the justice of this sentence, and sup­ports the reality of his punishment, by ap­pealing to the stripes which he continued, he says, to feel after his sleep had left him.

In speaking of literature, St. Jerom has some curious expressions concerning the li­terary magnificence of his age. ‘Parch­ment,’ says he, ‘is tinged with purple, gold flows into letters, and books are ar­rayed in jewels.’ He ascribes this pas­sion for splendor to the Roman ladies, whom he represents, in general, as full of ostentation, and destitute of virtue.

From hence he takes occasion to put his fair disciple on her guard against luxury and avarice.

At the distance of thirty years from the composition of these instructions to the tender Eustochium, we find the ardent St. Jerom addressing, with the same zeal for [Page 48] chastity, another Roman virgin, of equal or superior eminence; I mean the celebrated Demetrias, the grand-daughter of Proba, a matron of the highest rank and character in Rome, who, flying from that city, when it was taken by the Goths, escaped with her family, and the wreck of an immense for­tune, to the coast of Africa. The young and lovely Demetrias—inflamed with a pious passion for the palm of virginity, or alarmed, perhaps, by the fate of many illus­trious Roman damsels, torn from their ex­iled parents, and basely sold to Syrian mer­chants by the infamous. Count Heraclian, who commanded in Africa—sought an asy­lum in the church, by assuming the veil. The holy maiden was complimented by the most eminent saints of the age on this act of devotion. Nothing can more forcibly shew the high consequence of canonical virgins in that period, than the epistle of St. Jerom to Demetrias. After some praise bestowed on her own character, and that of her family, he represents her consecration as [Page 49] an event which diffused such universal joy throughout the Roman world, that it com­pensated in a great measure the late over­throw of the imperial city. He affirms, that the delight and exultation of the Ro­man people, on this occasion, were superior to what they had formerly displayed, both when their country was delivered from the ravages of the Gauls, and when, after the fatal battles of Trebia, Thrasymene, and Cannae, they first heard of the victory which Marcellus obtained at Nola. This, surely, is one of the most hyperbolical compli­ments that was ever paid to a fair devotee, and affords us a curious proof how far the imagination of our lively saint would some­times outrun his judgment. But though his zeal has overcharged the picture, we must remember that he painted from life: and his description of the effects produced by the consecration of this noble damsel, exhibits in the strongest light the maidenly enthusiasm of that period. After declaring that the joy of Demetrias's family was such [Page 50] as the eloquence both of Cicero and De­mosthenes would be unequal to describe, St. Jerom exclaims, ‘Good God, what was their exultation! as from one fruit­ful root many virgins shot forth ^*; a multitude of female dependants pursued the example of their lady; the profession of virginity prevailed in every house ^†. I speak too faintly: all the churches of Africa exulted; the fame of the pious virgin pervaded every city, every town, every village, to the most lonely hut; all the islands between Africa and Italy were filled with the joyful tidings. Then Italy threw off her garb of mourning, and the half-demolished walls of Rome recovered a part of their pristine splendor, her God being deemed propitious in this perfect conversion of her daughter. You would [Page 51] have thought the race of Goths ex­tinguished, and all her base enemies struck dead by the avenging thunder of heaven.’

Having represented the effects of her consecration in these flattering colours, St. Jerom proceeds to favour this illustrious virgin with many precepts for the mainte­nance of her purity. He dwells on the usual topics of temperance and prayer. He ingeniously compares the virgin, who lives chastely in the warmth of youth, to those holy persons who continued unhurt in the fiery furnace. To the rich virgin he ob­serves, that it is more meritorious to employ a large fortune in charitable donations to the poor, than in building a costly and splendid church. He advises his fair pupil to amuse herself with manual work. He cautions her against the insidious doctrine of the heretic Rufinus. He exhorts her never to hear any conversation between a man and his wife, as such dialogues are of [Page 52] an infectious nature ^*. ‘Chuse her for your companion,’ says the saint, ‘who never suspects that she is handsome; who never throws back her cloak to discover her neck, but covers even her face so carefully, that she has hardly one eye, when she is walking in public, suffi­ciently unveiled to discern her path.’

The saint then speaks of his own former composition on the preservation of virgi­nity; a work, he says, which raised to him many enemies, on account of the honest freedom with which he arraigned the vices of the time. He is still, however, equally severe on female licentiousness: "Many," says he, ‘affect the sanctity of canonical virgins, that they may more quietly in­dulge their impure desires. These things,’ continues the saint, ‘we see and suffer, and, when dazzled by a piece of gold, [Page 53] we even rank them in the catalogue of good works ^*.’ He concludes with ex­horting his chaste disciple to love the scrip­ture; and, what has a ludicrous tendency to overthrow all his favourite doctrine, he en­treats her to revere her grandmother as a model of perfection.

The respectful love which St. Jerom had conceived for virginity was so great, that it appears to have been the ruling passion of his life, and may be traced in almost all his writings. In his letters to different friends who had consulted him on the education of their female infants, he discovers the most ardent and anxious desire to form, from the cradle, a religious Old Maid. In advising a lady, whose name was Laeta, to teach her little daughter to read by letters of box or ivory, he gives her a particular caution to let no boys come near the infant maiden. The whole letter is curious, as it circum­stantially [Page 54] describes the very singular cau­tions which St. Jerom thought necessary to form a female character of accomplished purity.—But I must hasten to speak of the two more elaborate works of this saint, in which his predominant passion may be said to burst forth with the greatest fervency. The first of these is a treatise on the perpe­tual virginity of the Virgin Mary, in oppo­sition to Helvidius, who had attempted to prove, by passages from the gospel, that, after the birth of our Saviour, the Virgin Mary had other children by her husband Joseph. After replying to all the argu­ments of his adversary with great acuteness and strength of reason, St. Jerom indulges himself in a rhetorical description of the two opposite characters, a virgin and a wife; and he concludes his treatise by magnifying the pre-eminence of the former with all the lively spirit of eloquent enthusiasm.—The second is a work, in which the zeal of our saint, for the honour of virginity, arose to a still higher pitch; I mean his answer to [Page 55] Jovinian. This Italian monk, of a mode­rate and respectable character, had very can­didly asserted, that the married women and, virgins, who, lived in equal obedience to the laws of the gospel, were equally meri­torious. The indignation of the zealous Jerom took fire at this assertion; he could not bear that those objects of his idolatry, the pure virgins of the church, should be thus placed on a level with women debased, in his idea, even by a legal cohabitation with man. He is so hurried on by the ve­hemence of his anger, that he exclaims, in the opening of his reply, ‘How shall I check myself, and not indulge the wea­pon so impatient to strike in the cause of virginity ^*?’ Indeed, the warm saint appears utterly unable to conduct the con­troversy with any degree of temper. Com­paring the candid doctrine of his adversary [Page 56] to the hissing of the old serpent, he threa­tens to crush him as the most vile and per­nicious of reptiles.

The passionate compositions of a bold and vigorous mind, enriched with extensive learning, are generally entertaining, though full of error and absurdity. There is an attractive energy in satirical wit, however destitute of truth, when it is sharpened by indignation or envy. It is owing, perhaps, in some measure, to this forcible charm, that some unjust compositions of two very different authors, Voltaire and Dr. John­son, have been read with peculiar avidity. In many strokes of personal character, and in the compact vigour of their style, these great writers both resembled St. Jerom. Sarcastic imagination and literary pride were, perhaps, the predominant characte­ristics of this singular triumvirate; they all delighted to exert the talent which they all possessed, of blowing an adversary to pieces with a sparkling explosion of irritable wit.

[Page 57]The mild and unfortunate Jovinian, though he had mercy and justice on his side, sunk under the vindictive eloquence of St. Jerom, who supported against his antagonist the pre-eminence of his favou­rite virginity by a variety of arguments, and a torrent of sacred and prophane eru­dition. The saint very artfully perverts many texts of scripture to his purpose, and from some of them draws a wonderful in­ference against the purity of matrimonial duties ^*. He dwells on the authority of St. Paul, in his famous exhortation to celi­bacy. He affirms that virgins are more beloved by heaven, because their sacrifice is not enjoined, but voluntary. He de­clares, there is as much difference between marriage and virginity, as between not sin­ning and doing good.

Having made the utmost of those texts [Page 58] in scripture, which could be converted to the honour of virginity, he proceeds to shew, that a state of continence was no new establishment, introduced in opposition to nature by the Christian church, but of an­cient and universal estimation. In this part of his treatise, he gives an ample cata­logue of the most eminent supposed virgins of the Pagan world, not omitting the Ca­milla and Harpalice of Virgil. He men­tions the tradition of the Indian Gymnoso­phists, that the founder of their religious in­stitutions was generated from the side of a virgin. He condescends to repeat even the Grecian fable concerning Plato's mother, who was said to have been impregnated by a phantom of Apollo ^*.

There are several points of religious doc­trine which St. Jerom disputes with his an­tagonist, but I touch only on that which is particularly connected with the subject of this Essay. This, indeed, is the point for which [Page 59] the angry saint most vehemently contends. His indignation seems to have been parti­cularly roused by the great eagerness with which the Roman ladies had embraced the liberal maxims of his opponent. Some canonical virgins, convinced by Jovi­nian of the innocence and the merits of matrimony, had dropped the veil, and preferred the warm protection of a hus­band, to the chilling shelter of the church. St. Jerom, in the close of his invective, very forcibly describes the popularity of his antagonist. He laments that the rich and noble received him with deference and affection. He represents him as the pre­ceptor of impurity, surrounded by multi­tudes of lascivious women, who have lost, not only their modesty, but all sense of shame; "and who display more wantonness," says the saint, ‘in the argumentative defence of their desire, than in its actual exertion.’ — He concludes with a spirited address to Rome, as the mistress of the world. He beseeches the imperial city to act in con­formity [Page 60] to her ancient reputation, to be ex­alted by virtue, and not humbled by plea­sure.

Though Jovinian seems to have had a large majority of the fair sex on his side, his mild doctrine concerning them was for­mally condemned by ecclesiastical autho­rity, and he died in exile. St. Jerom arose triumphant from the contest; yet we find that many pious critics in Rome arraigned his composition, for extolling virginity to such a pitch, by the degradation of wed­lock. In some of his letters he treats these critics with the utmost contempt. He as­serts, in support of his own doctrine, that the apostles were either unmarried, or conti­nent after marriage ^*. He concludes one of his epistles on this topic with an air of jocularity, by saying, ‘To explain my sen­timents on wedlock completely, I would have all those provide themselves with [Page 61] wives, who, from their nightly fears, are unable to lie alone ^*.’

Such was the doctrine, and such the suc­cess, of St. Jerom, as the eulogist of virgi­nity. It may amuse the English reader to see this eloquent and chaste enthusiast in the character of a poet; I shall therefore close the chapter with a translation of the epi­taph which he composed on his great friend and patroness, the illustrious Paula.—This lady, after residing about twenty years in Bethlem, where she had founded three mo­nasteries for virgins, and one for monks— and after acting as a mother to all the Christian pilgrims, who then crowded to the holy sepulchre—ended a life of the strict­est piety, in the year 404, at the age of fif­ty-six. The faithful St. Jerom lamented her with the most passionate affliction, and placed on different parts of the rock which [Page 62] was converted into her tomb, the two fol­lowing inscriptions.

On the front of the cave.

CHAP. V. On some Miracles ascribed to Monastic Virgins.

THE enthusiastic eloquence of the different saints, whom we have just reviewed, had undoubtedly great influence in augmenting the multitude of religious Old Maids. But it was not the only cause which produced this effect:—to the exhor­tations of the holy fathers we may add the universal and dazzling idea of supernatural power, supposed to reside in the monastic virgin of immaculate purity. Many fe­males would enter with ambitious zeal into a state which gave them a fair prospect of acquiring the very flattering privilege of working miracles: and in those ages, when diverse miracles were ascribed to the chaste and pious daughters of many a convent, every nun of lively imagination, who had the slightest acquaintance with the legends [Page 65] of her sisterhood, might readily hope for a privilege of which examples were so com­mon. The lives of the female saints con­tain an infinitude of miraculous incidents in honour of virginity. My readers would hardly thank me for reviving a large col­lection of these forgotten wonders; yet let me observe, with the great Montesquieu ^*, ‘that the lyes contained in these lives re­late to the manners of the time:’ and it forms a part of my design, to exhibit in this work the manners and sentiments of differ­ent ages, relating to that interesting condi­tion of female life which I have chosen for my subject. Every author must allow a place to many absurdities, if he means to give a history of human opinions, though on a [Page 66] single topic. The more ridiculous an an­cient legend may appear to us, the more forcibly will it shew us the extent and influ­ence of popular credulity. I shall, there­fore, select a few supernatural anecdotes of pious virgins; and, to render them the more interesting, I shall confine myself to the holy maidens of our own country. If we wished to produce the strongest example of mira­culous power ascribed to martyred chastity, we might pitch on the adventures of St. Ositha, a religious and royal virgin of Essex, who, being murdered and beheaded by Da­nish pirates, in the ninth century, is said, like some poetical heroes of romance, to have carried her severed head in her own hands to a church at a considerable distance from the spot where she was slain ^*.

[Page 67]The memory of this fair and chaste saint was held in peculiar veneration, as appears from a circumstance recorded in one of our early monastic chronicles. Alfward, bishop of London, was afflicted with a leprosy, and his distemper was supposed to be a punish­ment which he drew upon himself, by in­specting this buried virgin, whose body lay within his diocese, with a profane curio­sity, and pilfering some reliques from her grave ^*.

Among the most meritorious of our holy maidens, we ought, perhaps, to reckon the chaste St. Bridget of Scotland, who, having resolved on perpetual virginity, and being persecuted by the addresses of an ardent lover, prayed to heaven that she might be relieved from his distressing importunities by the sudden loss of her beauty. Her pious [Page 68] biographers inform us, that this singular petition was immediately granted:—her lovely countenance was instantly deformed, and the dangerous lustre of her eyes was drowned in blood. But we have the conso­lation of being told, by the same authority, that she recovered her charms as soon as her purity was perfectly secure.

Not to dwell on the legends of mere martyrologists, I shall relate, from the most respectable of our ancient historians, a mi­raculous anecdote, which not only shews the wonderful estimation in which monastic virginity was held, but even proves that the king himself was not safe, if he presumed to question or deride the continence of a canonized virgin.

The celebrated William of Malmsbury has enlivened the history of English prelates with the following account of a religious and royal maiden, whose name was Editha. This lady, the daughter of Edgar, a monarch distinguished by his military spirit and his amorous adventures, was early devoted to a [Page 69] life of monastic purity; and is said to have displayed all the gentle virtues in the mo­nastery of Wilton. Though a professed nun, she ventured to indulge herself in splendid apparel; and when reproved by St. Ethelwold for her finery, she defended her­self, with a pious vivacity, by a quotation from St. Augustin, affirming that pride was often seen in a sordid habit, and humility in a golden vest. In her devotions she was so fervent, that the great St. Dunstan, who be­held her during the consecration of a church which she had built, was enraptured with her piety. On observing, that she fre­quently extended her thumb, to make the sign of the cross, this prophetic saint ex­claimed, "May that blessed finger never decay!" and burst into a tender passion of tears, so violent as to shake with his sob­bing the deacon who stood next him. On being asked the reason of his disorder, he replied, ‘This blooming rose will soon wither; this dove, so dear to heaven, will fly away from us in six weeks from this [Page 70] day.’ His prophecy was accomplished: the royal virgin expired at the precise time he had foretold; and the same holy man beheld her in a vision, walking hand in hand with the sainted martyr to whom she had dedicated the church, and command­ing that such reverence should be paid to her on earth as she received in heaven.— Miracles became frequent at her tomb. At last it was ordered that her body should be brought forth from its grave; and her whole frame was found converted into dust, except her finger, her stomach, and the parts be­low it. While the holy man was amazed at these wonders, he was relieved by an ap­pearance of the virgin's spirit, who said that those parts of her body were justly free from putrefaction, for having preserved them­selves unpolluted by the two sensual sins of wantonness and gluttony ^*.

[Page 71]At a subsequent period, when king Ca­nute the Dane, who was apt, says the same pious historian, to satirize the saints of England, happened to visit Wilton, he treated the memory of the chaste and holy Editha with jocular contempt; affirming, that he could never believe she was justly sainted for chastity, as she was the daughter of Edgar, the most wanton of princes. While he spoke thus with the irreverence of a barbarian, he was reproved by the arch­bishop Ednodus. Canute growing angry, orders the sepulchre to be opened, that he [Page 72] might see what appearance of sanctity the dead virgin would discover. The mau­soleum being burst asunder, the deceased, spreading her veil before her face as low as her girdle, was seen to arise and attack the insolent monarch ^*. Overcome with ter­ror, throwing back his head, and losing the strength of his knees, he fell to the ground, and remained breathless so long, that he was supposed to be dead; but his faculties returning by degrees, he rejoiced to find that, although severely chastised, he had a season left him for penitence. The festival of the chaste Editha is therefore held venerable in many parts of England; and no one can think of profaning it with impunity.

Such are the anecdotes which the most sensible and accomplished of our ancient historians has related of one royal and pious maiden. Several incidents of a similar cast [Page 73] might be easily collected; but I apprehend the preceding is sufficient to shew, in a very strong point of view, the ideas of our ances­tors concerning the supernatural powers of a spotless virgin. What real influence such ideas may have had in augmenting the mul­titude of genuine Old Maids, I shall leave the contemplative sisterhood to consider.

CHAP. VI. On the Decline and Fall of Monastic Vir­ginity.

AGES have existed, in which a pas­sion for monastic chastity appears to have spread, like an epidemical disorder, through the female world; and ladies of the most elevated rank seem to have been par­ticularly exposed to this religious influenza. The great historian, who has lately exhi­bited a magnificent picture of declining Rome, delineates, with his usual spirit, the pious pomp and ostentation, with which the three daughters of the emperor Arcadius dedicated their virginity to God. He in­forms us, that ‘the obligation of their vow was inscribed on a tablet of gold and gems, which they publicly offered in the great church of Constantinople: their palace was converted into a monas­tery; [Page 75] and all males, except the guides of their conscience, the saints who had for­gotten the distinction of sexes, were scru­pulously excluded from the holy thresh­old^*.’

A female sacrifice announced to the world with such dazzling splendor, must have had great effect in extending the con­tagious passion for monastic virginity; and, in the succeeding ages, we find that many queens and princesses, in different kingdoms of Europe, preferred the chaste comfort of monastic continence to all the parade and pleasure of royal dignity. We have seen, in a former chapter of this Essay, that the married royal fair ones, as well as the single, aspired to that celestial crown of virginity, which was considered as superior to every earthly diadem; and many of these virgin wives (to give them the strange appellation which they coveted) appear to have obtained, from the religious complaisance of their husbands, [Page 76] a very plausible, if not an unquestionable title to the prime object of their ambition. In this wonderful species of purity, the royal fair ones of England seem to have surpassed those of other countries. — A very amusing Italian author, who has attempted to prove that the modern world is not in­ferior to the ancient in virtues of every class, among his examples of the most sin­gular modern chastity, has mentioned the English queen Ediltruda, whom he consi­ders as the wife of three husbands, yet justly canonized as a virgin ^*. The extraordi­nary merit ascribed to this royal Old Maid of England, made me search minutely into the history of so interesting a personage. I find that the Ediltruda of this courteous Italian writer, is the lady celebrated by our venerable Bede under the name of Aedil­thryda; a lady whose adventures I have mentioned in a preceding chapter, on a dif­ferent [Page 77] occasion. I will here add, that our honest historian, who allows her only two husbands, yet vouches for her virginity in the following remarkable terms. — After saying that she resided twelve years with Ecgfrid the king, her last husband, and yet remained a perpetual virgin of glorious in­tegrity, he thus proceeds:— ‘To me, and to some others, who doubted if this were really so, bishop Wilfrid, of blessed memory, declared that he was himself a perfect witness of her integrity; for Ecg­frid had promised to give him an ample estate, and a large sum of money, if he could persuade the queen to admit his embraces; being assured that she loved no man better. Nor should we doubt,’ con­tinues the honest Bede, ‘that a circum­stance could happen even in our time, which faithful historians inform us was very frequent in the preceding age ^*.’

[Page 78]Frivolous and nonsensical as anecdotes of this kind may appear to a fastidious critic, they particularly deserve the attention of the truly philosophical, as they instruct us in that most interesting branch of useful knowledge, the history of manners. Al­though the opinions and practices of our age afford but little countenance to the fact so candidly supported by the venerable Bede, the most sceptical reader may incline to ad­mit the truth of it, when he considers that, in the days of Aedilthryda, to lead the life of a nun was esteemed the height of human happiness, and the surest passport to celes­tial [Page 79] beatitude: nay, to become the parent of a nun was regarded as a blessing of such importance, that some good ladies were contented to sacrifice, for this blessing, the glory arising from that continent virtue, in which they prided themselves so devoutly. This remark is grounded on an anecdote as curious as the preceding, which Dugdale has inserted in his Monasticon, from the manuscript chronicles of John, the vicar of Tinmouth. This pious historian has re­corded, that a nobleman, whom he calls Wolfhelmus, having children by his wife, resided with her for eighteen years in per­fect continence; when an angel appeared, and exhorted this chaste couple to cohabit once more, for the sake of producing a spouse for Christ; and then to persevere in their former purity of life ^*. The sugges­tion [Page 80] of the angel was not disregarded; and this heaven-directed intercourse gave birth to Wolfhildis, who became a nun of such signal purity, that she rejected the rich of­fers, and escaped from the amorous pursuit, of king Edgar; although Wenfleda, the aunt of that licentious monarch, conde­scended to act as the base minister of his pleasures, and employed the most ungene­rous artifice to ensnare this resolute and il­lustrious virgin.

But if there were times in which monastic chastity appeared so firm as to resist and triumph over the importunities even of royal intrigue, we must confess that, in other sea­sons, it assumed a very different appearance, and turned at last into the most deplorable frailty.

The venerable Bede has himself given us a very striking picture of monastic enor­mities, in his epistle to Ecgbert. From this we learn, that many young men, who had no title to the monastic profession, got possession of monasterie, where, instead of [Page 81] engaging in the defence of their country, as their age and rank required, they in­dulged themselves in the most dissolute in­dolence, and did not abstain from the vir­gins that were devoted to God ^*.

We learn from Dugdale, that in the reign of Henry the Second, the nuns of Amsbury abbey in Wiltshire were expelled from that religious house, on account of their incon­tinence ^†; and, to exhibit in the most lively colours the total corruption of monastic chastity, Bishop Burnet informs us, in his History of the Reformation, that when the nunneries were visited by the command of [Page 82] Henry the Eighth, ‘whole houses were found almost all with child ^*.’

When we consider to what oppressive in­dolence, to what a variety of wretched­ness and guilt, the young and fair inhabi­tants of the cloister were frequently be­trayed, we ought to admire those benevo­lent authors, who, when the tide of reli­gious prejudice ran very strong in favour of monastic virginity, had spirit enough to op­pose the torrent, and to caution the devout and tender sex against so dangerous a pro­fession. It is in this point of view that the character of Erasmus appears with the most amiable lustre; and his name ought to be eternally dear to the female world in parti­cular. Though his studies and constitu­tion led him almost to idolize those elo­quent fathers of the church, who have magnified monastic virginity, his good sense, and his accurate survey of human life, [Page 83] enabled him to judge of the misery in which female youth was continually in­volved by a precipitate choice of the veil. He knew the successful arts by which the subtle and rapacious Monks inveigled young women of opulent families into the cloister, and he exerted his lively and delicate wit in opposition to so per­nicious an evil. The writings of many eminent authors have been levelled against the abuses of the monastic life; but several of these, like the noted work of the hu­morous Rabelais, appear to have flowed from a spirit as wanton and licentious as ever lurked in a convent, and abound in language offensive to every decent reader. It is not thus with Erasmus; his two dia­logues, intitled, The Virgin averse to Mar­riage, and The Penitent Virgin, are written with admirable pleasantry, and seem to have been dictated by a chaste and angelic desire to promote the felicity of woman.

In those nations of Europe where nun­neries still exist, how many lovely victims [Page 84] are continually sacrificed to the avarice or absurd ambition of inhuman parents! The misery of these victims has been painted with great force by some benevolent writers of France, and particularly by that admir­able novelist Madame de Genlis, in her Letters on Education. In most of these pathetic histories, that are founded on the abuse of convents, the misery originates from the parent, and falls upon the child. The reverse has sometimes happened; and there are examples of unhappy parents, who have been rendered miserable by the reli­gious perversity of a daughter. In the fourteenth volume of that very amusing book, the Causes Célébres, a book which is said to have been the favourite reading of Voltaire, there is a striking history of a girl under age, who was tempted by pious arti­fice to settle herself in a convent, in express opposition to parental authority. Her pa­rents, who had vainly tried the most tender persuasion, endeavoured at last to redeem their lost child by a legal process against [Page 85] the nunnery in which she was imprisoned. The pleadings on this remarkable trial may, perhaps, be justly reckoned among the finest pieces of eloquence that the law­yers of France have produced. Monsieur Gillet, the advocate for the parents, repre­sented, in the boldest and most affecting language, the extreme baseness of this reli­gious seduction. His eloquence appeared to have fixed the sentiments of the judges; but the cause of superstition was pleaded by an advocate of equal power, and it finally prevailed. The unfortunate parents of Marie Vernat, for this was the name of the de­luded girl, were condemned to resign her for ever, and to make a considerable pay­ment to those artful devotees, who had piously robbed them of their child.

When we reflect on the various evils that have arisen in convents, we have the strongest reason to rejoice and glory in that reformation, by which the nunneries of England were abolished. Yet, it would [Page 86] not be candid or just to consider all these as the mere harbours of licentiousness, since we are told, that at the time of their sup­pression, some of our religious houses were very honourably distinguished by the purity of their inhabitants. "The visitors," says bishop Burnet, ‘interceded earnestly for one nunnery in Oxfordshire, Godstow, where there was great strictness of life, and to which most of the young gentle­women of the country were sent to be bred; so that the gentry of the country desired the king would spare the house: yet all was ineffectual ^*.’

In this point of view, much undoubtedly may be said in favour of convents; yet, when the arguments on both sides are fairly weighed, I apprehend that every true friend to female innocence will rejoice in those sensible regulations, which our Catholic neighbours have lately made respecting [Page 87] nunneries, and which seem to promise their universal abolition ^*; an event which, we are told by experience, would be far from diminishing the purity of the female world, since I can safely assert, to the honour of the sisterhood, that at this day there are more genuine Old Maids existing in Eng­land, than could have been found here at any period of our history, when our island abounded in convents, when every county contained a multitude of nuns, and virgi­nity was the most fashionable of all pro­fessions.

CHAP. VII. On some Monastic Old Maids distinguished by literary Talents.

WHEN we consider what innumer­able multitudes of virgins have passed their lives in the leisure of a con­vent—when we reflect on the active inge­nuity of the female mind, and remember that convents, during many ages, were the treasuries of all the learning that remained upon the earth—we may be surprised in ob­serving the very small number of monastic Old Maids, who are said to have bequeathed to us any literary production. Perhaps, indeed, many a fair and chaste author has existed, whose name and works have been unjustly buried in sudden oblivion. I am led to this conjecture by finding that one monastic and maiden prodigy of literature has been strangely overlooked or misrepre­sented [Page 89] by our best antiquarians; I mean the poetical Saxon nun Hrosvitha or Roso­vida. This lady, who flourished about the year 980, exerted her poetical genius to confirm and encrease the number of mo­nastic Old Maids. She wrote six dramatic compositions in imitation of Terence; but on subjects very different from those of the Roman dramatist, as the plays of the virgin author were chiefly intended to animate her sister nuns to the preservation of their virginity.

It is strange that these dramatic cu­riosities are so imperfectly known among us, especially as some of our ablest scholars have lately employed themselves in elabo­rate researches on the obscure origin of the modern drama.

Mr. Warton, in the emendations which he has added to his second volume on English poetry, has, indeed, mentioned the name and title of this chaste and pious dra­matist, but attributes her compositions to her first editor Conradus Celtes, who pub­lished [Page 90] her plays and other sacred poems at Nurenburg, 1501.

Such inaccuracies are inevitable in a work so various and extensive as the excel­lent History of English Poetry; and I am confident that its learned and amiable au­thor will thank me for pointing out this mistake, and thus enabling him to correct his involuntary injustice towards this lite­rary phoenix of the cloister. Though her works were re-published at the beginning of this century, they are still so rare, that I have searched in vain through the libraries of our two universities, and through some of the most curious private collections of books in this kingdom, for a copy of her chaste and interesting dramas. I have for some time delayed to close this chapter of my Essay, in the hope of receiving Roso­vida from a friend on the continent; but the rare dramatist not arriving as I ex­pected, and these pages being called for by the press, I can only afford the curious reader the imperfect gratification of know­ing [Page 91] that these early plays, and an engraved portrait of the chaste maiden who wrote them, actually exist^*.

I should particularly regret the loss of an opportunity to enrich this Essay with trans­lations from this rare dramatic Old Maid, had I not the hope of doing ample justice to her merits on a future occasion. For, if the chaste sisterhood bestow on my labours in their service that animating favour which I am inclined to expect from their curiosity and good-nature, I mean to devote to them the residue of my advanced life, and to exe­cute a work to their honour, which the re­public of letters has long wanted, a Biogra­phical Dictionary of eminent Old Maids.

Having this grand performance in con­templation, I shall not in these little books attempt to expatiate on the Teresas of [Page 92] Spain ^*, the Schurmans of Germany ^†, the Scuderys of France ^‡, the Bourignons of [Page 93] Flanders ^*, or, in short, on any of those vo­luminous virgins, who have astonished the [Page 94] different kingdoms of Europe by the ferti­lity of their pious or romantic pens.

But there are two monastic Old Maids, so very remarkable, yet so little known in our country, that I must embrace the pre­sent opportunity of introducing them to the acquaintance of my fair readers. The first is a pious visionary virgin of Venice; the second, a poetical nun of Mexico. To the Venetian virgin, who is known in France by the name of Mere Jeanne, the famous French traveller, Guillaume Postel, was indebted for most of those singular ideas, by which he excited universal asto­nishment in the age of Francis the First. Postel was patronised for his extensive eru­dition by that munificent prince, to whom the learned enthusiast very confidently pro­mised universal dominion. By this pro­phecy [Page 95] in favour of France, Postel excited the enmity of some Spanish Jesuits in Rome, which obliged him to depart from that city, and repair to Venice. It was here that the wonderful Mere Jeanne, whom he describes as a little old woman of forty ^*, imparted to him those mysteries, which he communicated to the world in a little book written in Italian, whose long title is so cu­rious, that I shall insert an entire translation of it: ‘The First News of another World; that is, the admirable History (and not less necessary and useful to be read and understood by every one, than stupen­dous), intitled, The Venetian Virgin —part seen, part proved, and most faithfully written, by William Postel, first-born of the Regeneration, and Spi­ritual Father of the said Virgin.’ —1555. Octavo.—Of this very rare volume France is said to contain only two copies; [Page 96] but there is a French publication by the same author, containing the same doctrine; which consists in announcing to women an universal dominion over the world. This dominion, however, is purely spiritual, and means nothing more than the establishment of a more perfect reason, which beginning, according to the author, in his Venetian Virgin, was to extend over the universe, and thus confirm and perpetuate the sove­reignty of woman. How far the doctrine of Postel may have been verified, and how far the sisterhood in particular may have enjoyed that sovereign purity and perfec­tion of reason, which this learned man first discovered in his celebrated Venetian Old Maid, are delicate points, which the expe­rience of my fair readers will best enable them to decide.

While they are settling the matter, let me hasten to Mexico, and present to them, from that city, sister Jua [...] Inez de la Cruz, a religious virgin, so eminent for her poe­tical [Page 97] talents, that she has been honoured with the title of a Tenth Muse.

Juana was born in November, 1651, at the distance of a few leagues from the city of Mexico. Her father was one of the many Spanish gentlemen, who sought to improve a scanty fortune by an establishment in America, where he married a lady of that country, descended from Spanish parents. Their daughter Juana was distinguished in her infancy by an uncommon passion for literature, and a wonderful facility in the composition of Spanish verses. Her pa­rents sent her, when she was eight years old, to reside with her uncle, in the city of Mexico. She had there the advantage of a learned education; and, as her extraordi­nary talents attracted universal regard, she was patronised by the lady of the viceroy, the Marquis de Mancera, and, at the age of seventeen, was received into his family. A Spanish encomiast of Juana relates a re­markable anecdote, which, he says, was [Page 98] communicated to him by the viceroy him­self. That nobleman, astonished by the extensive learning of the young Juana, in­vited forty of the most eminent literati that his country could afford, to try the extent and solidity of Juana's erudition. The young female scholar was freely but po­litely questioned, on the different branches of science, by theologians, philosophers, mathematicians, historians, and poets; ‘and, as a royal galleon’ (I use the words of his excellency the viceroy, says my Spanish author) ‘as a royal galleon would defend herself against a few scallops, that might attack her, so did Juana Inez extricate herself from the various questions, argu­ments, and rejoinders, that each in his own province proposed to her.’

The applause which she received, on this signal display of her accomplishments, was far from inspiring the modest Juana with vanity or presumption. Indeed, a pious humility was her most striking characte­ristic. [Page 99] Her life amounted only to forty-four years, and of these she passed twenty-seven, distinguished by the most exem­plary exercise of all the religious virtues, in the convent of St. Geronimo. Her delight in books was extreme, and she is said to have possessed a library of four thousand volumes; but, towards the close of her life, she made a striking sacrifice to charity, by selling her darling books for the relief of the poor. Few female authors have been more celebrated in life, or in death more lamented. The collection of her works, in three quarto volumes, con­tains a number of panegyrics, in verse and prose, bestowed on this chaste poetess by the most illustrious characters both of Old and New Spain. The most sensible of the Spanish critics, father Feyjoo, has made this general remark on Juana's composi­tions, ‘that they excel in ease and ele­gance, but are deficient in energy;’ a failing the more remarkable, as the pious enthusiasm of this poetical nun was so [Page 100] great, that she wrote in her own blood a profession of her faith. Let me observe, in answer to her critic, that most of Juana's verses are written on subjects, where poe­tical energy was not to be expected. Many of her poems are occasional compliments to her particular friends; and, in her sacred dramas, the absurd superstitions of her country were sufficient to annihilate all poe­tical sublimity.

In one of her short productions, she de­scribes the injustice of men towards her own sex. I shall close my brief account of this admirable maiden with an imitation of this performance, taking the liberty, how­ever, to omit several stanzas. It is, I think, the most pleasing specimen that I could se­lect from her poetry, and has a particular claim to a place in this Essay, since it may be regarded as a vindication of Old Maids, composed by a virgin of eminence and au­thority.

CHAP. VIII. On some Old Maids of the new World.

SEVERAL of the Spanish writers, in giving an early account of the wes­tern world, which they had just discovered, and were eager to make known, have de­scribed the wantonness and the servility of the American females in colours that are disgraceful to human nature. The rela­tions of Peter Cieca de Leon, in particular, exhibit these indecent yet beautiful savages in the most deplorable point of view, and might almost lead us to imagine, that, rich as the new world appeared in many valuable productions, it never produced an Old Maid. Happily, however, for the honour of the sisterhood, there arose in that country a Spanish historian, who, being descended from a princess of Peru, engaged with pa­triotic ardour in the noble task of vindicat­ing [Page 104] the purity of the Peruvian ladies. The Inca Garcilaso de la Vega opens the fourth book of his Royal Commentaries with a circumstantial account of the virgins devoted to the sun.—"In the false religion of Peru," says the historian, ‘there were many things truly great and respectable; one of these was the profession of perpetual virginity, which the women preserved in many houses of retirement, built for them in many pro­vinces of the empire: and, that it may be understood what women these were, to whom they were devoted, and in what they were exercised, I shall describe them minutely, because the Spanish historians, who treat of this point, pass over it, ac­cording to the vulgar proverb, like a cat over coals ^*.’

This illustrious author then enters into every particular relating to these religious virgins, describing, from his own know­ledge, the exact situation of the building in [Page 105] the city of Cusco, where they had formerly resided: — he contradicts the general opi­nion concerning them, and clearly proves, that they never dwelt or officiated as pries­tesses in the temple of the Sun; on the con­trary, he asserts, that the Incas took parti­cular care that no men should enter into the mansion of these sequestered maidens, and no women into that of the Sun—two dis­tinct buildings, at a considerable distance from each other, which Garcilaso tells us he had seen entire, as they were preserved with particular veneration by the Peruvians, in that memorable conflagration, when, re­volting against their Spanish oppressors, they burnt the city of Cusco.

These virgins, although they did not re­side in the Temple of the Sun, were still considered as the wives of that radiant power, whom they respected as the proge­nitor of their princes. They were all of royal blood—their number was not limited, "but commonly amounted," says the his­torian, "to more than fifteen hundred."

[Page 106]These ingenious maidens employed themselves in working assiduously for their nominal husband, the Sun; and, as he had no immediate occasion for the splendid vest­ments they fashioned for him, it was their custom to present his natural heir, the reigning Inca, with the rich and elegant productions of their manual labour. It is remarkable, that these sequestered virgins were liable to that inhuman punishment which was inflicted on the frail vestals of Rome; and, towards the person who se­duced them from their vows of chastity, the Peruvian law was still more severe than the Roman; it not only took the life of the daring offender himself, but extended to all the unfortunate beings to whom he was re­lated: all his possessions were to be laid desolate, that the earth might retain no traces of a wretch, who had impiously vio­lated a hallowed spouse of the Sun.

But whether the maids of Peru were purer in constitution than the Roman ves­tals, or whether the Peruvian heroes had [Page 107] not, like those of Rome, that audacity of character, which delights to plunge into the deepest guilt, we are assured that Cusco was not inured, like Rome, to the horrid spec­tacle of burying frail virgins alive.— ‘Such was the law,’ says the historian of Peru, ‘but the execution of it was never seen, because no person was ever found to have offended against it.’

The horror and indignation with which the Peruvians regarded those Spanish ruf­fians who profaned this virgin sanctuary, are happily expressed in those spirited verses of Dr. Warton, intitled, The Dying Indian.— The warrior thus exults at his death, in the idea of having avenged the injured maidens of his country.

The community of holy virgins had sub­sisted for some centuries in Peru, before that unfortunate empire became the victim of Spanish avarice, hypocrisy, and oppres­sion: yet those historical sceptics, who de­light to start a doubt on the existence of distant virtue, might intimate, with some plausibility, that this numerous community of nominal virgins never contained, perhaps, a single genuine Old Maid. They might say, that as the reigning Inca had the privi­lege of visiting these sequestered ladies (as he was the acknowledged representative of that radiant luminary to whom they all pro­fessed a connubial obedience) every virgin-wife [Page 109] of the Sun would be eager to consum­mate her marriage, by receiving the caresses of his imperial proxy.

But to invalidate such a sceptical objec­tion against the perpetual virginity of the Peruvian nuns, it may be sufficient to ob­serve, that, besides the fifteen hundred vir­gins who were confined in Cusco, there were many houses of retirement in different provinces of the empire, where the most lovely damsels were sequestered, as the wives or concubines of the reigning Inca. And such was the religious veneration which the fair Peruvians entertained for their prince, that, if we may believe their historian, every beautiful virgin considered it as the height of felicity to be made a captive during life, for the mere chance of contributing to the pleasures of her royal master.

The courteous Garcilaso is so solicitous to vindicate the chastity of the fair Peru­vians, that he informs us, there were other ladies, who did not live in a state of seclu­sion [Page 110] from society, yet were bound by vows of perpetual virginity, which they most faithfully observed. He assures us, that he was personally acquainted with a most re­spectable old lady of this class, who was both a friend and a relation of the princess his mother. Whoever considers this honourable testimony in their favour, will readily, I trust, admit that primitive Old Maids ex­isted in the western world, before it was enlightened by its European invaders.

I cannot quit this part of my subject without paying a just compliment to that immortal, though fictitious, maiden of Peru, the Zilia of Madame de Graffigny.—Who­ever wishes to be more acquainted with the Virgins of the Sun, may find both informa­tion and delight in the Peruvian Letters; a work that, for delicacy of sentiment, and vivacity of description, is inferior, per­haps, to no performance which the literary world has received from the tender and lively imagination of woman.

CHAP. IX. On the Reverence paid to Old Maids by our Northern Ancestors.

OF all people on the globe, those to whom the sisterhood of Old Maids have been most indebted, are undoubtedly our brave progenitors of the North. The manly and generous Goths have acquired a degree of glory, ‘Above all Greek, above all Roman fame,’ by paying the most tender deference to the fair sex, and by setting the highest value on the virtue of chastity. According to the religious creed of these gallant tribes, the virgin who died chaste, like the warrior who fell in battle, was immediately admit­ted, with distinguished honour, into their [Page 112] Valhalla, or Palace of the Dead ^*. Among the Goddesses enumerated in that amusing collection of Gothic Fables, the Edda, we find the two virgins Fylla and Gefione. The office of the latter was to preside over maidens after their death. The Hall of Odin, and the Paradise of Mahomet, bear a striking resemblance to each other. The beatitude which departed warriors were sup­posed to enjoy in these two regions of eter­nal delight, appears to have consisted chiefly in being attended by virgins; and the learn­ed Keysler supposes, that Mahomet was in­debted to the ancient Scythians for this al­luring idea ^†.

[Page 113]The Gothic maid, who persevered in her chastity, had indeed a peculiar claim to dis­tinction in the regions of the dead, since, ac­cording to the popular creed of her country, she was exposed, when living, to trials of the most extraordinary and tremendous nature, arising from the influence of Runic spells. In the singular little poem, in which Odin enumerates his own magical powers, he de­clares, that ‘he is possessed of an incanta­tion, by which he can change the mind of any coy maiden, and bend her entirely to his wishes ^*.’ — ‘And long after the age of Odin,’ says Bartholine, ‘it was be­lieved, that by a certain Runic composi­tion, the mind of any damsel, however averse to love, might be rendered pliant to the entreaties of her admirer—but if the lover, who attempted to form this amorous spell, made any mistake, even in tracing a single letter of the charm, in­stead of inspiring his fair one with love, [Page 114] he deprived her of health, and loaded her with such bodily infirmities, as could be cured only by a more skilful master of this interesting magic, who might disco­ver the errors of the imperfect spell, and remove the evil it produced by a new in­cantation.’

To confirm his account of this popular opinion, my author has quoted a little story, which shews what a severe misfortune it was to a Gothic lady to be beloved by a blockhead.

The sum of the story is this:—Helga, the daughter of Thorfin, was reduced to great infirmity, both of body and mind, by one of these amorous Runic spells, imper­fectly written by a bold but ignorant rustic, who had first vainly sought her in marriage, and afterwards as vainly courted her to an illicit connection. The source of the lady's malady was detected, and she was restored to health by the superior magical talents of Egill the poet.

If the heroes of the North, endued as [Page 115] they were with great bodily strength, pos­sessed also this magic influence over the minds of the fair sex, they certainly deserve our esteem for having used their double powers with admirable moderation and ge­nerosity. The Goths, in particular, were not only attentive to female honour, in re­spect to the women of their own nation; but they paid the highest regard to the chastity of their fair captives, in the most licentious hours of victory and plunder. When the Gothic king Totila made himself master of Rome, he exerted so much care in preserv­ing the women from violation, that, accord­ing to the historian Procopius, ‘not a single virgin, or matron, or widow, was disho­noured ^*.’

Before that event, an Italian, named Ca­laber, had complained to the Gothic mo­narch, that his daughter had been ravished [Page 116] by a powerful chieftain of his army. The magnanimous sovereign doomed the of­fender to death, although the Gothic nobles interceded for him, on account of his mili­tary talents: Totila replied to their inter­cession in a speech truly royal:—the nobles acquiesced in the justice of their king: the distinguished ravisher suffered death for his offence, and his property was given to the maiden whom he had injured ^*.

A tender veneration for the fair sex was a characteristic of the northern barbarians, to which Caesar and Tacitus have borne a more early and a very honourable testimony. The latter has preserved the names of two Northern Old Maids, who appear to have been idolized by their gallant countrymen for their prophetical sagacity. The most eminent of these was Veleda, a virgin who [Page 117] had extensive authority over that warlike tribe the Bructeri, according to the cus­tom of the Germans, says Tacitus, which led them to worship their prophetic fe­males as goddesses. Veleda maintained her dignity with all the circumspection that is proper for a maiden of a charac­ter so important. She resided in a lofty tower, and admitted not to her presence the Roman emissaries who wished to converse with her ^*: yet, sharing the misfortunes of her brave countrymen, this chaste pro­phetess fell a victim to Roman tyranny, and is supposed to have been a captive in Rome during the reign of Vespasian. She had, however, a virgin successor in her religious office, whose name was Ganna; and from this circumstance Mr. Pellontier, in his elaborate history of the Celts, has supposed, with great probability, that in the German [Page 118] tribe of the Bructeri there was a regular succession of prophetical Old Maids ^*.

The active valour, and the enthusiastic gallantry, which the manly barbarians of the North discovered, even in their rudest state, produced, in process of time, that singular and gorgeous monument of Gothic genius, the institution of Chivalry; an institution superior, in some points of view, to every thing that we find in the antiquities of Greece and Rome; an institution peculiarly interesting to the sisterhood of Old Maids, as one of its capital objects was the preser­vation of virginity!

A literary prelate of our church has at­tempted, in a series of letters, to elucidate this noble institution, and to vindicate the glory of the Gothic character:—but he has unluckily made two remarks, which would greatly debase the very character that he wishes to exalt, if they were not, like many of his critical opinions, entirely devoid of all so­lid [Page 119] foundation. As these two remarks relate to virgins, and their chaste Gothic admirers and defenders, I shall dwell a little on both. The learned bishop asserts, that the Grecian hero, or demi-god, and the Gothic knight, were characters completely similar, or, to use his own words, that ‘the Grecian Bac­chus and Hercules were the exact counter­parts of Sir Launcelot and Amadis de Gaule ^*.’ He quotes, indeed, the great authority of Spenser for this comparison; but a slight resemblance in valour and con­quest was sufficient for the purpose of the poet. The critic, attempting to aggrandize the Gothic name, ought, instead of adopt­ing this poetical similitude, to have shewn how the Grecian differed from the more noble and more virtuous Goth. In the great point of generous chastity, the difference was extreme. In the Greek poem, that re­cords the adventures of Bacchus, one of his principal exploits is that of violating a [Page 120] sleeping nymph ^*; and the incontinence of Hercules was so notorious, that (not to men­tion his robbing an Amazonian princess of her girdle) he is said by Herodotus to have cohabited with a female monster in Scythia^†. If the Gothic heroes, Sir Launcelot and Amadis, could start into life, what punish­ment would they think severe enough for a critic, who had rashly dared to call them the exact counterparts of these Grecian ravishers. In fact, no comparison can be more inju­rious; for in the heroic ages, the Grecian hero appears to have taken the most unwar­rantable liberties with every virgin that fell into his power; and the Gothic knight, on the contrary, not only defended the purity of every maid in distress, but was often bound by the most solemn oaths to remain a virgin himself.—The second remark of the learned bishop is equally injurious to the pure and liberal heroes of the Gothic or feudal ages: for it supposes ‘that feudal [Page 121] gallantry was the offspring of the privilege, which the ladies then possessed, of feudal succession ^*;’ or, in other words, that the Gothic knights idolized the fair for their rank and riches, and not for their beauty and their virtue. We can believe, indeed, that such ideas might influence the courtly manners of a priest in the eighteenth century; but a very slight acquaintance with history and romance is sufficient to convince us, that such ideas were never harboured by any true knight, in the purest ages of chivalry.

How far the virtue of the ladies was more respected than their rank, by the gal­lant gentry of this period, we have a strik­ing example in an anecdote related by that indefatigable searcher into the records of chivalry, Mr. de Sainte Palaye.

This curious author informs us, ‘that the Chevalier de la Tour, in his instruc­tions addressed to his daughters, about the year 1371, mentions a knight of his time, who, in passing near the castles in­habited [Page 122] by ladies, affixed a mark of in­famy to the mansion of those, who were not worthy to receive loyal knights pur­suing honour and virtue. He bestowed, at the same time, a just encomium on those whose merits entitled them to pub­lic esteem ^*.’

That insinuating Platonic love, which mingled itself with the manners of chivalry, has often, perhaps, undermined the chastity of a resolute virgin. It would be a curious speculation to consider how far this refined passion has proved a treacherous destroyer of Old Maids, and to trace its prevalence or decline in different ages; but, as I fear it might lead me to swell this little work into a formidable size, I shall content myself with pointing out the subject as worthy the researches of my philosophical brethren; and only remark, that this chaste yet dan­gerous affection was highly fashionable at the court of England in the year 1634, as [Page 123] we learn from one of Howell's familiar let­ters ^*; and that it is ridiculed with much lively spirit in a play of Sir William Dave­nant's, called the Platonic Lovers, repre­sented in 1636.

Let us return to the ages of chivalry.— Notwithstanding the prevalence of this pe­rilous Platonic love in those ages, the spirit of the times gave such fidelity, as well as vigour, to all the generous affections, that I am persuaded many a lovely damsel of that period became a perfect Old Maid, from a faithful attachment to the memory of her gallant deceased admirer. I consider the tender Melesinda, Countess of Tripoli, in Palestine, as a most respectable Old Maid of this class. The romantic Troubadour Geoffrey Rudel became enamoured of her beauty by the mere report of her charms. He crossed the sea to throw himself at her feet. Illness seized him on the voyage, and when they carried him ashore, he was supposed to be dead. The singular passion of the [Page 124] knight touched the tender soul of the Countess. She hastened to visit this gal­lant victim of love. He still breathed— received her compassionate embraces, and expired with expressions of delight on the felicity of dying in her arms. The Coun­tess honoured his remains with a magnifi­cent funeral, and retired to lament him, during her life, in the chaste solitude of the cloister ^*.

Strange as it may sound, the virginity of woman will be often found to have derived its firmest support from the gallantry of man; a paradox sufficiently explained by the preceding story.

As the Greeks were utterly unacquainted with the spirit of gallantry, according to the confession of their learned historian Mr. Mitford ^†, this may be one among other reasons to account for the extreme scarcity of elderly virgins in Greece. For our superior politeness, and that happy mix­ture [Page 125] of frankness and delicacy in our man­ners towards women, by which the modern world is exalted above the ancient, we are certainly indebted to our noble ancestors of the North, who exhibited, in the earliest period of their history, the most generous attention to female honour in general, and a particular veneration for their intelli­gent Old Maids.

CHAP. I. On certain Passages in English Poets concern­ing Virginity.—On the medical Influence ascribed to it.—On various Devices sup­posed to ascertain it, &c.

HAVING examined at large, in a former part of this Essay, the many brilliant compliments which the fathers of the church have paid to virginity, I shall now consider the terms in which the great­est poets of our country have spoken of this delicate and interesting subject. As en­thusiasm is the essential quality both of saints and poets, we might from hence con­jecture, that the genuine Old Maid would [Page 128] be treated with equal reverence by both; but alas! the poetical enthusiast is subject to a certain gay and wanton levity of spirit, which tempts him now and then to fail in the respect that we all owe to the sisterhood. This remark is particularly applicable to Chaucer and Shakespeare. I am happy, however, in being able to add, for the ho­nour of the English muse, that two poets, of equal eminence, have treated virginity with all the modest and tender veneration which we have seen it receiving from so many eloquent saints. It will, I trust, be amusing to compare the language of these four illustrious bards on our favourite subject. — Let us begin with Chaucer. Though he flourished at a time when the convent and chivalry, those two profest guardians of maiden purity, were in fashion, he does not seem to have entertained any very high reverence for a perpetual virgin; at least we find him treating that character with much sarcastic jocularity, in the long [Page 129] and lively prologue with which his Wife of Bath introduces her tale. The following lines seem to indicate that the poet himself possessed a spirit as amorous as that of the buxom lady, in whose character he is speak­ing.

It is remarkable, that the argument against virginity, contained in the last couplet, ap­pears also in a Greek epigram by Paulus Silentiarius, an author of the sixth century, who has described the church of Sancta So­phia at Constantinople in a very singular poem, and who says, in the epigram to which I allude,

Let me observe, for the credit of Chaucer, [Page 131] that he appears desirous of atoning for the freedom with which he had treated virgins of every class, by his verses on that marvellous holy maid St. Caecilia; a composition in which he engaged, if we may believe the following introduction to it, to preserve himself from the perils of licentious indo­lence:

But if Chaucer appears to have failed now and then, in his veneration towards the sisterhood, his transgressions against the chaste community are very trivial, when compared with those of Shakespeare. The [Page 132] Old Maid may applaud herself for posses­sing a charitable spirit, if she perfectly for­gives this saucy prince of dramatic poets for the following passage in his comedy of "All's well that Ends Well."

‘It is not politic in the commonwealth of nature to preserve virginity. Loss of virginity is rational increase; and there was never virgin got, till virginity was first lost. That you were made of, is metal to make virgins. Virginity, by being once lost, may be ten times found; by being ever kept, is ever lost: 'tis too cold a companion; away with it! There's little can be said in't, 'tis against the rule of nature. To speak on the part of vir­ginity, is to accuse your mothers; which is most infallible disobedience. He that hangs himself is a virgin; virginity mur­ders itself; and should be buried in high­ways, out of all sanctified limit, as a des­perate offendress against nature. Virgi­nity breeds mites, much like a cheese; consumes itself to the very paring, and so [Page 133] dies with feeding its own stomach. Be­sides, virginity is peevish, proud, idle, made of self-love, which is the most in­hibited sin in the canon. Keep it not, you cannot chuse but lose by't: out with't! Within ten years it will make it­self two, which is a goodly increase, and the principal itself not much the worse— away with't!—'Tis a commodity will lose the gloss with lying; the longer kept, the less worth:—off with't while 'tis vendible! answer the time of request. Virginity, like an old courtier, wears her cap out of fashion; richly suited, but unsuitable: just like the brooch and the toothpick, which wear not now. Your date is better in your pye and your porridge than in your cheek: and your virginity, your old virginity, is like one of our French withered pears: it looks ill: it eats dryly:—marry, 'tis a wither'd pear: it was formerly better: marry, yet 'tis a wither'd pear ^*.’

[Page 134]Let us observe, as an apology for our ini­mitable poet, that he has given us the pre­ceding sarcasms against the sisterhood as the language of a poltroon.

Since the personal history of Shakespeare, dark as it is, must be still peculiarly inter­esting to every English reader, let me ha­zard a few conjectures concerning it, that were suggested by the passage I have quoted.

Mr. Malone, in his very ingenious and amusing attempt to ascertain the order in which the plays of Shakespeare were writ­ten, has allotted the comedy of "All's Well that Ends Well" to the year 1598. I was at first inclined to suppose, that this elegant and accurate commentator was mis­taken in this article, from an idea, that Shakespeare could not have written such an invective against old virginity in the reign of Elizabeth, who prided herself on being the queen of Old Maids. But, re­flection has led me into a conjecture, which, fanciful as it may seem to others, to me ap­pears [Page 135] to confirm the date assigned by Mr. Malone to this comedy; and to give also additional spirit to the passage, as directly pointed against the queen herself, from an honest indignation of the poet in behalf of his great friend and patron the liberal earl of Southampton. Mr. Malone, in speaking of this nobleman, has observed, ‘that he attended lord Essex on the expedition to Cadiz, in 1597, as a volunteer, and after­wards to Ireland as general of the horse, from which employment he was dismissed by the peremptory orders of Queen Eli­zabeth, who was offended with him for having presumed to marry Miss Eliza­beth Vernon [in 1596] without her ma­jesty's consent.’

Now it appears to me highly probable, that when his patron was thus injuriously treated by the antiquated maiden queen, merely for marrying a lovely young woman, it appears, I say, highly probable, that Shakespeare might at this juncture point all his wit, with a generous acrimony, against [Page 136] that old virginity, which, equivocal as it was, his tyrannical sovereign considered as the highest of her titles. In the following year (1599) when Essex was in confine­ment, Lord Southampton and Lord Rut­land (as we learn from a letter of that pe­riod) ‘came not to the court [at Non-such] but passed their tyme in London, merely in going to plaies every day ^*.’ If the comedy in question made a part of their entertainment, as it probably did, they must have enjoyed, with peculiar relish, this spirited caricatura of old virginity, as high­ly applicable to that malevolent, affected Old Virgin, who had so recently excited their anger and derision.

This conjecture may at first appear in­consistent with the tradition, that Shake­speare wrote The Merry Wives of Windsor in the year 1601, at the request of Eliza­beth; yet it is possible, that her majesty might enjoin our poet to exhibit a carica­tura [Page 137] of love, in the person of Falstaff, to atone for the satirical freedom with which he had delineated old virginity in the speech of Parolles. We must at the same time con­fess, that this imperious Old Maid would have probably corrected the dramatist in a manner much more severe, had she ever suspected him of pointing his satire against her own princely person; although she owed him much indulgence for the sublime compliment which he had formerly paid her, ‘As a fair Vestal throned by the West^*.’

But it is time to quit our uncertain conjectures on this inimitable sovereign of the drama, to speak with more certainty of a poet, who has treated the sisterhood with superior courtesy. I mean the gentle Spenser; who has not only celebrated the virginity of his queen, in the Introduction to his Legend of Chastitie ^†, but in his cha­racter [Page 138] of Belphoebe has given us the fol­lowing beautiful description of this female perfection.

To these lines of Spenser I am tempted to add another portrait of virginity, by his neglected but spirited disciple Phineas Fletcher, who was once called the Spenser of his age. In his allegorical poem, intitled "The Purple Island," after giving a de­scription of Agnia, or Chastitie in the Mar­ried, to use the words of his own illustration, he proceeds thus:

After a long description of this heroine, the poet concludes her character in the fol­lowing stanza:

[Page 142]But of all the poetical compliments that virginity has received, none, I think, are so truly beautiful and sublime, as those which have proceeded from the chaste enthusiasm of Milton. Let the reader judge from the following passages of Comus.—The elder brother, in speaking of his lost sister, says,

Again, the lady herself, in her address to Comus, vindicates, with great spirit, the dignity and power of maiden excellence.

While we admire the transcendant grace and energy of Milton's language, let us re­mark, in justice to an elder and admirable poet of our country, that most of the pre­ceding ideas, which relate to the preroga­tives of the genuine and confirmed virgin, are copied from that neglected but very beautiful pastoral drama, the Faithful Shep­herdess of Fletcher. In this drama, Clorin, a tender and pious nymph, having bu­ried her lover, and being determined to die an Old Maid, resides by his grave in a wood, and is attended by a modest and obedient satyr. The cause of this obe­dience, from such a creature, she expresses in the following speech; to which Milton has paid the highest honour, by more than one imitation of it.

We find in the same drama, that the poet has ingeniously availed himself of the po­pular opinion concerning the medical power of the true maiden. His holy shepherdess, Clorin, says, in describing herself,

The salutary influence ascribed to virgi­nity appears to have been very extensive. [Page 148] In the old poem on Sir Bevis of Southamp­ton, we find that noble knight preserved from his enemy, the dragon, by luckily stumbling into a well of miraculous purity:

But the idea that medical powers belong to the true maiden, though it was cherished by our romances of chivalry, and still more by our monastic legends, did not first arise from modern superstition. We learn from a passage in Aelian, that some of the an­cients admitted even the apparel of a ge­nuine maid among the articles of their ma­teria medica; nor did they suppose the effi­cacy of this singular medicine confined to the human frame: "a horse," says the au­thor [Page 149] I have just mentioned, ‘may be cured of the strangury, if a virgin will unloose her zone, and apply it to his head.’ That dreadful disease of man, which has been supposed, both in England and France, to admit of no cure, but from the touch of the sovereign, might be healed, according to the opinion of the ancients, by the purer hand of virginity. But as these maidenly remedies have long ceased to be fashionable in the medical world, I shall not swell these volumes by enumerating the different ma­ladies to which they were applied, or the various modes of application.

Ceasing, therefore, to consider virginity as a nostrum, let us proceed to remark, that it has sometimes been the patient, as well as the instrument, of quacks. It is one of the most striking foibles in man, that he will often attempt to ascertain, by insuffi­cient tests, many doubtful points, which it would be much wiser to admit entirely upon trust. Hence have arisen many fan­ciful and fallacious devices to prove the in­tegrity [Page 150] of a virgin. Pliny the naturalist informs us, that the stone Gagates of Lycia was used for this curious experiment; and Albertus Magnus is still more explicit in speaking of its wonderful property ^*. A simi­lar power of proving the fidelity of a wife is ascribed to the magnet, in the pleasing little Greek poem on precious stones, which bears the name of Orpheus ^†.

But the most surprising evidence, that ever bore testimony against a frail woman, was a bird called Porphyrio, which is said to have had so delicate a sense of honour, that it put an end to its own existence, if its mistress offended against the laws of chastity ^‡.

On this subject we ought not to omit the [Page 151] serpent kept in a temple of Juno, which disdained to accept any food unless offered by the pure hand of a virgin. This dainty animal is mentioned by Aelian, and alluded to by the poet Propertius, who tells us, in elegant and picturesque verses, of which the following are an imperfect copy,

In the Greek romances we find various trials of virginity circumstantially described. Chariclia, the heroine of Heliodorus, is represented by that elegant and lively writer as passing with intrepid innocence through a fiery ordeal. The lovely maiden, arrayed [Page 152] in a Delphic robe, with her hair dishevelled, and with a countenance expressing religious transport, leaps on a blazing altar, and stands unhurt amid the flames, attracting universal admiration, as more like a Divi­nity than a mortal ^*.

Achilles Tatius has delineated a scene of a similar kind, still more picturesque. He tells us, that in a grove belonging to Diana there was a cave of peculiar sanctity devoted to Pan. Just within the portal of this cave, a miraculous pipe was suspended, formed of those reeds into which the nymph Syrinx was metamorphosed, when she fled from the wanton pursuit of the rustic God.

A wondrous power resided in this pipe, and rendered it an unquestionable test of maiden innocence. Whenever a true vir­gin entered the cave, sounds of the sweetest melody proceeded from this instrument; but if one who had lost her purity was rash enough to approach it, the pipe continued [Page 153] silent, and, instead of music, a groan of la­mentation was sent forth from the cave.

Leucippe, the heroine of Tatius, being accused of impurity, is brought to ascertain either her guilt or innocence by this awful experiment. She is surrounded by soli­citous spectators: her malignant accuser, her anxious father, and her lover, suffering still stronger agitation—confident, indeed, in the virtue of his mistress, yet trembling lest she might suffer from the wantonness of Pan. Thus attended, the virgin, with a meek and modest, yet intrepid dignity, de­scends into the cave. What a group for the pencil! New pictures succeed.—The doors of the cave now close upon her. What a moment of universal anxiety!— The pipe begins to sound with peculiar sweetness—the doors unfold, and the virgin ascends to honour and to love. What a scene of triumph and ecstacy for her father and her future husband!

In the same romance we have another trial of virgin purity, intitled, "The Trial of [Page 154] the Stygian Fountain." The ceremonial of it is thus described:—A maiden accused of impurity swears that the accusation is false. Her oath is inscribed on a small tablet, and, with this suspended to her neck, she descends into the fountain. If she has sworn falsely, the water begins to swell, and rises till, reaching her neck, it overwhelms the tablet; but, if she is a genuine maid, the placid water continues below her knee, and the triumphant virgin, having remained her appointed time in the fountain, is led out of it by the applauding priest ^*.

In the romance, which bears the name of the learned bishop Eustathius, a similar trial occurs. That amusing author de­scribes a temple of Diana, in which was a golden statue of the Goddess bending her bow; at her feet flowed a murmuring fountain, by which the chaste Divinity used to prove the innocence of her votaries. The suspected virgin was conducted into [Page 155] this mysterious water with a crown of laurel on her head. If she was really pure, the Goddess did not extend her bow, the water remained calm, and the maiden passed qui­etly through it, retaining her laurel crown on her head; but if (to copy the expression of Eustathius) the breath of Venus had ex­tinguished her virgin lamp, Diana directed her bow against the pretended virgin, and seemed to aim at her head. The af­frighted culprit hid herself in the stream to avoid the shaft, and her laurel wreath was washed off by the murmuring water ^*.

Incidents of this kind seem to belong to romance; yet the learned editor of Eusta­thius, in a note to this story, has produced a similar anecdote from a grave historian. He quotes a passage from an unpublished Greek chronicle of Constantinople, which informs us, that a statue of Venus in that city had this formidable attribute of disco­vering the foibles of the fair: it ascertained [Page 156] the purity of married women and of virgins, both rich and poor; but at last, says the chronicle, the sister of Justin's wife de­stroyed the statue for having detected her frailty ^*.

The only remains of these superstitious and fantastic trials of virginity, that have descended to our more refined and enlight­ened age, appear in the common jest of try­ing to rekindle by the breath an extinguished candle. Pasquier, the learned French an­tiquarian, has written a chapter on this sportive custom: he does not, indeed, at­tempt to discover its origin, but gravely takes occasion from the idea to assert the despicable emptiness of all animal pleasure, and to affirm, on the authority of Tertul­lian, that the happiness of woman consists in her virginity ^†.

I shall close this miscellaneous chapter by acquainting the chaste sisterhood with many vain attempts that I have made to [Page 157] elucidate a very mysterious proverb, by which their whole order is preposterously condemned to a very strange and unworthy destiny; I mean the proverb, which says, that Old Maids are doomed ‘to lead apes in hell.’ After consulting the pro­foundest antiquarians of our own country, and some upon the continent, I am still un­able to ascertain the origin of this remark­able saying. One of my ingenious friends is convinced that it was invented by the Monks, to allure opulent females into the cloister, by teaching them, that if they did not become the spouses either of man or God, they must expect to be united, in a future world, to the most impertinent and disgusting companion. For my own part, I am inclined to rank an idea so injurious to my fair friends among the dismal and despicable superstitions of Aegypt, as I find a passage in Hermes Trismegistus, which says, that those who die childless are, im­mediately after their death, tormented by [Page 158] demons ^*. I must confess, however, that from the very high respect which the Aegyptians entertained for the ape, the demons intended by Trismegistus could hardly be of that figure. Indeed, the af­fectionate adoration which apes have some­times received, as we learn from the pious poet Prudentius ^†, has at times led me to conjecture, that the saying in question might have arisen in some country where it bore a very different meaning from what we annex to it at present; where this destiny of the ancient virgin was intended, not as the punishment, but the reward of her continence.

I do not recollect to have seen the expres­sion of leading apes in any English author before Shirley the dramatic poet. In his comedy, called The School of Compli­ment, printed in 1637, there is a scene, in [Page 159] which, to humour the madness of Infor­tunio, the several characters on the stage pretend to be damned. Delia, among the rest, declares, that ‘she was damned for being a stale virgin, and that her pu­nishment was to lead apes in hell.’

A living poet of our country seems to have wished to make the sisterhood amends for the insult of this injurious proverb, by assigning a place to Old Maids in his poe­tical elysium. As the friend and advocate of the chaste community, I transcribe with singular pleasure the following verses, in which their neglected merits are so libe­rally distinguished.

CHAP. II. Containing the Discussion of a very delicate and important Question.

AS good fortune has thrown into my hands a manuscript oration on a topic highly interesting to the sisterhood, I shall insert it in this chapter; and, to gra­tify, to the utmost of my power, the curio­sity of my fair readers, I shall introduce it by a little history of the incidents which have enabled me to enrich my work with so singular an embellishment.

A few years ago I had the happiness of ranking among my friends a gentleman of the most amiable singularity. He was a baronet of an ancient family, and very am­ple possessions, in the North of England. His father, who had all the convivial spirit so prevalent in that part of our island, paid a very heavy tax for his bacchanalian en­joyments, [Page 162] in suffering the frequent visits of an excruciating gout, and in dying at last a martyr of the bottle. My friend Sir Hi­lary Highman had all the natural vivacity of his father; he loved pleasure as well, but, warned by so striking an example, he re­solved to pursue it, though with equal ar­dour, yet in paths of less peril.

While his father was yet living, he disco­vered in his own frame, young as it was, some traces of that formidable distemper, to which parental intemperance had given him too good a title. This tendency he wisely determined to counteract, by a steady adherence to the most simple diet. Yet, as he was unwilling to irritate the growing ill-humour of a parent, whom he tenderly regarded, he engaged not in this degenerate regimen, till he had taken leave of the jo­vial, testy, and crippled old gentleman, to embark in a favourite project of visiting the ruins of Greece. An opposite conduct might have endangered his future fortune; as the impetuous old toper detested the [Page 163] character of a milksop, and would not, per­haps, have scrupled to disinherit a son, merely for renouncing that festive poison, which had destroyed his own temper, and was rapidly preying on the dregs of his ex­hausted life. My friend, indeed, when he set out on his travels, relying on the strength of his father's constitution, enter­tained a very lively hope of amusing the old knight, on his return, with a history of his adventures. But the fates deter­mined otherwise. A long scene of election festivity hurried this hearty friend of Bac­chus to the grave; and the temperate Sir Hilary was recalled from the ruins of Athens, to take possession of an estate large enough to furnish every kind of luxury to an attic imagination. Abstemious as he was, Sir Hilary was a genuine disciple of Epicurus; he considered pleasure as the universal aim of every sensible being; but the pleasure he courted was only such as arises from the indulgence of an elegant fancy and a benevolent heart. He was [Page 164] particularly fond of female society; and his passions were vehement, though tender; a Grecian lady, of exquisite beauty and ac­complishments, inflamed them to the high­est degree, and he had been privately mar­ried to her many months, when the intelli­gence arrived which recalled him to his country. The delights arising from his new connection, and the general state of his father's ruined health and temper, allowed him not to feel any great poignancy or grief, though he frequently spoke of the de­parted old gentleman with a grateful and tender regret. Sir Hilary was far from shewing any eagerness to take possession of the princely opulence which had now de­volved to him. His affectionate attention to his lovely Greek, rendered his travels homeward particularly slow. This fair part­ner of his fortune was advanced in preg­nancy. Her husband would have kindly waited the event on the coast of Asia Mi­nor, of which she was a native; but it was settled, at the request of the lady, that they [Page 165] should proceed on their way to England as far as Rome, where she had the happiness of presenting to Sir Hilary two lovely boys, not inferior to the twin founders of the im­perial city. The exulting mother soon re­covered her strength with increasing loveli­ness; and the whole party arrived, with chequered sensations of joy and sorrow, at the paternal seat of Sir Hilary. The young baronet paid all decent honours to the me­mory of his father, and handsomely provid­ed for a few old domestics, who had shared both the joviality and the infirmities of their late master. He soon began to new-model his house, and to regulate his establishment. In both it was his chief aim to unite ele­gance with comfort, and gaiety with tem­perance. He built a very spacious library, with an adjoining saloon; the latter was well furnished with a few admirable pic­tures, and the former completely enriched with books, busts, and statues. Sir Hilary had imbibed very early an extreme passion for Grecian literature, which the incidents [Page 166] of his life had tended to increase. He parti­cularly admired that cast of conversation which used to form the most delightful part of an ancient attic entertainment, and he often wished to substitute something of this nature in the room of those dull or disgust­ing topics of discourse, which produce such a heavy effect in the rural visits of our English gentry. He was a hearty friend to every harmless, social pleasure; but he wished to give a little tincture of literary refine­ment to his convivial neighbourhood. This was no easy task; yet Sir Hilary accom­plished it: and indeed there is hardly any enterprize too hard for a man, who pos­sessed, as he did, engaging manners with warm philanthropy, and a very abundant portion of opulence and wit. Events, how­ever, happened luckily to facilitate his de­sign. On his extensive estate there were two livings of considerable value; they had been occupied by two orthodox topers, pro­moted by the old baronet for their uniform adherence to the bottle. These honest di­vines [Page 167] had drank so deeply together to the memory of the good old knight, that they soon finished their last bumper on earth, and slept in peace with their patron. Sir Hilary seized, with great pleasure, this op­portunity of settling in his neighbourhood two gentlemen whose habits of life were congenial with his own. He was happy in bestowing ease and independence on two liberal men, with whom he had contracted an intimacy at college, and who had been the associates of his early studies. They were persons of equal integrity, but of dif­ferent characters. Literature was the pas­sion of each; but the first valued learning only as it led him to the serious practice of virtue; the second loved it as the most pleasing exercise of an active and playful spirit. Opposite as they were in their dis­positions, they had a perfect esteem for each other, and for the amiable patron, who con­sidered their society as one of the highest gratifications that propitious fortune had bestowed upon him. These clerical friends [Page 168] were both in the prime of life; and, as they were both unmarried, they were particu­larly caressed by the families around them. By the aid of these gentlemen, with a third clergyman, who resided under his roof as a domestic chaplain, and his assistant in the education of his children, Sir Hilary com­menced an institution, which contributed not a little to the amusement of himself and his acquaintance. At the full of every moon, it was his custom to give a very elegant en­tertainment to the gentry of his neighbour­hood. On these days, in the interval be­tween tea and supper, orations were read or spoken in the spacious library, on a subject proposed at the preceding assembly. It was the banquet of Plato, an author in whom Sir Hilary delighted, that first inspired him with this idea: and in these English dia­logues the moral spirit of that sublime Grecian was sometimes very happily co­pied, without any mixture of the gross inde­cency, with which the most engaging of his productions is miserably disgraced. [Page 169] Sir Hilary did not confine his entertainment to prosaic discourses; but professed himself equally obliged to those guests, who pro­duced either a prose dissertation, or a poeti­cal jeu d'esprit on the topic of the day. The verses were deposited on a large li­brary table, and usually read by Sir Hi­lary's secretary, who acted as clerk to the assembly, before the orations began; which were generally delivered by their respective authors, and sometimes without any pre­meditation. Extempore verses, composed upon the spot, were also kindly received; and if thrown on the table while the assem­bly was sitting, they were read by the clerk, when the orations were closed, as a kind of epilogue to the amusements of the day.

I happened to meet my old acquaintance Sir Hilary in London, at a time when I was greatly reduced by a severe and lingering illness. He kindly insisted on my passing a few weeks with him at his country seat, in the friendly hope of contributing to the re­covery of my health, affirming, with his [Page 170] usual pleasantry, that one of his attic ban­quets would prove to me a nervous cordial; and conduce, more than the most fashion­able medicines, to the revival of a literary invalid. My friend's institution was now indeed in a very flourishing state. Sir Hi­lary had, by degrees, diffused around his neighbourhood a spirit of amicable and ele­gant emulation. He had particularly ca­ressed and animated the young people in the genteel families around him, and in the course of a few years he had formed, in his assembly, a little band of orators, whom Athens herself might have listened to with pleasure. The ladies, though they never so far forgot the delicacy of their sex as to declaim in these meetings, yet contributed not a little to the general amusement, by various compositions.

As to myself, I wished in vain for powers to take an active part in the pleasing cere­mony of the place; but my health was still so weak, that I dared not venture on any kind of mental exertion. I had, however, [Page 171] before this period, conceived the first idea of my present work, and, wishing to derive all the advantages I could from this accom­plished society, I requested my friend Sir Hilary to propose the following question as a subject of debate in one of his assemblies: — ‘Which is the more eligible for a wife, a Widow, or an Old Maid?’ —My lively friend very chearfully acquiesced in my pro­posal; and the topic gave birth to much innocent pleasantry, and to some serious ar­gument. I heartily wish it were in my power to enrich these volumes with many of the pieces, both in prose and rhyme, that were produced on this occasion; but all that I was allowed to treasure up, amounts only to three epigrams, and a single oration. It is, however, the very oration that I was most solicitous to obtain; for, alas! with grief I confess, that although seven orators ha­rangued upon the question, one alone had generosity enough to argue on the side of the neglected sisterhood; with what powers of rhetoric, my reader will very soon have [Page 172] the opportunity of judging. I shall first produce the poetical jeux d'esprit. The first of the three following epigrams was found, with other pieces of poetry, on the library table, and were recited, according to the ceremonial I have mentioned, before the orations began; the others were literally produced extempore, and of course were not read till the speeches were closed; but as they arose from the preceding epigram, I shall here insert them united.

There were other verses recited, of a more serious cast. Some juvenile bards wandered a little from the subject; and a young Oxonian forgot the respect due to both parties concerned in the question; for, instead of deciding the point in debate, he satirized both the Widow and the Old Maid with much sarcastic wit, and con­cluded with a most animated panegyric on a blooming girl of eighteen.

More than one poet, however, pleaded the cause of the Widow with energy and pa­thos; but the frail nymphs of Parnassus were so unfriendly to the claims of the el­derly virgin sisterhood, that no bard ap­peared to sing decidedly in favour of the poor Old Maid: nor will this circum­stance be thought surprising, when we re­collect, [Page 175] that among the orators (a more rea­sonable set of men than the sportive sons of Apollo) the Old Maiden found only a single advocate. Of the six speakers who argued with vehemence for the Widow, the most amusing was a lively and honest fox-hunter, not remarkable for erudition, but possessed of strong mental powers in a robust consti­tution, and happy in a rich vein of original humour. This gentleman was actually in chace of a young, opulent, and lovely Wi­dow. He gloried in this pursuit, and, being animated with the fairest prospect of success, he spoke with peculiar force and felicity on the topic of the day. I must confess, that he sometimes threw the au­dience into a kind of panic, by appearing to gallop very fast towards the precipice of indecency; but whenever he found him­self on the brink of it, he rapidly made so delicate and dexterous a turn, that he con­verted the terrors of the company into ease, admiration, and good-humour.

The debate on this side of the question [Page 176] was closed by a speaker of an opposite cha­racter. He was a gentleman of extensive learning and a grave deportment, yet easy in his address and forcible in his elocution. He gave us a serious yet entertaining his­tory of widowhood, and enumerated the happy events, and the illustrious characters, to which the second marriage of some emi­nent Widows had given birth. When his peroration was ended, which, being tender and pathetic, formed a pleasing contrast to the humorous arguments of his prede­cessor, a gentleman arose, who possessed, with a very graceful person, an uncommon archness of countenance; and in a voice pe­culiarly melodious, he delivered the fol­lowing oration:

I will not presume to comment on the precéding oration; but merely add, that the ecclesiastical author, from whom the inge­nious speaker has cited a most remarkable anecdote, is St. Jerom. It is contained in one of his epistles addressed to a Widow, whose name was Ageruchia. I shall tran­scribe the words of the saint at the bottom of the page ^*, and close this chapter by re­turning thanks to my eloquent friend, for the permission to print his speech, and by expressing a cordial wish, that my readers [Page 197] may bestow on it as much favour and ap­plause, as it received from the amicable and polite assembly in which it was delivered.

CHAP. III. The concluding Chapter of the Essay, contain­ing a Sermon to Old Maids, delivered in a Dream.

THE most sanguine projector that ever wasted his fortune and his brains in the smoke of expectation, never thought on the golden crown of all his la­bours with more assiduity and hope, than I have thought on the amusement and advan­tage, which, I trust, will accrue to the com­munity of Old Maids from this elaborate Essay. The good spinsters have frequently engrossed me sleeping as well as waking. In proof of this affectionate assertion, I shall close my work with a circumstantial account of a very singular vision, which my extreme solicitude for their interest most certainly produced.

I had been reading, in a hot summer's [Page 199] day, a little too soon after dinner, one of the Greek homilies on virginity; when my at­tention gradually diminished, and sleep im­perceptibly stole upon me. I found my­self transported on a sudden from my own narrow study, and a little circle of dingy folios, to the middle of a large and magni­ficent apartment. It appeared to be the refectory of a very populous convent: at the upper end of it were two doors; the one, which stood open, discovered to me a very elegant and extensive chapel; the other, as I found in the sequel, led into a set of apartments appropriated to the lady abbess of this chaste but unfettered society. I was soon informed, by a group of cour­teous females, who were walking for the purposes of exercise and conversation in this spacious hall, that the ample and sump­tuous fabric had been raised by the contri­bution of many elderly virgins, all of libe­ral birth and education, though unequal in their fortunes, who, forming themselves into a very numerous yet friendly commu­nity, [Page 200] dwell together with quiet industry and social content.

"We are governed," said a kind and communicative sister of the house (who, with a disposition that appeared to me pe­culiarly angelical in an ancient virgin, ex­pressed more eagerness to satisfy my curio­sity than her own) ‘we are governed by a president of our own sex, who is annually elected by a majority of our sisterhood; but though we formally exert the privi­lege of election, we have never had but one and the same governess; for the lady who first planned, and has since di­rected, our society, is constantly rechosen into the delicate and important office, which she discharges to the satisfaction of all with whom she is connected.’ "How, madam," I exclaimed, ‘how may I obtain the happiness of beholding a personage so extraordinary?’ ‘You will probably behold her very soon,’ replied my kind informer, ‘returning into this sa­loon from our adjoining chapel. You [Page 201] may distinguish,’ she continued, ‘thro' that open door, a distant party engaged about the altar; among them you may just discern our president Seraphina, with her two favourite assistants, Mele­sinda and Fuscina. They are employed in a melancholy yet pleasing office, in decorating the tomb of an amiable old divine, who formed a part of our house­hold, and was, indeed, to have appeared in the character of our pastor; but as, from motives of maidenly discretion, we chose the good man in a very advanced and infirm period of life, he has never been able to ascend the pulpit prepared for him. We were afraid of wounding both him and ourselves, by appointing any substitute for him, while we could hope for his recovery, and have there­fore subsisted hitherto without any acting minister, except one selected from our­selves, for the mere purpose of reading the chapel service of the day; for we are very punctual in our daily devotions; and, [Page 202] now the good old man is departed, our president will probably soon chuse for us a preacher, who may fill more effectually the department of the deceased.’ My pulse quickened as she spoke; but the mingled sentiments of surprise, joy, and ambition, rendered me unable to frame an immediate reply. Never did the hot peri­cranium of any dean or provost so itch and burn for an expected mitre, as mine did at this moment for a certain square cap of white velvet, adorned with a silver tassel, which now glittered in my view. It was suspended to the wall of the saloon, at the centre of the dining-table; and my good-natured informer, who observed with what an inquiring eye I surveyed it, very kindly told me, it was the work of their fair presi­dent, prepared as a mark of affectionate distinction for the pastor of this maiden flock. While this shining object of my chaste ambition still attracted my eyes, and I was still listening to several interesting little anecdotes concerning it, the lady ab­bess [Page 203] and her attendants began to move to­wards me. My heart fluttered as they ad­vanced. Though a considerable space was yet between us, I was struck with a trem­bling and speechless awe, by the air of com­placent grandeur which appeared in the form and countenance of Seraphina. Ne­ver did a young volunteer, presented for the first time to the imperial Catherine of Russia, feel a more ardent, unutterable de­sire to serve his fair sovereign in the field or the cabinet, than I felt to recommend my­self to the very different favours of this dignified lady. But how is it possible, thought I to myself, as she was approach­ing, to make her suddenly my patroness? Her character, and all her features, assure me, that she is utterly devoid of ambition and desire, those quick and powerful springs, by the means of which the frater­nity of eloquent and able ministers have so often and so rapidly been exalted by the queens and abbesses of their respective countries. But there is a nobler passion, [Page 204] my heart inwardly said to itself, that, by actuating both of us alike, may facilitate my success with Seraphina; and this is our mutual zeal for the felicity of her fellow-maidens. Could this fair president of au­tumnal virgins be made acquainted with all that I have thought, and all that I have written, in behalf of Old Maids—but here's my difficulty and distress; how can I explain to her, in a few minutes, the long labours of my life?—While these ideas were passing, with confused rapidity, in my mind, Seraphina advanced very near to me. The mild dignity of her aspect extorted from me a bow of affectionate admiration. I made an imperfect effort to tell her so; but, before I could utter a single sentence to recommend myself, as I wished, to her favour, she saluted me by my name, to my infinite astonishment; and proceeded to in­form me, with a graceful and engaging fa­miliarity, that the departed minister was one of my old friends, who had given her a complete idea both of my person and my [Page 205] character, expressing a wish on his death-bed, in the most flattering terms, that I might be chosen to succeed him in the pas­toral care of this sisterhood. ‘We are no strangers,’ continued the polite Sera­phina, ‘to the benevolent cast of your stu­dies, and we look with peculiar gratitude on a person, whose pen has been long employed, with a very singular humanity, to amuse, to instruct, and, I may say, to honour, a certain class of females, whom the unthinking world have incessantly wounded with derision or neglect. It is possible, Sir,’ she added, ‘that your book, to which I allude, however en­riched and adorned with learning and with fancy, with reason and with wit; it is possible, I say, that this book may not find more kindness from the world, than what has hitherto attended the degraded order of beings to whom it is so generously devoted. But, what­ever fate may attend your work, whose merits have been fully explained to us, [Page 206] we shall at least enjoy the happiness of securing you from many of those humi­liating personal evils, to which the great­est authors have been exposed, if you will allow us to appoint you the preacher of our chapel.’

Seraphina paused for my reply; but my head and heart were too full to allow me the use of speech in the first moments of my surprise and exultation. I made her the profoundest reverence, that a body not per­fectly elastic could accomplish. It was as low as the bow of a new-created bishop to his earthly maker, yet, I fear, it was not so much the genuine movement of humility, as of pride.

Seraphina seemed to read all my senti­ments, and, to relieve me from the perplex­ing difficulty of putting my thanks into proper words, she thus pursued her dis­course.

‘It is now the usual hour of our morn­ing prayers: will you allow me, Sir, the pleasure of introducing you to your new [Page 207] office? You will find the books of our chapel in order; and I doubt not but, as you have long meditated on the good and evil of our single state, you can oblige us, on the instant, with a sermon adapted to our sequestered condition.’ —Much as I was elated by the flattering appointment, I felt myself embarrassed by this proposal. In truth, I was utterly unprepared; and wished to excuse myself on the score of my dress, thinking it improper to appear as the pastor of these elegant, though ancient maidens, in a rusty black coat, which time and snuff had conspired to disfigure; but casting such a downward glance on my own person, as every man does, who means to ground an apology on his habit, I was astonished to find myself arrayed in a new cassock. My amazement increased, on perceiving that my right hand, which held a clean cambrick handkerchief, was decorated with a magni­ficent ring, not of diamond indeed, but formed by a single sapphire of uncommon magnitude and lustre. Without disturbing [Page 208] my brain to account for my acquisition of this surprising ornament, I bowed again to the fair president, and followed her towards the chapel. My ring had acted as a talis­man to dispel my embarrassment, and I ad­vanced with such an air of confidence, as I have formerly observed in a courtly preacher, apparently inspired, not indeed by the inward light of the soul, but by the radiance beaming from his own little finger.

We now entered the chapel: it was a structure of exquisite proportions, in which elegance and simplicity were most happily united. The walls were covered with a stucco of very pale dove-colour, enrich­ed with decorations of white marble, consist­ing chiefly of emblematic figures, expres­sive of innocence and peace. The only painting which this edifice contained, was of glass; it formed the rich and magnifi­cent window, to which the chapel was in­debted for all the light it received. The effect of this window was truly celestial; not [Page 209] only from the happy disposition of that soft and solemn radiance which it diffused over the building, but from the transcendent beauty of the figures with which it was en­riched. Chastity was here represented in a meek yet firm position, supported by Tem­perance and Fortitude, and paying a kind of modest homage to Charity and Faith. The two latter were raised on a slight elevation, and, being united by a posture of sisterly endearment, formed the pyramidical point in this enchanting group. The distinct cha­racter of every personage was so exquisitely conceived, and so forcibly expressed; the connection of all was rendered so happily visible by their attention to each other, that no spectator could behold this little assembly of virtues, without feeling a tender reve­rence for each, and without wishing to be­come the perfect votary of all.

While I gazed on this enchanting pic­ture, the bell began to toll: the numerous sisterhod came flocking to their seats: I ad­vanced to the reading desk: I adjusted the [Page 210] books: I went through the service: and now, with a heart that began to palpitate afresh, I ascended the pulpit. A multitude of curious and piercing eyes flashed upon me: but my embarrassment was a little re­lieved by a hymn of the divinest melody, most admirably sung by a few sisters of the house. In the time which this soothing ce­remony allowed me to collect my hurried spirits, it struck me, that the unknown power to whom I was indebted for my cas­sock and my ring, might have happily sup­plied me with a supernatural sermon. In this hope I now searched my pockets, but, to my utter disappointment, I could find only a small copy of the Old Testament. In confusion and distress, I turned hastily to such passages, as I thought might befriend me on the present occasion. My eye sud­denly fastened on a text that pleased me: I closed the volume; fat in profound thought for a few minutes; then rose, with inward exultation, and delivered the following dis­course.

In descending from the pulpit I observed, with an honest pride, the effect of my dis­course in the features of the sisterhood. Several of them pressed around me to ut­ter their compliments on the occasion; while others contrived to compliment their preacher in a manner still more engaging, by discovering to me, without affectation, the traces of those subsiding tears, which I had drawn from my tender audience, not by the real excellence of my sermon, but by the cordial fervour and apparent sincerity of my zeal. In truth, I had preached to them from the bottom of a feeling and benevo­lent heart; and I had raised so forcibly before my own eyes the successive images which I presented to them, that, in deliver­ing [Page 232] my sermon, I was myself affected even to tears, and obliged to pause, more than once, to recover the powers of my suspended voice.—The lady Seraphina, who spoke to me, as president, in the name of the com­munity, had begun to honour me with a very delicate encomium, but checked her­self on a sudden; and, observing that I had exhausted myself to such a degree that I was ready to faint, she hastily dispatched the good Melesinda for a glass of hartshorn and water. I was still within the chapel; for, perceiving myself in some danger of falling, I had supported my weak and emaciated body against a pillar. The compassionate lady abbess held one of my hands, which answered the honest pressure of her gene­rous anxiety. Her favourite Fuscina con­tinued, by her direction, to chase my tem­ples till the hartshorn arrived. I drank it with some difficulty, and, regaining a little portion of strength, I said to my charitable assistants, in a feeble and broken voice, ‘Be not alarmed, my good sisters! you [Page 233] see before you a frail and feverish mor­tal, whose trembling nerves have but too often refused to second and support the honest ardour of his soul. Accept, how­ever, my good intention, and allow me to live and die in your service!’ The attentive lady abbess endeavoured to raise and comfort me with the most friendly and endearing expressions. She now conducted me, in the tenderest manner, into her own private apartment. She seated me on a most comfortable sopha, that filled a large recess in an elegant and spacious parlour. The room was decorated with many beautiful works, both of the needle and the pencil; but alas! I was unable to contemplate their respective beauties, for the shades of death appeared now to be gathering very fast around me. The kind solicitude of Seraphina re­doubled: she discovered the most fervent desire to restore my health. ‘Excellent lady!’ I exclaimed, with all the little voice that I could raise, ‘disquiet not thy tender bosom with a vain expectation!—I [Page 234] perceive that my last moment is near, and I ought not to regret it, since I have obtained and enjoyed the great object of my ambition, the affectionate favour of your sisterhood. Yet there is one thing that I have still to wish, and you alone can indulge me.’—‘O name it! name it!’ said the tender abbess, pressing my cold hand, and wetting it with her tears. "Yes, madam," I replied, ‘I will lay before you all the little weaknesses of a heart that has much to hope, and little to fear, from a being so benevolent and gentle as you are. I am a vain creature; but your tenderness will call my vanity a virtue. Indeed I covet not the most envied distinction; I sigh not for pre-eminence in learning, genius, or wit: yet, I confess to you, I wish with great fervour to attract the notice of posterity; I wish, that as long as my name endures, it may be honoured with the affectionate remembrance of my fellow-creatures, and particularly with the tender esteem [Page 235] of your sisterhood.’ — ‘It must, it must,’ said the good abbess, sobbing. — "O!" replied I, enfolding one of her hands within mine, ‘secure to me this de­lightful distinction! you have the power of doing so:—give me your promise, that I shall be buried in your chapel, under a simple slab of white marble, with this inscription; ‘Here lies --- ---- The Friend and Pastor of Old Maids.’’ The kind abbess assented, and I thus con­tinued:— ‘I have yet another request: pray forgive the whimsies of a fond, and, perhaps, foolish old man! — I conjure you, let me not be removed from this chamber, till the day of my interment!— place me in my coffin just as I am, in this my pastoral habit! and, as I confess [Page 236] I have a secret horror of being buried alive, pray let some of your good sisters be so charitable as to watch my body, during nine days at least, after my de­cease!’

The tender Seraphina continued to sig­nify her perfect acquiescence in all my de­sires; not by distinct words, indeed, but a series of the most expressive and endearing gestures. —"Enough! enough!" I ex­claimed, in a sepulchral tone; and, bestow­ing upon her a benediction but half articu­lated, I with difficulty raised her unresisting hand to my clammy lips, then gently laid it on my own throbbing heart, and, having squeezed it against my bosom in a strong convulsive pressure, expired.

My spirit, however, remained fluttering and invisible in the chamber, and seemed to contemplate, with a sort of seraphic pride, the chaste, weeping abbess, and my own lifeless body. The excellent Sera­phina would not quit the corpse for a single moment, till she was thoroughly persuaded [Page 237] that the breath of the lamented pastor was departed from him for ever. She then gave such orders as were necessary for the li­teral accomplishment of my request. She permitted select parties of the kind and cu­rious sisterhood to enter the apartment by turns, and indulge themselves in contem­plating the countenance of their departed friend. My spirit was highly flattered and entertained by their various comments upon it, and by their many quick vicissitudes of maidenly curiosity and regret. At length a simple but elegant coffin was brought to the sopha on which I died. The body, without any change of dress, was deposited within it; but the coffin remained open. The admirable lady abbess herself deter­mined to set the community an example of tender and generous attachment. She did me the unusual honour of watching the body the first night, attended by her two favourite sisters. In the evening of the subsequent day, it happened that Melesinda and Fus­cina were left alone in this office. They [Page 238] endeavoured to amuse each other by entering into a very curious and diverting debate on my character and constitution: but my mo­desty will not allow me to repeat the many flattering things which were uttered on this occasion. At last, when they had tho­roughly discussed all my qualities— ‘I sin­cerely regret this good man,’ said the friendly Fuscina, ‘as the world contains but few such advocates for our sisterhood: but don't you think, my dear Melesinda, that we may ground some little hope of his revival, on his singular request of be­ing attended nine days?—Suppose he should be only in a trance! — Good God!’ continued the kind-hearted crea­ture, ‘I would give the world to restore him.’

As she uttered these words, she cast a piercing eye on my countenance, and, wet­ting the tip of her fingers with a little bot­tle of lavender-water, which she held in her left hand, she began to rub my temples with an eager anxiety, yet with some degree of [Page 239] that awe and trepidation which the dead are apt to inspire.

In a few moments she exclaimed, ‘Look! look! my dear Melesinda! am I mistaken? or may we not perceive a little dawn of colour on his cheek?’ — Her benevolent heart beat high with expecta­tion; and, seizing my hand, she said aloud, with the commanding, ecstatic air of a bene­ficent enchantress — ‘O thou gentle pas­tor, revive, and live for ever! not only for us, but for every future Old Maid!’ —She seemed to speak with a prophetic transport; and at the same time squeezed my hand with such forcible pressure, that I awaked with mingled sensations of pain and exultation.

I looked wistfully around, and was sur­prised to find, instead of a kind and honest old maiden on each side of me, St. Basil's Discourse on Virginity at my left hand, and towards the right, an exhausted bottle of port.

[Page 240]In the first moments that I could clearly recollect all the particulars of my vision, I threw them upon paper, and resolved to make them serve me as the close of my elaborate Essay, in the hope, that good Old Maidens, who are said to delight in visions, may believe, like the honest folks in Homer, that they descend from heaven.

Whether I am really indebted to my good angel, or not, for this unexpected con­clusion of my work, I shall now leave the candid critics of either sex to decide.— Frank and gentle spirits, who are willing to be pleased! let me request and advise you to consider this chequered production with that uniform good-nature and satisfaction, which the author has endeavoured to pro­mote, and sincerely wishes you to preserve, not only through these pages, but in turn­ing over every new leaf of your separate lives, whatever you may chance to find its con­tents!—Let me caution you against one pos­sible error in your judgment of this per­formance! Do not, I entreat you, suppose [Page 241] that these little volumes were written with an idle ambition of trying what supposed wit and learning could produce on a subject not very promising!—Do not, I conjure you, rank my Essay on Old Maids with the fa­mous Meditation on a Broomstick!—I flat­ter myself it is far superior to that celebrated production in the merits of the aim pro­posed, though not in those of execution. I am willing to hope that my design will be thought to possess the charm of origina­lity; but I cannot presume to think, that I am entitled to any such commendation for the conduct of my performance, since I must candidly confess, that it bears a very striking resemblance to many other philo­sophical essays, by ending in a Dream.