aces are
calculated to generate and nourish. This is rather a geographical
than a moral distinction. It is thinking more of the place than of
the temper. They restrain their persons; but are not careful to
expel from their hearts the dispositions which excite the appetite,
and form the very essence of danger. A young creature can not be
happy who spends her time at home in amusements destined for
exhibition, while she is forbidden to be exhibited.

"But while we are teaching them that Christianity involves a heroic
self-denial; that it requires some things to be done, and others to
be sacrificed, at which mere people of the world revolt; that it
directs us to renounce some pursuits because they are wrong, and
others because they are trifling; we should, at the same time, let
them see and feel, that to a Christian the region of enjoyment is
not so narrow and circumscribed, is not so barren and unproductive,
nor the pleasures it produces so few and small, as the enemies of
religion would insinuate. While early habits of self-denial are
giving firmness to the character, strengthening the texture of the
mind, and hardening it against ordinary temptations; the pleasures
and employments which we substitute in the stead of those we
banish, must be such as tend to raise the taste, to invigorate the
intellect, to exalt the nature, and enlarge the sphere of
enjoyment; to give a tone to the mind, and an elevation to the
sentiments, which shall really reduce to insignificance the
pleasures that are prohibited.

"In our own instance I humbly trust, that through the divine
blessing, perseverance has been its own reward. As to Lucilla, I
firmly believe that right habits are now so rooted, and the relish
of superior pleasures so established in her mind, that had she the
whole range of human enjoyment at her command; had she no higher
consideration, no fear of God, no obedience to her mother and me,
which forbade the ordinary dissipations, she would voluntarily
renounce them, from a full persuasion of their empty, worthless,
unsatisfying nature, and from a superinduced taste for higher
gratifications.

"I am as far from intending to represent my daughter as a faultless
creature, as she herself is from wishing to be so represented. She
is deeply conscio