high gifts with which he had been originally endowed, | guished torch in an unwholesome atmosphere, has and as his will, that moral faculty of the mind, became already suffered in his generations for his deviation perverse, this bright illumination was obscured, be- from the path of rectitude, and for the abuses of his cause in his corrupt state it would have been hurtful moral faculty; and untaught by experience, who sells rather than beneficial. It was this superior degree of her lessons at the price of tears, the enlightened nations intelligence which gave to the antediluvian races such of the present age, in their frightful abuse of the powvast superiority over the succeeding generations of ers entrusted to them for high and holy purposes, seem, mankind; and it was the same cause that led to that in the perversity of a corrupt will, and in the excesses gigantic moral and intellectual corruption, which we of a presumptuous understanding, rapidly to approach can only comprehend in its consequence-the destruc- the verge of that sheer precipice, around and beneath tion of all flesh upon earth. The will being the moral which, in the decrees of a superintending Providence, power in man, it follows from what we have said, that all is darkness and degradation. If the will or moral if the will be perverse and licentious, the crimes of faculty were properly chastened, to enlighten the unmen are measured in their enormity by the extent of derstanding would be to improve the heart; but when their understanding. Thus we trace the cause of all man, surrendering himself up to the desires of a rebelthe horrors of the revolutions of the last century, urged lious will, “sins against the canon laws of his foundaon by enlightened minds, regardless of the salutary res- tion," and is at war with his nature, to expand his traint of morals and religion. At the time of the revi-intellect is to heap the measure of his enormities. val of letters in Europe, and the discovery of printing, this key of knowledge, which had been mercifully taken from the corrupt generations, who had so grossly abused its treasures, seemed about to be restored to man, renovated as his soul and intellect had been by a long christian education. And after the intelligence of man had been extended by the revival of letters, and before the purple carnage and material philosophism which quickly followed the reformation, it seemed reserved for these latter ages to witness the full meridian splendor of human intelligences. It appeared that the great scheme of creation was about to be fulfilled, and that the intellectual light which played around the cradle, would brighten the last age of humanity. Men, catching the glowing spirit of Milton, had persuaded themselves that they beheld puissant nations, rousing themselves like a strong man after sleep, shaking his invincible locks; that they saw them as an eagle muing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eye at the full midday beam, purging and unscaling her long abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance: but the calm impartial voice of history will declare the unsettled condition of the human family, and already discerns the malignant typhon of revolution gathering strength amid the increasing licentiousness of the age, collecting his scattered members, recruiting his exhausted energies, and preparing anew to assault, to oppress, and to desolate the world!

It will be objected that an enlightened understanding may compel the will. Alas! such is not the history of man. Throw around him a blaze of light, and closing his eyes to the celestial radiance, how often do we find him descending the paths which lead to the dark and unfathomable abysses of crime? He drinks abundantly of all the wells and springs of knowledge, but, like the fabled waters of the Golden Fountain, they convert him into stone. If virtue be not founded in the moral instead of the intellectual faculty, how shall we account for the transcendent virtues of the son of Jesse, the untutored peasant king, whose pastoral staff was displaced for the royal sceptre; whose harp, in the language of a beautiful writer, whose harp was full-stringed, and every angel of joy and of sorrow swept over the chords as he passed, but the melody always breathed of heaven; who hath dressed out religion in such a rich and beautiful garment of divine poesy as beseemeth her majesty, in which being arrayed, she can stand up before the eyes even of her enemies in more royal state than any personification of love, or glory, or pleasure, to which highly gifted mortals have devoted their genius. Let us confess the amiable truth: his will was chastened and obedient, the moral faculty was upright, and the divine flame of intellect in this pure atmosphere burned with a brilliant and holy lustre. And if the enlightened understanding can compel the reluctant will, how was it, that the son of David, he, to whom God had given “a

Considering man then as the work of the great Crea-wise and an understanding heart, so that before him tor, upon whom in his munificence he had impressed his sacred image and bestowed the divine emanation of intellect; looking upon this most wonderful of the works of the Supreme Architect, as endowed with free will, and subjected to restraints admirably adapted to his condition and essential to his happiness; we can only account for his obscured understanding and unparalleled debasement, by the abuse of the favors heaped upon him. For, the whole history of the human race teaches us, that the mental and social degradation of man, in all ages, has invariably followed the corrupt and licentious will, which has led him to abuse his transcendent privileges. God is justice, and governs the world by fixed laws, and the genius of punishment presides over their.fulfilment, and invariably chastises every prevarication or departure. The barbarian, debased beneath the primitive condition of manhood, in whom the light of reason glimmers like a half extin

there was none that was like unto him, neither after him was there any to arise like unto him,"-abandoning himself to the appetites of a depraved will, and forgetful of his covenant with Jehovah, “turned away from the commandments and the statutes, which the Lord had set before him, and served other gods and worshipped them?" And if to enlighten the understanding be to improve the heart, how shall we account for the corruption of all flesh in the races of the antediluvian world, which so far surpassed the generations of our age in knowledge and understanding? Whence the necessity of that divine prayer taught us by the meek and merciful Redeemer, "deliver us from temptation ?" or of that other humiliating confession in the ritual, “we have done the things we ought not to have done, and we have left undone those things we should have done?" Alas! it is too often the case, the waters of virtue, like the sacred fountain of Dodona, cease to flow in the

noontide blaze of intellect, but gush forth in sparkling | ests of religion than the persecution and intolerance of and plenteous effusion in the stillness of the benighted mind.

It was ordained of old, even from the creation, that beneath the branches of the tree of knowledge should lurk the enemy of man. Not all the vigilance of the celestial wardens of the gates of Paradise could repel the great corrupter of the will. But since "no falsehood can endure touch of celestial temper, but returns of force to its own likeness," armed with the spear of truth, let us endeavor to disrobe vice of her seemliness, and compel her to indue her pristine and repulsive deformity.

one established institution; whether it would not have been better to have purified and remodelled the ancient temple, venerable for its age and coeval with christianity, than to have erected a thousand different altars; whether universal freedom of opinion and its dark satellite infidelity, the leading consequence and necessary result of this reformation; whether all these have not rather retarded than promoted the social and moral improvement of man,-is a fair field for the exercise of philosophical inquiry.

The first great reformation, or divine fulfilment of the designs of Providence in the religious government Inaccessible to the prejudices of the age in which of man, was introduced in a time of profound peace, at we live, we have boldly canvassed the utility of the a period when the shadow of the Roman eagles had religious reformation of the sixteenth century in its been thrown upon the uttermost boundaries of the ultimate consequences. Originating with man, it could known world, and when the language of Greece, with not claim a celestial origin, and participated in the all its graceful purity, had attained its highest excelfallibility and frailty of his nature. If we could trace lence. Its spirit was peace and good will towards man, the divine impress in its character, introduction, or con- and its corner stone was unbounded brotherly love. sequences, we are not so unmindful of the fate of the It was heralded in by a man of many sorrows, but Israelite who stretched forth his arm to uphold the whose life was a faithful exhibit of the sublime docark of the covenant, as to attempt an exposition of trines he taught. Clothed with the power of the its effects upon the destinies of the children of men. Father, he was meek and humble of heart, and he There is but one reformation of the religious institu- never suspended the laws of nature, obedient to his tions of the human family, which bears the broad seal will, but to bless and to sanctify those whom he ranof the Deity, and that seems to have been pre-ordained somed from perdition. Did the dead arise from a bed from the beginning for the redemption of a lost world. of corruption, and cast off his tabid cerements,—the From the fall of man, every system of polity, every soul too was purified, and it was only the promise of a type and figure of religious observances among the more glorious resurrection! Did the leper cast his chosen people, shadowed forth this mighty revolution. scales, and was made whole in the flesh,—the spirit too The christian era constitutes a fixed central point in the was chastened, and he was clad in the raiment of innohistory of man, and while preceding generations, filled cence! Did the blind see,-the hand that restored his with hope, looked forward to the coming of the Sun vision cast a divine ray into his soul, and he was of Righteousness to resuscitate a perishing world, sub- blessed forevermore! Did the good man seek for virsequent ages have looked back to the advent of the tue or the wise man for the lessons of wisdom?-the Redeemer as the sacred fountain, from which all the Sermon on the Mount contained every lesson of mosprings of life were to flow forevermore. The wise rality, all the fruits of wisdom. But the reformation men, who came forth from towards the rising of the of the sixteenth century originated in angry and exasun, were not the only watchers for the star that stood | cerbated feeling, and one of its first consequences was a over the stable of Bethlehem, while the shepherds multiplication of conflicting and hostile sects, which adored the infant Saviour. The rising of that star had during a space of thirty years deluged in blood the long been foretold in those sublime passages of prophe- fairest provinces of christendom. In England, Scotland, tic inspiration, which were consecrated to the Israelite; France, Germany, and Ireland, the red car of reform and the Gentiles had learned that it was to be to them rolled in the blood of slaughtered recusants. Each sect too a light of salvation, and a gathering together of the boasted its martyrs, but humanity and religion shudnations of the earth into one fold under one divine pastor. dered at the multitude of deluded victims. The primiWhen the veil of the temple was rent asunder and the tive purity of the established current of religion, as it mysteries of the sanctuary were revealed; when the had flowed from the fountain of truth, may have been oracles of paganism were struck dumb on their altars; troubled by the admixture of licentious indulgences when the types and figures of the old religion were and lax morality, yet it would have been no difficult overshadowed by the presence of the Deity; the only task to trace it in the midst of its slime and pollution, religious reformation, which has been promised to man, to its pure and sacred source. When the proud city of or which is consistent with the divine scheme of re- Babylon was beleagured by the forces of combined demption, was consummated. Hence all subsequent nations, the turbid waters of the great river were changes in the religious polity of nations, are the work diverted into new channels, and though Babylon the of human hands, and like any other result of merely great fell, the numerous currents deflected from the human agency, are legitimate subjects of investigation. ancient bed, instead of uniting and rolling on in one Whether mankind has gained anything permanently pure stream, stagnated into a pestilential marsh, until beneficial, by the reformation of the sixteenth century, nothing but the booming of the bittern and the howling which at far less cost to humanity and religion must of the hyena marked the spot where once stood in not necessarily have followed the revival of letters purple pride the city of the plain! Reformations thereand consequent intellectual development; whether the fore in the religious observances of a people, the work of substitution of the revilings and mutual massacres perishable mortals, and divested of supernatural agenof rival sects was less prejudicial to the true inter-cy, whether they originate in Arabia or Germany, in

the solitary cave of Mecca or in the monastic cells of Erfurt, whether they eventually introduce sensuality or infidelity,—are subjects which fall peculiarly within the province of the philosophy of morals.

to the alarming progress of infidelity, the elder daughter of that universal freedom of opinion, which this revolution necessarily introduced. Unrestrained by authority, and fostered by the prevailing liberalism, Carefully eluding all points of controversy in which which a sudden freedom from restraint invariably proreligionists or sectarians might feel interested, and con- duces, the philosophists and illuminati broached their fining our remarks strictly to the operation of events appalling doctrines, subversive alike of government, upon the morals of a people, it is scarcely necessary social order, morals, and religion. The reformers had for us to admit, that in the beginning of the sixteenth overthrown the temporal power, and circumscribed the century, a large portion of the clergy had swollen spiritual dominion of the papal hierarchy; but the inbeyond the girth of the canon, that the temporal fidel and the scoffer, quickened like the reptile in the power of the Roman hierarchy had become unhap-warm sunlight of science, exulted in the triumph of pily blended with its spiritual dominion, and that all naturalism over christianity. Voltaire, in the conreflecting men of the age felt and admitted the neces-centrated malice of his heart, declared himself the persity of reformation in the morals of the teachers of the sonal enemy of God; Rousseau, more dangerous, belaity.

cause less indiscreet, proclaimed the worship of nature. The one was an open blasphemer, the other a dreaming sophist. The former would have erected amid the ruins of the christian temple an altar to Moloch; the latter, in the illusions of a mind not totally depraved, would have deified mysterious nature. From the declared enemy of christianity there was little to fear, but its firmest muniments were shaken by the insidious scoffer. While the stones which were hurled by the Roman soldiery against the walls of Jerusalem were white, danger could be avoided; but when the color was changed by the command of Titus, there was no longer a warning voice to bid them "bow down, for the bolt cometh." Voltaire was an atheist, because his wishes had warped his judgment, and made him disbe lieve christianity because it was opposed to his pas sions. "This was his condemnation: he loved darkness rather than light, because his deeds were evil.” But Rousseau was one of the most dangerous sophists of his age; and in the significant language of La Harpe, "every thing in his writings, even truth itself, deceives." What evils have not these men entailed upon the human family, by the perversion of exalted intellect? Filled with the sacred flame, it only expanded within their bosoms and spread its warmth around to detach the frightful avalanche, and scatter desolation.

It may have been, that in the moral stagnation of the age, the torrents of revolution were required for the lustration of the people. Like the waters of the great deep, it may have been necessary for the preservation of pure and wholesome religion, that the conflicting tempests of unlicensed opinions and sectarian feelings, should sweep over its bosom, and agitate the element to preserve its purity; so that when the strife should have been rebuked, and calmness restored, it might have reflected from its pure and unruffled surface the unbroken image of the Everlasting. But when the winds were abroad, there was none to stay their violence, and men, alarmed for the protracted continuance of the storm, looked in vain for the celestial image of purity and peace, to spring into life, like the beauteous Aphrodite, from amidst the foam of the tempestuous sea. But if a divine spirit had raised and governed this tempest, as in the days of the redemption of man, when the "storm of wind came down upon the lake, and they were filled with water, and in jeopardy, there would have been among them One, to whom they would have gone, and said, Master, save us or we perish; and he would have arisen, and rebuked the wind and the raging of the waters, and they would have ceased, and there would have been a calm." But alas! there was none so powerful, and the waves of that tempest yet burst against the trembling muniments which girt and defend the morals of christendom. If we incline to judge impartially between the estab-author; and though endowed with all the graces of a lishment of religion at the introduction of christianity and its projected reformation by means merely human in the sixteenth century, we must learn to discriminate accurately between what is essentially divine and unchangeably eternal in the revelation of love, and the ele- The whole history of the generations of the children ments of destruction, which man has opposed thereto, of men has been an unceasing struggle between the or mingled therewith. In the ages which preceded and benevolence of the Creator, and the rebellious will of followed the christian era, we trace with sentiments of his creatures. In the blissful walks of Eden, he begrateful admiration, of amazement and awe, the special stowed upon our first parents the highest degree of dispensations of Providence for its propagation and intelligence of which their nature was susceptible; and advancement, its security and protection, and the won- with the slightest possible restriction, imposed as an derful concurrence of events towards this single object acknowledgment of their dependance, they offended of divine love; while, in the introductory and concur- him in the only way in which they could rebel. In the rent circumstances of the reformation of the sixteenth ages which preceded the deluge, men were gifted with century, we are compelled to lament the early appear-powers of intellect, of which we can frame but an imance of those germs of disorganization, which have perfect conception; and they rapidly attained to such since shaken to their foundations the social establish- abandoned profligacy, that "it repented the Lord that ments of the human race. Next to the bitter revilings he had made man on the earth." And when to regene of hostile sects, which, after this latter event, sprang rate lost man the awful price of the redemption was immediately into life, our attention is forcibly attracted paid,-when by a long course of christian education he

Not all the celestial harmonies of that nature, which in the wild delirium of infidelity, he would have deified, could elevate the soul of the sophist to its beneficent

refined intellect, he remained like the "Sea of Glass" in the valley of Switzerland, fast locked in the icy fetters of disbelief, though summer smiled around, and all the flowers of loveliness blossomed on its borders.

had been fitted for intellectual advancement,-when the revival of letters had rendered him impatient of the blessing, even in the morning of science, he snatched the first rays of the rising sun to kindle the flame of rebellion.

and it is sufficient to banish his productions from every domestic hearth that no husband can read Falkland or Ernest Maltravers to his wife, no fond brother to his sister, no father to his daughter. There is no more frightful evidence of the decline of public morals in the Man is a social being. A pure morality is essential present generation, than the lamentable facility with to the preservation of social institutions—and morality which this fascinating writer has perverted the taste of reposes upon revealed religion. Whatever therefore nations, and substituted for the pure morality and mantends to shake the religious principles or to corrupt the ly vigor of Walter Scott, the sickly sentimentalism and morals of a people, is destructive of the social estab- the licentious profligacy, which infect every page of his lishments and happiness of man. It is by this standard romances. And unless this style of writing be utterly that we estimate the virtues or the vices of those who repudiated, there is much cause to apprehend a rapid undertake to entertain or to instruct mankind. There descent to that gross licentiousness of manners and is something so essentially criminal, so wholly unnatu- morals, which have invariably preceded the most deploral in the perversion of that intellect, which has been rable social and political convulsions; for these enemies bestowed on us for the praise of God and benefit of our of mankind, unless they be repulsed in their first adfellow creatures, to the corruption of the morals of a vances upon the citadel of virtue, like the martial Ropeople, that we are at a loss to conceive the inducement mans, deny all mercy when the battering ram shall to a crime so foul and destructive. We can only com- have once smitten the walls. We feel no disposition to pare such miscreants to that most unfortunate of the distinguish between the merits of creeds, but it would family of man, the public executioner; an officer abso- perhaps have been well for the interests of society, if lutely necessary for the preservation of social order. the religious sects, which protested against the ancient His head and heart are constructed like ours, and yet establishment, had not neglected in their zeal to reform by some unaccountable propensity, he prefers, to all the abuses, to retain that admirable feature in its ecclesiasagreeable, lucrative, and honorable professions which tical polity, which elevates matrimony to the dignity of present themselves in such numbers to the strength a sacrament, and while it merely permits that a wife be and to the ingenuity of man, the miserable employment put away for the single cause of infidelity, yet holds of inflicting pain and death upon his fellow mortals. the bond to be indissoluble, and literally adheres to the He is either ignorant of public opinion, or has the ef- solemn injunction, "Whom God hath joined together frontery to brave it. The public authorities have no let no man put asunder." It is the high prerogative of sooner assigned him a dwelling, than the habitations of christianity to have elevated woman to her proper others are removed out of sight; and in the midst of station; and in all the events connected with its estabsuch a solitude he lives with his family and children, lishment, she has occupied an important station. As from whose lips alone he catches the tones of the human if by a just retribution, as she had been the first to voice. And after an execution, when his loathsome disobey, we find her throughout the ancient dispensatask is consummated, he stretches forth his hand, red tion in a state of comparative debasement, in which she with the sign of death, and justice, shrinking from his was doomed to remain until the coming of the Messiah, presence, throws him a few pieces of gold, which he when she was to bruise the serpent's head beneath her bears off between two lines of spectators retiring with heel. But since that era, while in pagan nations she horror at his approach. No moral eulogy is applicable to still abides the primal curse, she has been elevated to a him, for all such regard the social relations which unile the level with the sterner sex wherever the light of chrishuman family—and this man has none. And yet all tianity has been diffused. We need not advert to the power, all greatness, all subordination depend upon terrible rites of the people who inhabit the banks of the the executioner; he is at once the horror and the bond Ganges, or the aborigines of our own forests, for eviof society. Remove from the world this incompre-dences of the debasement of woman; for all the systems bensible agent, and that instant order will yield to of ancient legislation despised, degraded, and maltreatchaos, governments will be subverted, and society ed the female race. "Woman," says the law of Menou, perish. God, who established sovereignty, likewise ordained punishment; these are the two poles between which he has poised our globe, for "Jehovah is the Lord of the two poles, and upon them he has ordered the world to roll." And if such be the degradation of a human being in the discharge of a necessary and important duty for the maintenance of order, if such be the estimation in which he is held, and no moral eulogy be applicable to him, what station shall we assign to those, who, perverting the endowments of the intellect from their legitimate use, labor to sap the foundations of morality, and to subvert the social fabric by corrupting the VIRTUE OF WOMAN, the fast and firmest bond of civilization and society?

At the very head of the band of remorseless disorganizers, who, in despicable imitation of Voltaire, have assailed the morals of those two germs of society, women and young men, stands Edward Lytton Bulwer;

"in infancy is protected by the father, by the husband in youth, and by the son in old age. Her proper state is always that of dependance. The unconquerable capriciousness of her temper, the inconstancy and versatility of her character, the absence of all personal affection, and the natural perversity which characterises her sex, have not failed, notwithstanding every precaution, to detach them in a short time from their husbands." Plato wished that the laws would never for a single moment lose sight of woman, for, said he, if legislation on this point be unwise, they no longer constitute the half of the human family; they do however form more than the half, and just so much as they exceed us in number, are they inferior to us in virtue. All are acquainted with the almost incredible slavery and endless tutelage, to which women were subjected in Athens. Upon the death of a father who left behind him an unmarried daughter, the next of kin of the same name

Woman, without whom the two extremities of life would be without succor, and its intervening space without pleasure, is not only the pride and ornament of

was entitled to educate her and make her his wife; | to the scaffold, how touchingly does her simple remark and a husband could bequeath his wife upon his death, find a response in the human heart: "Believe me, my as a part of his property to any individual he might friends, when you put persons of my sex to death, think proper to select. Who does not recollect the God thinks of it more than once." In imitation of the severity of the Roman laws towards females? We divine founder of that religion which had elevated her might well imagine, when we remark the policy of sex to its proper dignity, her last moments seem to these ancient legislators with respect to the second or have been more occupied with the guilt of her perseinferior sex, that they had taken their lessons in the cutors than with her individual sufferings. This is no school of Hypocrates, who considered them essentially place for a eulogy upon woman, doomed, devoted, sufand radically evil. "Woman," he declares, "is per-fering woman. In the hour of hope her presence gilds verse by nature; her disposition ought to be continually the distant horizon, in the day of prosperity she enrepressed, otherwise it will burst forth like the branches hances its comforts, and in the dark hour of adversity, of a tree in every direction. If the husband be absent, when the manly trunk is shaken by the tempest, she the parents are unable to restrain or control her; she clings around it and supports it with all her delicate tenmust be entrusted to the care of a friend, whose zeal drils; and when the bolt shall have fallen, and the riven will not be blinded by affection." In a word, the legis- and shattered stock is all that remains of robust virility, lation of all nations of the earth has degraded woman; she gathers up her clustering foliage around it, in tenand even at the present day she is a slave under the der solicitude to shelter and conceal from the scoffing Koran, and little better than a brute among the sav- and mockery of an unfeeling world the ruin which ages. The Gospel alone, by developing their innate drags her to the earth. It has been the proud destiny and essential excellence, has been able to elevate them of this country to have produced two distinguished to an equality with man. It alone has proclaimed the personages, who, in point of true dignity and moral rights of woman; and after having bestowed those weight of character, have surpassed all the sons of the rights upon her, has implanted within her bosom a children of men. And it is not the least of the high principle the most active and powerful, whether for attributes of these men, that they entertained and exgood or evil, which was the only security for their pro- pressed throughout all the vicissitudes of an eventful tection. Destroy, or even weaken the influence of this life, a proper regard for the excellence, and a lofty sense divine law in a christian community, by extending to of the purity of woman; and the daughters of their dewoman that freedom which can only be safely enjoyed scendants will have shamed their mothers, before they where that influence is deeply felt; and you will im-forget the exalted virtues of Marshall and Washington. mediately behold that noble and touching liberty, which she derives from the Gospel, degenerate into the most shameless licentiousness. They will become the most terrible instruments to extend that universal corrup-joyous life, but her affections, like the waters of the tion, which in a short time must shake the pillars of the state. The result of such widespread corruption must be felt in any nation; and soon, very soon, as public morals are corrupted, the government itself, reposing on morality, must bow down burdened with precocious afflictions, and its leprous decrepitude will fill all beholders with dismay and horror. A Turk or a Persian, who should attend one of our festive dances, would consider us mad; for he could not reconcile to his ideas of female purity this mingling of the sexes, and this unmeasured license. The heart of woman is so much more awake to celestial influences, her disposition is so much more conformable to the spirit of revelation, that by a kind of retributive justice, christianity has thrown around the sex her lightest mantle of freedom, and knowing well how easy it is to inspire vice, she has denied to the sterner race the power to compel it. Let this maxim be deeply impressed upon the minds of legislators, that as woman owes her freedom and elevation to christianity, so it will be necessary, before abolishing the scriptures, either to confine her, as in the Ottoman empire, or to subject her to frightful laws, as among the Hindoos. Well did the projectors of the French revolution understand the intimate connexion between christianity and female excellence, and the influence of that sex upon the morals of a people; and it is one of the darkest features in that darkest page of the book of man, that they first degraded her to a level with the brute, and only offered her their disgusting homage when she had been stripped of every moral attribute. When Elizabeth of France was led

Lybian fountain, grow warmer as the shades of adversity darken around the paths of our pilgrimage. The great objection we have to the principles and morals of Bulwer, Byron, and all that licentious school, is, that they attempt to infuse their mortal venom wherever its pernicious influence is most destructive; for they seek not only to sully the mirror of virgin purity, but to loosen the sacred bands of wedlock, and ridicule the sanctity of conjugal rites. In this the spirit of their writings is directly opposed to the genius of christianity; and worse than the infidel, they not only strike at the faith, but they labor to subvert the existence of social man. Let no lukewarm christian, let no tardy moralist tell us of the rape of Helen, or of the derelict queen of Carthage, from whose hapless and illegitimate loves have sprung two of those poems which seem destined to immortality. They were penned before the introduction of christianity, and were designed for a people among whom woman was deplorably debased, and the mere instruments of a master's pleasure. The scholar still admires in the Iliad, the wisdom of Nestor, the craft of Ulysses, the valor of Achilles, the courage of Hector, the prowess of Ajax, the sorrows of Priam, and the regal state of Agamemnon; but in the effeminacy of Paris and the inconstancy of Helen, there was nothing to shock the morals of a pagan generation, and woman was already debased beyond the influence of writers. But under the christian dispensation, since the revival of letters, and the consequent refinement of morals and manners, woman has become the bond of society; and those who spread before her the seductive