that this love and habit will be induced. Here is the great advantage of early intellectual culture. The busiest have some leisure, leisure which they may employ ill or well; and that they will employ it well may reasonably be expected when knowledge is thus attractive for its own sake. That this effect is in a considerable degree actually produced, is indicated by the improved character of the books which poor men read, and in the prodigious increase in the number of those books. The supply and demand are correspondent. Almost every year produces books for the laboring classes of a higher intellectual order than the

A journeyman in our days can understand and relish a work which would have been like Arabic to his grandfather.

Of moral education we say nothing here, except that the principles which are applicable to other classes of mankind are obviously applicable to the poor. With respect to the inculcation of peculiar religious opinions on the children who attend schools voluntarily supported, there is manifestly the same reason for inculcating them in this case as for teaching them at all. This supposes that the supporters of the school are not themselves divided in their religious opinions. If they are, and if the adherents to no one creed are able to support a school of their own, there appears no ground upon which they can rightly refuse to support a school in which no religious peculiarities are taught. It is better that intellectual knowledge, together with imperfect religious principles should be communicated, than that children should remain in darkness. There is indeed some reason to suspect the genuineness of that man's philanthropy, who refuses to impart any knowledge to his neighbors because he cannot, at the same time, teach them his own creed.

CHAPTER XII.

AMUSEMENTS.

The Stage-Religious Amusements-Masquerades-Field Sports -The Turf-Boxing-Wrestling-Opinions of PosterityPopular Amusements needless.

IT is a remarkable circumstance, that in almost all Christian countries many of the public and popular amusements have been regarded as objectionable by the more sober and conscientious part of the community. This opinion could scarcely have been general unless it had been just yet why should a people prefer amusements of which good men feel themselves compelled to disapprove? Is it because no public recreation can be devised of which the evil is not greater than the good? or because the inclinations of most men are such, that if it were devised, they would not enjoy it? It may be feared that the desires which are seeking for gratification are not themselves pure; and pure pleasures are not congenial to impure minds. The real cause of the objectionable nature of many popular diversions is to be sought in the want of virtue in the people.

Amusement is confessedly a subordinate concern in life. It is neither the principal nor amongst the principal objects of proper solicitude. No reasonable man sacrifices the more important thing to the less, and that a man's religious and moral condition is of incomparably greater importance than his diversion, is sufficiently plain. In estimating the propriety or rather the lawfulness of a given amusement, it may safely be laid down, That none is lawful of which the aggregate consequences are injurious to morals:-nor, if its effects upon the immediate agents are, in general, morally bad :-nor if it occasions needless pain and misery to

men or to animals --nor, lastly, if it occupies much time or is attended with much expense.-Respecting all amusements, the question is not whether in their simple or theoretical character, they are defensible, but whether they are defensible in their actually existing

state.

THE DRAMA.—So that if a person, by way of showing the propriety of theatrical exhibitions, should ask whether there was any harm in a man's repeating a composition before others and accompanying it with appropriate gestures-he would ask a very foolish question because he would ask a question that possesses little or no relevancy.to the subject.—What are the ordinary effects of the stage upon those who act on it? One and one only answer can be given—that whatever happy exceptions there may be, the effect is bad, that the moral and religious character of actors is lower than that of persons in other professions. "It is an undeniable fact, for the truth of which we may safely appeal to every age and nation, that the situation of the performers, particularly of those of the female sex, is remarkably unfavorable to the maintenance and growth of the religious and moral principle, and of course highly dangerous to their eternal interests.''*

Therefore, if I take my seat in the theatre, I have paid three or five shillings as an inducement to a number of persons to subject their principles to extreme danger;—and the defence which I make is, that I am amused by it. Now, we affirm that this defence is invalid; that it is a defence which reason pronounces to be absurd, and morality to be vicious. Yet I have no other to make; it is the sum total of my justification.

But this, which is sufficient to decide the morality of * Wilberforce: Practical View, c. 4, s. 5.

the question, is not the only nor the chief part of the evil. The evil which is suffered by performers may be more intense, but upon spectators and others it is more extended. The night of a play is the harvest time of iniquity, where the profligate and the sensual put in their sickles and reap. It is to no purpose to say that a man may go to a theatre or parade a saloon without taking part in the surrounding licentiousness. All who are there promote the licentiousness, for if none were there, there would be no licentiousness; that is to say, if none purchased tickets there would be neither actors to be depraved nor dramas to vitiate, nor saloons to degrade and corrupt, and shock us.-The whole question of the lawfulness of the dramatic amusements, as they are ordinarily conducted, is resolved into a very simple thing :-After the doors on any given night are closed, have the virtuous or the vicious dispositions of the attenders been in the greater degree promoted? Every one knows that the balance is on the side of vice, and this conclusively decides the question-"Is it lawful to attend?"

The same question is to be asked, and the same answer I believe will be returned, respecting various other assemblies for purposes of amusement. They do more harm than good. They please but they injure us; and what makes the case still stronger is, that the pleasure is frequently such as ought not to be enjoyed. A tippler enjoys pleasure in becoming drunk, but he is not to allege the gratification as a set-off against the immorality. And so it is with no small portion of the pleasures of an assembly. Dispositions are gratified which it were wiser to thwart; and, to speak the truth, if the dispositions of the mind were such as they ought to be, many of these modes of diversion would be neither relished nor resorted to. Some persons try to persuade themselves that charity forms a part of

their motive in attending such places; as when the profits of the night are given to a benevolent institution. They hope, I suppose, that though it would not be quite right to go if benevolence were not a gainer, yet that the end warrants the means. But if these persons are charitable, let them give their guinea without deducting half for purposes of questionable propriety. Religious amusements, such as oratorios and the like, form one of those artifices of chicanery by which people cheat, or try to cheat, themselves. The music, say they, is sacred, is devotional; and we go to hear it as we go to church: it excites and animates our religious sensibilities. This, in spite of the solemnity of the association, is really ludicrous. These scenes subserve religion no more than they subserve chemistry. They do not increase its power any more than the power of the steam-engine. As it respects Christianity, it is all imposition and fiction; and it is unfortunate that some of the most solemn topics of our religion are brought into such unworthy and debasing alliance.*

MASQUERADES are of a more decided character. If the pleasure which people derive from meeting in disguises consisted merely in the "fun and drollery" of the thing, we might wonder to see so many children of five and six feet high, and leave them perhaps to their childishness :-but the truth is, that to many the zest of the concealment consists in the opportunity which it gives of covert licentiousness; of doing that in secret, of which, openly, they would profess to be ashamed. Some men and some women who affect propriety when the face is shown, are glad of a few hours of concealed libertinism. It is a time in which principles are left to guard the citadel of virtue without the auxiliary of public opinion. And ill do they * See also Essay II., c. I.