It is thus that these works awaken extensively, in the minds of the young, associations unfavorable to the sterner and sterling virtues; and in many cases, these amiable qualities are so associated with vice as to render it attractive. It is thus that we are presented by popular novelists—and in such a manner as I know carries along the sympathies of many young men, while their imaginations are rendered familiar with the haunts of vice—with gentlemen robbers who rob in style; who are so generous that they never rob the poor; who never shed human blood if people will give up their money without it; and if they are occasionally obliged to blow out the brains of some agent of the law, they are really sorry for it, though they do not see how such impertinent fellows could expect any thing better. It is thus that the impression is received, that a certain class of impulses is sufficient to secure success in life, and even to excuse the want of principle; and young men with their heads full of pictures, not perhaps so bad as this, yet fundamentally the same, rush eagerly into life without fixed principles and fixed aims.

To him who is without experience, there is no sight more beautiful than that of a young man of an ingenuous nature entering upon life, and resting upon his own good impulses to keep him from evil. But such a sight, even when there has been no corruption like that just spoken of, now causes apprehension in me; for I have seen him who had every thing, in his person and in his sensibilities, to excite admiration and love, tarrying long at the wine, and seeking mixed wine; I have seen him going to that "house" which "is the way to hell;" and therefore it is that I would utter a solemn protest against any thing which would divorce the beauty of virtue from the principle of virtue, or which would give an impression that there is security without fixed principle. Even "genius," with all these amiable qualities—

"Yet may lack the aid
Implored by humble minds and hearts afraid,
May leave to timid souls the shield and sword
Of the tried faith and the resistless word;
Amid a world of dangers venturing forth,
Frail but yet fearless, proud in conscious worth,
Till strong temptation, in some fatal time,
Assails the heart and wins the soul to crime."

Then,

"All that honor brings against the force
Of headlong passion, aids its rapid course;
Its slight resistance but provokes the fire,
As wood-work stops the flame, and then conveys it higher."

With such a basis to the characters presented, it will follow of course, that the emotions and the sensibilities will be chiefly addressed in these works, and thus they become the principal means of promoting that false and selfish sensibility which is so often cultivated in refined society. This is a more refined species of intemperance, and is to the mind what intemperance in strong drink is to the body. It causes excitement for the mere selfish enjoyment produced by it, without leading to any exertion. And as the grosser species of intemperance is more common among one sex, so it is to be feared, that this more refined species is more common among the other; and that for both, circulating libraries, and other libraries, instead of furnishing wholesome entertainment, are too often converted into mere intellectual dram-shops. There are many who seek chiefly for excitement, who have a constant craving for it, whose emotions and mental sensibilities have become accustomed to a set of artificial stimulants till they are sensible to no other, and they become as remorselessly selfish as the drunkard himself. I would sooner apply for an act of genuine kindness, one which should reach actual want, to a woman in a log-house, upon the side of a mountain, surrounded by hungry children, than to the daintiest young lady whose sensibilities have spindled up and wilted in the artificial heat of novel-reading. In order to perform the duties of benevolence and philanthropy, it is indispensable that the sensibilities should be kept alive to the impressions of misery as it actually presents itself in all its squalid accompaniments.

"Sweet are the tears that from a Howard's eye
Drop on the cheek of one he lifts from earth;
And he who works me good with unmoved face,
Does it but half; he chills me while he aids,
My benefactor, not my fellow-man.
But even this, this cold benevolence,
Seems worth, seems manhood, when there rise before me
The sluggard Pity's vision-weaving tribe,
Who sigh for wretchedness, yet shun the wretched,
Nursing, in some delicious solitude,
Their slothful loves and dainty sympathies!"

It was this esteem in which mankind hold the sensibilities and impulses, this preference of spontaneousness without its connexion with principle, which gave its popularity to what has been called the sentimental school—the results of which ought to teach society a lesson not soon to be forgotten. Concerning this school, it is justly remarked by Coleridge, that "all the mischief achieved by Hobbes, and the whole school of materialists, will appear inconsiderable if it be compared with the mischief effected and occasioned by the sentimental philosophy of Sterne and his numerous imitators. The vilest appetites, and the most remorseless inconstancy towards their objects, acquired the title of the heart—the irresistible feelings—the too tender sensibility: and if the frosts of prudence, the icy chains of human law, thawed and vanished at the genial warmth of human nature, who could help it? It was an amiable weakness."

I would here remark, that I have no objection to fictitious writings as such. There are those to which I do not object. Let them cease, first, to present false pictures of life: secondly, to array the sensibilities and associations of the mind against principle: and, thirdly, let them cease to create and feed a morbid craving for excitement, and to destroy the balance between the feelings and the judgment: and I shall not object to them. The mass of these writings, however, do produce each and all of these effects, and are, so far, indisputably pernicious.

I have been thus particular in pointing out the evils which arise from arraying what is beautiful and graceful in morals and in conduct against that which is right, because I do not believe that the community are sufficiently warned against the mischief it is working, and in many cases are not perhaps aware of the manner in which it is wrought. Evil gains advantage over man by dividing him against himself, by bringing into collision faculties that were intended to work harmoniously together; and we may regard it as settled, that whoever or whatever would set up mere impulses, or sensibilities, or emotions, in the place of the reason and conscience of man, is thus dividing him against himself. It is with the conscience of man as it is with a king. He may have his prime minister, who is his chief favorite, and next to himself, but he must never abandon his power, or suffer the highest subject to depose him from the throne. The desires and affections are then only truly beautiful, when they are in ready attendance at the court of their rightful sovereign.