ADVERTISEMENT. On Physical abuses under the existing dispensation, the press has issued many treatises of late its Moral evils have drawn inferior noteperhaps from a principle of more common habituation. The suggestion occurs, however, that these, though but very partially glanced-at, might, through the shape in which they are here presented, attract and, peradventure, affect those who would toss in distaste or disdain from the "Perils of the Nation." The attempt, therefore, is made to trace some of the silent influences exercised over thought and action by the system of Society as at present constituted. With this general design these pages involve a particular, in the person of the chief agent: who is not proposed either for imitation or reprehension; but as entitled-from contingency, in connection with those influences-to toleration. Indeed if, abstractly, the real force of Circumstance were admitted over innate or acquired properties, men would be led to mark less ascetically the defections which are, in far more cases than can be fathomed, its unavoidable result. The recognition might be widelier observed, that humanity neither is, nor can be, sinless; and the sole instance to the contrary not so frequently forgotten, as but evidence of its exhibitor having been a God. PROTEUS. VILLIERS. BOOK I. No. 1-A beginning-that is to say, "after the high Epic fashsion." Speak, both, I charge ye! But, for the Lord's sake, not together!-You, sir, OLD PLAY (after the manner of Scott). During the latter part of a day in June, two young men were lounging along the cloisters of a dilapidated Abbey. The sun, though cloudless, reached not the flags from which their footsteps echoed, the broad roof excluding the greater VOL. I. B |