it is pleaded that a facility of style, and an easy turn of expression, are acquisitions to be derived from an early interchange of sentiments by letterwriting; but even if it were so, these would be dearly purchased by the sacrifice of that truth and sobriety of sentiment, that correctness of language, and that ingenuous simplicity of character and manners, so lovely in female youth.

In

Next to pernicious reading, imprudent and violent friendships are the most dangerous snares to this simplicity. And boundless correspondences with different confidants, whether they live in a distant province, or, as it often happens, in the same street, are the fuel which principally feeds this dangerous flame of youthful sentiment. those correspondences, the young friends often encourage each other in the falsest notions of human life, and the most erroneous views of each other's character. Family affairs are divulged, and family faults aggravated. Vows of everlasting attachment and exclusive fondness are in a pretty just proportion bestowed on every friend alike. These epistles overflow with quotations from the most passionate of the dramatic poets; and passages wrested from their natural meaning, and pressed into the service of sentiment, are, with all the violence of misapplication, compelled to suit the case of the heroic transcriber.

But antecedent to this epistolary period of life, they should have been accustomed to the most scrupulous exactness in whatever they relate. They should maintain the most critical accuracy in facts, in dates, in numbering, in describing, in short, in whatever pertains, either directly or indirectly, closely or remotely, to the great fundamental principle, Truth. It is so very difficult for persons of great liveliness to restrain themselves within the sober limits of strict veracity, either in their asser

tions or narrations, especially when a little undue indulgence of fancy is apt to procure for them the praise of genius and spirit, that this restraint is one of the earliest principles which should be worked into the youthful mind.

The conversation of young females is also in danger of being overloaded with epithets. As in the warm season of youth hardly any thing is seen in the true point of vision, so hardly any thing is named in naked simplicity; and the very sensibility of the feelings is partly a cause of the extravagance of the expression. But here, as in other points, the sacred writers, particularly of the New Testament, present us with the purest models; and its natural and unlaboured style of expression is perhaps not the meanest evidence of the truth of the gospel. There is throughout the whole narratives no overcharged character, no elaborate

description, nothing studiously emphatical, as if truth of itself were weak, and wanted to be helped out. There is little panegyric, and less invective; none but on great, and awful, and justifiable occasions. The authors record their own faults with the same honesty as if they were the faults of other men, and the faults of other men with as little amplification as if they were their own. There is perhaps no book in which adjectives are so sparingly used. A modest statement of the fact, with no colouring and little comment, with little emphasis and no varnish, is the example held out to us for correcting the exuberances of passion and of language, by that divine volume which furnishes us with the still more important rule of faith and standard of practice. Nor is the truth lowered by any feebleness, nor is the spirit diluted, nor the impression weakened, by this soberness and moderation; for with all this plainness there is so much force, with all this simplicity there is so much

energy, that a few slight touches and artless strokes of scripture characters convey a stronger outline of the person delineated, than is sometimes' given by the most elaborate and finished portrait of more artificial historians.

If it be objected to this remark, that many parts of the sacred writings abound in a lofty, figurative, and even hyperbolical style; this objection applies chiefly to the writings of the Old Testament, and to the prophetical and poetical parts of that. But the metaphorical and florid style of those writings is distinct from the inaccurate and overstrained expression we have been censuring; for that only is inaccuracy which leads to a false and inadequate conception in the reader or hearer. The lofty style of the Eastern, and of other heroic poetry, does not so mislead; for the metaphor is understood to be a metaphor, and the imagery is understood to be ornamental. The style of the scriptures of the Old Testament is not, it is true, plain, in opposition to figurative; nor simple, in opposition to florid; but it is plain and simple in the best sense, as opposed to false principles and false taste; it raises no wrong idea; it gives an exact impression of the thing it means to convey; and its very tropes and figures, though bold, are never unnatural or affected when it embellishes, it does not mislead; even when it exaggerates, it does not misrepresent; if it be hyperbolical, it is so either in compliance with the genius of Oriental language, or in compliance with contemporary customs, or because the subject is one which will be most forcibly impressed by a strong figure. The loftiness of the expression deducts nothing from the weight of the circumstance; the imagery animates the reader, without misleading him; the boldest illustration, while it dilates his conception of the subject, detracts nothing from its exactness; and the divine Spirit,

mstead of suffering truth to be injured by the opulence of the figures, contrives to make them fresh and varied avenues to the heart and the understanding.

CHAPTER XI.

On Religion.-The necessity and duty of early instruction, shewn by analogy with human learning.

IT has been the fashion of our late innovators in philosophy, who have written some of the most brilliant and popular treatises on education, to decry the practice of early instilling religious knowledge into the minds of children. In vindication of this opinion, it has been alleged, that it is of the utmost importance to the cause of truth, that the mind of man should be kept free from prepossessions; and in particular, that every one should be left to form such judgment on religious subjects as may seem best to his own reason in maturer years.

This sentiment has received some countenance from those better characters who have wished, on the fairest principle, to encourage free inquiry in religion; but it has been pushed to the blameable

*Rosseau directs, that from the hour of birth to the age of twelve, the education of the child should be purely negative. Following this advice, one of our popular Encyclopædias, pubished a little time before this work, gave a system of education, in which the writer says, "The reader will doubtless be surprised that we have attended our pupil throughout the whole of the first age of life, without ever speaking to him of religion. He hardly knows at fifteen, whether or not he has a soul, and perhaps it will not be time to inform him of it when he is eighteen; if he learns it too soon, he runs a risk of not knowing it at all." ED.

excess here censured, chiefly by the new philosophers; who, while they profess only an ingenuous zeal for truth, are in fact slily endeavouring to destroy Christianity itself, by discountenancing, under the plausible pretence of free inquiry, all attention whatever to the religious education of our youth.

It is undoubtedly our duty, while we are instilling principles into the tender mind, to take peculiar care that those principles be sound and just; that the religion we teach be the religion of the Bible, and not the inventions of human error or superstition that the principles we infuse into others, be such as we ourselves have well scrutinized, and not the result of our credulity or bigotry; nor the mere hereditary, unexamined prejudices of our own undiscerning childhood. It may also be granted, that it is the duty of every parent to inform the youth, that when his faculties shall have so unfolded themselves, as to enable him to examine for himself those principles which the parent is now instilling, it will be his duty so to examine them.

But, after making these concessions, I would most seriously insist, that there are certain leading and fundamental truths; that there are certain sentiments on the side of Christianity, as well as of virtue and benevolence, in favour of which every child ought to be prepossessed; and may it not be also added, that to expect to keep the mind void of all prepossession, even upon any subject, appears to be altogether a vain and impracticable attempt? an attempt, the very suggestion of which argues much ignorance of human nature.

Let it be observed here, that we are not combating the infidel; that we are not producing evidences and arguments in favour of the truth of Christianity, or trying to win over the assent of the reader to that which he disputes; but that we are taking it for