We are far from thinking,' replied she, that our charity should be limited to our own immediate neighbourhood. We are of opinion, that it should not be left undone any where, but that there it should be done indispensably We consider our own parish as our more appropriate field of action, where Providence by "fixing the bounds of our habitation," seems to have made us peculiarly responsible, for the comfort of those whom he has doubtless placed around us for that purpose. It is thus that the Almighty vindicates his justice, or rather calls on us to vindicate it. It is thus he explains why he admits natural evil into the world, by making the wants of one part of the community an exercise for the compassion of the other.

Surely,' added Mrs. Stanley, the reason is particularly obvious, why the bounty of the affluent ought to be most liberally, though not exclusively, extended to the spot whence they derive their revenues. There seems indeed to be a double motive for it. The same act involves a duty both to God and to man. The largest bounty to the necessitous on our estates, is rather justice than charity. 'Tis but a kind of pepper-corn acknowledgment to the great Lord and proprietor of all, from whom we hold them. And to assist their own labouring poor is a kind of natural debt, which persons who possess great landed property owe to those from the sweat of whose brow they derive their comforts, and even their riches. 'Tis a commutation, in which, as the advantage is greatly on our side, so is our duty to diminish the difference, of paramount obligation.'

I then repeated my request, that I might be allowed to take a practical lesson in the next periodical visit to the cottages.

Mis. Stanley replied, As to my girls, the elder ones, I trust, are such veterans in their trade, that your approbation can do them no harm, nor do they stand in need of it as an incentive. But should the little ones find that their charity procures them praise, they might perhaps be charitable for the sake of praise, their benevolence might be set at work by their vanity, and they might be led to do that, from the love of applause, which can only please God when the principle is pure. The iniquity of our holy things, my good friend, requires much Christian vigilance. Next to not giving at all. the greatest fault is to give from ostentation. The contest is only between two sins. The motive robs the act of the very name of virtue, while the good work that is paid in praise, is stripped of the hope of higher retribution.

On my assuring Mrs. Stanley, that I thought such an introduction to their systematic schemes of charity might inform my own mind and improve my habits, she consented and I have since been a frequent witness of their admirable method; and have been studying plans, which involve the good both of body and soul. Oh! if I am ever blest wilh a coadjutress, a directress let me rather say,

formed under such auspices, with what delight shall I transplant the principles and practices of Stanley Grove to the Priory! Nor indeed would I ever marry but with the animating hope that not only myself, but all around me, would be the better and the happier for the presiding genius I shall place there.

Sir John Belfield had joined us while we were on this topic. I had observed sometimes that though he was earnest on the general principle of benevolence, which he considered as a most imperious duty, or, as he said in his warm way, as so lively a pleasure, that he was almost ready to suspect if it were a duty; yet I was sorry to find that his generous mind had not viewed this large subject under all its aspects. He had not hitherto regarded it as a matter demanding any thing but money: while time, inquiry, discrimination, system, he confessed he had not much taken into the account. He did a great deal of good, but had not allowed himself time or thought for the best way of doing it. Charity, as opposed to hard-heartedness and covetousness, he warmly exercised; but when, with a willing liberality, he had cleared himself from the suspicion of those detestable vices, he was indolent in the proper distribution of money and somewhat negligent of its just application. Nor had he ever considered, as every man should do, because every man's means are limited, how the greatest quantity of good could be done with any given sum.

But the worst of all was, he had imbibed certain popular prejudices respecting the more religious charities; prejudices altoge ther unworthy of his inlightened mind. He too much limited his ideas of bounty to bodily wants. This distinction was not with him, as it is with many, invented as an argument for saving his money, which he most willingly bestowed for feeding and clothing the necessitous. But as to the propriety of affording them religious instruction, he owned he had not made up his mind. He had some doubts whether it were a duty. Whether it were a benefit, he had still stronger doubts; adding that he should begin to consider the subject more attentively than he had yet done.

Mrs Stanley in reply said, 'I am but a poor casuist, Sir John, and I must refer you to Mr. Stanley for abler arguments than I can use. I will venture however to say, that even on your own ground it appears to be a pressing duty. If sin be the cause of so large a portion of the miseries of human life, must not that be the noblest charity which cures, or lessens, or prevents sin? And are not they the truest benefactors even to the bodies of men, who by their religious exertions to prevent the corruption of vice, prevent also, in some measure, that poverty and disease which are the natural concomitants of vice? If in endeavouring to make men better, by the infusion of a religous principle, which shall check idleness, drinking, and extravagance, we put them in the way to be

come healthier, and richer, and happier, it will furnish a practical argument which I am sure will satisfy your benevolent heart.'

CHAP. XXIX.

MR. TYRREL and his nephew called on us in the evening, and interrupted a pleasant and useful conversation on which we were just entering.

Do you know, Stanley,' said Mr. Tyrrel, that you have absolutely corrupted my nephew, by what passed at your house the other day in favour of reading. He has ever since been ransack

ing the shelves for idle books.'

I should be seriously concerned,' replied Mr. Stanley, if any thing I had said should have drawn Mr. Edward off from more valuable studies, or diverted him from the important pursuit of religious knowledge.'

6 Why to do him justice, and you too,' resumed Mr. Tyrrel, 'he has since that conversation begun assiduously to devote his mornings to serious reading, and it is only an hour's leisure in the evening which he used to trifle away, that he gives to books of taste; but I had rather he would let them all alone. The best of them will only fill his heart with cold morality, and stuff his head with romance and fiction. I would not have a religious man ever look into a book of your belles lettres nonsense; and if he be really religious, he will make a general bonfire of the poets.'

That is rather too sweeping a sentence,' said Mr. Stanley. "It would, I grant you, have been a benefit to mankind, if the entire works of some celebrated poets, and a considerable portion of the works of many not quite so exceptionable, were to assist the conflagration of your pile.'

And if fuel failed,' said Sir John Belfield, we might not only rob Belinda's altar of her

Twelve tomes of French romances neatly gilt, but feed the flame with countless marble covered octavos from the modern school. But having made this concession, allow me to ob serve, that bescause there has been a voluptuous Petronius, a prophane Lucretius, and a licentious Ovid, to say nothing of the numberless modern poets, or rather individual poems, that are immoral and corrup-shall we therefore exclude all works of imagination from the library of a young man? Surely we should not indiscriminately banish the Muses as infallible corruptors of the youthful mind; I would rather consider a blameless poet as the auxiliary of virtue. Whatever talent enables a writer to possess an empire over the heart, and to lead the passions at his command, puts it in his power to be of no small service to mankind. It is no new re

mark that the abuse of any good thing is no argument against its legitimate use. Intoxication affords no just reason against the use of wine, nor prodigality against the possession of wealth. In the instance in dispute I should rather infer that a talent capable of dife fusing so much mischief, was susceptible of no small benefit. That it has been so often abused by its misapplication, is one of the highest instances of the ingratitude of man for one of the highest gifts of God.'

'I cannot think,' said I, that the Almighty conferred such a faculty with a wish to have it extinguished. Works of imagination have in many countries been a chief instrument of civilization. Poetry has not only preceded science in the history of human progress, but it has in many countries preceded the knowledge of the mechanical arts; and I have somewhere read, that in Scotland they could write elegant Latin verse before they could make a wheelbarrow. For my own part, in my late visit to London, I thought the decline of poetry no favourable symptom.'

I rejoice to hear it is declining,' said Tyrrel. I hope that what is decaying, may in time be extinguished.'

Mr. Tyrrel would have been delighted with what I was displeased,' replied I. I met with philosophers, who were like Plato in nothing but his abhorrence of the Muses; with politicians, who resembled Burleigh only in his enmity to Spenser; and with warriors, who however they might emulate Alexander in his conquests, would never have imitated him in sparing" the house of Pindarus."

The art of poetry,' said Mr. Stanley, is to touch the passions, and its duty to lead them on the side of virtue. To raise and to to purify the amusements of mankind; to multiply and to exalt pleasures, which being purely intellectual, may help to exclude such as are gross, in beings so addicted to sensuality, is surely not only to give pleasure, but to render service. It is allowable to seize every avenue to the heart of a being so prone to evil; to rescue him by every fair means not only from the degradation of vice, but from the dominion of idleness. I do not now speak of gentlemen of the sacred function, to which Mr. Edward Tyrrel aspires, but of those who, having no profession, have no stated employment; and who, having more leisure, will be in danger of exceeding the due bounds in the article of amusement. Let us then endeavour to allure our youth of fashion from the low pleasures of the dissolute; to snatch them, not only from the destruction of the gaming-table, but from the excesses of the dining-table, by inviting them to an elegant delight that is safe, and especially by enlarging the range of pure mental pleasure.

In order to this, let us do all we can to cultivate their taste, and innocently indulge their fancy. Let us contend with impure wri ters, those deadliest enemies to the youthful mind, by opposing to them in the chaster author, images more attractive, wit more

acute, learning more various; in all which excellencies our firstrate poets certainly excel their vicious competitors.'

Would you, Mr. Tyrrel,' said Sir John, throw into the enemy's camp all the light arms which often successfully annoy where the heavy artillery cannot reach?

'Let us,' replied Mr. Stanley, rescue from the hands of the profane and the impure, the monopoly of wit which they affect to possess, and which they would possess, if no good men had written works of elegant literature, and if all good men totally despised

them '

For my own part,' said Mr. Tyrrel, I believe that a good man, in my sense of the word, will neither write works of imagination, nor read them.'

At your age and mine, and better employed as we certainly may be,' said Mr. Stanley, we want no such resources. I myself, though I strongly retain the relish, have little leisure for the indulgence, which yet I would allow, though with great discrimination, to the young and the unoccupied. What is to whet the genius of the champions of virtue, so as to enable them successfully to combat the leaders of vice and infidelity, if we refuse to let them be occasionally sharpened and polished by such studies? That model of brilliant composition, Bishop Jeremy Taylor, was of this opinion, when he said " by whatever instrument piety is advantaged, use that, though thou grindest thy spears and arrows at the forges of the Philistines

I know,' continued Mr. Stanley, that a Christian need not borrow weapons of attack or defence from the classic armoury; but, to drop all metaphor, if he is called upon to defend truth and virtue against men whose minds are adorned with all that is elegant, strengthened with all that is powerful, and enriched with all that is persuasive, from the writers in question-Is he likely to engage with due advantage if his own mind be destitute of the embellishments with which theirs abound? While wit and imagination are their favourite instruments, shall we consider the aid of either as useless, much less as sinful in their opponents?'

While young men will be amused,' said Sir John, it is surely of importance that they should be safely amused. We should not therefore wish to obliterate in authors such faculties as wit and fancy, nor to extinguish a taste for them in readers.'

'Show me any one instance of good that ever was effected by any one poet,' said Mr. Tyrrel, and I will give up the point; while on the other hand, a thousand instances of mischief might doubtless be produced.'

The latter part of your assertion, Sir,' said I, I fear is too true: but to what evil has elevation of fancy led Milton, or Milton his readers? In what labyrinths of guilt did it involve Spenser or Cowley? Has Thomson, or has Young added to the crimes or the