ouring of profaneness. As the freedom of Shakespeare scandalizes our
sectaries, so among the circles, in which religion was most the mode in
Germany, the unconstrained and unaffected purity of Goethe began to pass
for licentiousness.

We are indeed ourselves very far gone in this distemper, and value
ourselves on our superior delicacy, because we cannot see without a
blush what in times less refined was not supposed to need a veil, as
none suspected it could ever raise an impure thought.

Another mischief not less formidable sprang from the same cause. It is
the tendency of all enthusiasm to concentrate all the powers and
feelings of the soul in its single object. Religious enthusiasm, the
most intense as its object is the highest, is of all the most jealous
and exclusive, and can least bear any participation in its sovereignty
over the thoughts and affections. Hence wherever it has been strongly
excited, whatever bears the name or is allied to the nature of
amusement and diversion has been proscribed, not so much on an ascetic
principle of mortification, as sensual indulgence, but because it is
thought to distract the attention from the great business of life. We
are still suffering under a like effect of the puritanical spirit, the
traces of which will perhaps never be effaced from our national
character. Under its dominion the lower orders were deprived of their
innocent and invigorating sports, and forced to supply their place by
noxious stimulants, drawn first from the conventicle and afterwards
from the alehouse. The pleasures of the higher classes are of a more
intellectual kind; their most refined entertainments are derived from
the fine arts and elegant literature. But when the productions of
literature and art are considered as diversions, they are levelled
before the eye of religion with the sports of the vulgar; they are
perhaps less harmless, as they cost much more time and ingenuity in the
production, and exercise a more powerful influence over the mind.
From this point of view there is no essential difference between a
puppet-show and a play of Shakespeare; only the one is a pastime for
children, the other for men; a panorama is a source of amusement
differing in degree only, not in kind, from a cartoon of Raphael; the
former has the advantage of affording more general entertainment. A map
or sea-chart are greatly superior to either, for they contribute to the
practical purposes of life. But when religio