le toward the pit; while all the tomes of
Thomas Hearne and good old John Nichols will be weighed among their good
works!

_Sir Thomas More_.--Sport as thou wilt in allusions to allegory and
fable; but bear always in thy most serious mind this truth, that men hold
under an awful responsibility the talents with which they are entrusted.
Kings have not so serious an account to render as they who exercise an
intellectual influence over the minds of men!

_Montesinos_.--If evil works, so long as they continue to produce evil,
heap up condemnation upon the authors, it is well for some of the
wickedest writers that their works do not survive them.

_Sir Thomas More_.--Such men, my friend, even by the most perishable of
their wicked works, lay up sufficient condemnation for themselves. The
maxim that _malitia supplet aetatem_ is rightfully admitted in human
laws: should there not then, by parity of justice, be cases where, when
the secrets of the heart are seen, the intention shall be regarded rather
than the act?

The greatest portion of your literature, at any given time, is ephemeral;
indeed, it has ever been so since the discovery of printing; and this
portion it is which is most influential, consequently that by which most
good or mischief is done.

_Montesinos_.--Ephemeral it truly may be called; it is now looked for by
the public as regularly as their food; and, like food, it affects the
recipient surely and permanently, even when its effect is slow, according
as it is wholesome or noxious. But how great is the difference between
the current literature of this and of any former time!

_Sir Thomas More_.--From that complacent tone it may be presumed that you
see in it proof both of moral and intellectual improvement. Montesinos,
I must disturb that comfortable opinion, and call upon you to examine how
much of this refinement which passes for improvement is superficial. True
it is that controversy is carried on with more decency than it was by
Martin Lutherand a certain Lord Chancellor, to whom you just now alluded;
but if more courtesy is to be found in polemical writers, who are less
sincere than either the one or the other, there is as much acerbity of
feeling and as much bitterness of heart. You have a class of miscreants
which had no existence in those days--the panders of the press, who live
by administering to the vilest passions of the people, and encouraging
their most dangerous errors, practising upon