LETTER I.

From Mrs. H. More, to Miss

MY DEAR CLEORA,1

I SIT down at my first moment of leisure to comply with your flattering request that I should write you a letter. I hope you will condescend to read it with kindness, though it is not, according to your wish, written in verse. I am afraid, however, that you are not of the opinion of an old critic I have read, who says that poets are the next best writers to the writers in prose. Now you must know I laid by my poetry with my pink ribbons, thinking them both to be rather youthful decorations, though when the former is dedicated to such noble purposes as Milton and Cowper applied their transcendent genius, I could almost consent to poets dying with a pen in their hand.

I am not at all displeased at your enthusiasm for poetry. It is frequently a symptom of a warm heart and a good taste; but like all our other strong tendencies and ardent propensities, it requires vigilance and regulation; it should be directed to a good end, and made subordinate to more solid studies.

I was tempted to send you the small edition of my 'Sacred Dramas,' with another volume of the same Lilliputian size of 'The Search after Happiness, with other Poems,' till I collected from your letter you had probably got them, they having been lately re-published. I have however changed my purpose

1 A name playfully bestowed.

in favour of a larger work which is less likely to have fallen in your way. I have therefore written to Hatchard to send you a copy of my 'Hints to a Princess,' a book, which, embracing more subjects of general information than most of my other writings, I thought would at your age and with your turn of mind, be more acceptable than those of a still graver cast. When you have perused the whole, I shall be very glad to receive the animadversions of so grave a critic.

I hope you have begun to read some of the works of Dr. Johnson. They are so valuable, so instructive and so pure, that you cannot form too early nor too intimate an acquaintance with them. In my youthful days, it was my great happiness to have this eminent man for my intimate friend.

His Rasselas' and Tour to the Hebrides' are among the more entertaining of his works.

I doubt not your having such excellent counsellors at home, as to render any little hints from me quite superfluous. But I give them as a proof of the interest I take in what concerns you, an interest excited by your letter.

If ever your papa and mamma come to Clifton, or into Somersetshire, and bring you with them, I hope I shall see you. My house in summer is almost a bower of roses, which I imagine would be not a little to your taste. I beg my best respects to your mamma, though I have not the honour to be known to her, and remain

Your obliged and affectionate

H. MORE.

Barley Wood, near Bristol, March 11, 1816.

POPERY IN IRELAND.

MADAM,

WILL you permit me to offer a few remarks, and rather to ask your opinion than to express my own, on a passage in Mr. Hobart Seymour's eloquent and beautiful letter to the Bishop of London? After detailing facts illustrative of the species of persecution now carried on in Ireland, and speaking of the influence of the priests, and the means by which that influence is upheld, Mr. Seymour proceeds to state a very probable consequence of the undeviating, unrelenting, systematic endeavour to raze the walls of the Protestant church in Ireland even to the' ground. He states that many persons hold in private the opinions they dare not profess in public, and are inwardly Protestants, while in appearance they are attached to the Church of Rome.- On this I pause not. We are not to " despise the day of small things;" and very small may be the first beginnings -very feeble and diminutive may be the plant that rises at first from the seed sown in the heart. I said I pause not on this; but while penning the last sentence, a thought crossed me which will have utterWhere the conversion is sincere-where the work is really from God-can we, for one moment, believe that the truth will be held in unrighteousness? And is it not to hold the truth in unrighteousness to

ance.

remain in a corrupt, persecuting church, after the judgment has been convinced and the conscience enlightened? Is there not in this secret protestantism, a practical lie. "Thou hast given a banner to those that fear thee that it might be displayed because of thy truth." "Come out from among them, my people, and be ye separate, and touch not the unclean thing." It is no time to shrink from our colours -the trumpet hath sounded, and the war-steed hath heard the noise of the battle. "Who is on the Lord's side? who?" hath resounded among the hosts; and let us beware, (for we shall have to answer for it,) of giving any encouragement to concealment of profession. "He that is not for us is against us)," were words spoken by Him, whose words shall never pass away. A heathen lawgiver, amid the darkness and the wickedness of Paganism, had the sagacity to perceive the real character of those who, in any great public contest, wished to be reckoned neutral, and the spirit to enact that they should be accounted infamous,-a sentence more dreaded than death among a vainglorious people. Surely, surely, in the fearful, the sublime contest between Protestantism and Popery, truth and falsehood, heaven and hell, which is now going forward, we do not need to be stimulated to decision of action, to determination of purpose by any name from the musty roll of antiquity, though that name be the name of the Athenian Solon. I am not afraid of your saying that I go too far; I know too well your bold, uncompromising defence of truth, and the energy with which you would call on all to range themselves under the standard of the Captain of our salvation, to fear

your interposing any low motives of worldly prudence, or political expediency as an obstacle to the path which, amid pain, sorrow, suffering, tribulation, is, we know from scripture, the only path of safety and of peace. "With the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation" was a sentence penned by the inspired apostle at the time the emperor Nero was reigning at Rome, and but a very few years before that monster of iniquity began his virulent persecution of the church. And it was a maxim followed in the severest of her trials. I am a Christian' was breathed out amid the varied and unheard of tortures of the martyrs of Lyons and Vienne under Antoninus Philosophus. 'I am a Christian, though a sinner, I am a Christian,' has been the dying affirmation of many of the noble army of martyrs, when urged with diabolical perseverance to " curse God," the God who died for them. And the line of demarcation was in the primitive church bold and distinct, no parleying with the foe-no thought of truce. From rank to rank-from man to man ran the watchword 'No surrender,' and they gave place, I mean the true servants of Christ, gave place by subjection, no not for an hour." There is a liberality, a pretended charity, in the present day, a spurious improvement of comparatively modern date, which was unknown in the early church. Then it was that John, the beloved disciple who drank, from the wellspring of true love, draughts which mortal man has seldom been permitted to quaff, rushed out of the bath because Cerinthus, an enemy of truth, was in it. Then it was that Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, the blessed martyr, being saluted in the streets of