as singular.  That with the disappearance of the baths, and the use of body-linen, a powerful influence was exerted on the creation of modesty, there can be little doubt.” (Rudeck, op. cit., pp. 57, 399, etc.)

In 1461, when Louis XI entered Paris, three very beautiful maidens, quite naked, represented the Syrens, and declaimed poems before him; they were greatly admired by the public.  In 1468, when Charles the Bold entered Lille, he was specially pleased, among the various festivities, with a representation of the Judgment of Paris, in which the three goddesses were nude.  When Charles the Fifth entered Antwerp, the most beautiful maidens of the city danced before him, in nothing but gauze, and were closely contemplated by Duerer, as he told his friend, Melancthon.  (B.  Ritter, “Nuditaeten im Mittelalter,” Jahrbuecher fuer Wissenschaft und Kunst, 1855, p. 227; this writer shows how luxury, fashion, poverty, and certain festivals, all combined to make nudity familiar; cf.  Fahne, Der Carneval, p. 249.  Dulaure quotes many old writers concerning the important part played by nude persons in ancient festivals, Des Divinites Generatrices, Chapter XIV.)

Passek, a Polish officer who wrote an account of his campaigns, admired the ladies of Denmark in 1658, but considered their customs immodest.  “Everyone sleeps naked as at birth, and none consider it shameful to dress or undress before others.  No notice, even, is taken of the guest, and in the light one garment is taken off after another, even the chemise is hung on the hook.  Then the door is bolted, the light blown out, and one goes to bed.  As we blamed their ways, saying that among us a woman would not act so, even in the presence of her husband alone, they replied that they knew nothing of such shame, and that there was no need to be ashamed of limbs which God had created.  Moreover, to sleep without a shift was good, because, like the other garments, it sufficiently served the body during the day.  Also, why take fleas and other insects to bed with one?  Although our men teased them in various ways, they would not change their habits.” (Passek, Denkwuerdigkeiten, German translation, p. 14.)

Until late in the seventeenth century, women in England, as well as France, suffered much in childbirth from the ignorance and superstition of incompetent midwives, owing to the prevailing conceptions of modesty, which rendered it impossible (as it is still, to some extent, in some semi-civilized lands) for male physicians to attend them.  Dr. Willoughby, of Derby, tells how, in 1658, he had to creep into the chamber of a lying-in woman on his hands and knees, in order to examine her unperceived.  In France, Clement was employed secretly to attend the mistresses of Louis XIV in their confinements; to the first he was conducted blindfold, while the King was concealed among the bed-curtains, and the face of the lady was enveloped in a network of