Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/288

246 under any apprehension; and accordingly they are decked out with all the ornaments and embellishments of the fair sex. The ridiculous creatures you see on the other side, as they come from a distance, are content with having the head decorated with jasmines and a party-colour hood, without divesting themselves of the other parts of their male attire." He had scarcely concluded this explanation, when the alcaid and his attendants arrived, and barred the outlets with all possible diligence. Having formed a string of countesses, marchionesses, and seignoras, and appropriated to themselves the refreshments that had been prepared, they led them to the jail, where their heads were shaven, with a view to cool them, at the same time that the corroborative of a good bastinado was applied to the shoulders.

Such a punishment was worthy of so monstrous an insanity. But can any motives be assigned to exculpate this failing? Plato was of opinion, that at the beginning of the world all mankind were androgyni; but that they having insulted him, Jupiter divided them into two halves, man and woman; on which account the propensity of one sex for the other is so extremely natural. May it not likewise be said, that in many men there still remain certain relics of the other sex, which naturally manifest themiSelves } Both consequences have the same solidity and force as the arbitrary system of Plato: it is certain that weak heads alone, inflated with wind, can give into the mania of appearing that which they are not;—a mania which is of such antiquity, that in the time of Augustus, these counterfeit hermaphrodites were met with at Rome. Horace represents to us the youth Nearcus, with the hair flowing gracefully on the shoulders, and perfumed with the most quisite