which Christianity alone can furnish, and without which benevolent propensities are no security to virtue. And perhaps it is not too much to say, in spite of the monopoly of benevolence to which the new philososphy lays claim, that the human duties of the second table have never once been well performed by any of the rejectors of that previous portion of the Decalogue which enjoins duty to God. In some of the most splendid of these characters compassion is erected into the throne of justice, and justice is degraded into the rank of plebeian virtues. Creditors are defrauded, while the money due to them is lavished in dazzling acts of charity to some object that affects the senses; which fits of charity are made the sponge of every sin, and the substitute of every virtue: the whole indirectly tending to intimate how very benevolent people are who are not Christians. From many of these compositions, indeed, Christianity is systematically, and always virtually excluded; for the law, and the prophets, and the gospel can make no part of a scheme in which this world is looked upon as all in all; in which want and misery are considered as evils arising solely from human governments, and not from the dispensations of God; in which poverty is represented as merely a political evil, and the restraints which tend to keep the poor honest, as the most flagrant injustice. The gospel can make no part of a system in which the chimerical project of consummate earthly happiness (founded on the pretence of loving the poor better than God loves them) would defeat the divine plan, which meant this world a scene of discipline, not of remuneration. The gospel can have nothing to do with a system in which sin is reduced to a little human imperfection, and Old Bailey crimes are softened down into a few engaging weaknesses; and in which the turpitude of all the vices a man himself commits, is done away by his candour in tolerating all the vices committed by others.

But the part of the system the most fatal to that class whom I am addressing is, that even in those works which do not go all the length of treating marriage as an unjust infringement on liberty, and a tyrannical de

duction from general happiness; yet it commonly hap pens that the hero or heroine, who has practically vio lated the letter of the seventh commandment, and con. tinues to live in the allowed violation of its spirit, is painted as so amiable and so benevolent, so tender or so brave; and the temptation is represented as so irresistible, (for all these philosophers are fatalists) the predominant and cherished sin is so filtered and purged of its pollutions, and is so sheltered and surrounded, and relieved with shining qualities, that the innocent and impressible young reader is brought to lose all horror of the awful crime in question, in the complacency she feels for the engaging virtues of the criminal.

But there is another object to which I would direct the exertion of that power of female influence of which I am speaking. Those ladies who take the lead in society are loudly called upon to act as the guardians of the public taste as well as of the public virtue. They are called upon therefore, to oppose with the whole weight of their influence, the irruption of those swarms of publications now daily issuing from the banks of the Danube, which, like their ravaging predecessors of the darker ages, though with far other arms, are over running civilized society. Those readers, whose purer taste has been formed on the correct models of the old classic school, see with indignation and astonishment the Huns and Vandals once more overpowering the Greeks and Romans. They behold our minds, with a retrograde but rapid motion, hurried back to the reign of "chaos and old night," by terrific and unprincipled compositions, which unite the taste of the Goths with the morals of Bagshot,*

Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimeras dire!

The newspapers announce that Schiller's Tragedy of the Robbers, which inflamed the young nobility of Germany to enlist themselves into a band of highwaymen to rob in the forest of Bohemia, is now acting in England by persons of quality!

and by wild and mis-shapen superstitions, in which, with that consistency which forms so striking a feature of the new philosophy, those who deny the immortality of the soul are most eager to introduce the machinery of ghosts.

The writings of the French infidels were some years ago circulated in England with uncommon industry and with some effect: but the plain sense and good principles of the far greater part of our countrymen resisted the attack, and rose superior to the trial. Of the doctrines and principles here alluded to, the dreadful consequences, not only in the unhappy country where they originated and were almost universally adopted, but in every part of Europe where they have been received, have been such as to serve as a beacon to surrounding nations, if any warning can preserve them from destruction. In this country the subject is now so well understood, that every thing that issues from the French press is received with jealousy; and a work on the first appearance of its exhibiting the doctrines of Voltaire and his associates, is rejected with indignation.

But let us not on account of this victory repose in confident security. The modern apostles of infidelity and immorality, little less indefatigable in dispersing their pernicious doctrines than the first apostles were in propagating gospel truths, have indeed changed their weapons, but they have by no means desisted from the attack. To destroy the principles of Christianity in this island, appears at the present moment to be their grand aim. Deprived of the assistance of the French press, they are now attempting to attain their object under the close and more artificial veil of German literature. Conscious that religion and morals will stand or fall tos gether, their attacks are sometimes levelled against the one and sometimes against the other. With strong occasional professions of general attachment to both of these, they endeavour to interest the feelings of the reader, sometimes in favour of some one particular vice, at other times on the subject of some one objection to revealed religion. Poetry as well as prose, romance as

well as history, writings on philosophical as well as on political subjects, have thus been employed to instil the principles of Illuminatism, while incredible pains have been taken to obtain able translations of every book which was supposed likely to be of use in corrupting the heart or misleading the understanding. In many of these translations, certain stronger passages, which, though well received in Germany, would have excited disgust in England, are wholly omitted, in order that the mind may be more certainly, though more slowly, prepared for the full effect of the same poison to be administered in a stronger degree at another period.

Let not those to whom these pages are addressed deceive themselves, by supposing this to be a fable; and let them inquire most seriously whether I speak truth in asserting that the attacks of infidolity in Great Britain are at this moment principally directed against the female breast. Conscious of the influence of women in - civil society, conscious of the effect which female infidelity produced in France, they attribute the ill success of their attempts in this country, to their having been hitherto chiefly addressed to the male sex. They are now sedulously labouring to destroy the religious principles of women, and in too many instances have fatally succeeded. For this purpose not only novels and romances have been made the vehicles of vice and infidelity, but the same allurement has been held out to the women of our country, which was employed by the first philosophist to the first sinner-Knowledge. Listen to the precepts of the new German enlighteners, and you need no longer remain in that situation in which Providence has placed you! Follow their examples, and you shall be permitted to indulge in all those gratifications which custom, not religion, has tolerated in the male

sex!

Let us jealously watch every deepening shade in the change of manners; let us mark every step, however inconsiderable, whose tendency is downwards. Cor. ruption is neither stationary nor retrograde; and to have departed from modesty, is already to have made a

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progress. It is not only awfully true, that since the new principles have been afloat, women have been too eagerly inquisitive after these monstrous compositions; but it is true also that, with a new and offensive renun. ciation of their native delicacy, many women of character make little hesitation in avowing their familiarity with works abounding with principles, sentiments, and descriptions, which should not be so much as named "among them." By allowing their minds to come in contact with such contagious matter, they are irre coverably tainting them; and by acknowledging that they are actually conversant with such corruptions, (with whatever reprobation of the author they may qualify their perusal of the book,) they are exciting in others a most mischievous curiosity for the same unhal. lowed gratification. Thus they are daily diminishing in the young and the timid those wholesome scruples, by which, when a tender conscience ceases to be intrenched, all the subsequent stages of ruin are gradually fa. cilitated.

We have hitherto spoken only of the German writ. ings; but because there are multitudes who seldom read, equal pains have been taken to promote the same object through the medium of the stage; and this weapon is, of all others, that against which it is, at the present moment, the most important to warn the more inconsiderate of my country women.

As a specimen of the German drama, it may not be unseasonable to offer a few remarks on the admired play of the Stranger. In this piece the character of an adultress, which, in all periods of the world, ancient as well as modern, in all countries, heathen as well as christian, has hitherto been held in detestation, and has never been introduced but to be reprobated, is for the first time presented to our view in the most pleasing and fascinating colours. The heroine is a woman who forsook a husband the most affectionate and the most amiable, and lived for some time in the most criminal commerce with her seducer. Repenting at length of her crime, she buries herself in retirement. The talents of