limb, so that he can easily take any position and can continue any kind of movements without effort.  Moreover his senses are acute and well-practised, he knows the principles of the various trades; to work like a master of his craft he only needs experience, and experience comes with practice.  To which of these trades which are open to us will he give sufficient time to make himself master of it?  That is the whole question.

Give a man a trade befitting his sex, to a young man a trade befitting his age.  Sedentary indoor employments, which make the body tender and effeminate, are neither pleasing nor suitable.  No lad ever wanted to be a tailor.  It takes some art to attract a man to this woman’s work.[Footnote:  There were no tailors among the ancients; men’s clothes were made at home by the women.] The same hand cannot hold the needle and the sword.  If I were king I would only allow needlework and dressmaking to be done by women and cripples who are obliged to work at such trades.  If eunuchs were required I think the Easterns were very foolish to make them on purpose.  Why not take those provided by nature, that crowd of base persons without natural feeling?  There would be enough and to spare.  The weak, feeble, timid man is condemned by nature to a sedentary life, he is fit to live among women or in their fashion.  Let him adopt one of their trades if he likes; and if there must be eunuchs let them take those men who dishonour their sex by adopting trades unworthy of it.  Their choice proclaims a blunder on the part of nature; correct it one way or other, you will do no harm.

An unhealthy trade I forbid to my pupil, but not a difficult or dangerous one.  He will exercise himself in strength and courage; such trades are for men not women, who claim no share in them, Are not men ashamed to poach upon the women’s trades?

    “Luctantur paucae, comedunt coliphia paucae. 
     Vos lanam trahitis, calathisque peracta refertis
     Vellera.”—­Juven.  Sat.  II.  V. 55.

Women are not seen in shops in Italy, and to persons accustomed to the streets of England and France nothing could look gloomier.  When I saw drapers selling ladies ribbons, pompons, net, and chenille, I thought these delicate ornaments very absurd in the coarse hands fit to blow the bellows and strike the anvil.  I said to myself, “In this country women should set up as steel-polishers and armourers.”  Let each make and sell the weapons of his or her own sex; knowledge is acquired through use.

I know I have said too much for my agreeable contemporaries, but I sometimes let myself be carried away by my argument.  If any one is ashamed to be seen wearing a leathern apron or handling a plane, I think him a mere slave of public opinion, ready to blush for what is right when people poke fun at it.  But let us yield to parents’ prejudices so long as they do not hurt the children.  To honour trades we are not obliged to practise every one of them, so long as we do not