Note 1 — CHAP. XIV.

That custom and habit give a sanction, and render familiar, in some countries, many things which would be considered as preposterous in others, is an observation, which is more or less verified, in proportion to the variety of places which the traveller has visited. An officer in the India service has, in a late publication, described the variety of attitudes, gestures, looks, sighs, expressions of desire, fear, hope, trepidation, and every gradation of passion, which is acted by the dancing-girls in the East Indies; and yet, though these young women are exerting all their faculties for promoting wantonness in the beholders, to obtain a living, the whole race of Gentoo women are most remarkable for the purest minds of any people in the universe1.