beings as your aunt, who appear to have dropped into our planet from some happier sphere, and who adjust their principles of action to a model of abstract perfection, with which common-place mortals are unacquainted. Such beings only think of how to please God; but the mass of men and women dress themselves daily in the mirror of each other's approbation, and act reciprocally on each others' characters. Let one sex degenerate, it matters not which, you will find the other follow in the downward course." "But, my dear sir, these authors whom you decry, do not _create_ vice, they only _exhibit_ it; and though I do not advocate the practice, yet after all it would seem that men need not be much worse for _reading_, than for hearing and seeing what is exceptionable. If infidelity and immorality were only propagated by books, your argument against such writers as Lord Byron would be unanswerable. But allow me to say, that the Bible itself, in the strongest terms, insists on the depravity of the human species, and offers the most flagrant illustrations in proof of human delinquency. The hardness of heart, and unbelief of man, are frequently held up to view in Holy Writ; and what does a Rochefaucauld in prose, or a Byron in verse, do more than represent things as they _are_?" "If you consider the matter for a moment," replied my opponent, "I fancy that you will be at no loss to discover some striking differences which will sufficiently answer your question. The evil tendency of such writers as Rochefaucauld, and all the class of satirists, who represent man as a debased and hypocritical animal, does not proceed from the truth of the picture, but from the manner of the painter. The scriptures indulge us in no 'lying vanities;' they speak of the human race as born in sin and the children of wrath; and Conscience, when we attend to her voice, confirms the humiliating charge, with uncompromising fidelity. But while the Bible, and those who preach its doctrines, point out the disease, they likewise present the antidote. If they proclaim the deformity of the natural man, it is to shew how the crooked may be made straight; if they expose his weakness, it is to impart strength; if they display his corruption, it is but to invite him to wash in those waters which cleanse from all impurity. But such moralists as you support, if moralists they can be called without absurdity, would seem intent on excusing vice. The effect of their books is, as it were to _legalize_ iniquity, by representing it as invincible, and to destroy all sense of shame by laying bare its concealments. Whatever produces this result by means of a pungent and sententious brevity, is doubly injurious; for the authority of a maxim is thus combined with the stimulus of evil: the form is thus rendered portable and adhesive; and truths conveyed in an epigrammatic shape at once flattering to our sagacity in an appeal to its accuteness, and soothing to our faults by pronouncing