by what passed at your house the other day in favor of reading? He has ever since been ransacking 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."

"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 observe, that because there has been a voluptuous Petronius, a scoffing Lucian, and a licentious Ovid, to say nothing of the numberless modern poets, or rather individual poems, that are immoral and corrupt—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 corrupters of the youthful mind; I would rather consider a blameless poet as the auxiliar 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 remark 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 diffusing so much