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By great application, much reading, and observation on life and manners, she has acquired literary abilities to cast the sentiments she culls here and there into verse; but there is no poetry. In prose she writes mechanically, and where she has conceived, brings forth decently, and "as "well as can be expected;" but her births are frequently without conception, and her pages, therefore, often impalpable inanity. Her sacred novels are not her worst productions. She has abilities, but no genius,

As a woman, her chief virtue is prudence and cunning; she is charitable, i. e. gives away small gifts, the property oftener of others than her own, and thus has the credit of extensive charity. With strangers she talks but little, unless she thinks it her interest to be loquacious. She is moderate in eating and drinking; and rather regular as to her time of going to rest and rising. She has acquired a very soft, whispering, insinuating manner of speaking. She can be pleasant, although she hates you; and profess kindness, attachment, and friendship, without meaning any thing by it. She is impatient of, and never forgives contradiction; and, if possible, will remove any obstacle to the accomplishment of her purpose; and if she can evade the law, or public censure, is not scrupulous about the means. When offended, she knows no forgiveness, and every thing must submit to the violence and implacability of her temper. She works, however,

as not to be easily discovered to be of this temper. She can preach extempore, and, like Hester Wilmot, pray without book or pre-meditation; and can invent and propagate falsehoods, hate and calumniatę, with seldom a possibility of detection.

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In her religion all the graces and virtues of the gospel are put in requisition, yet these are not enough. Her religion is this, that; and it is neither this nor that. There is a mixture of mysticism, insidiousness, and paradox in her doctrines, but ill explained, which excites a doubt respecting her principles, and renders the existence of her religion very questionable. She refines and abstracts, without any rational philosophy, so much as to run in a circle. She would have us be "serious," neither laugh, dance nor sing, and, it is supposed, like Lackington's virgin after marriage, so "pure" as to refuse her husband marital rights and rites. Salvation is limited to those only of her way of thinking; and she believes all who do not agree with her to "perish everlastingly." Her benevolence and charity are confined to a sect; she is ignorant of that spirit that Jesus displayed in his conversation with the woman of Samaria; and is constantly keeping alive the invidious distinction of Jew and Samaritan. To apply the term panacea to the words "genuine piety," perpetually dropping from her mouth and pen, is indeed an appropriate epithet; but she vends it too cheaply as a nostrum, without

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proving its having, alas! cured any disease of her own heart. All that the theology of her cast seems to have done for her, is, to make her more cunning, artful, temporizing, and ostentatiously pious, than her neighbours.

In politics, from the hope of reward, or a want of fortitude to vindicate a righteous cause, she uniformly approves of the minister of the day, and whatever she may think, declares no opposite opinion. If virtue and religion were in a mean habit, or in discredit with the great, she would deny both; for without their notice, and some smiles from them, she cannot exist.

"Way for my Lord; Virtue stand by and bow."

Although to superiors she is fawning, and to inferiors tyrannical, to promote her schemes she can associate, eat and drink, and converse with the meanest of the mean, and indefatigably labour to puritanize their minds. If she were thirty years younger, I have no doubt but she might live to see two thirds of the nation non-descripts, calling out and voting for the abolition of a liturgy in the churches. It was the extempore praying lecturers who began the mischief in the time of Charles the first, and arrogated to themselves exclusive holiness. I have conversed with some of the modern non-descripts, since I have begun to write this critique, and they tell me it is impossible to be saved but by believing as they do. They dismiss Curates who do not unite in their scheme; they refuse their pulpits to the regular Clergy. "The plague is begun."

Dissenters I would tolerate and cherish as the establishment; but I would not create more.To puritanize is to revolutionize the people, and to revolutionize is to confound all order, subordination, religion, and regular government. He, or she, therefore, that puritanizeth, "does not "deserve well of his or her country."

THE END.

APPENDIX.

To prove the literary larceny committed by H. More, and her uniform practice of calumny, alluded to in this work, the following extracts are made from Mrs. Yearsley's NARRATIVE to the Public, in 1787.

"But should be obliged to her if she would return my "manuscript copies."

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"Miss More replied, They are left at the printers, "Mrs. Yearsley-Don't think I shall make any use of "them. They are burnt.' 'Burnt!!" said I!! She "seemed confused My heart felt for her;-those short 06 pauses convinced me that she was hurt, and from that "consideration I was silent; but am still concerned that "she would not return those poems which are not pub"lished." Page 20.

In a note Mrs. Yearsley says, dignifying H. More with the title of Stella

"Stella wrote to London, that I dashed the money in "her face, and that I was otherwise very violent. I de"clare those charges to be totally without foundation: the money lay on the table, but was not touched by me.

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"Motives the most powerful and natural that can possess "the female breast, urged me to require a copy of the deed; "nor can I now at this present period repent the requisi"tion, though it has been attended with so much calumny

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