The Rev.

Charles Robertson, author of a certain

[P.90] “Lecture on Poetry, addressed to Working Men,” asserts that Passion became Love under the influence of Christianity, and that the idea of a Virgin Mother spread over the sex a sanctity unknown to the poetry or to the philosophy of Greece and Rome.[FN#21] Passing over the objections of deified Eros and Immortal Psyche, and of the Virgin Mother—symbol of moral purity—being common to every old and material faith,[FN#22] I believe that all the noble tribes of savages display the principle. Thus we might expect to find, wherever the fancy, the imagination, and the ideality are strong, some traces of a sentiment innate in the human organisation. It exists, says Mr. Catlin, amongst the North American Indians, and even the Gallas and the Somal of Africa are not wholly destitute of it. But when the barbarian becomes a semi-barbarian, as are the most polished Orientals, or as were the classical authors of Greece and Rome, then women fall from their proper place in society, become mere articles of luxury, and sink into the lowest moral condition. In the next stage, “civilisation,” they rise again to be “highly accomplished,” and not a little frivolous.

[p.91]Miss Martineau, when travelling through Egypt, once visited a harim, and there found, among many things, especially in ignorance of books and of book-making, materials for a heart-broken wail over the degradation of her sex. The learned lady indulges, too, in sundry strong and unsavoury comparisons between the harim and certain haunts of vice in Europe.

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