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A new series of nervous affections were consequently introduced, which puzzled the faculty very much, until they discovered how ineffectual bark and steel, and the whole class of tonics, were in the vicinity of a circulating library. At length, however, castles and ghosts, and blue chambers, and blue devils, became so common, that it required a very unusual mixture of raw-heads and bloody-bones to excite a moment's apprehension in the most delicate young lady. Light at the end of a gallery had no more effect than farthing candles ought to have; and the most timid looked behind the tapestry, indifferent whether it concealed a gang of banditti or a set of china. Murders and rapes were perused with great composure, and towers toppled on their heads without disturbing a single hair of the Ninon or the Brutus. Vast forests were perambulated by night like the Mall at noon-day, and travellers lost their way without caring whether they ever found it.

Those therefore who studied courage in such edifying performances, may have an opportunity to practise it, since they may be assured that the enemy will have no hesitation in performing the incidents they have familiarised by reading. The threatening foe has, indeed,

perpetrated them so frequently in other countries, that perhaps at no very distant period much of the history of the late war will be read as romance, and the circumstance of a GREAT HERO murdering his prisoners in cool blood, and poisoning his own troops because they were sick, will be thought the daring invention of our celebrated castle-builder Mrs. Ratcliffe, or of the ghost-master-general, Mr. Lewis.

I have been led into these desultory remarks, partly by the incident mentioned in the beginning of my paper, but chiefly with a view to contribute my share of contempt for those principles and practices, that folly and dissipation, which more or less have been aiding the present disorganized state of Europe. Very recent experience has demonstrated that we have yet a party, although small, and I trust, impotent, who still persist in circulating opinions subversive of the order of society, and calculated to produce what they have already produced in other quarters, national slavery and humiliation, and individual poverty and misery. With such men it is impossible to argue, and it would be folly to temporize. If we did not know how "desperately wicked" the human

heart may be, to what could we refer such conduct, unless to lunacy or fatuity?

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With their utmost industry, however, they have not been able to darken the present prospect. Indirectly perhaps we are indebted to them; since they have contributed to quicken the exertions and rouse the spirit of their indignant fellow subjects. And such, indeed, has been the consequence of the menaces of the enemy and the artifices of his agents, that in a very short time the nation will be placed out of the reach of all probable danger. Among others who have contributed to this just and necessary cause, in a very considerable degree, are the Clergy. It is with great pleasure I now frequently hear discourses from the pulpit, expressly adapted to the circumstances of the nation, and pointing how the passing events are to be considered in a religious view. This is highly seasonable. The present is not the time when public licentiousness ought to prevail without resistance. It is impossible to read, unconcerned, the heterogeneous intelliwhich some of our newspapers gence afford-a short paragraph respecting the danger of the nation, and a lengthened column of insipid trash relating to a dance, or a rout. This

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frivolous spirit, we trust, is not English; and it is, therefore, peculiarly becoming in the teachers of sacred truth, to direct the public attention to objects of higher importance, and to those resources in a time of danger, which are beyond all human power or contrivance.

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The eventful history of the last ten years awful lesson to all nations. And now we are again, and perhaps more closely than ever, to contend with a nation which has hitherto been a scourge in the hand of God-a nation bent on no melioration of the condition of society among any people-a nation once dyed in the blood of its king, its nobles and citizens, under the pretext of regaining liberty, and now so bigoted to slavery as to be determined to spread it and its accompanying miseries over the habitable globe. This is evidently not the work of man, as man. It is irreconcileable with the lowest wisdom, and would be resisted by the shallowest understanding. The enemy are blind agents in the hands of a superintending Providence, who acts for wise, although to us, mysterious purposes. Happy will it be if, by imploring the Divine aid, and exhibiting a thorough reformation, we should become the highly favoured people appointed to check the career of mad ambition, to restore peace to the

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distracted nations of Europe, and to bid the sword return into its sheath. When we recollect our many past deliverances, we may humbly hope that one greater than all may yet be in reserve; and if we truly and unfeignedly prize the religious and civil privileges which for so many years we have enjoyed, amidst storms and tempests, we cannot fail at the same time to recollect the terms on which they were granted, and the correspondent duties we owe to the "Giver of every good and perfect gift."

THE PROJECTOR. No 22.

"Conciliat animos hominum COMITAS, affabilitasque

sermonis,"

CIC. de Off. II. 14.

September 1803.

IN the course of a short walk with a friend lately, I accompanied him into a shop, where he made several purchases of articles which I thought were somewhat dear; but I observed

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