and what
harlots is _the thief, the harlot_, and _the pirate_ of De Foe? We would
not hesitate to say, that in no other book of fiction, where the lives
of such characters are described, is guilt and delinquency made less
seductive, or the suffering made more closely to follow the commission,
or the penitence more earnest or more bleeding, or the intervening
flashes of religious visitation upon the rude and uninstructed soul more
meltingly and fearfully painted. They, in this, come near to the
tenderness of Bunyan; while the livelier pictures and incidents in them,
as in Hogarth or in Fielding, tend to diminish that fastidiousness to
the concerns and pursuits of common life which an unrestrained passion
for the ideal and the sentimental is in danger of producing."

* * * * *

Lamb, in a letter to one of his correspondents, says, after speaking of
his recent contributions to the "London Magazine,"--"In the next number
I shall figure as a theologian, and have attacked my late brethren, the
Unitarians. What Jack-Pudding tricks I shall play next I know not; I am
almost at the end of my tether." Talfourd, of course, does not publish
the article, or even give its title, which is, "Unitarian Protests."
Those who would see how well or how ill Elia figures as a theologian
should read

* * * * *

"UNITARIAN PROTESTS: IN A LETTER TO A FRIEND OF THAT PERSUASION NEWLY
MARRIED.

"Dear M----,--Though none of your acquaintance can with greater
sincerity congratulate you upon this happy conjuncture than myself, one
of the oldest of them, it was with pain I found you, after the ceremony,
depositing in the vestry-room what is called a Protest. I thought you
superior to this little sophistry. What! after submitting to the service
of the Church of England,--after consenting to receive a boon from her,
in the person of your amiable consort,--was it consistent with sense, or
common good manners, to turn round upon her, and flatly taunt her with
false worship? This language is a little of the strongest in your books
and from your pulpits, though there it may well enough be excused from
religious zeal and the native warmth of Non-Conformity. But at the
altar,--the Church-of-England altar,--adopting her forms, and complying
with her requisitions to the letter,--to be consistent, together with
the practice, I fear, you must drop the language of dissent. You are no
longer sturdy N