 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 can not 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 in 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 wheel-barrow. For my own part, in my late visit to London, I thought the decline of poetry no favorable symptom."

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

"Mr. Tyrrel would have been delighted with that with which 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 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 endeavor to snatch 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
