"are more easily resisted, because the malignity is ad"vertised."

It will be an " Annus mirabilis" indeed, to see the Masters, Heads and Fellows of Colleges, turned non-descript, field and itinerant preachers! And Sir Joseph Banks, at the head of the Royal and Antiquary Societies, going on missions to Sierra Leone and elsewhere! She then has a hit' at Rousseau; he and she both enthusiasts in their way.

British novels are condemned wholesale; yet her own sisters, with her help, produced one or two. Now, I ask this lady, when was it she read all the novels, for they are numerous? It was not before her conversion; for that did not take place till after her fruitless walks to church when she was young. It could not be since the reformation; for that would be a heinous sin. Did she know them intuitively? No! she certainly read them since she became a saint. Now if she has read them without guilt, why may not others; but perhaps, to instruct others, a woman must herself be wicked? i. e. "knowing good and evil." Innocence and much knowledge do not go together. H. More, therefore, is either innocent and ignorant, or knowing and wicked. Dr. Priestley's works were publicly disapproved of, and the clergy read them; Mrs. More forbids novels and Rousseau, and the ladies will, therefore, read them both. I once saw a man hanged, who at his execution, declared he had always lived honestly, and was guilty of no other felonious act but that for which he was about to suffer, and that he

would not have committed that act, had he not heard a certain pious preacher describe the manner houses were broke into!

She next endeavours to stop the deluge of German plays into this country, which she describes as" uniting the taste of the Goths with the mo"rals of Bagshot ;"

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Gorgons and Hydra's, and Chimeras dire !"

And makes an observation, though new, yet not fact," that those who most earnestly deny the immortality of the soul, are most eager to in"troduce the machinery of ghosts." The lady should be consistent. She should either not read plays, or allow them innocent; but she dispraiseth the drama, and yet publisheth dramatic works! It must be a calumny to charge the French infidels with sending us German plays, to instil the principles of illuminism, with a view to overturn christianity (the arts and sciences will do that!) and that Englishmen have been employed to translate French works, omitting the bolder passages, in order that the mind may be brought, though more slowly, to receive the poison at another period. She alledgeth the application of the infidels to the English males has not been so successful as wished for, and that now they apply to the ladies, to influence their sons and husbands!

"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 coun"try, which was employed by the first philosophists to the "first sinner-Knowledge. Listen to the precepts of the

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"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 reli"gion, has tolerated in the male sex.

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Thus it would seem there is a jealousy between H. M. and the Illuminati; the one struggling to seduce the nation to a religious, and the other to a political mania. But the British are a sensible people. Mrs. More ought not to have admitted such observations. She says

"It is not only awfully true, that since the new princi"ples have been afloat, women have been too eagerly in"quisitive after these monstrous compositions; but it is "true also that, with a new and offensive renunciation 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 irrecoverably tainting them; "and by acknowledging that they are actually conversant "with such corruptions, they are exciting in others a most "mischievous curiosity for the same unhallowed gratifica"tion. 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 facilitated."

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Mrs. More's "Strictures" seem to be calculated rather to corrupt than improve the sex. Her own mind at least is not very pure. Her strictures ought to be publicly burnt.

Ladies are again warned against the theatre (all but her own plays) and she gives (p. 49) a few

remarks on the German drama, from the admired play The STRANGER; and she forbids the ladies to see or read a play! She tells the ladies of Great-Britain and Ireland, that "The Female “Werter” asserts, in a work entitled "The Wrongs of Women," that "adultery is justifiable, "and that the restrictions placed on it by the "laws of England constitutes one of the Wrongs "of Women." For H. More to advertise the existence of such a book, is an irremissible crime. There is no father or husband in England that will not reprobate her for it, and she cannot be considered but as a corrupter of the morals of the sex. She descants on depravity as gravely, and details its grossest acts as frigidly, as if its object were to allay the tumult of the passions, while it is letting them loose on mankind.

In p. 57, an apostrophized and awful address is directed to parents on this subject.

"Abuse not," says she, "so noble a quality as Chris"tian candour, by misemploying it in instances to which "it does not apply. Pity the wretched woman you dare "not countenance; and bless HIM who has made you to "differ.' If unhappily she be your relation or friend, anxiously watch for the period when she shall be deserted "by her betrayer; and see if, by your Christian offices, "she can be snatched from a perpetuity of vice. But if,

through the Divine blessing on your patient endeavours, "she should ever be awakened to remorse, be not anxious "to restore the forlorn penitent to that society against "whose laws she has so grievously offended; and remem"ber, that her soliciting such a restoration, furnishes but too "plain a proof that she is not the penitent your partiality "would believe; since penitence is more anxious to make

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"its peace with Heaven than with the world. To restore "a criminal to public society, is perhaps to tempt her to "repeat her crime, or to deaden her repentance for having "committed it, as well as to insult & to injure that society."

Reader! let me address thee! Is this the spirit of the religion of Jesus, which H. professes? Did he not command to forgive not seven, but seventy times seven? Did Jesus condemn the woman taken in adultery? When all left the room, and he asked her, (since there was not an innocent person found among her accusers to cast a stone at her; and the cruel Hannah, if she had been present, would have perhaps, convicted by her own conscience, been obliged to go out also) "Where are thine accusers? Hath no man con"demned thee?" She said, "No man, Lord." And Jesus said unto her, "neither do I condemn "thee-go, and sin no more." Let me ask Hannah, how she would like to be so treated by society. "Patere legem quam ipse tuleris." Mrs. More is not yet brought to a sense of her sins: she has christianity yet to learn. Adultery is a great sin; but there are greater. It is more venal than "private accusations." It is more venal than many falsehoods of which she is convicted. Marvel not, Hannah, that I 66 say, you must be "born again." But, politically speaking, may not an adulteress reclaimed become a useful member of society, educate her children, discharge her duty to her husband and servants, and be again a mother. But driven out of society, the loss of which she has sustained perhaps by no