to be a still safer test of successful coquetry.  Thus may the young innocent heart be gradually led on to depend for its enjoyment on the factitious passing admiration of a light and thoughtless hour; and still worse, if possessed of keen susceptibilities and powers of quick adaptation, the lesson is often too easily learned of practising the arts likely to attract notice, thus losing for ever the simplicity and modest freshness of a woman’s nature.  That may be a fatal evening to you on which you will first attract sufficient notice to have it said of you that you were more admired than Lucy D. or Ellen M.; this may be a moment for a poisonous plant to spring up in your heart, which will spread around its baleful influence until your dying day.  It is a disputed point among ethical metaphysicians, whether the seeds of every vice are equally planted in each human bosom, and only prevented from germinating by opposing circumstances, and by the grace of God assisting self-control.  If this be true, how carefully ought we to avoid every circumstance that may favour the commencing existence of before unknown sins and temptations.  The grain that has been destitute of vitality for a score of centuries is wakened into unceasing, because continually renewed existence, by the fostering influences of light and air and a suitable soil.  Evil tendencies may be slumbering in your bosom, as destitute of life, as incapable of growth, as the oats in the foldings of the mummy’s envelope.  Be careful lest, by going into the way of temptation, you may involuntarily foster them into the very existence which they would otherwise never possess.

When once the craving for excitement has become a part of our nature, there is of course no safety in the quietest, or, under other circumstances, most innocent kind of society.  The same amusements will be sought for in it as those which have been enjoyed in the ball-room, and every company will be considered insufferably wearisome which does not furnish the now necessary stimulant of exclusive attention and general admiration.

I write the more strongly to you on the subject of worldly amusements, because I see with regret a tendency in the writings and conversation of the religious world, as it is called, to extol every other species of self-denial, but to Observe a studied silence respecting this one.

A reaction seems to have taken place in the public mind.  Instead of the puritanic strictness that condemned the meeting of a few friends for any purposes besides those of reading the Scriptures and praying extempore, practices are now introduced, and favoured, and considered harmless, almost as strongly contrasted with the former ones as was the promulgation of the Book of Sports with the strict observances that preceded it.  We see some, of whose piety and excellence no doubt can be entertained, mingling unhesitatingly in the most worldly amusements of those who are by profession as well as practice “lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God.”