[Steele.

Saturday, May 20, to Tuesday, May 23, 1710.

From my own Apartment, May 22.

In the distribution of the apartments in the new Bedlam, proper regard is had to the different sexes, and the lodgings accommodated accordingly. Among other necessaries, as I have thought fit to appoint storytellers to soothe the men, so I have allowed tale-bearers to indulge the intervals of my female patients. But before I enter upon disposing of the main of the great body that wants my assistance, it is necessary to consider the human race abstracted from all other distinctions and considerations except that of sex. This will lead us to a nearer view of their excellences and imperfections, which are to be accounted the one or the other, as they are suitable to the design for which the persons so defective or accomplished came into the world.

To make this inquiry aright, we must speak of the life of people of condition, and the proportionable applications to those below them will be easily made, so as to value the whole species by the same rule. We will begin with the woman, and behold her as a virgin in her father's house. This state of her life is infinitely more delightful than that of her brother at the same age. While she is entertained with learning melodious airs at her spinet, is led round a room in the most complaisant manner to a fiddle, who is entertained with applauses of her beauty and perfection in the ordinary conversation she meets with: the young man is under the dictates of a rigid schoolmaster or instructor, contradicted in every word he speaks, and curbed in all the inclinations he discovers. Mrs. Elizabeth is the object of desire and admiration, looked upon with delight, courted with all the powers of eloquence and address, approached with a certain worship, and defended with a certain loyalty. This is her case as to the world: in her domestic character, she is the companion, the friend, and confidante of her mother, and the object of a pleasure something like the love between angels, to her father. Her youth, her beauty, her air, are by him looked upon with an ineffable transport beyond any other joy in this life, with as much purity as can be met with in the next.

Her brother William, at the same years, is but in the rudiments of those acquisitions which must gain him esteem in the world. His heart beats for applause among men, yet is he fearful of every step towards it. If he proposes to himself to make a figure in the world, his youth is damped with a prospect of difficulties, dangers, and dishonours; and an opposition in all generous attempts, whether they regard his love or his ambition.

In the next stage of life she has little else to do, but (what she is accomplished for by the mere gifts of nature) to appear lovely and agreeable to her husband, tender to her children, and affable to her servants: but a man, when he enters into this way, is but in the first scene, far from the accomplishment of his designs. He is now in all things to act for others as well as himself. He is to have industry and frugality in his private affairs, and integrity and addresses in public. To these qualities, he must add a courage and resolution to support his other abilities, lest he be interrupted in the prosecution of his just endeavours, in which the honour and interest of posterity are as much concerned as his own personal welfare.

This little sketch may in some measure give an idea of the different parts which the sexes have to act, and the advantageous as well as inconvenient terms on which they are to enter upon their several parts of life. This may also be some rule to us in the examination of their conduct. In short, I shall take it for a maxim, that a woman who resigns the purpose of being pleasing, and the man who gives up the thoughts of being wise, do equally quit their claim to the true causes of living; and are to be allowed the diet and discipline of my charitable structure to reduce them to reason.

On the other side, the woman who hopes to please by methods which should make her odious, and the man who would be thought wise by a behaviour that renders him ridiculous, are to be taken into custody for their false industry, as justly as they ought for their negligence.

N.B. Mr. Bickerstaff is taken extremely ill with the toothache, and cannot proceed in this discourse.

St. James's Coffee-house, May 22.

Advices from Flanders of the 30th instant, N.S., say, that the Duke of Marlborough having intelligence of the enemy's passing the Scarp on the 29th in the evening, and their march towards the plains of Lens, had put the Confederate army in motion, which was advancing towards the camp on the north side of that river between Vitry and Henin-Lietard. The Confederates, since the approach of the enemy, have added several new redoubts to their camp, and drawn the cannon out of the lines of circumvallation in a readiness for the batteries.

It is not believed, notwithstanding these appearances, that the enemy will hazard a battle for the relief of Douay; the siege of which place is carried on with all the success that can be expected, considering the difficulties they meet with occasioned by the inundations. On the 28th at night we made a lodgment on the salient angle of the glacis of the second counterscarp, and our approaches are so far advanced, that it is believed the town will be obliged to surrender before the 8th of the next month.