true heroism as to refuse a challenge (and it requires more real courage to refuse a challenge than to accept one), who would yet be in danger of relapsing into the dreadful pusillanimity of the world, when he is told that no woman of fashion will hereafter look on him but with contempt. While we have cleared away the rubbish of the Gothic ages, it were to be wished we had not retained the most criminal of all their institutions. Why chivalry should indicate a madman, while its leading object, the single combat, should designate a gentleman, has not yet been explained. Nay, the plausible original motive is lost, while the sinful practice is continued; for the fighter of the duel no longer pretends to be a glorious redresser of the wrongs of strangers; no longer considers himself as piously appealing to Heaven for the justice of his cause; but, from the slavish fear of unmerited reproach, often selfishly hazards the happiness of his nearest connections, and always comes forth in direct defiance of an acknowledged command of the Almighty. Perhaps there are few occasions on which female influence might be exerted to a higher purpose than on this, in which laws and conscience have hitherto effected so little. But while the duellist, who perhaps becomes a duellist only because he was first a seducer, is welcomed with smiles, the more hardy dignified youth, who, not because he fears man but God, declines a challenge, who is resolved to brave disgrace rather than commit sin, would be treated with cool contempt by those very persons to whose esteem

he might reasonably have looked, as one of the rewards of his true and substantial fortitude.

How, then, is it to be reconciled with the decisions of principle, that delicate women should receive with complacency the successful libertine, who has been detected by the wretched father or the injured husband in a criminal commerce, the discovery of which has too justly banished the unhappy partner of his crime from virtuous society? Nay, if he happens to be very handsome, or very brave, or very fashionable, is there not sometimes a kind of dishonourable competition for his favour? Is there not a sort of bad popularity attached to his attentions? But, whether his flattering reception be derived from birth, or parts, or person, or, what is often a substitute for all, from his having made his way, by whatever means, into good company, women of distinction sully the sanctity of virtue by the too visible pleasure they sometimes express at the attentions of such a popular libertine, whose voluble small-talk they admire, whose sprightly nothings they quote, whose vices they justify or extenuate, and whom, perhaps, their very favour tends to prevent from becoming a better character, because he finds himself more acceptable as he is.

May I be allowed to introduce a new part of my subject, by remarking that it is a matter of inconceivable importance, though not perhaps sufficiently considered, when any popular work, not on a religious topic, but on any common subject, such as politics, history, or science, has happened

to be written by an author of sound Christian principles? It may not have been necessary, nor prudently practicable, to have made a single page in the whole work professedly religious; but still, when the living principle informs the mind of the writer, it is almost impossible but that something of its spirit will diffuse itself even into subjects with which it should seem but remotely connected. It is at least a comfort to the reader to feel that honest confidence which results from knowing that he has put himself into safe hands; that he has committed himself to an author whose known principles are a pledge that his reader need not be driven to watch himself at every step with anxious circumspection; that he need not be looking on the right hand and on the left, as if he knew there were pitfalls under the flowers which are delighting him. And it is no small point gained, that even on subjects in which you do not look to improve your religion, it is at least secured from deterioration. If the Athenian laws were so delicate that they disgraced any one who showed an enquiring traveller the wrong road, what disgrace, among Christians, should attach to that author, who, when a youth is enquiring the road to history or philosophy, directs him to blasphemy and unbelief?*

The author has often heard it mentioned as matter of regret, that Mr. Gibbon should have blemished his elegant history with the two notoriously offensive chapters against Christianity. But does not this regret seem to imply that the work would, by this omission, have been left safe and unex

In animadverting farther on the reigning evils which the times more imperatively demand that women of rank and influence should repress, Christianity calls upon them to bear their decided testimony against every thing which is notoriously contributing to the public corruption. It calls upon them to banish from their dressing-rooms (and, oh that their influence could banish from the libraries of their sons and husbands) that sober and unsuspected mass of mischief, which, by assuming the plausible names of Science, of Philosophy, of Arts, of Belles Lettres, is gradually administering death to the principles of those who would have been on their guard, had the poison been labelled with its own pernicious title. Avowed attacks upon Revelation are more easily resisted, because the malignity is advertised; but who suspects the destruction which lurks under the harmless or instructive names of General History, Natural History, Travels, Voyages, Lives, Encyclopedias,

ceptionable? May we not rather consider these chapters as a fatal rock indeed; but as a rock enlightened by a beacon, fairly and unequivocally warning us of the surrounding perils? To change the metaphor Had not the mischiefs of these chapters been rendered thus conspicuous, the incautious reader would have been still left exposed to the fatal effects of the more disguised poison which is infused through almost every part of the volumes. Is it not obvious that a spirit so virulent against revealed religion as these two chapters indicate would be incessantly pouring out some of its infectious matter on every occasion; and would even industriously make the opportunities which it did not find?

Criticism, and Romance?

many

Who will deny that

of these works contain much admirable matter, brilliant passages, important facts, just descriptions, faithful pictures of nature, and valuable illustrations of science? But while "the dead fly lies at the bottom," the whole will exhale a corrupt and pestilential stench.

Novels, which chiefly used to be dangerous in one respect, are now become mischievous in a thousand. They are continually shifting their ground, and enlarging their sphere, and are daily becoming vehicles of wider mischief. Sometimes they concentrate their forces, and are at once employed to diffuse destructive politics, deplorable profligacy, and impudent infidelity. Rousseau was the first popular dispenser of this complicated drug, in which the deleterious infusion was strong, and the effect proportionably fatal. For he does not attempt to seduce the affections but through the medium of the principles. He does not paint an innocent woman ruined, repenting, and restored; but, with a far more mischievous refinement, he annihilates the value of chastity, and, with pernicious subtlety, attempts to make his heroine appear almost more amiable without it. He exhibits a virtuous woman, the victim, not of temptation, but of reason, not of vice, but of sentiment,-not of passion, but of conviction; and strikes at the very root of honour, by elevating a crime into a principle. With a metaphysical sophistry the most plausible, he debauches the heart of woman, by cherishing her vanity in the erection of a sys