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pors, for his trembling apprehensions. To any such, who have half wished that I might not speak, I say :-Nor would I, did I not know that purity will suffer more by the silence of shame, than by the honest voice of truth.

Another difficulty springs from the nature of the English language, which has hardly been framed in a school where it may wind and fit itself to all the phases of impurity. But were I speaking French -the dialect of refined sensualism and of licentious literature; the language of a land where taste and learning and art wait upon the altars of impurity— then I might copiously speak of this evil, nor use one plain word. But I thank God, the honest English tongue which I have learned, has never been so bred to this vile subservience of evil. We have plain words enough to say plain things, but the dignity and manliness of our language has never grown supple to twine around brilliant dissipation. It has too many plain words, vulgar words, vile words; but it has few mirror-words, which cast a sidelong image of an idea; it has few words which wear a meaning smile, a courtezan-glance significant of something unexpressed. When public vice necessitates public reprehension, it is, for these reasons, difficult to redeem plainness from vulgarity. We must speak plainly and properly; or else speak by inuendo-which is the devil's language.

Another difficulty lies in the confused echoes which vile men create in every community, when the pulpit disturbs them. Do I not know the arts of cunning men? Did not Demetrius, the Silversmith (worthy to have lived in our day!) become most wonderfully pious, and run all over the city to rouse up the dormant zeal of Diana's worshippers, and gather a mob, to whom he preached that Diana must be cared for; when, to his fellow-craftsmen, he told the truth: OUR CRAFT IS IN DANGER! Men will not quietly be exposed. They foresee the rising of a virtuously retributive public sentiment, as the mariner sees the cloud of the storm rolling up the heavens! They strive to forestall and resist it. How loudly will a liquor-fiend protest against temperance lectures-sinful enough for redeeming victims from his paw! How sensitive some men to a church bell! they are high priests of revivals at a horse-race, a theatre, or a liquor-supper; but a religious revival pains their sober minds. Even thus, the town will be made vocal with outcries against sermons on licentiousness. Who cries out ?-the sober?the immaculate ?-the devout? It is the voice of the son of midnight; it is the shriek of the STRANGE WOMAN'S victim! and their sensitiveness is not of purity, but of fear! Men protest against the indecency of the pulpit, because the pulpit makes

them feel their own indecency; they would drive us from the investigation of vice, that they may keep the field open for their own occupancy. I expect such men's reproaches. I know the reasons of them. I am not to be turned by them, not one hair's breadth, if they rise to double their present volume, until I have hunted home the wolf to his lair, and ripped off his brindled hide in his very den!

Another difficulty exists, in the criminal fastidiousness of the community upon this subject. This is the counterfeit of delicacy. It resembles it less than paste-jewels do the pure pearl. Where delicacy, the atmosphere of a pure heart, is lost, or never was had, a substitute is sought; and is found in forms of delicacy, not in its feelings. It is a delicacy of exterior, of etiquette, of show, of rules; not of thought, not of pure imagination, not of the chrystal-current of the heart! Criminal fastidiousness is the Pharisee's sepulchre; clean, white, beautiful without, full of dead men's bones within! -the Pharisee's platter, the Pharisee's cup-it is the very Pharisee himself; and like him of old, lays on burdens grievous to be borne. Delicacy is a spring which God has sunken in the rock, which the winter never freezes, the summer never heats; which sends it quiet waters with music down the flowery hill-side, and which is pure and transparent, because

it has at the bottom no sediment. I would that every one of us had this well of life, gushing from our hearts-an everlasting and full stream

False modesty always judges by the outside; it cares how you speak, more than what. That which would outrage in plain words, may be implied furtively, in the sallies of wit or fancy, and be admissible. Every day I see this giggling modesty, which blushes at language more than at its meaning; which smiles upon base things, if they will appear in the garb of virtue! That disease of mind to which I have frequently alluded in these lectures, which leads it to clothe vice beautifully and then admit it, has had a fatal effect also upon Literature; giving currency to filth, by coining it in the mint of beauty. It is under the influence of this disease of taste and heart, that we hear expressed such strange judgments upon English authors. Those who speak plainly what they mean, when they speak at all, are called rude and vulgar; while those upon whose exquisite sentences the dew of indelicacy rests like so many brilliant pearls of the morning upon flowers, are called our moral authors!

The most dangerous writers in the English language are those whose artful insinuations and mischievous polish reflect upon the mind the image of impurity, without presenting the impurity itself. A

plain vulgarity in a writer is its own antidote. It is like a foe who attacks us openly, and gives us opportunity of defence. But impurity, secreted under beauty, is like a treacherous friend who strolls with us in a garden of sweets, and destroys us by the odor of poisonous flowers proffered to our senses. Let the reprehensible grossness of Chaucer be compared with the perfumed, elaborate brilliancy of Moore's license. I would not willingly answer at the bar of God for the writings of either; but of the two, I would rather bear the sin of Chaucer's plainspoken words which never suggest more than they say, than the sin of Moore's language, over which plays a witching hue and shade of licentiousness. I would rather put the downright, and often abominable, vulgarity of Swift into my child's hand, than the scoundrel-indirections of Sterne. They are both impure writers; but not equally harmful. The one says what he means; the other means what he dare not say. Swift is, in this respect, Belial in his own form; Sterne is Satan in the form of an angel of light: and many will receive the temptation of the Angel, who would scorn the proffer of the Demon. What an incredible state of morals, in the English church, that permitted two of her eminent clergy to be the most licentious writers of the age, and as impure as almost any of the English literature! Even

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