ent remarked, "that a bad book ought as much to be guarded against as a bad companion." There certainly is nothing more true, and yet the most dangerous books are daily published uncensured; and a mean, ignorant, mercenary, or unprincipled publisher, may spread poison daily more detrimental than arsenic. Some books, like men, acquire great reputation by some brilliant points, while the general tendency, like the general character, is never investigated.

In no instance is this more remarkable than in the writings of the celebrated Rousseau. The annals of literature never exhibited to the world a more paradoxical, whimsical, ingenious, eloquent, weak, and dangerous author.

This author's works have been much read, while few have examined the truth of his pictures, or analyzed the consistency or tendency of his doctrines. In the preface to his novel, he says, "Chaste girls never read romances; and the girl who reads four pages of this is undone."

Yet no books are more called for at Circulating Libraries than romances, and none more than his. With such sentiments he gives his book to the world, and then presumes to write another upon education.

The following fragment, which I lately met with, said to be found among some old MSS. it

is believed, will convey, in a strong and true light, what is said of his writings, and may, perhaps, lead some people to think when they read. I am, &c.

CATO.

A PROPHECY

FOUND IN AN OLD MANUSCRIPT.

In those days a strange person shall appear in France, coming from the borders of a lake, and he shall cry to the people, Behold I am possessed by the demon of enthusiasm; I have received the gift of incoherence; I am a philosopher, and a professor of paradoxes.

And a multitude shall follow him, and many shall believe in him.

And he shall say to them, You are all knaves and fools; and your wives and daughters are debauched; and I will come and live among you. And he shall abuse the natural gentleness of the people by his foul speeches.

And he shall cry aloud, " All men are virtuous in the country where I was born; but I will not live in the country where I was born."

And he shall maintain, that arts and sciences

necessarily corrupt the manners; and he shall write upon all arts and sciences.

And he shall declare the theatre a source of prostitution and corruption, and he shall write operas and comedies.

And he shall affirm savages only are virtuous, though he has never lived among sayages, but he shall be worthy to live among them.

And he shall say to men, cast away your fine garments, and go naked, and he himself shall wear laced clothes when they are given him.

And he shall say to the great, " they are more despicable than their fortunes ;" but he shall frequent their houses, and they shall behold him as a curious animal brought from a strange land.

And his occupation shall be to copy French music, and he shall say there is no French music.

And he shall declare romances destructive to morality, and he shall write a romance, and, in his romance, the words shall be virtuous, and the morals wicked; and his characters shall be outrageous lovers and philosophers.

And he shall say to the universe, “ I am a favourite of fortune; I write and I receive loveletters:" and the universe shall see the letters he received were written by himself.

And in his romance he shall teach the art of

suborning a maiden by philosophy; and she shall learn from her lover to forget shame, and become ridiculous, and write maxims.

And she shall give her lover the first kiss upon his lips, and shall invite him to lie with her; and he shall lie with her, and she shall become big with metaphysics, and her billet-doux shall be homilies of philosophy.

And he shall teach her that parents have no authority in the choice of a husband, and he shall paint them barbarous and unnatural.

And he shall refuse wages from the father, because of the delicacy natural to men, and receive money underhand from the 'daughter, which he shall prove to be exceedingly proper.

And he shall get drunk with an English lord, who shall insult him; and he shall propose to fight with the English lord; and his mistress, who has lost the honour of her own sex, shall decide upon that of men; and she shall teach him, who taught her every thing, that he ought not to fight.

And he shall receive a pension from the lord, and shall go to Paris, where he shall not frequent the society of well-bred and sensible people, but of flirts and petit-maitres, and he shall believe he has seen Paris.

And he shall write to his mistress, that the

women are grenadiers, go naked, and refuse nothing to any man they chance to meet.

And when the same women shall receive him at their country-houses, and amuse themselves with his vanity, he shall say they are prodigies of reason and virtue.

And the petit-maîtres shall bring him to a brothel, and he shall get drunk like a fool, and lie with strange women, and write an account of all this to his mistress, and she shall thank him.

And he shall receive his mistress's picture, and his imagination shall kindle at the sight; and his mistress shall give him obscene lessons on solitary chastity.

And this mistress shall marry the first man that arrives from the world's end; and, notwithstanding all her craft, she shall imagine no means to break off the match; and she shall pass intrepidly from her lover's to her husband's arms.

And her husband shall know, before his marriage, that she is desperately in love with, and beloved by, another man; and he shall voluntarily make them miserable; but he shall be a good man, and, moreover, an Atheist.

And his wife shall immediately find herself exceedingly happy, and shall write to her lover

L