author, both from what we hear of the circulation which they have
already obtained, and from our conviction that they are calculated, if
not strongly denounced to the public, to produce, at this moment,
peculiar and irremediable mischief. The style of composition, as we have
already hinted, is almost new in this country: it is less offensive than
the old fashion of obscenity; and for these reasons, perhaps, is less
likely to excite the suspicion of the moralist, or to become the object
of precaution to those who watch over the morals of the young and
inexperienced. We certainly have known it a permitted study, where
performances, infinitely less pernicious, were rigidly interdicted.

There can be no time in which the purity of the female character can
fail to be of the first importance to every community; but it appears to
us, that it requires at this moment to be more carefully watched over
than at any other; and that the constitution of society has arrived
among us to a sort of crisis, the issue of which may be powerfully
influenced by our present neglect or solicitude. From the increasing
diffusion of opulence, enlightened or polite society is greatly
enlarged, and necessarily becomes more promiscuous and corruptible; and
women are now beginning to receive a more extended education, to venture
more freely and largely into the fields of literature, and to become
more of intellectual and independent creatures, than they have yet been
in these islands. In these circumstances, it seems to be of incalculable
importance, that no attaint should be given to the delicacy and purity
of their expanding minds; that their increasing knowledge should be of
good chiefly, and not of evil; that they should not consider modesty as
one of the prejudices from which they are now to be emancipated; nor
found any part of their new influence upon the licentiousness of which
Mr. Moore invites them to be partakers. The character and the morality
of women exercises already a mighty influence upon the happiness and the