will walk in the steps of his beloved parent. We have an earnest of his gracious intentions. Every church has resounded with the royal proclamation for the encouragement of piety and virtue, and for punishing profaneness, vice, and immorality. He has pledged his honour, - honour is the law of kings, — and his honour is unimpeachable. In spite of the machinations of the wicked, he wears by acclamation his hereditary crown, and

May He who wears the crown immortally,
Long guard it his!

He has commenced his reign auspiciously with a public act of wise and well-timed beneficence. By His Majesty's dedication of a large portion of land with a noble pecuniary bounty to a most important purpose, DARTMOOR will hold out to postérity a lasting monument of royal liberality. By this permanent establishment for the protection and support of a large class of helpless, houseless beings, not only will the desert be literally converted into a fruitful field, but the neglected human plant will be reared and cultivated, the body rescued from the miseries of want, the mind from the desolation of ignorance, and the heart from the corruptions of idleness, and the ravages of sin.

"These are imperial arts, and worthy kings!"

O may he so live in the hearts of his people, and so reign in the fear of God, that it may become hereafter a matter of controversy among unborn historians whether the third or fourth GEORGE will have the fairest claim to the now proverbial appellation of the BEST OF KINGS!

PREFACE

ΤΟ

THE FIRST EDITION.

It is with the sincerest satisfaction, and the most lively gratitude to God, that the writer of these pages is enabled to bear her feeble but heart-felt testimony to the progress which religion has made, and is making, amongst us, especially in the higher, and even the highest ranks of society.

At a period, therefore, abounding and advancing in almost every kind of religious improvement, she may be thought by those who would be looking for congratulation rather than caution, to have imposed on herself an invidious task, in choosing to dwell less on the triumphs of Christianity than on the dangers or the errors of some of its professors. Yet she is persuaded that they who have made the greatest proficiency in piety will be the most ready to forgive the intimations, of which they stand in the least need.

It may, however, justly be said, that the writer might have found more appropriate objects of censure amongst the worldly and the irreligious, than in the more respectable classes whom she has taken the liberty to make the subject of animad

version. But the truth is, the thoughtless and the profligate have been so successively and so perseveringly attacked by far more powerful pens; have been so long assailed by the monitory maxims of the moralist, pelted by the missile weapons of the satirist, and chastised by the grave rebuke of the divine; that, with due deference, she turns over the hitherto incorrigible to stronger and more efficient hands; while she ventures to address her observations to other quarters, where there will be more hope of forgiveness, and less despair of success.

She does not therefore appeal to those who "hear not Moses and the Prophets," but rather to those who, hearing, neglect them; and especially to those who, in some awful instances, misrepresent them. She presumes, with respect and diffidence, to expostulate with some, who, though exempt from palpable defects in practice, yet require to be reminded that speculative errors cannot be indulged without danger; and to intimate to others, that the practice may be faulty where there are no material errors in the creed. Doubtless indifference to religion will hereafter be more severely judged, than mistakes in it, especially if the latter be found to proceed from the head, as the other more apparently does from the heart.

The remarks in the early part of this volume, on the excess of continental intercourse, will probably be accused of blamable scrupulosity, and the writer be charged with unnecessary rigour. Yet

what enlightened conscience will deny that some of the habits to which allusion is made militate as much against the self-denying spirit of our religion as more ostensible faults? They would not, however, have been noticed, had they been confined to trifling and common characters; but the least error that grows into a habit, and that habit sanctioned by the countenance of the worthy and respectable, becomes more important than even the vices of ordinary men or frivolous women. In lamenting the probably injurious consequences to a large proportion of the myriads who are still, with unabated eagerness, crowding to a foreign shore, the author is fully persuaded that many amongst them carry out principles too deeply rooted to be shaken by unprofitable intercourse, and morals too correct to be infected by the fascinations of pleasure. But who will deny that the countenance of those who escape the injury gives an authority to those who receive it? In this view the wisest and most correct of our emigrants may, by lending themselves to the practice, furnish, in the result, an apology for things which they themselves disapprove; and thus their example may be pleaded, as favouring what they would be amongst the last to tolerate.

That long and frequent absences from our home, and especially from our country, are not favourable to the mind, is but too visible in that spirit of restlessness acquired by so many who have repeatedly made the experiment. For it is observable that the desire once indulged, instead

of being cooled is inflamed; inclination becomes voracity. Appetite has grown with indulgence. And is it not to be feared that the sober scenes of domestic, and especially of rural life, will continue to appear more and more insipid in proportion to the frequency with which they are deserted? Will not successive and protracted carnivals convert the quiet scenes of home enjoyment into what the poet calls "a lenten entertainment?"

Home is at once the scene of repose and of activity. A country gentleman of rank and fortune is the sun of a little system, the movements of which his influence controls. It is at home that he feels his real importance, his usefulness, and his dignity. Each diminishes in proportion to the distance he wanders from his proper orbit. The old English gentry kept up the reverence and secured the attachment of their dependants by living among them. Personal affection was maintained by the presence of the benefactor. Subordination had a visible head. Whereas, obedience to a master they do not see savours too much of allegiance to a foreign power.

We know that the Roman hero, who transgressed the boundaries of his own province by once crossing the Rubicon, changed the whole condition, circumstances, constitution, and character of his country. May not the reiterated passage of the Straits of Dover eventually produce moral changes not less important?

The mischiefs effected by these incessant migrations may, indeed, be slow, but they are pro