in the following particulars, which my limits will allow me barely to mention.

1. Passing over the baser sort of novels, or such as have a direct tendency to deprave the mind and the heart, it may be confidently affirmed that the greater part of the rest, though they profess to have a moral purpose, do in no measure inculcate pure Christian morals, but those of a spurious kind; the standard of their morality being very little higher, if any, than that of the highest order of the pagan school.

2. There is always danger, especially as regards youth, of cultivating the imagination too much, and the more solid faculties of our nature too little; and it is of the nature of most novels to produce this effect: they expand and bloat the imagination without informing the understanding, or maturing the judgment.

3. The pictures of life given in novels, are not usually those of common, but of high life; and they can be, therefore, of no practical use at all to persons who are not destined to move in the highest circles. On the other hand, they tend to sophisticate their manners as well as their morals; the manners of dukes and duchesses being widely remote from what should be the manners of plain men and women.

4. Novel-readers, unless gifted with a more than ordinary fund of sound sense, are prone to slide into a romantic habit of thinking, and to cherish extravagant expectations. Finding in the books they are most accustomed to, a series of preternatural events; astonishing effects produced without even a shadow of cause; persons suddenly raised, as by magic, from humble circumstances to boundless opulence and loftiness of rank;-finding in the books which they ponder by day and through the vigils of

the night, a perpetual recurrence of such unearthly scenery described in glowing language; it is no wonder that they cherish preposterous hopes; nor is it a wonder if they become disgusted with the homely scenes and occupations of ordinary life, and look with contempt upon every situation, enjoyment, or connection, that is actually attainable by them.

5. If novels have the good effect of beguiling the young into a passion for reading, they have, also, not unfrequently, the bad effect of so enervating their minds that there is left them neither industry, nor relish for sober history, or for any thing else that requires the labor of their understandings and judgments.

6. This kind of reading has a tendency to vitiate the taste, as well in regard to style as to sentiment. The readers of novels-they who read them indiscriminately or without selection— are accustomed to a style nauseously sweet, or vapidly towering; consisting of spangled heaps of words and images, which smother the sense, where sense there is. Thus accustomed, their feelings. are no less repugnant to plain sober language than to plain sober

sense.

It does by no means follow from what has been said, that parents and instructors should lay their children under an absolute interdiction with respect to the reading of novels. For, not to mention that such is the texture of our general nature that prohibition has a stimulating power, so that if a book never so worthless were prohibited by law, almost every body would wish to read it; there are, no doubt, some novels, which might be put into the hands of the young, with safety, and to their real advantage. The danger lies in reading them indiscriminately or without selection, and in making them a principal part of reading.

"Those novels which paint the manners and character of the body of mankind, and affect the reader with the relation of misfortunes that may befall himself," may be perused, now and then, not only as an amusement, but as a profitable study;-yet, after all, it is real life, with which we must chiefly have to do.

NUMBER LXXXVIII.

OF THE IMPASSABLE AND UNALTERABLE LIMITS TO THE PLEASURES OF

SENSE.

THE pleasures of sense, common to all animal natures, can admit

of

very little increase by the refinements of art, and, at the same time, are bounded and limited by impassable barriers. I say impassable barriers, for you no sooner have overleaped them than the pleasure is gone, and satiety, disgust, or some kind or other of painful dissatisfaction, succeeds to its place.

Sweet as is the light, too much of it would instantly destroy the organ of vision. Pleasant as it is to see the sun, yet to look steadfastly upon him in his meridian glory, would cause pain, and even blindness. The light of that luminary, by which alone we see the innumerable objects that are visible to us, is colored; else our feeble organ of sight could endure it scarcely for a moment. For what if the whole sky, the whole earth, and every object above and around us, shone with the unmingled brightness of uncolored light? In that case, the light itself would become darkness, since every eye must instantly be blinded by it.

And as with sight, so with hearing. A sound that is too

strong and forcible, deafens the ear. Nay, even the most sweet and harmonious sounds, when long continued, or very often repeated, become indifferent to the car, if not tiresome.

In like manner, the smell is sickened with perpetual fragrance, and the palate surfeited by overmuch sweetness.

Even the joy of mere animal nature, when it exceeds the just bounds, becomes a disturber. Overmuch joy of this sort, is inquietude; it banishes quiet sleep as effectually as pungent grief.

Hence it falls out, agreeably to the established constitution of our nature, that scarcely any persons lead more unpleasant lives than those who pursue pleasure with the most eagerness. And so it must needs be, because their over eagerness of desire, by spurring them on to perpetual excess, turns their pleasures to pains, and their very recreations to scenes of wearisome drudgery.

If Solomon had not told us from his own experience, that such a course of life is not only vanity, but vexation of spirit; yet the world abounds with instances to prove and illustrate it. Of these I will now cite two eminent ones of the last age.

Richard Nash, Esq.,-commonly called Beau Nash-who died, 1781, aged eighty-seven, was Master of the Ceremonies, or King of Bath, for the space of nearly half a century. His body was athletic, his constitution strong and healthy, and his ruling passions were vanity, and keenness of desire for fashionable dissipation. To his darling wishes the means of indulgence exactly and altogether corresponded. Presiding over the amusements of the courtiers, and nobility, and gentry of England, he gratified his vanity with the finery and costliness of his apparel, and with the implicit obedience paid to his orders; and whilst employed in providing banquets of pleasure for his voluptuous guests, he sel