ill half the volumes. They consider love as the great business of
human life, and even teach that it is impossible for this love to be
regulated or restrained; and to the indulgence of this passion every
duty is therefore sacrificed. A country life, with a kind mother or
a sober aunt, is described as a state of intolerable misery; and one
would be apt to fancy from their painting, that a good country-house
is a prison, and a worthy father the jailor. Vice is set off with
every ornament which can make it pleasing and amiable; while virtue
and piety are made ridiculous, by tacking to them something that is
silly or absurd. Crimes which would be considered as hanging matter
at our county assizes--at least if I were a juryman, I should bring
in the whole train of heroes, _Guilty--Death_--are here made to the
appearance of virtue, by being mixed with some wild flight of
unnatural generosity. Those crying sins, ADULTERY, GAMING, DUELS,
and SELF-MURDER, are made so familiar, and the wickedness of them is
so disguised by fine words and soft descriptions, that even innocent
girls get loose to their abhorrence, and talk with complacency of
_things which should not be so much as named by them_.

I should not have said so much on this mischief, continued Mr.
Worthy, from which I dare say, great folks fancy people in our
station are safe enough, if I did not know and lament that this
corrupt reading is now got down even among some of the lowest class.
And it is an evil which is spreading every day. Poor industrious
girls, who get their bread by the needle or the loom, spend half the
night in listening to these books. Thus the labor of one girl is
lost, and the minds of the rest are corrupted; for though their
hands are employed in honest industry, which might help to preserve
them from a life of sin, yet their hearts are at the very time
polluted by scenes and descriptions which are too likely to plunge
them into it; and when their vain weak heads compare the soft and
delicious lives of the heroines in the book, with their own mean
garb and hard labor, the effect is obvious; and I think I do not go
too far when I say, that the vain and showy manner in which young
women, who have to work for their bread, have taken to dress
themselves, added to the poison they draw from these books,
contribute together to bring them to destruction, more than almost
any other cause. Now tell me, do not you think these wild books will
hurt your daught