and admiration of woman in those days!  Old Priam and all his aged council pay her reverence.  Menelaus is the only one of the Grecian heroes that had no other wife or mistress—­here was devotion and constancy!  Andromache has been, and ever will be, the pride of the world.  Yet the less refined dramatist has told of her wrongs; for he puts into her mouth a dutiful acquiescence in the gallantries of Hector.  Little can be said for the men.  Poor old Priam we must pardon, if Hecuba could and did; for Priam told her that he had nineteen children by her, and many others by the concubines in his palace.  He had enough, too, upon his hands—­yet found time for all things—­“[Greek:  hore eran, hore de gamein, hore de pepausthai].”  How lovely is Penelope, and how great her wrongs!—­and the lovely Nausicaa complains of scandal.  But great must have been the deference paid to women; for Nausicaa plainly tells Ulysses, that her mother is every thing and every body.  People have drawn a very absurd inference to the contrary, from the fact of the princess washing the clothes.  That operation may have been as fashionable then as worsted work now, and clothes then were not what clothes are now—­there were no Manchesters, and those things were rare and precious, handed down to generations, and given as presents of honour.  You have shed tears over the beautiful, noble-hearted Iphigenia—­wronged even to death.  Glorious was the age that could find an Alcestis to suffer her great wrong!  Such women honour human nature, and make man himself better.  Oh, how infinitely less selfish are they than we are—­confiding, trusting—­with a fortitude for every sacrifice!  We have no trust like theirs, no confidence—­are jealous, suspicious, even on the wedding-day.  You quite roared with delight when you heard of a fool, who, mistrusting himself and his bride, tried his fortune after the fashion of the Sortes Virgilianae, by dipping into Shakspeare on his wedding-day and finding

      “Not poppy nor mandragora,
  Nor all the drowsy syrups of the East,
  Shall ever med’cine to thee that sweet sleep
  Which thou ow’dst yesterday.”

You have rather puzzled me, Eusebius, by giving me so wide a field of enquiry—­woman’s wrongs; of what kind—­of ancient or modern times—­general or particular?  You should have arranged your objects.  It is you that are going to write this “Family Library,” not I. For my own part, I should have been contented in walking into the next village, an unexpected guest, to the houses of rich and poor—­do you think you would have wanted materials?  But forewarned is forearmed—­and few will “tell the secrets of their prison-house,” if you take them with a purpose.  On your account, in this matter, I have written to six ladies of my acquaintance, three married and three single.  Two of the married have replied that they have nothing to complain of—­not a wrong.  The third bids me ask her husband.  So I put her down as ambiguous—­perhaps