"Your carriage, lady, I know is irksome even now; how you dread the daily airing with Papa and Flora! (a sly smile;) I knew you did. What were those nicely-turned feet and ancles made for? they would be even slenderer, if used as Nature formed them to be. "Well, well, but the dress, the dress!'—'Well, then to the dress: here goes; though really it is awful. In the first place, I must remind you of what Thomson says, who appears to have been a good judge of these matters: speaking of his Lavinia, he says, 'Loveliness Needs not the aid of foreign ornament, or words to that effect. But seriously, I am confident that if my Utopian schemes were to succeed even in a partial degree, such discoveries, such an extension of individual ingenuity, would be made from the leisure afforded to active and cultivated intellect, in the arts, in chemical and mechanical process; modes of operative workmanship would be so arranged and simplified, that with very small assistance from friends, dress and ornaments most elegant, might be wrought at home, without quite so much aid from those hells for children, and adult's 'manufactories.' I never hear the click, the buz of their machinery, without fancying the laugh, the flap of demon's wings, exulting in the torments of the hapless infants there huddled in their own close atmosphere, breathing contagion, shut in from the fresh air of liberty. Even now, what becoming attire is prepared by the sole use of the piercer, the scissars, and the needle! How charming you would be, clad in the work of your own industry!''Well, perhaps I might; (stealing a sidelook in the glass;) but there is a something, for absence of which nothing can make amends how void of all politeness we should be; no stately reserye, no haughty demeanour, they would be scouted I suppose?'—' Madam, believe me, persons of common sense laugh at them heartily, even now; they are articles. more scoffed at every day. Who cares for the airs of aristocratic insolence, but the cap-inhand dependants, who are exposed to their immediate fury? Even they mimic them the next moment, and load the dealers in such contraband stuff with execrations. For my own part, I have long been of opinion, that what is termed the extremity of fashionable ease and grace, is the very acme of cruelty and rudeness. When once politeness becomes artificial, it ceases to be such: true politeness springs from the heart, without dissimulation, without effort; it is nothing more than the diffusion of kindness and good-will, happy itself, delighting to impart equal happiness to others: the boorishness you dread, is solely the result of hardness of heart generated from ignorance. Grace, in the expression of kindness, flows from pure Nature; no one was ever graceful from artifice, effort, or imitation : real, innate grace is Nature. I always see more elegance in the unstudied speech and attitude of good-natured, winning artlessness, than in the formal, hacknied mannerism, founded on the abandonment of natural expression. "The advancement of knowledge will be a general cement to the union of mankind. That knowledge in its proper sense operates as such, is evident, from the fact of the philosophers of all nations corresponding on good terms, while the rest of the world have been diligently employed in murdering each other on the most trifling occasions. Philosophical enquiry is the bond of peace. If its disciples have disputed, they have done so without drawn weapons and ill blood. If men of talent in general, can obtain literary leisure by exemption from the distress and abstraction of mind attendant on want, (and who has not talent, power of application of mind to some point?) how rapid will be the strides of science! If she has ad vanced thus far, rising with cumbrous effort from beneath the load of tyranny, superstition, and wilful mis-representation, which have in vain tried to crush and overwhelm her, what may we not expect when she is fostered by the hand of freedom, civil and religious, defended by the common good-will of man?" "Let us conclude, by hoping that the era is fast approaching, when the sword shall 'be turned into ploughshares;' when every man 'shall sit under the shade of his own vine,' and when wisdom shall be indeed justified of her children." LETTER XXV. To-day, as we were taking our usual ramble, L-said, "You may perhaps recollect I mentioned in the conversation preliminary to the disquisitions we have made, 'That your conscience, and by consequence the conscience of every man, when thought shall be rendered subject to the dominion of right reason, must become your guide.' If the orthodox had over-heard that discourse they would have scouted the idea, they would have exclaimed, 'What egregious folly do these sceptics commit at the first onset, who attempt to reduce the rules of moral conduct to a standard as variable as the shades of intellect in each individual, to a focus which dilates or contracts, as passion or prejudice may be its particular lens. Look at the atrocious barbarities which mark those who have no morality, save the dictates of this vaunted conscience, which apostacy so cries up as the spring of good; look to the countries on which our Revelation has not yet shone, covered with 'gross darkness,' their people abandoned to K |