work to which he is referring is
so well known, that he needs scarcely name Mrs. H. More.]

[Footnote 83: See SMITH'S Theory of Moral Sentiments.]

[Footnote 84: While all are worthy of blame, who, to qualities like
these, have assigned a more exalted place than to religious and moral
principle; there is one writer who, eminently culpable in this respect,
deserves, on another account, still severer reprehension. Really
possessed of powers to explore and touch the finest strings of the human
heart, and bound by his sacred profession to devote those powers to the
service of religion and virtue, he every where discovers a studious
solicitude to excite indecent ideas. We turn away our eyes with disgust
from open immodesty: but even this is less mischievous than that more
measured style, which excites impure images, without shocking us by the
grossnesses of the language. Never was delicate sensibility proved to be
more distinct from plain practical benevolence, than in the writings of
the author to whom I allude. Instead of employing his talents for the
benefit of his fellow-creatures, they were applied to the pernicious
purposes of corrupting the national taste, and of lowering the standard
of manners and morals. The tendency of his writings is to vitiate that
purity of mind, intended by Providence as the companion and preservative
of youthful virtue; and to produce, if the expression may be permitted,
_a morbid sensibility in the perception of indecency_. An imagination
exercised in this discipline is never _clean_, but seeks for and
discovers something indelicate in the most common phrases and actions of
ordinary life. If the general style of writing and conversation were to
be formed on that model, to which Sterne used his utmost endeavours to
conciliate the minds of men, there is no estimating the effects which
would soon be produced on the manners and morals of the age.]

[Footnote 85: Vide SMITH on the Wealth of Nations, Vol. iii.]

[Footnote 86: Vide the Grammarians and Dialecticians on the Diminutives
of the Italian and other languages.]

[Footnote 87: Many more might be added, such as a good fellow, a good
companion, a libertine, a little free, a little loose in talk, wild,
gay, jovial, being no man's enemy but his own, &c. &c. &c. &c; above
all, _having a good heart_.]

[Footnote 88: Gal. v. 19-21. Col. iii. 5-9.]

[Footnote 89: Job, xxviii. 28. Psalm, cxi. 10. Prov. i. 7.--ix. 10.]

[Footnote 90: 2 Peter