themselves into market produce for his delight, and have really
abandoned the commodity in ministering to the lust for it, suffered
themselves to be dragged ages back in playing upon the fleshly
innocence of happy accident to gratify his jealous greed of possession,
when it should have been their task to set the soul above the fairest
fortune and the gift of strength in women beyond ornamental whiteness.
Are they not of nature warriors, like men?--men's mates to bear them
heroes instead of puppets? But the devouring male Egoist prefers them
as inanimate overwrought polished pure metal precious vessels, fresh
from the hands of the artificer, for him to walk away with hugging,
call all his own, drink of, and fill and drink of, and forget that he
stole them.

This running off on a by-road is no deviation from Sir Willoughby
Patterne and Miss Clara Middleton. He, a fairly intelligent man, and
very sensitive, was blinded to what was going on within her visibly
enough, by her production of the article he demanded of her sex. He had
to leave the fair young lady to ride to his county-town, and his design
was to conduct her through the covert of a group of laurels, there to
revel in her soft confusion. She resisted; nay, resolutely returned to
the lawn-sward. He contrasted her with Constantia in the amorous time,
and rejoiced in his disappointment. He saw the goddess Modesty guarding
Purity; and one would be bold to say that he did not hear the Precepts,
Purity's aged grannams maternal and paternal, cawing approval of her
over their munching gums. And if you ask whether a man, sensitive and a
lover, can be so blinded, you are condemned to re-peruse the foregoing
paragraph.

Miss Middleton was not sufficiently instructed in the position of her
sex to know that she had plunged herself in the thick of the strife of