138 



A HISTORY OF 



est and most rapid progress, is made when 

 they arrive near the age of puberty. It is then 

 that all the powers of nature seem at work in 

 strengthening the mind, and completing the 

 body; the youth acquires courage, and the 

 virgin modesty; the mind, with new sensations, 

 assumes new powers ; it conceives with grea- 



ter force, and remembers with greater tenacity. 

 About this time, therefore, which is vari- 

 ous in different countries, more is learned 

 in one year tha*n in any two of the pre- 

 ceding; and on this age, in particular, the 

 greatest weight of instruction ought to be 

 thrown. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 



OF PUBERTY. 



IT has been often said, that the season of 

 youth is the season of pleasures : but this can 

 only be true in savage countries, where but 

 little preparation is made for the perfection 

 of human nature; and where the mind has but 

 a very small part in the enjoyment. It is 

 otherwise in those places where nature is car- 

 ried to the highest pitch of refinement, in 

 which this season of the greatest sensual de- 

 light is wisely made subservient to the suc- 

 ceeding and more rational one of manhood. 

 Youth, with us, is but a scene of preparation ; 

 a drama, upon the right conduct of which all 

 future happiness is to depend. The youth 

 who follows his appetites, too soon seizes the 

 cup, before it has received its best ingredients; 

 and, by anticipating his pleasures, robs the 

 remaining parts of life of their share ; so that 

 his eagerness only produces a manhood of 

 imbecility, and an age of pain. 



The time of puberty is different in various 

 countries, and always more late in men than 

 in women. In the warm countries of India, 

 the women are marriageable at nine or ten, 

 and the men at twelve or thirteen. It is also 

 different in cities, where the inhabitants lead 

 a more soft, luxurious life, from the country, 

 where they work harder, and fare less deli- 

 cately. Its symptoms are seldom alike in dif- 

 ferent persons ; but it is usually known by a 

 swelling of the breasts in one sex, and a rough- 

 ness of the voice in the other. At this season, 

 also, the women seem to acquire new beauty, 

 while the men lose all that delicate effeminacy 

 of countenance which they had when boys. 



All countries, in proportion as they are ci- 



vilized or barbarous, improve or degrade the 

 nuptial satisfaction. In those miserable re- 

 gions, where strength makes the only law, the 

 stronger sex exerts its power, and becomes 

 the tyrant over the weaker : while the inha- 

 bitant of Negroland is indolently taking his 

 pleasure in the fields, his wife is obliged to 

 till the grounds, thatserve for theirmutual sup- 

 port. It is thus in all barbarous countries, 

 where the men throw all the laborious duties 

 of life upon the women ; and, regardless of 

 beauty, put the softer sex to those employ- 

 ments that must effectually destroy it. 



But, in countries that are half barbarous, 

 particularly wherever Mahometanism pre- 

 vails, the men run into the very opposite ex- 

 treme. Equally brutal with the former, they 

 exert their tyranny over the weaker sex, and 

 consider that half of the human creation as 

 merely made to be subservient to the depra- 

 ved desires of the other. The chief, and, in- 

 deed, the only aim of an Asiatic, is to be pos- 

 sessed of many women ; and to be able to fur- 

 nish a seraglio, is the only tendency of his am 

 bition. As the savage was totally regardless 

 of beauty, he, on the contrary, prizes it too 

 highly ; he excludes the person who is pos- 

 sessed of such personal attractions from any 

 share in the duties or employments of life; . 

 and, as if willing to engross all beauty to him- 

 self, increases the number of his captives in 

 proportion to the progress of his fortune. In 

 this manner he vainly expects to augment his 

 satisfactions, by seeking from many that hap- 

 piness which he ought to look for in the so- 

 ciety of one alone. He lives a gloomy tyrant, 



