possesses much moral charm when compared with the popular religions of Greece and Rome. The felicity of their deities consisted in the vilest debauchery; nor was there a crime, however deep its dye, that had not been committed and gloried in by some one of their numerous objects of worship(444).” Never, also, could the doctrine, that the gods take no concern in human affairs, appear more plausible than in the age of Lucretius, when the destiny of man seemed to be the sport of the caprice of such a monster as Sylla. With respect to the other great leading tenet of Lucretius and his master—the mortality of the soul, still greater injustice is done to the philosopher and poet. It is affirmed, and justly, by a great Apostle, that life and immortality have been brought to light by the gospel; and yet an author who lived before this dawn is reviled because he asserts, that the natural arguments for the immortality of the soul, afforded by the analogies of nature, or principle of moral retribution, are weak and inconclusive! In fact, however, it is not by the truth of the system or general philosophical views in a poem, (for which no one consults it,) that its value is to be estimated; since a poetical work may be highly moral on account of its details, even when its systematic scope is erroneous or apparently dangerous. Notwithstanding passages which seem to echo Spinosism, and almost to justify crime(445), the _Essay on Man_ is rightly considered as the most moral production of our most moral poet. In like manner, where shall we find exhortations more eloquent than those of Lucretius, against ambition and cruelty, and luxury and lust,—against all the dishonest pleasures of the body, and all the turbulent passions of the mind.