That there is another set of men who are equally disposed to attack those who have entered on a religious course of life; I mean those who have tried to convince themselves that this life is all, and who either distrust these self-denying christians' sincerity, or despise their understandings.

That I believe this class of beings are impelled by a feeling of secret envy, as they can not be quite sure that another world is one of "the cunningly devised fables;" therefore they feel that the followers of the cross of Christ will have a great advantage over them, if their creed be right, and that consequently, the consistent christian is of all beings the most to be envied, and therefore to be hated and calumniated the most.

That it is a great error to believe that professors of serious religion are gloomy. That, on the contrary, the most perfect cheerfulness, evenness of spirit, and uninterrupted happiness, is to be found in the christian family, such as I have tried to describe.

That fathers and mothers in law, brothers' wives and sisters' husbands, are also prominent objects for detraction; that the detractors from the first of these should be particularly on their guard against the deceitfulness of their own hearts, because their detraction springs probably from good and amiable motives; and lastly, that the latter are under the dominion of feelings which are less excusable, and which policy as well as principle should lead them to struggle with and subdue.

CHAPTER XIII.

ON DEFAMATION.

I MUST now discuss the most painful part of my subject; namely, that excess of detraction which becomes DEFAMATION. Defamation is always detraction; but though the tongue, which is ready to detract, is well fitted to defame, still, detraction is not positively defamation.

It was against the utterers of detraction amounting to defamation, that the punishment of standing in a white sheet in the aisle or porch of a church, was awarded by the justice of our ancestors; and when I first entered into society, and heard reputations gossiped away, I used to consider the abolition of this punishment as a national evil; nay, I have sometimes amused myself with imagining certain of our acquaintances standing in the aisle of their parish church, in this well-deserved attire! and had 1 possessed the power of grouping with my pencil, many persons might have seen their faces peeping from under its degrading folds, who would have been unconscious that they deserved to figure there, though, for the slanderous frequenters of an ale-house, or inhabit

ants of a cottage, they would have judged it a proper punishment. But as sinners in robes were always more offensive to me than sinners in rags, and the slanderer of the drawing-room than that of the kitchen, (as ignorance may excuse the one but can not the other,) I wrapt the white sheet in idea round the rich alone, and should have rejoiced to see my imaginations realized. But, as I have increased in years, I have learnt to make more allowance for the infirmities of others, taught and humbled by a growing sense of my own; and the white sheet, or, indeed, any punishments for offences which are common to us all as erring mortals, I have ceased to feel any desire to see inflicted, even, as I humbly trust, on those who have calumniated myself. Still, I have not ceased to feel a strong emotion of indignation whenever I hear defamation uttered against friend or foe; and alas! there are few persons who have lived in the world, whether in public or in private life, without hearing their acquaintances, male or female, accused of faults which, if proved, would have driven them from society. I have frequently heard accusations uttered, which made accusers responsible to the power of the law, and uttered too with a degree of self-complacency, for the ingenious malice with which the charge was worded, not only painful but appalling to witness. Which of my readers, as well as myself, has not heard a lawyer accused of taking a bribe to lose a cause for his client! or a physician or surgeon accused of killing his patients,

either by his system, his rashness, or his igno-
rance? Which of us has not heard some per-
sons accused of suppressing or forging a will?
Who has not listened to the aspersions of the
fair fame of woman, for which the utmost ven-
geance
of the law could not have afforded the
slightest recompense? and this, too, in what is
called good company!

Far be it from me to plead for those of my own sex, who, regardless of decorum, have been contented to be innocent, without being careful to appear so; who have carried liveliness to the borders of levity, and worn the semblance of errors, which they, in their inmost heart, abhorred; such mistaken women must be content to take the consequences of their own actions, and, though their indiscretion does not at all excuse the slander and backbiting of their accusers, still they must bend in humble resignation to the punishment of which they are conscious. But I have known instances where the most correct conduct has not preserved from defamation.

I know, that there have been men and women too, who though supported by the consciousness of innocence, have yet pined, broken-hearted through life, bowed by a sense of degradation which they never deserved; and have sunk into an early grave, from the consequences of calumnies, spoken originally, perhaps, in the orgies of bacchanalian revelry, and repeated as much in wantonness as malignity at the tea-table of the gossip. Alas! these unfortunates might have exclaimed with

1

the frogs in the fable, when some wanton boys threw stones into their pond, "It may be sport to you, but it is death to us.

Nay, I believe that there are individuals tremblingly alive to the opinion of others, who are preserved from misery, and prevented from hiding themselves in obscurity, merely by being allowed to remain unconscious to what vile motives even their best actions are attributed. For as the somnambulist can walk in safety in the midst of peril, only while his sleep is permitted to continue, so these objects of unmerited obloquy are preserved in peace only as long as they are ignorant of their wrongs, but inform the calumniated, and awaken the sleep-walker, and wretchedness even for life would probably be the fate of the one, and dislocated joints or death, of the other.

My own sex must bear with me, while I say that though every man is debased in my eyes when I hear him accuse a woman of any gross offence, and though I consider his attack on defenceless females as mean and unmanly; yet, I am still more wounded when I hear the tongue of woman busy with the fame of woman, and when the scandalous story is propagated by a female slanderer. Men would not dare to slander one female in the presence of another, if we were true to ourselves; if, instead of seeming to enjoy the odious tale, we were to declare ourselves degraded at being supposed capable of relishing it, and were to throw the shield of our candour and disbelief over the

conscious and probably innocent victim.