or rhetoric-take him to a play, to a rehearsal of a musical composition, or to a dancing-room, and watch the effects of those particular things upon him. Where shall we find amongst these beings-indeed amongst any beings—an individual whose feelings are not excited? and it the character of the performance be vicious, will not the feelings of such an individual be excited to a vicious excess, whatever may have been the previous regularity of the disposition? Am I not justified, then, in assigning to the thea tre and I will now at the instance of Common Sense, extend the charge as far as he has carried his illustrative comparisons-am I not justified in assigning to the amusements in question, the effects I charged upon the theatre in my other Aetter I repeat it again, that there is a criminal and contagious influence in the very essence of those amusements; and that these bad effects are heightened by the illicit character of exhibitions in certain parts of the house. Those excitations are upon feelings virtuous in themselves; they cause a gradual deviation of principle from strict rectitude, and " curse with an excess of emotion that nothing virtuous can ever satisfy." By degrees, the feelings not satisfied by any thing virtuous, seek gratification in the libidinous pleasures, in the tenderness of forbidden enjoyments, and in a period not very protracted they become adepts in vice and master spirits in alt the diabolical arts of an infernal agent. Say, then, whether I am wrong or illiberal and whether I am a mere " calumniator" who cannot "substantiate his charge."

The main point being proved, it is almost unnecessary to go much into detail; but I shall avail myself of this opportunity of making a remark or two on amusements in general; and this I feel more at liberty to do on account of the latitude which Common Sense has alloyed himself on the same topics.

Feelings, that have been intensely excited, are invariably followed by a proportionate languor; and it is a well attested fact, that the most unruffled spirits are the most unfeeling spirits. Whatever then is virtuous, must depend upon an excitation of the feelings; and whatever is calculated to overstrain the nerves, and to relax the heart, is virtue in excess, or virtue out of place. In either case, we perform that act at the

expense of our future power to perform one less energetic, but perhaps not less praise-worthy. When the act in question is merely for amusement, or the feeling excited merely for our own personał gratification, we incur a degree of guilt, if by entering too intensely into that amusement, we disqualify ourselves for a performance of those duties that subsequently occur. Now as it has been shown that the amusements in question depend for their value upon an intensity of excitation, do we not run great risk of incurring this guilt by attending, or by seeking our pleasure in those places? Can any man whose feelings have been really interested in the amusement, enter into the spirit of the scene which may possibly meet his eyes upon his return home, or if he should be called to witness a scene of distress elsewhere, has he a single tear to drop for their wretchedness, or a feeling in unison with the surrounding misery?

If, then, we suppose there was no vicious interchange of glances, no con. tamination of feeling which necessarily results from the indiscriminate collision of different vices there, does not the natural voluptuous disposition that is created by the emotions themselves, unfit a man for the "every-day business of common life?" And is it not absolutely impossible, incompatible with the formation of the human heart, that "with the occasion pass away the feelings of the occasion ?" Every one must see the futility of the argument used by Common Sense, and the incorrectness of his assertions.

So far am I from withdrawing_my charges against the theatre, that I as positively call upon my opponent to look round him, and assert that he will find proof sufficient of their truth. We may each of us make assertions and produce cases in support of either side; but still any case adduced may be coloured to suit the case it is brought to support, and the question would be still open to dispute as it was at any previous time.

Having proved the dangerous tendency of an undue excitation of the passions, and having shown that the amusements in question do excite the passions too intensely, can we resist the conclusion, that the effects of such amusements are baneful to society? Whatever honours may be due to Shakespeare, no one can charge me with attempting to tear a

single leaf from that chaplet which poster ity has woven round his honoured brow; rather would I invoke the anathema of genius and virtue upon the head of the mindless, heartless wretch, who should atattempt to blast the rich and full blown foliage that is undulated by the passing breeze in his unwithering coronet. In the splendour of his glories we must remember there were occasional obscurations; as on the sun's disk there are spots that diminish its native lustre. I give Shakespeare credit for all the good he has done; but I, at the same time, will not wilfully refuse to see that even his dramatic pieces have occasional faults, nor that they may be made productive of much evil. I shall always give to ge nius its due honours; but never will 1 sacrifice truth at the splendid altar of graceful viciousness.

Leeds, April 4th, 1822.

T. S. D.

The reply in question is just what I anticipated; and could I have been convinced by the arguments of Tan-sin Daleth, I should not have published the few brief remarks I did.

I deny, in toto, the existence of the facts which he asserts; and think it no difficult matter to show that all the cases he has adduced are but the particular colourings, the brighter side of facts, which if viewed upon a larger scale, tend to prove the truth of what I have affirmed.

First, then Tau-sin Daletb asks whether our present state is not preferable to that of the aborigines of this country. I answer No. He asks whether the increased facilities of supplying our wants is not in a greater ratio than the increase of those wants themselves.

I answer No. He asks where

nothing to be set down in

the

refinement of feeling which accompa nies a state of improvement. I answer NO. In short, to all his questions, without a single exception, I answer, No. As to the diffusion of education and its consequences, let that pass at present which I the more readily request from seeing in your notices to Correspondents that a discussion some way connected with this is to appear in your next volume, "This German gentleman means," by "deceiving the people," simply that the people are too short sighted and too much the crea tures of the passing moment to act under a fair representation of facts just as they are, but must be led to form a phalanx in support of any patriotic project from being deceived into it by false and untenable,but,to them plausible arguments. I object to a diffusion of education on the ground of its rendering this purpose more difficult to attain. Now, for the reasons of my disputing the positive yes" in answer to Tausin Daleth's queries.

The increased facilities of which your Correspondent speaks do indeed render more easy the attainment of luxuries, and of some things which custom has christened necessaries; but so far as the immediate and essential supports of life go, I deny that we have any facilities that increase in a greater ratio than does the number of claimants who start up for their respective portions of those supports. The Cherokee or the Chickasau can promise bimself a dinner a week hence with more certainty thau can an English labourer or a French Mechanic: and perhaps there are fewer casualties and fewer precarious circumstances in the way of his accomplishing any project he may form than either Tau-sin Daleth or myself may find to oppose us in any of our designs. The Indian goes forth with his bow and arrows, and the wilds of bis country afford ample scope for his dexterity and for success in his pursuit: but here, in this land of liberty, this land of feeling and of Bibles, the man who does not inherit a fortune from his ancestors, must go with his batin bis hand, and his tongue unnerved with fear

"To ask some lordly fellow worm To give him leave to toil." and is refused-the refusal too, not un

frequently accompanied by insult-even the sorry privilege of toiling for anothers profit and a morsel of bread for himself! Is there any casualty to which a man in a state of barbarism is subjected, that carries off a greater average number, and that prematurely, than do the noxious vapours and the deathly trades of modern England? Are there in reality more starved to death in such a state than there are of wretched beings in our own country, notwithstanding the panacea which the Parishsystem is vauntingly said to offer? Would to God I had two thousand years ago, reclined in listless indolence over my winter fire, and sheltered by the spreading oaks that probably overshadowed the spot where, in the bitterness of my soul, I am now writing! I should have enjoyed privileges I now do not; and if I had not known how to write or have known the luxury of an easy chair, I should not have needed them, for I should not have known that they existed. Indeed not half that period gone, the greatest used a " joint-stool:" "Three legs upholding firm A massy shape, in fashion square or round:On such a stool immortal Alfred sat And swayed the sceptre of his infant realms." and what monarch since has "swayed the sceptre" with more honour, more utility, or more real skill? Has the ratio between the qualifications of governors kept pace with the improvement which Cowper has so ingeniously traced in the gradual conversion of a three-footed stool into a modern sofa? Does that monarch" whose taste is so exquisite," as Sir Robert Heron once said, "that he cannot endure the sight of the same furniture for two years together," as far surpass the restorer of his country's expiring liberty, as his splendid court exceeds the simple shed of Alfred-a shed that had fewer "com. forts" than has a modern monarch's hair dresser and not a thousandth part of its decoration? These are questions which come home to the point, and the latter cannot certainly be considered invidious when we think of George and Alfred. So much for the real improvement in procuring the means of subsistence: let us now enquire whether we are not unfitted by civilization for bearing the evils of polished life in a greater ratio, than there are means invented for warding off those evils.

It is granted that the bolt of heaven strikes fewer English oaks now, than it did in the year one of the Christian era; but that is owing to there being fewer of those noble monarchs of the vegetable kingdom-and certainly notwitstanding the experiments of Franklin, Stanhope and Children, in electricity, there are doubtless as many victims to its terrible ravages as there ever were. If we look through the various caverns in the bowels of the earth, we shall find that the facilities for safety notwithstanding the gener ously employed ingenuity of Stephenson and Davy,are not commensurate with the dangers created by the death-winged vapours: and if we extend our remarks to that class of beings who are employed in Sheffield and Birmingham to complete the shape and power of the knife I have just used to correct the point of my pen, can we find any advantage in the knife to compensate for an abridgment of at least thirty years of what the inspired penman considers the "life of man ?" Or, upon the broadest scale, do not our manufactures give birth to more physisical, and consequently, more mental suffering, than they have ever found the means of removing or of counteracting? And if so, where are the boasted privi→ leges conferred by civilization? Nay, going farther---which however in this age of religious affectation it maybe construed into impiety to enquire- does even religion, the glorious era of evangelism, fully compensate for its concomitant evils and the miseries created by its co-existent civilization? I ask this question with due deference: let no man judge me. The Governor of the Universe knows my heart and who art thou, frail brother-mortal, that darest to take upon thee the office that exclu sively belongs to the Omniscient?*

I scarcely expect the progressive stages of national demoralization-I certainly do not wish to witness them in my own country; the evil is now in existence, and the "remedy is much worse than even the disease" yet, I would humbly enter my caveat against the wholesale system which is carried on by the more devout,of sending to the uncultured, the blessings they do not need, and which will operate as a curse to their posterity. We have done mischief enough amongst the African states by the deathly, the exterminating feuds we have created there; shall we increase the evil by absolving them from all those remaining obligations which are entwined with their earliest perceptions and identified with their mas

The set-off in favour of the refinement of emotion which civilization produces, is a mere fictious commodity, an "airy nothing" that has no habitation, name or value, and that exists solely in the distorted imagination of those whom edu cation has made fools of, and enthusiasm madmen. "What is love," says Tau-sin Daleth, "in our time was mere brutality in the savage state; and what we desig nate by the title of sentiment was to them unknown" but where is there a country more civilized-that is, where luxury has attained a higher pitch, than the Öttoman Empire; and where is there an uncivilized country that answers the cha racter in the first member of his period so completely as Turkey ? As to sentiment, hear what a prophet of our own school, Cowper says:

"New-fangled sentiment, the boasted grace Of those who never feel in the right place,And even in Sterne and St. Pierre, do we not trace an intensity of misery that, however delicious in its connections, is yet misery in itself, and triple misery in its consequences? Many a one has sentimentalized till hunger and privation has awakened their slumbering and halfintoxicated senses; and they have started up in an agony that none but themselves would attempt to describe, and in which they themselves would but partially succeed.

Upon the whole, then, though the division of labour may make a show in a work on commercial philosophy, and the luxuries of life may be weighty over the second bottle after dinner; yet to the man who is pining in obscurity, and forbidden by the penal statutes to take his quiver and his bow to supply his hunger in the circumjacent fields, and unable to find any substitute for it, to him civilization wears a less gaudy face,-the mask has fallen, the deception is apparent.

THETA SIGMA DELTA.

Leeds, April 3d. 1822.

turer modes of thought? Shall we tempt them to exchange the bonds of society for the shackles of an alien religion-which can find no concord in their bosom which touches no tender recollection of their infantine conceptions, and which to say the best appears like the loose webs of modern sophistry, compared with the creed which we have combined in our minds with the most pathetic legends of our boyish days.

Each beat of joy each throb of woe,
For good receiv'd, or hopes brought low,
Wak'd in thy heart a kindred glow,
My Husband.
Were never favoured pair more bless'd,
When round our kness six darlings press'd,
And smill'd carressing and carressed,

My Husband.
For though at times this drew à sigh,
And stole a tear-drop to our eye;
Remembering two that were on high,
My Husband.
Yet 'twas a tear that gleam'd delight,
Like eye of morning, softly bright,
While glist'ning through the dews of night,
My Husband
Sweet flowers just opening on the view,
In fragrance bath'd in morning dew,
When heaven's commissioned angels fiew.
My Husband.

Snatched the fair blossoms from our eyes,
To bloom beneath unclouded skies,
Arrayed in heavens ætherial dyes,
My Husband.

II. But oh! how throbb'd my boding heart,
When o'er thy couch death hield his dart,
And seem'd to say you too must part,
My Husband.

THE HARPER'S LAY.

Thy hollow cheek, thy languid eye

I mark'd, in silent agony,

Yet dar'd not think that thou would'st die.

My Husband.

But oh! my spirit fainted quite,
When of thy children-thy delight,
Thou couldst not bear the melting sight,
My Husband'.
And when thy lips the sentence pass'd,
That" dearest friends must part at last,"
In dumb despair I sunk aghast,
My Husband.
Then seem'd my tears a widow's tears,
My fears a widow'd mother's fears,
Where orphan voices first she hears,
My Husband.

Yet while by racking care oppress'd
One precious thought my spirit bless'd,
I saw thy soul in Jesu's rest,

My Husband.

And though my heart in anguish pined,
It soothed me still to mark thy mind,
So meek, so humble, so resigned,
My Husband.

III. I tried on God to cast my care,
"O save, or give me strength to bear;"
God heard a wife's, a mother's prayer,
My Husband.
For when by grief her spirit weighed,
Thy on her couch was laid,
'Twas there thy ebbing life was stayed,
My Husband.
This seem'd to touch with sudden start,
Some secret spring within thy heart,
And life's new impulse to impart,

My Husband.
I mark'd the change, and at the sight,
As morning breaks upon the night,
So beam'd my heart with new delight,
My Husband.

O! then upon thy looks to dwell,
And to thine eye and ear to tell,
How dear the hope thou wouldst be well,
My Husband.

With extasy unfelt before,
God's Mercies then I numbered o'er,
For thou wast added to the store,

-1

My Husband.

My trembling fears had laid thee low!
Shall time ere quench the grateful glow,
To HIM, who kindly spared the blow.
My Husband.

Now here together let us raise
An altar to JEHOVAH'S praise,
And give to him our future days,

My Husband.

Preston, March, 30th 1822.

Oh wake again my harp I pray,
It is my last my saddest lay,
And why should silence rest upon
Thy still beloved strings?

Oh wake to mourn the day that's gone,
The fall of Cambria's Kings.

Oh Snowdon! shall thy glens no more,
Echo the wild harp's sound?

Shall the lone torrents dashing roar,
Be all that wakes around?

It may not be, the last and least
Of all thy bards shall yet be heard,
Thy proudest harps in death have ceased
But I, like that deserted bird

Who mourns her mate, shall wake again,
In thy lone glens the minstrel strain,
For glories past and gone:

And though the lay be poured in vain
And dark'ning rocks alone;

Hear the sad dirge, yet wake I pray
Sweet chords the latest harpers lay.
How rung the glorious voice of war,
From Cheviots hills to Penmanmawn,
And in Plyn Llymnons deepest glen,
Glanced shields and helmets fair;
And startling at the tumult then
The wild goat left its lain.

Shaking proud Snow don's crowning snows,
The war cry of her sons arose,
The gathering word of warriors free,
Was "Cambria and our Liberty,"
A hundred harps in Eryn's vale
Poured their wild music to the gale,
And ever at the martial sound
The kindling warrior rose,

The lightning of his dark eyes spoke
Defiance to his foe's.

For his proud spirit sbunned the yoke
That foreign hands had bound;
O'er that fair land where glory stood,
The guardian of each rock and flood;
And ever at the war-song's close,
The unsheathed falchions flashed in light,
As high they waved, unstain'd and bright
In myriads to the sun :

And shouts rose from each gallant band,
"On, on we fight to save the land,
Our father's valour won:"

A curse upon thee Edward' e're,
That summer morn had past,
Oh! many a cheek at sunrise fair
Lay withering in the blast,

And many a heart whose spirits proud
Sprung at the trumpets sound
Lay cold in death; or willing pour'd
Its best blood on the ground.
Falters my barp? it is not mine,
To wake the dirge for Cambria's line,
All, all are gone, and I am left
A hunted outlaw, yet bereft →
Of joy or hope, I still must pour,
My death-song to the torrents roar,
Shades of my fathers lingering yet-
O'er this deserted land ye hear
My strains ye cannot yet forget,
The harp once pleasant to your ear.
The bard shall hear ye sigh no more,
O'er your diminished name.

Rise, rise on winds for he has waked