The praise of Rousseau is in this paper much too unquallfied; he is the most dangerous and seductive of writers; and I gladly seize the opportunity of introducing an admirably. written corrective, from a volume just published under the title of "Extracts from the Diary of a Lover of Literature ;" a work which, though singularly desultory in its construction, abounds in taste, good sense, and nervous composition. I am sorry that want of room must limit my quotation from this writer to his strictures on the Nouvelle Heloise, the most pernicious, however, of the productions of the French

man.

"Rousseau is a character who has by turns transported me with the most violent and opposite emotions of delight and disgust, admiration and contempt, indignation and pity: but my ultimate opinion of him, drawn as it is from a pretty attentive consideration of his writings and actions, will not, I think, easily be changed.

"Of all the modes of inculcating opinion, that which brings before us a vivid representation of real life, where every thing lives and moves and breathes at the disposition of the fancy; which indirectly enforces its sentiments by the energy of character and action, and impressively stamps them on the mind by the interest and fascination of circumstantial narrative, has unquestionably the fairest chance for rapid and popular effect. Feeble and impotent is the most animated exhortation, lifeless and inert are the most authoritative precepts, compared with the powerful and seductive influence of a well conceived and well conducted novel; which, while it awakens breathless curiosity, and enchains expectant attention, by the magic of its fable, while it agitates at pleasure, and in modes most conducive to its purpose, all the varieties of passion, silently liquefies and moulds to its will, the taste, the turn of thought, the moral sentiments, and the moral character of its reader. Of compositions like these, I shall always take the liberty to collect the aim, from the final and

predominant impression which they leave upon the mind. If their tendency is, upon the whole, to relax the obligations to virtue, and smooth the declivities to vice, by means which it is so entirely in the power of the writer to employ and to conceal, it is not any declaration on his part, nor any corrective he may put in his own mouth, or in those of the personages he brings forward, no, nor any lenient qualification he may deem it prudent to introduce in the moral government of his drama, which shall soothe my unguarded unsuspecting simplicity, into a persuasion of the innocent spirit of the work, or the virtuous views of the author. The effect it is impossible to mistake; the intention, at best, is equivocal. With what impressions, then, do we rise from the perusal of Julia? With a considerable abatement, I think, in our exquisite sense and high estimation (to say no more) of three most important regulations in life: regulations, which, engrafted as they are upon the dearest of our personal and bosom interests, strike deep into the composition of our several characters, mingle with the whole texture of our domestic œconomy, and affect, remotely indeed, but powerfully, the entire fabric of civil society-those, I mean, which enjoin the purest chastity in females before marriage; a deference to parental authority, in the disposal of their affections and their persons; and a sacred horror to whatever may tend, after marriage, to alienate their conjugal regards, Love, which it is the object of these regulations to check from diffusion or perversion, and to conduct into its regular fructifying channels, has so universal and absolute an influence, enters into our composition at so green an age, and agitates the tender germ with such an impetuous and tender impulse, that, in the cultivation of the human mind, it cannot be too vigilantly watched, or sedulously trained. This imperious passion, from which we derive our being and transmit it, and in a great degree our characters too, it has been the endea vour of Rousseau to exasperate into an impatience of all con

troul; and to convert into an engine for overwhelming its natural guardians and protectors, as tyrannical usurpers over the rights of nature. What is the story he brings before us? › A young lady, the only and darling child of a man of rank, and proud of that rank, conceives a passionate attachment for a youth entrusted with the delicate charge of her educa tion; a clandestine intercourse is carried on; the impossibility of union reverberates the flame, and kindles intolerable ardour; the youth is modest and reserved; the enamoured maid invites him to her bed, and rewards his passion with the last favour a virgin can bestow: an improper sympathy is suspected by the father; he proposes and presses an equal match on which he had long set his heart; she reluctantly consents; she dismisses her lover; she marries; she resumes her old correspondence with her favourite paramour; she admits him, with her husband's permission, an inmate in the house; she is indulged with opportunities of renewing with him the pas. sionate scenes, and reviving the harrowing remembrances, of former days; and expires in this unnatural intercourse. When these things are fairly set before us, in all their naked defor mity, we want no monitor to prompt our aversion and disgust. We see by an intuitive glance, we feel by an instinctive thrill, all the pestilent disorders which would flow in upon us, from our encouragement, from our toleration, of such practices; from our not driving them, as we do, by common consent, from society, with shame and scorn and detestation. It requires no logic to convince us, that if the settled restrictions on these subjects were once removed, and nothing substituted but loose personal discretion, swayed by every gust of appetite and passion, that all domestic security and comfort, all parental care, all filial duty, all pure and hallowed affection, all conjugal confidence and endearment, would be overwhelmed under a flood of gross adulterous lust and corrupted sentiment. What shall we think then of a writer, who, by the fascination of his fable, the melting fervour of

his sentiments, and the vivid force of his thrilling descriptions, induces us, not to palliate as venial errors, not to approye as amiable failings, but to enter into and to adopt as our own, to cherish as consolatory expedients, and embrace as a sort of sanctuary and refuge from despair, these flagrant violations of delicacy, decency, and chastity?" P. 73, 74.

I LAY before you a sketch of the principal inci

dents which have occurred in the life of a Country Curate; a life sufficiently varied to interest the inquisitive, and sufficiently marked with error to afford admonition to the incautious.

I was born at a considerable distance from the metropolis. My father was one of those clergymen who cavil at creeds and propose emendations to the liturgy; and of those articles which are jointly considered as the standard of genuine orthodoxy, of many he would confess his utter disbelief, and of some his sovereign contempt. It is easy, therefore, to imagine, that he was never dignified by patronage, or exalted to preferment. His friends, indeed, were numerous; but his enemies were active. They who had assented to doctrines into which they never inquired, will not look favourably on those in whom inquiry has produced incredulity; and they, whom doubt has not deterred from assent, are little delighted with honesty