cessary to sharpen the feelings amongst
the monotony of existence; every amusement and all literature become
more pungent in their character; life is no longer a thing proceeding
from powers _within_, but sustained by new impulses from without.

There is one peculiar form of this danger to which I would specially
direct your attention. There is one nation in Europe which, more than
any other, has been subjected to these influences. In ages of
revolution, nations live fast; centuries of life are passed in fifty
years of time. In such a state, individuals become subjected more or
less to the influences which are working around them. Scarcely an
enjoyment or a book can be met with which does not bear the impress of
this intensity. Now, the particular danger to which I allude is French
novels, French romances, and French plays. The overflowings of that
cup of excitement have reached our shores. I do not say that these
works contain anything coarse or gross--better if it were so: evil
which comes in a form of grossness is not nearly so dangerous as that
which comes veiled in gracefulness and sentiment. Subjects which are
better not touched upon at all are discussed, examined, and exhibited
in all the most seductive forms of imagery. You would be shocked at
seeing your son in a fit of intoxication; yet, I say it solemnly,
better that your son should reel through the streets in a fit of
drunkenness, than that the delicacy of your daughter's mind should be
injured, and her imagination inflamed with false fire. Twenty-four
hours will terminate the evil in the one case. Twenty-four hours will
not exhaust the effects of the other; you must seek the consequences
at the end of many, many years.

I speak that which I do know; and if the earnest warning of one who
has seen the dangers of which he speaks realized, can reach the heart
of one Christian parent, he will put a ban on all such works, and not
suffer his children's hearts to be excited by a drunkenness which is
worse than that of wine. For the worst of it is, that the men of our
time are not yet alive to this growing evil; they are elsewhere--in
their studies, counting-houses, professions--not knowing the food, or
rather poison, on which their wives' and daughters' intellectual life
is sustained. It is precisely those who are most unfitted to sustain
the danger, whose feelings need restraint instead of spur, and whose
imaginations are most