text: " Is there not in the _Spectator_ a story or dream where every man is obliged to choose a wife unseen tied up in a sack? At this said Lacedaemon by the by women seem to have somewhat ruled the roast and taken the law at least before marriage into their own hands; for Clearchus Solensis in his adages reports that "at Lacedaemon on a certain festival the women dragged the unmarried men about the altar and beat them with their hands in order that a sense of shame at the indignity of this injury might excite in them a desire to have children of their own to educate and to choose wives at a proper season for this purpose