], said Madame la
Presidente yesterday, very judiciously; yet it is only speaking
popularly that one can be supposed to mean, what however no one much
refuses to assert, that the Venetian ladies are amorously inclined: the
truth is, no check being put upon inclination, each acts according to
immediate impulse; and there are more devotees, perhaps, and more
doating mothers at Venice than any where else, for the same reason as
there are more females who practise gallantry, only because there are
more women there who _do their own way_, and follow unrestrained where
passion, appetite, or imagination lead them.
To try Venetian dames by English rules, would be worse than all the
tyranny complained of when some East Indian was condemned upon the
Coventry act for slitting his wife's nose; a common practice in _his_
country, and perfectly agreeable to custom and the _usage du pays_. Here
is no struggle for female education as with us, no resources in study,
no duties of family-management; no bill of fare to be looked over in the
morning, no account-book to be settled at noon; no necessity of reading,
to supply without disgrace the evening's chat; no laughing at the
card-table, or tittering in the corner if a _lapsus linguae_ has
produced a mistake, which malice never fails to record.
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