as well as individual crimes are often overruled to some hidden purpose far different from the intention of the actors: how Omnipotence can, and often does, bring about the best purposes by the worst instruments: how the bloody and unjust conqueror is but the rod of his wrath,' to punish or to purify his offending children: how the fury of the oppressor,' and the sufferings of the oppressed, will one day, when the whole scheme shall be unfolded, vindicate his righteous dealings. She will explain to the less enlightened reader, how infinite Wisdom often mocks the insignificance of human greatness, and the shallowness of human ability, by setting aside instruments the most powerful and promising, while He works by agents comparatively contemptible. But she will carefully guard this doctrine of Divine Providence, thus working out his own purposes through the sins of his creatures, and by the instrumentality of the wicked, by calling to mind, while the offend. er is but a tool in the hands of the great Artificer, the wo denounced against him by whom the offence cometh! She will explain how those metations and revolutions in states which appear to us so unaccountable, and how those operations of Providence which seem to us so entangled and complicated, all move harmoniously and in perfect order: that there is not an event but has its commission; not a misfortune which breaks its allotted rank; not a trial which moves out of its appointed track. While calamities and crimes seem to fly in casual confusion, all is commanded or permitted; all is under the control of a wisdom which cannot err, of a goodness which cannot do wrong. To explain my meaning by a few instances. When the spirit of the youthful reader rises in honest indignation at that hypocritical piety which divorced an unoffending queen to make way for the lawful crime of our eighth Henry's marriage with Ann Boleyn, and when that in dignation is increased by the more open profligacy which brought about the execution of the latter; the instructor will not lose so fair an oc. casion for unfolding how in the councils of the Most High the crimes of the king were overruled to the happiness of the country; and how, to this inauspicious marriage, from which the heroic Elizabeth sprang, the protestant religion owed its firm stability. This view of the subject will lead the reader to justify the Providence of God without diminishing her abhorrence of the vices of the tyrant. She will explain to her how even the conquest of ambition, after having deluged a land with blood, involved the perpetrator in guilt, and the innocent victim in ruin, may yet be made the instrument of opening to future generations the way to commerce, to civilization, to Christianity, She may remind her, as they are following Cæsar in his invasion of Britain, that whereas the conqueror fancied he was only gratifying his own inordinate ambition, extending the flight of the Roman Eagle, immortalizing his own name, and proving that this world was made for Cæsar;' he was in reality becoming the effectual though unconscious instrument of leading a land of barbarians to civilization and to science and was in fact preparing an island of pagans to embrace the religion of Christ. She will inform her, that when afterwards the victorious country of the same Cæsar had made Judea a Roman province, and the Jews had become its tributaries, the Romans did not know, nor did the indignant Jews suspect, that this circumstance was operating to the confirmation of an event the most important the world ever witnessed. ་ For when Augustus sent forth a decree that all the world should be taxed ;' he vainly thought he was only enlarging his own imperial power, whereas he was acting in unconscious subservience to the decree of a higher Sovereign, and was helping to ascertain by a public act the exact period of Christ's birth, and furnishing a record of his extraction from that family from which it was predicted by a long line of prophets that he should spring. Herod's atrocious murder of the innocents has added an addition. al circumstance for the confirmation of our faith; the incredulity of Thomas has strength. ened our belief; nay, the treachery of Judas, and the injustice of Pilate, were the human instru. ments employed for the salvation of the world. The youth that is not thoroughly armed with Christian principles, will be tempted to mutiny not only against the justice, but the very exist ence of a superintending Providence, in contemplating those frequent instances which occur in history of the ill success of the more virtuous cause, and the prosperity of the wicked. He will see with astonishment that it is Rome which triumphs, while Carthage, which had clearly the better cause, falls. Now and then indeed a Cicero prevails, and a Cataline is subdued: but often, it is Cæsar successful against the somewhat juster pretensions of Pompey, and against the still clearer cause of Cato. It is Octavius who triumphs, and it is over Brutus that he triumphs. It is Tiberius who is enthroned, while Germanicus falls! Thus his faith in a righteous Providence at first view is staggered, and he is ready to say, Surely it is not God that governs the earth! But on a fuller consideration (and here sugges tions of a Christian instructor are peculiarly wanted) there will appear great wisdom in this very confusion of vice and virtue; for it is calculated to send our thoughts forward to a world of retribution, the principle of retribution being so imperfectly established in this. It is indeed so far common for virtue to have the advantage here, in point of happiness at least, though not of glory, that the course of Providence is still calculated to prove that God is on the side of virtue; but still virtue is so often unsuccessful, that clearly the God of virtue, in order that his work may be perfect, must have in reserve a world of retribution. This confused state of things therefore is just that state which is most of all calculated to confirin the deeply considerate mind in the belief of a future state; for if all here were even or very nearly so, should we not say, 'Justice is already satisfied, and there needs no other world.' On the other hand, if vice always triumphed, should we not then be ready to argue in favour of vice rather than virtue, and to wish for no other world. It seems so very important to ground young persons in the belief that they will not inevitably meet in this world with reward and success according to their merit, and to habituate them to expect even the most virtuous attempts to be often, though not always disappointed, that I am in danger of tautology on this point. This fact is precisely what history teaches. The truth should be plainly told to the young reader; and the antidote to that evil, which mistaken and worldly people would expect to arise from divulging this discouraging doctrine is faith. The importance of faith therefore, and the necessity of it to real, unbending, and persevering virtue, is surely made plain by profane history itself. For the same thing which happens to states and kings, happens to private life and to individuals. Thus there is scarcely a page, even of pagan history, which may not be made instrumental to the establishing of the truth of revelation; and it is only by such a guarded mode of instruction that some of the evils attending on the study of ancient literature can be obviated. Distrust and diffidence in our own judgment seems to be also an important instruction to be learnt from history. How contrary to all expectation do the events therein recorded commonly turn out! How continually is the most sagacious conjecture of human penetration bafil. ed and yet we proceed to foretel this consequence, and to predict that event from the appearances of things under our own observation, with the same arrogant certainty as if we had never been warned by the monitory annals of successive ages. over the fortitude of the Christian hero, or the constancy of the martyr, if she do not bear in mind that she herself is called to endure her own common trials with something of the same temper: if she do not bear in mind that, to controul irregular humours, and to submit to the daily vexations of life, will require, though in a lower degree, the exertion of the same principle, and supplication for the aid of the same spirit which sustained the Christian hero in the try. ing conflicts of life; or the martyr in his agony at the stake. May I be permitted to suggest a few instances, by way of specimen, how both sacred and common history may tend to promote self. knowledge? And let me again remind the warm admirer of suffering piety under extraordinary trials, that if she now fail in the petty occasions to which she is actually called out, she would not be likely to have stood in those more trying occasions which excite her admiration. While she is applauding the self-denying saint who renounced his case, or chose to embrace death, rather than violate his duty, let her ask herself if she has never refused to submit to the paltry inconvenience of giving up her company, or even altering her dinner-hour on a Sunday, though by this trifling sacrifice her family might have been enabled to attend the public worship in the afternoon. While she reads with horror that Belshazzar was rioting with his thousand nobles at the very moment when the Persian army was bursting through the brazen gates of Babylon; is she very sure that she herself, in an almost equally imminent moment of public danger, has not been nightly indulging in every species of dissipation? There is scarcely one great event in history which does not in the issue, produce effects upon which human foresight could never have When she is deploring the inconsistency of calculated. The success of Augustus against the human heart, while she contrasts in Mark his country produced peace in many distant Anthony his bravery and contempt of ease at provinces, who thus ceased to be harassed and one period, with his licentious indulgences at tormented by this oppressive republic. Could another; or while she laments over the intrepid this effect have been foreseen, it might have soul of Cæsar, whom she had been following sobered the despair of Cato, and checked the in his painful marches, or admiring in his convehemence of Brutus. In politics, in short in tempt of death, now dissolved in dissolute pleaevery thing except in morals and religion, all sures with the ensnaring queen of Egypt: let is to a considerable degree uncertain.-This her examine whether she herself has never, reasoning is not meant to show that Cato ought though in a much lower degree, evinced somenot to have fought, but that he ought not to thing of the same inconsistency? whether she have desponded even after the last battle; and who lives perhaps an orderly, sober, and reasoncertainly, even upon his own principles, oughtable life during her summer residence in the not to have killed himself. It would be departing too much from my object to apply this argument, however obvious the application, against those who were driven to unreasonable distrust and despair by the late successes of a neighbour-ligion, which can be made to bend to places and ing nation. But all knowledge will be comparatively of little value, if we neglect self-knowledge; and of self-knowledge history and biography may be made successful vehicles. It will be to little purpose that our pupils become accurate critics on the characters of others, while they remain ignorant of themselves; for while to those who exercise a habit of self-application a book of profane history may be made an instrument of improvement in this difficult science; so with. out such an habit the Bible itself may, in this view, be read with little profit. It will be to no purpose that the reader weeps country, does not plunge with little scruple in the winter into all the most extravagant pleasures of the capital? whether she never carries about with her an accommodating kind of re seasons, to climates and customs, to times and circumstances; which takes its tincture from the fashion without, and not its habits from the principle within; which is decent with the pious, sober with the orderly, and loose with the licentious? While she is admiring the generosity of Alexander in giving away kingdoms and provinces, let her, in order to ascertain whether she could imitate this magnanimity, take heed if she herself is daily seizing all the little occasions of doing good, which every day presents to the affluent? Her call is not to sacrifice a province; but does she sacrifice an opera ticket? She who THE WORKS OF HANNAH MORE. is not doing all the good she can under her pre- | sent circumstances, would not do all she foresees she should, in imaginary ones, were her power enlarged to the extent of her wishes. commodation. And here the pious instructor will come in, in aid of their deficiency: for philosophers too seldom trace up causes, and wonders, and blessings to their Author. And it is peculiarly to be regretted that a late justly cele brated French naturalist, who, though not famous for his accuracy, possessed such diversified powers of description that he had the talent of making the driest subjects interesting; together with such liveliness of delineation, that his characters of animals are drawn with a spirit and variety rather to be looked for in an historian of men than of beasts: it is to be regretted, I say that this writer, with all his excellencies, is absolutely inadmissible into the library of a young lady, both on account of his immodesty and his impiety; and if in wishing to exclude him, it may be thought wrong to have given him so much commendation, it is only meant to show that the author is not led to reprobate his prin. ciples from insensibility to his talents. The remark is rather made to put the reader on remembering that no brilliancy of genius, no diversity of attainments, should ever be allowed as a commutation for defective principles and corrupt ideas.* While she is inveighing with patriotic indig. nation, that in a neighbouring metropolis, thirty theatres were open every night in time of war and public calamity, is she very clear that in a metropolis which contains only three, she was not almost constantly at one of them in time of war and public calamity also? For though in a national view it may make a wide difference whether there be in the capital three theatres or thirty, yet, as the same person can only go to one of them at once, it makes but little difference as to the quantum of dissipation in the individual. She who rejoices at successful virtue in a history, or at the prosperity of a person whose interests do not interfere with her own, may exercise her self-knowledge by examining whether she rejoices equally at the happiness of every one about her: and let her remember she does not rejoice at it in the true sense, if she does not labour to promote it. She who glows with rapture at a virtuous character in history, should ask her own heart, whether she is equally ready to do justice to the fine qualities of her acquaintance, though she may not particularly love them; and whether she takes unfeigned pleasure in the superior talents, virtues, fame and fortune of those whom she professes to love, On the use of definitions, and the moral benefits though she is eclipsed by them? * * * * In like manner, in the study of geography and natural history, the attention should be habitually turned to the goodness of Providence, who commonly adapts the various productions of climates to the peculiar wants of the respective inhabitants. To illustrate my meaning by one or two instances out of a thousand. The reader may be led to admire the considerate goodness of Providence in having caused the spiry fir, whose slender foliage does not obstruct the beams of the sun, to grow in the dreary regions of the north, whose shivering inhabitants could spare none of its scanty rays; while in the torrid zone, the palm-tree, the plantain, and the banana, spread their umbrella leaves to break the almost intolerable fervor of a vertical sun. camel, who is the sole carrier of all the merchandise of Turkey, Persia, Egypt, Arabia, and Barbary, who is obliged to transport his incredible burthens through countries in which pasture is so rare, can subsist twenty-four hours without food, and can travel loaded, many days without water, through dry and dusty deserts, which supply none; and all this, not from the habit, but from the conformation of the animal: for naturalists make this conformity of powers to climates a rule of judgment in ascertaining the native countries of animals, and always determine it to be that to which their powers and properties are most appropriate. How the Thus the writers of natural history are perhaps unintentionally magnifying the operations of Providence, when they insist that animals do not modify and give way to the influence of other climates; but here they too commonly stop; neglecting, or perhaps refusing, to ascribe to infinite goodness this wise and merciful ac30 CHAP. X. of accuracy in langnage. 'PERSONS having been accustomed from their cradles to learn words before they knew the ideas for which they stand, usually continue to do so all their lives, never taking the pains to settle in their minds, the determined ideas which belong to them. This want of a precise signification of their words, when they come to reason, especially in moral matters, is the cause of very obscure and uncertain notions. They use these undetermined words confidently, without much troubling their heads about a certain fixed meaning, whereby, besides the ease of it, they obtain this advantage, that as in such discourse they are seldom in the right, so they are seldom to be convinced that they are in the wrong, sons out of their mistakes, who have no settled ing just the same to go about to draw those pernotions, as to dispossess a vagrant of his habitation who has no settled abode.-The chief end of language being to be understood, words serve not for that end when they do not excite in the hearer the same idea which they stand for in the mind of the speaker.'t it be I have chosen to shelter myself under the broad sanction of the great author here quoted, with a view to apply this rule in philology to a moral purpose; for it applies to the veracity of as strongly recommends unequivocal and simple conversation as much as to its correctness; and truth, as accurate and just expression. Scarcely any one perhaps has an adequate conception Goldsmith's History of Animated Nature has many references to a Divine Author. It is to be wished that some judicious person would publish a new edition of this work, purified from the indelicate and offensive parts. † Locke. how much clear and correct expression favours, the elucidation of truth; and the side of truth is obviously the side of morals; it is in fact one and the same cause; and it is of course the same cause with that of true religion also. It is therefore no worthless part of education, even in a religious view, to study the precise meaning of words, and the appropriate signification of language. To this end I know no better method than to accustom young persons very early to a habit of defining common words and things; for, as definition seems to lic at the root of correctness, to be accustomed to define English words in English, would improve the understanding more than barely to know what these words are called in French, Italian, or Latin. Or rather, one use of learning other languages is, because definition is often involved in etymology; that is, since many English words take their derivation from foreign or ancient languages, they cannot be so accurately understood without some knowledge of those languages: but precision of any kind, either moral or philological, too seldom finds its way into the education of women. It is perhaps going out of my province to observe, that it might be well if young men also before they entered on the world, were to be furnished with correct definitions of certain words, the use of which is become rather ambiguous; or rather they should be instructed in the double sense of modern phraseology. For instance; they should be provided with a good definition of the word honour in the fashionable sense, showing what vices it includes, and what virtues it does not include; the term good company, which even the courtly Petronius of our days has defined as sometimes including not a few immoral and disreputable characters: religion, which in the various senses assigned it by the world, sometimes means superstition, sometimes fanaticism, and sometimes a mere disposition to attend on any kind of form of worship: the word goodness, which is made to mean every thing that is not notoriously bad; and sometimes even that too, if what is notoriously bad be accompanied by good humour, pleasing manners, and a little alms-giving. By these means they would go forth arined against many of the false opinions which, through the abuse or ambiguous meaning of words, pass so current in the world. But to return to the youthful part of that sex which is the more immediate object of this little work. With correct definition they should also be taught to study the shades of words, and this not merely with a view to accuracy of expression, though even that involves both sense and elegance, but with a view to moral truth. It may be thought ridiculous to assert that morals have any connexion with the purity of language, or that the precision of truth may be violated through defect of critical exactness in the three degrees of comparison: yet how frequently do we hear from the dealers in superlatives, of most admirable, superexcellent, and quite perfect' people, who, to plain persons, not bred in the school of exaggeration, would appear mere common characters, not rising above the level of mediocrity! By this negligence in the just application of words, we shall be as much misled by these trope and figure ladies, whe they degrade as when they panegyrize; for we a plain and sober judgment, a tradesman mayna be the most good-for-nothing fellow that eve existed,' merely because it was impossible fr him to execute in an hour, an order which n quired a week; a lady may not be the mer hideous fright the world ever saw,' though the make of her gown may have been obsolete for month; nor inay one's young friend's father be a' monster of cruelty,' though he may be a quiet gentleman who does not choose to live at watering-places, but likes to have his daughter stay at home with him in the country. Of all the parts of speech, the interjections the most abundantly in use with the hyperboli. cal fair ones. Would it could be added that these emphatical expletives (if I may make use of a contradictory term,) were not sometimes tinctured with profaneness! Though I am per suaded that idle habit is often more at the bat tom of this deep offence than intended impiety, yet there is scarcely any error of youthful talk which merits severer castigation. And an habi of exclamation should be rejected by polished people as vulgar, even if it were not abhorred as profane. The habit of exaggerating trifles, together with the grand female failing of excessive mu tuial flattery, and elaborate general professions of fondness and attachment, is inconceivably cherished by the voluminous private correspondences in which some girls are indulged. In vindication of this practice it is pleaded that a facility of style, and an easy turn of expression, are acquisitions to be derived from an early in terchange of sentiments by letter-writing; but even if it were so, these would be dearly pur. chased by the sacrifice of that truth, and sobriety of sentiment, that correctness of language, and that ingenuous simplicity of character and man. ners so lovely in female youth. Next to pernicious reading, imprudent and violent friendships are the most dangerous snares to this simplicity. And boundless correspon dences with different confidants, whether they live in a distant province, or, as it often happens, in the same street, are the fuel which principally feeds this dangerous flame of youthful sentiment. In those correspondences the young friends often encourage each other in the falsest notions of human life, and the most erroneous views of each other's character. Family affairs are di vulged, and family faults aggravated. Vows of everlasting attachment and exclusive fondness are in a pretty just proportion bestowed on every friend alike. These epistles overflow with quotations from the most passionate of the dramatic poets; and passages wrested from their natural meaning, and pressed into the service of sentiment, are, with all the violence of misapplica tion, compelled to suit the case of the heroic transcriber. But antecedent to this epistolary period of life they should have been accustomed to the most scrupulous exactness in whatever they relate. They should maintain the most critical accuracy in facts, in dates, in numbering, in describing, in short, in whatever pertains, either directly or indirectly, closely or remotely, to the great fun THE WORKS OF HANNAH MORE. damental principle, truth. It is so very difficult | very tropes and figures, though bold, are never for persons of great liveliness to restrain them- unnatural or affected: when it embellishes it selves within the sober limits of strict veracity, does not mislead; even when it exaggerates, it either in their assertions or narrations, especi- does not misrepresent; if it be hyperbolical, it ally when a little undue indulgence of fancy is is so either in compliance with the genius of apt to procure for them the praise of genius and oriental language, or in compliance with conspirit, that this restraint is one of the earliest temporary customs, or because the subject is principles which should be worked into the one which will be most forcibly impressed by a strong figure. The loftiness of the expression youthful mind. The conversation of young females is also in deducts nothing from the weight of the circumdanger of being overloaded with epithets. As stance; the imagery animates the reader within the warm season of youth hardly any thing out misleading him; the boldest illustration, is seen in the true point of vision, so hardly any while it dilates his conception of the subject, dething is named in naked simplicity; and the tracts nothing from its exactness; and the divery sensibility of the feelings is partly a cause vine Spirit, instead of suffering truth to be inof the extravagance of the expression. But here, jured by the opulence of the figures, contrives to as in other points, the sacred writers, particu-make them fresh and varied avenues to the larly of the New Testament, present us with heart and the understanding. CHAP. XI. instruction shown by analogy with human On religion. The necessity and duty of early learning. the purest models; and its natural and unlaboured style of expression is perhaps not the meanest evidence of the truth of the Gospel. There is throughout the whole narratives, no overcharged character, no elaborate description, no. thing studiously emphatical, as if truth of itself were weak, and wanted to be helped out. There is little panegyric, and less invective; none but IT has been the fashion of our late innovators on great, and awful, and justifiable occasions. The authors record their own faults with the in philosophy, who have written some of the same honesty as if they were the faults of other most brilliant and popular treatises on education, men, and the faults of other men with as little to decry the practice of early instilling religious There knowledge into the minds of children. In vinamplification as if they were their own. is perhaps no book in which adjectives are so dication of this opinion it has been alleged, that sparingly used. A modest statement of the fact, it is of the utmost importance to the cause of with no colouring and little comment, with little truth, that the mind of man should be kept free omphasis and no varnish, is the example held from prepossessions; and in particular, that out to us for correcting the exuberances of pas-every one should be left to form such judgment sion and of language, by that divine volume on religious subjects as may seem best to his which furnishes us with the still more important rule of faith and standard of practice. Nor is the truth lowered by any feebleness, nor is the spirit diluted, nor the impression weakened by this soberness and moderation; for with all this plainness there is so much force, with all this simplicity there is so much energy, that a few slight touches and artless strokes of Scripture characters convey a stronger outline of the person delineated, than is sometimes given by the most elaborate and finished portrait of more artificial historians. own reason in maturer years. This sentiment has received some counte. nance from those better characters who have wished, on the fairest principle, to encourage free inquiry in religion; but it has been pushed to the blameable excess here censured, chiefly by the new philosophers; who, while they profess only an ingenuous zeal for truth, are in fact slily endeavouring to destroy Christianity itself, by discountenancing, under the plausible pretence of free inquiry, all attention whatever to the religious education of our youth. It is undoubtedly our duty, while we are inIf it be objected to this remark, that many parts of the sacred writings abound in a lofty, stilling principles into the tender mind, to take figurative, and even hyperbolical style; this ob. peculiar care that those principles be sound and jection applies chiefly to the writings of the Old just; that the religion we teach be the religion Testament, and to the prophetical and poetical of the Bible, and not the inventions of human parts of that. But the metaphorical and florid error or superstition: that the principles we instyle of those writings is distinct from the inac-fuse into others, be such as we ourselves have curate and overstrained expression we have been well scrutinized, and not the result of our crecensuring; for that only is inaccuracy which dulity or bigotry; not the mere hereditary, unleads to a false and inadequate conception in the examined prejudices of our own undiscerning reader or hearer. The lofty style of the eastern, childhood. It may also be granted, that it is and of other heroic poetry, does not so mislead; the duty of every parent to inform the youth, for the metaphor is understood to be a metaphor, that when his faculties shall have so unfolded and the imagery is understood to be ornamental. themselves, as to enable him to examine for The style of the Scriptures of the Old Testa-himself those principles which the parent is now ment is not, it is true, plain in opposition to instilling, it will be his duty so to examine figurative; nor simple in opposition to florid; but it is plain and simple in the best sense, as opposed to false principles and false taste; it raises no wrong idea; them. But after making these concessions, I would most seriously insist that there are certain leadgives an exact impres-ing and fundamental truths; that there are cersion of the thing it means to convey; and its tain sentiments on the side of Christianity, as |