Mrs. Moore practically extends the same doctrine to cards and assemblies. No cards--because cards are employed in gaming; no assemblies--because many dissipated persons pass their lives in assemblies. Carry this but a little further, and we must say,--no wine, because of drunkenness; no meat, because of gluttony; no use, that there may be no abuse! The fact is, that Mr. Stanley wants not only to be religious, but to be at the head of the religious. These little abstinences are the cockades by which the party are known,--the rallying points for the evangelical faction. So natural is the love of power, that it sometimes becomes the influencing motive with the sincere advocates of that blessed religion, whose very characteristic excellence is the humility which it inculcates. We observe that Mrs. Moore, in one part of her work, falls into the common error about dress. She first blames ladies for exposing their persons in the present style of dress; and then says, if they knew their own interest,--if they were aware how much more alluring they were to men when their charms are less displayed, they would make the desired alteration from motives merely selfish. "Oh! if women in general knew what was their real interest! if they could guess with what a charm even the _appearance_ of modesty invests its possessor, they would dress decorously from mere self-love, if not from principle. The designing would assume modesty as an artifice; the coquet would adopt it as an allurement; the pure as her appropriate attraction; and the voluptuous as the most infallible art of seduction." I. 189. If there is any truth in this passage, nudity becomes a virtue; and no decent woman, for the future, can be seen in garments.