 a sort of competition who should be most strenuous in their endeavors to attract them. Surely women of fashion can hardly make a more corrupt use of influence, a talent for which they will be peculiarly accountable. Surely, mere personal purity can hardly deserve the name of virtue in those who can sanction notoriously vicious characters, which their reprobation, if it could not reform, would at least degrade.

On a further acquaintance, I found Sir John and Lady Belfield to be persons of much worth. They were candid, generous, and sincere. They saw the errors of the world in which they lived, but had not resolution to emancipate themselves from its shackles. They partook, indeed, very sparingly of its diversions, not so much because they suspected their evil tendency, as because they were weary of them, and because they had better resources in themselves.

Indeed, it is wonderful that more people from mere good sense and just taste, without the operation of any religious consideration, do not, when the first ardor is cooled, perceive the futility of what is called pleasure, and decline it as the man declines the amusements of the child. But fashionable society produces few persons, who, like the ex-courtier of King David, assign their fourscore years as a reason for no longer "delighting in the voice of singing men and singing women."

Sir John and Lady Belfield, however, kept a large general acquaintance; and it is not easy to continue to associate with the world, without retaining something of its spirit. Their standard of morals was high, compared with that of those with whom they lived; but when the standard of the gospel was suggested, they drew in a little, and thought things might be carried too far. There was nothing in their practice which made it their interest to hope that Christianity might not be true. They both assented to its doctrines, and lived in a kind of general hope of its final promises. But their views were neither correct, nor elevated. They were contented to generalize the doctrines of Scripture, and though they venerated its awful truths in the aggregate, they rather took them upon trust than labored to understand them, or to imbue their minds with the spirit of them. Many a high professor, however, might have blushed to see how carefully they exercised not a few Christian dispositions; how kind and patient they were! how favorable in their construction of the actions of others! how charitable to the necessitous! how exact in veracity! and how tender of the reputation of their neighbor!

Sir John had been early hurt by
