Page:An account of a voyage to establish a colony at Port Philip in Bass's Strait.djvu/96

( 71 ) neglect all those minute delicacies in their common intercourse with the other sex, which form the basis of mutual love, considered as a refined passion. But the climate operating upon the fair sex more forcibly in proportion to their superior delicacy of organization, enervates the system, and induces a kind of restless indolence, to which is attached a boundless desire for variety, when it can be procured without much exertion: hence, while the mind is lulled into inactivity, and the eye of prudence sleeps, the bosom is "tremblingly alive" to the soft sensations of love, and the bulwarks of female innocence lie exposed and defenceless to the attacks of the watchful seducer. The public opinion is not, however, so depraved as to sanction this laxity of morals, and hence pregnancy is too