by its importunate prattle disturbed the tranquillity of private companies. So pernicious it is to common sense, reason, truth, virtue, order, and religion, when men of genius and learning employ their pens in spreading nonsense, absurdity, and falsehood; vice, disorder, and irreligion. If a writer of this sort were to take a cool and dispassionate view of the talents he has received, and the acts which he has done, the amount might probably be, nature has bestowed on him a mind competent to the acquisition of valuable and deep knowledge. Instruction and assiduity operating on these gifts of nature, have enabled him to communicate his conceptions, thoughts, and discoveries, agreeably, forcibly, and impressively. What has he done? He exhorted men and women to avoid the first link of a rational community, marriage, and to mingle with promiscuous intercourse, according to temporary impulse, and after the fashion of beasts. Respecting their offspring, the next gem of civil society, he exhorted them to descend below beasts, which have a care for their young. He instigated parents to disregard their children, and children their parents; he carried his proscription of natural affection through the relation of brother and sister. Lest this attempt to prevent the formation of a family, and so to arrest society in its first stage, should prove unsuccessful, he attacked it in more advanced progress, and endeavoured to destroy faith between man and man, to proscribe adherence to promises, to annihilate property, one of the great cements of society, and to banish religion, the grand security of human happiness. His practical lessons teach, that the restraints on unmarried women are not conducive to the welfare of society; that chastity is not a virtue, and concubinage a vice; that women are not likely to be better members of society, domestic, civil, and political, for being continent than prostitutes. He set up an immoral and impious model for the sex, and if all women were to follow the example of his heroine, universal profligacy and irreligion would ensue. As far, therefore, as the literary authority and power of these writings reach, they tend to increase debauchery and impiety. He has written a metaphysical work, of which the theoretical propositions are chimerical, absurd, and totally irreconcileable to human nature, as known to us by experience and induction, the only guides to just intellectual and moral speculation; and the practical doctrines, inculcated by precept and example, lead to the most unwise and immoral conduct, and to consequences that would unhinge all domestic, social, civil, political, and religious society. Such will a fair and impartial review of his literary efforts present to St. Leon the use and improvement of his talents and acquirements. That he intended such consequences, I by no means assert. I think it probable he did not. I should rather impute his work to an understanding so