quate reward for the conversion of so great a proselyte,) than to have seen his Holiness burned in effigy in the capital of a catholic country: which ceremony was absolutely performed at Paris, before Palais d'Egalité.

At the same time that I point out to the clergy what infinite benefit the country would derive from their laudable exertions in publicly preaching and privately acting true religion and repentance, I would have them be mindful of continuing to practise, as they ever have done, the duties which they preach to their congregations; and the more they continue to follow the humble path of the Divine Author of our religion and his apostles, the surer they are of having reverence and respect paid to them.-I am not of opinion, because St. John fed upon

locusts and wild honey, that a bishop's chief food should be molasses and cabbage, (which, by the by, is a famous dish in America;) or, because he is a priest, that he should not partake of the good cheer of this world in moderation; or that he should be debarred the innocent pleasures of this life-far be it from my thoughts; nor that he should preach abstinence and fasting, or spare diet, to the people at large; in which I should be sure of being condemned, not only by the fair sex in general, but by the most rigid prude, to whom I will reply, "Hold, Mrs. Abigail, I have too much regard for your sex to prescribe such spare diet and lean food," But at the same time I must observe, that I do not think religion so ponderous a virtue, that it

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* Vide Mandeville.

need be drawn in a coach and six horses. Indeed, whenever I see a superabundant degree of state-shew and pageantry in pious processions, it recalls to my mind what a poor half-starved Jesuit said to the grand-master of that order, passing by in great state to mass, "Jesuita, Jesuita, non ita ibat Jesus." For the benefit of my fair readers, who, from the present defective state of their education, cannot be supposed to understand Latin, but whose mental and corporeal improvement is the chief, if not the sole, motive which has induced me to undertake this Work, I will translate the passage: "Our Saviour did not make his entry into Jerusalem in a state-coach."

As I am of opinion that the labourer is worthy of his hire, and should be paid according to his real exertions, and not

according to his supposed virtues, I am of opinion that forty pounds a-year to a country curate, who serves four churches on a Sunday, and christens, marries, and buries the whole inhabitants of as many parishes, is not in a rateable proportion to a salary of sixteen thousand pounds per annum paid to a mitred superior, who has only to say a few prayers a few score times in the year. I trust I shall not be suspected of a want of respect to the learned and pious heads of our Church, or of attempting, in the smallest degree, to degrade or lower their consequence, when I most devoutly wish that the benefices of the inferior clergy, who labour hard in the vineyard, may be considerably augmented: for, surely, a stipend of forty pounds per annum will bear no comparison with a revenue of twelve or sixteen thousand. We have it from the first authority, that he

who serves at the altar should live by it; which he cannot decently do on an income of less than two hundred ayear.

It is not the dances and dancers only that are productive of immorality, but even the operas themselves are incentives to vice, and cause the destruction of female virtue. No person will deny the powers that music has over both the human and brute creation. Elian informs us, that the Lybian mares were excited to love by music. What moral man, after seriously reflecting on this, will ever permit his wife or daughters to go to the opera? or what decent and virtuous woman will ever request it? for I assert that music has more power now-a-days, (since the death of Orpheus and some other persons, ancient performers,) over the human than