îmitate his quotation from Rousseau; a thousand times I abandoned the attempt in despair and felt persuaded that his peculiar manner and power arose from an energy of soul, which nature could give, but which no human being could justly copy. In short, he seems to be altogether a being of a former age, or of a totally different nature from the rest of men. As I recall, at this moment, several of his awfully striking attitudes, the chilling tide, with which my blood begins to pour along my arteries, reminds me of the emotions produ ced by the first sight of Gray's introductory picture of his bard.

"On a rock, whose haughty brow,

"Frowns o'er old Conway's foaming flood,

"Robed in the sable garb of wo,

"With haggard eyes the poet stood;

"(Loose his beard and hoary hair

"Streamed, like a meteor, to the troubled air :)

"And with a poet's hand and prophet's fire,

"Struck the deep sorrows of his ¡yre."

Guess my surprise, when, on my arrival at Richmond, and mentioning the name of this man, I found not one person who had ever before heard of James Waddell! Is it not strange, that such a genius as this, so accomplished a scholar, so divine an orator, should be permitted to languish and die in obscurity, within eighty miles of the metropolis of Virginia? To me it is a conclusive argument, either that the Virginians have no taste for the highest strains of the most sublime oratory, or that they are destitute of a much more important quality, the love of genuine and exalted religion.

Indeed, it is too clear, my friend, that this soil abounds more in weeds of foreign birth, than in good and salubrious fruits. Among others, the noxious weed of infidelity has struck a deep, a fatal root, and spread its pestilential branches far around. I fear that our eccentrick and fanciful countryman,

Godwin, has contributed not a little to water and cherish this pernicious exotick. There is a novelty, a splendour, a boldness in his scheme of morals, peculiarly fitted to captivate a youthful and an ardent mind. A young man feels his delicacy flattered, in the idea of being emancipated from the old, obsolete and vulgar motives of moral conduct; and acting correctly from motives quite new, refined and sublimated in the crucible of pure, abstracted reason. Unfortunately, however in this attempt to change the motives of his conduct, he loses the old ones, while the new, either from being too ethereal and sublime, or from some other want of congeniality, refuse to mix and lay hold of the gross materials of his nature. Thus he becomes emancipated indeed; discharged not only from ancient and vulgar shackles; but also, from the modern, finespun, tinselled restraints of his divine Godwin. Having im

bibed the high spirit of literary adventure, he disdains the limits of the moral world; and advancing boldly to the throne of God, he questions him on his dispensations, and demands the reasons of his laws. But the counsels of heaven are above the ken, not contrary to the voice of human reason; and the unfortunate youth, unable to reach and measure them, recoils from the attempt, with melancholy rashness, into infidelity and deism. Godwin's glittering theories are on his lips. Utopia or Mezorania boast not of a purer moralist, in words, than the young Godwinian; but the unbridled licentiousness of his conduct makes it manifest, that if Godwin's principles be true in the abstract, they are not fit for this system of things; whatever they might be in the republick of Plato.

From a life of inglorious indolence, by far

too prevalent among the young men of this country, the transition is easy and natural to immorality and dissipation. It is at this giddy period of life, when a series of dissolute courses have debauched the purity and innocence of the heart, shaken the pillars of the understanding, and converted her sound and wholesome operations into little more than a set of feverish starts and incoherent and delirious dreams; it is in such a situation that a newfangled theory is welcomed as an amusing guest, and deism is embraced as a balmy comforter against the pangs of an offended conscience. This coalition, once formed and habitually consolidated, "farewell, a long farewell" to honour, genius and glory! From such a gulph of complicated ruin, few have the energy even to attempt an escape. The moment of cool reflection, which should save them, is too big with horrour to be endured. Every