Pedantry once of Fancy begged the dole
Of one brief kiss; she pointed him to Shame.
He, impotent and wanton, then Shame's favors stole.
Into the world at length a dead babe came--
"_Lucinda_" was its name.

The preaching of "religion," "womanliness," and the "holy fire of
divine enjoyment" makes an unedifying _mélange_: "The holiest thing in
any human being is his own mind, his own power, his own will;" "You do
all according to your own mind, and refuse to be swayed by what is
usual and proper." Schleiermacher admired in it that "highest wisdom
and profoundest religion" which lead people to "yield to the rhythm of
fellowship and friendship, and to disturb no harmony of love." In more
prosaic diction, the upshot of its teaching was the surrender to
momentary feelings, quite divorced from Laws or Things. The only
morality is "full Humanity;" "Nature alone is worthy of honor, and
sound health alone is worthy of love;" "Let the discourse of love,"
counsels Julius, "be bold and free, not more chastened than a Roman
elegy"--which is certainly not very much--and the skirmishes of
inclination are, in fact, set forth with an almost antique simplicity.
Society is to be developed only by "wit," which is seriously put into
comparison with God Almighty. As to practical ethics, one is told that
the most perfect life is but a pure vegetation; the right to indolence
is that which really makes the discrimination between choice and
common beings, and is the determining principle of nobility. "The
divine art of being indolent" and "the blissful bosom of
half-conscious self-forgetfulness" naturally lead to the thesis that
the empty, restless exertion of men in general is nothing but Gothic
perversity, and "boots naught but _ennui_ to ourselves and others."
Man is by nature "a serious beast; one must labor to counteract this