a class of critics, who would demand the softness and finish of a miniature in the painting of a panorama.

The author feels assured that the sentiments of these discourses are, in the main, such as the great majority of the thoughtful, and those interested in the promotion of the good. of society, will approve. He may differ from some whom he respects and loves on a single point on the wine question; but in respect to the necessity of the adoption, and the rigorous fulfillment of the pledge of abstinence from intoxicating drinks, in order to save multitudes of young men from the drunkard's grave, he apprehends that few, who have long witnessed the results of the opposite course, will materially differ from him.

As to those pleasure-loving critics, who, having no sympathy with the movements that contemplate the purification of society, cannot be expected to regard with favor either a pure and earnest Christianity, or any work that is not free from the "cant" of piety; who receive with rapture a semi-infidel volume of rhapsodies, and gloat over a lascivious description of life in the Isles of the Pacific, we have only to ask them before they turn away in contempt from a new volume on popular vice, to read attentively the description given in the Castle of Indolence, of a certain character called "Scorn."

"The other was a fell despiteful fiend:

Hell holds none worse in baleful bower below;
By pride, and wit, and rage, and rancor keen'd;
Of man alike, of good or bad, the foe:
With nose up-turned, he always made a show
As if he smelt some nauseous scent; his eye
Was cold, and keen, like blast from boreal snow;
And taunts he casten forth most bitterly."

Regarding these men as among the most efficient foes of Christianity; as those who give currency to corrupting works, and seek to maintain that great fountain of evil, the play-house, the author has spoken of them freely in this volume.

To the young men of our country he commends the lessons here given, in the hope that they may assist in guarding them against the temptations to vice, and in forming them for a pure, a noble, and a truly christian manhood.

Cincinnati, August 1, 1852.

THE SIRENS.

In the passage of multitudes of youth from the country to the city, there is an element of power and of weakness, an aspect of life and of death. It is this youthful life which supplies the arterial blood of these vast bodies; it is the enterprise and the vigor of the sons of the country that, amid the rapid waste and deterioration of manhood incident to cities, not only maintain the average of effective power in all trades and professions, but, by entering into the labors of the past and using skillfully the facilities for progress here so lavishly furnished, form them to a higher standard of excellence. There are in every city a thousand petty excitements, which, while they develop the minds of youth into a premature smartness, tend powerfully, by their number and variety, to prevent the formation of habits of protracted and profound reflection. These febrile agitations, succeeding each other daily, and, while they last, preoccupying the mind, to the exclusion of higher objects, retard the healthful growth of the intellect and unfit it for an ascent into loftier regions. And there are in the city so many influences opposed to the finest development of the bodily frame, that families planted here, unless recruited from without, after a few generations pass away. However admirable a field the city may furnish for the display of powers already in a measure developed, yet there