written it. It may be justly doubt

ed, whether Mr. Godwin ever understood himself.

In his eighth Effay on the happinefs of youth, in which the most dangerous principles are inculcated, he confiders the paternal authority exercifed over children as unjuft and oppreffive; and in this indifcriminate cenfure he does not confine himself to that fpecies of parental tyranny which feems to have for its object only the complete fubjugation of the child, and which may be thus faid to ufurp the laws of nature, but he foolishly extends it to every act of a parent which tends to restrict the unconfined liberty of the child in any manner what foever. Fraught with the falfe notions of liberty and independence, Mr. Godwin would have his children all men. The confequences of that unbiaffed exercife of their inclinations which he would award to them, may be easily foreseen by any difpaffionate mind. If children be allowed to indulge themfelves in every gratification, never to be thwarted, never to be forbidden, how ill would they be calculated, at a maturer age, to enter upon the fcenes of this life! Accuftomed from their earliest infancy to attain their every with, how would their minds be dejected, when, in the various occurrences of the world, their every with would be perhaps fruftrated! More than half their lives would then be requifite, after they became actors in fociety, to teach them that difappointments in our most fanguine hopes will often occur; and that he who pictures to himself scenes of unmixed and unbroken felicity, only forms greater opportunities for being deceived,

This philofophic axiom certainly ought to have been the motto to his Life of Chaucer, where no reader certainly ever will understand him, though in process of time he may perhaps understand himself, at leaft when the copy-right money is expended.

Vol. I.

and renders himself more obnoxious to the various evils of exifter.ce. He would unceasingly repine at his own peculiar hard fate, not daring to look around him, and view the common lot of mankind.

Such would be the confequences of that liberty which Mr. G. inculcates. But the language in which his ideas are clothed, the virulence of the terms adopted, and their obvious tendency, demand our ftrongeft reprobation. The following extract will illustrate his mode of rea> foning on this topic.

"But of all the fources of une happiness to a young perfon, the greatest is a fenfe of Davery. How grievous the infult, or how con temptible the ignorance, that tells a child that youth is the true seafon of felicity, when he feels himfelf checked, controuled, and tyran nized over in a thousand ways? I am rebuked, and my heart is ready to burft with indignation. A confcioufnefs of the power affumed over me, and of the unfparing manner in which it is ufed, is intolerable. There is no moment free from the danger of harsh and dictatorial interruption; the periods when my thoughtless heart began to lofe the fenfe of its dependence feem of all others moft expofed to it. There is no equality, no reasoning between me and my task-mafter. If I attempt it, it is confidered as mutiny. If it be feemingly conceded, it is only the more cutting mockery. He is always in the right; right and power in thefe trials are found to be infeparable companions. I defpife myfelf for having forgotten my mifery, and fuffered my heart to be deluded into a tranfitory joy.Dearly indeed, by twenty years of bondage, do I purchase the Scanty portion of liberty, which the govern'ment of my country happens to concede to its adult fubje&s!

"The condition of a negro-flave in the West Indies is, in many refpects, preferable to that of the youthful fon

Cec

of a free-born European. The flave is purchased upon a view of mercantile fpeculation; and, when he has finished his daily portion of labour, his mafter concerns himself no further about him. But the watchful care of the parent is endless. The youth is never free from the danger of its grating interference.

"If he be treated with particular indulgence, and made what is called a spoiled child, this ferves in fome refpects to aggravate the mifery of occafional controul. Deluded with the phantom of independence, he feels with double bitterness that he is only bound in fetters of gold. ·

*

"The drawbacks to which the pleafures of a child are fubject, are, firft, that they are fuperficial and worthlefs. They scarcely ever swell and elevate the mind. Secondly, they are pleasures which cannot, to a child of any fagacity, when reflected upon and fummed together, conftitute happiness. He fees that he was pleased, only because he was feduced to forget himself. When his thoughts return home, he is pleafed no longer. He is, perhaps, indignant against himself for having fuffered fo grofs a delufion. He abhors the flavery that conftitutes his lot, and breathes the nothingness of his condition."

p. 66 et feq.

Surely thefe are not the reafonings of a calm, candid, and philofophic mind: they breathe rather a fpirit of confufion and anarchy.

Waving for a moment the confideration that they pre-fuppofe too 'much fagacity in the child, let us confider what are their tendency. Let us confider whether, if reduced to practice, they would promote the happiness of the human species.

Mr. Godwin is a father, and may perhaps educate his own child in the principles he here lays down. If fo, it requires no uncommon powers of mind to predict the

confequences. A youth who fhall be taught, that his condition, while fubject to parental authority, is by far worse than that of a negro-slave in the Weft Indies, would no doubt prove a comfort to the declining years of his aged fire. The fchoolboy ftripling who is just perhaps entering in his teens would thus reafon with himfelf: "How can my heart, ready to burft with indignation, fubmit to the rebukes of yon haughty pedagogue? How can I tamely fuffer him to ufurp the law which nature has implanted in my breaft, and which bids me be independent ? Is my will to be thwarted? Am I to crouch and tremble before him, and afk his pardon when I have nobly dared to act for myself, and affert the privilege of my fpecies? No! I will be free! I was born fo, nor fhall the restrictions of a petty tyrant fubdue the ardour of my mind.

Let me reflect but for a moment. There is no equality, no reasoning, between me and my taskmafter. If I attempt it, it is confidered as mutiny. I had better be a Weft Indian flave."

Impreffed with this fact, his flubborn heart would refift every thing which his infant mind might confider as tyranny. Need I foretel the confequence? Confident of his own individuality of character, and the right of freedom which he poffeffes in common with his fpecies, he would commence the man while yet his mother's milk hung upon his lips. Spurning with philofophic indignation the careful precepts of his father, and the falutary counfels of maternal affection, he rushes into fociety unpractifed in its arts; he carries about him the crude notions of his independence and his liberty, which he finds too late to be mere words; nor does his felf-importance leave him till repeated and bitter experience has taught him, that man is not an independent but a relative being; and that he who arrogates to himself a su

tent dedicated to the fervice of

God. This tent was fet up and dedicated in the year before Christ fourteen hundred and ninety. The recollection, therefore, that a great event happened about five hundred years before the building of the temple, will lead us nearly to the time when the Ifraelites went out of Egypt: and it will not be difficult to recollect the fubtraction of ten from this number, and thus will be fixed in our memory a leading date in the Jewish hiftory, or the year fourteen hundred and ninety before Christ, the year marked by the erecting of the tent in the wilderness for the worship of the only true God.

Five hundred years from the building of the temple of Jerufalem, on this fide of the date of its erection, bring us to the reign of Darius of Perfia, and to the year in which he conceived that indignation against the Greeks, which after immenfe preparations vented itself in fruitless efforts, and ended in the immortal honour of the Greeks, and the endless infamy of the Perfians. Sixteen years before this revolution of Darius, or five hundred and fixteen years before Chrift, the building of the fecond temple at Jerufalem was finished by Zorobabel, twenty years after the edict of Cyrus for the return of the Jews into their own land, after a captivity of feventy years.

Thus we have fettled three important epochs, which will be ofgreat ufe to us in the history of the long period from the flood to the birth of Chrift; namely, the year fourteen hundred and ninety, diftinguished by the fetting up of the tent in the wildernefs by Mofes for the worship of the one true God: the year one thousand, diftinguished by the dedication of the temple of Solomon: and the year five hundred and fixteen, diftinguished by the dedication of the fecond temple by Zorobabel, a point of time when the Grecian hiftory begins to be of great importance.

Queft. II. Which are the objects moft worthy of attention between the fettling of England under one fovereign and its conqueft by William the Norman ?

The union of the various governments in England under one head was completed by Egbert in the year 827: the important battle which gave the throne to William the Norman took place on the 14th of October 1066. The firft event gave England a decided fuperiority over the reft of the ifland, and it was an object of refpect to the powers on the continent of Europe. But the great advantages refulting from fuch an union were much injured by two circumftances, which deftroyed for a great part of the interval mentioned the peace of the new kingdom;---the invasion of the island by the Danes, and the increafing evils of fuperftition from the arts, avarice, and ambition of the monks.

The Danes first began their inroads into the kingdom in the reign of Egbert, five years after the union; and from that time to the reign of Canute the Great, in the year 1017, the country was kept by them in continual alarm, and dreadful fcenes of devaftation and flaughter occafioned the utmoft mifery and diftrefs in every part of the kingdom. The animofity between the two nations, the Danes and the English, at laft gradually fubfided; they were foon blended with each other; and by the invafion of William the Norman, and the arrival of a new fet of foreigners, all the difference between the Danes and Englifh became matters of fubordinate confideration, and the very namės of Dane and of Danish extraction were foon buried in oblivion. The Danes, when they first invaded the ifland, were heathens, and their fury was particularly turned against priefts, monks, and monafteries: in the latter they found abundance of plunder, and met with little refiftance; and as the records of the times were chiefly kept by monks,

they are filled with little elfe but the miferies they suffered from theinroads of fo cruel and rapacious an enemy. The Danes, however, foon exchanged their grofs idolatry for the grofs fuperftition of the places in which they fettled; and fpeaking a dialect of the fame lan guage from which that of both nations took its origin, it was lefs difficult for them to be corporated together; and in their manners, habits, and general fentiments, they were not very diffimilar. The effects of the Danish invafion may however be still seen in our language; and from the peculiar fpots in which they now prevail, the afcendancy of the Danes over the Angles in that fpot in former times may be determined.

Popery during this period was making great ftrides to univerfal and defpotic fway. A great obftacle to it was the fecular clergy, or the priests, who, performing religious duties in towns and villages, were by marriages intimately connected with their neighbours, and felt a common intereft in their welfare. Mankind are prone to fuperftition and folly, and to attribute a degree of fuperiority to thofe men who either are not or pretend not to be fubject to the common failings and paffions of human nature. A life of celibacy and aufterity in a loose and sensual age gave the highest claims of reverence; and, in the general ignorance that prevailed, it was not known, as it is in the prefent times, that a man may be freed from all the endearing charities of life, and have the complete afcendancy over his fenfual appetites, and yet harbour in his breaft paffions and fentiments the most injurious to human nature. The pope and the monks took advantage of this ignorance: the mar ried clergy were treated with the utmost contempt; their wives were confidered as prostitutes; themselves as diffolute and carnal wretches; and they were denominated fecular

clergy, 'or perfons given up to the pleatures and bufinefs of the world; whilft the monks, as feparated from the rest of the world, and living under fuppofed holy rules, affumed to themselves the name of regulars. The remain of this prejudice is ftill kept up in the country, and the clergy are fuppofed, from certain. ceremonies and certain habits of life, to be incompetent for certain employments which, it is pretended, carry with them a degree of ftain from which fuch holy characters fhould be preferved. Againft this prejudice it is fufficient to note, that the apoftles and firft difciples of Chrift followed very laborious occupations; and the-labours of Paul are not lefs praife worthy, becaufe at times he followed the occupation of a tent-maker.

The life of Dunftan the monk is in this period particularly worthy of attention. In it we fee all the follies which arife from base fuperftition, and the artifices used to eftablish the power of the monks and of the court of Rome. The fecular clergy were not eafily conquered; and the laity, as the people were contemptuously called by both parties, were too bigotted to ftand by mute fpectators of thefe idle and frivolous difputes. Dunftan infulted his fovereign, and was confidered as a faint, for reprobating an attachment to a beloved wife; but another fovereign was extolled to the fkies, becaufe, though he indulged himself in every degree of licentioufnefs and cruelty, he took care to pay that court to Dunftan as fufficiently expiated his crimes. The part that Dunftan was playing near the thrones the monks performed in every private family: the women were particularly attached to them, and the laity difcovered, at laft, that they who make particular vows of chaftity require a tenfold more watchful eye in converfe with their wives and daughters. Monafteries now covered the land: falfe miracles