4 ing arches and let him be sure to cover his turrets with a good coating of moss and ivy; if an' owl can be procured at any price, the mixture will be greatly improved. A clanking of chains must next succeed, with a most dismal groan, re-' ecchoing through the vaulted passages. Here DON BERNARDO, DON SEBASTIAN, OR DON what you will, must start up, dash through thick and thin, till he tumbles down, extinguishes the lamp, and leaves himself and the reader in all the mazes of mysterious confusion; and a sudden gleam of light must instantly flash and disappear to plunge both of them into more impenetrable obscurity.' Horror must be heaped on horror, and darkness thicken upon darkness, amidst cold clammy carcases, accumulated skeletons, blood-stained daggers, &c. Our prose must now run quite mad; mobs of metaphors, unlike similies, and ill-paired figures jostling and supplanting each other, must add new terrors to the terrific description. Nor must our brains cease to be racked for fine words, far fetched expressions, half concluded periods, and sentences breaking off in the middle. "Omnia enim stolidi magis admirantur, amantque "Inversis que sub verbis latitantia cernunt." That is to say in plain English, "It is the fashion o admire, what from obscurity it is impossible to understand." Soon after a convent must appear with a villainous Friar and an intriguing Abbess, with matins, vespers, eating, drinking, and all the. concomitants of a monastic life. Then by a sort of presto or conjuror's wand we must raise a few spectres in a northern tower exactly as the clock, strikes ONE, but by no means later; together with a bell tolling without any sexton, and plenty of music without any fidlers. Next must be got ready the scowling brows of the MARQUIS, the tender moans of his amiable daughter, three or four half-starved conspirators, and three or four domestics dead drunk. The whole is necessarily to be concluded by the blowing up of the castle with gunpowder in the reign of ALFRED; and our phantoms are to be accounted for, by a little phosphorus in the time of the Crusades, We may stick a banditti here and there by way of sweetmeats, and sprinkle a few Alps in the room of sugarplums. A low murmuring voice, a mysterious ring, or some animated armour may be thrown in, as occasion shall require. Very successful names have been proposed for Novels in great number, I shall only hint a few for a modern romance, such as the GRIM NUN, OR THE ABBEY OF ST. BOG IN THE MOOR; THE FIERY PHANTOM OF THE FOREST, &c. &c. Such is the true and genuine receipt for composing and compiling these much admired publications, purchased from LANE'S MANUFACTORY, Leadenhall-street. Nothing now remains to render this farrago of nonsence complete, than by forming it into the exact shape of the MONK, on which every romance is more or less founded. "Hoc fonte derivata clades "In patriam populumque fluxit." Various and unnumbered woes, "From this polluted fountain head FRANCIS. Such is the ridiculous absurdity with which the age is fed, being puzzled with such flimsy intricacy, for the most part free from all meaning, whether good or bad; mature in dullness and confirmed in full stupidity. We are indeed much at a loss which to admire most, the total want of fire and imagination, or the systematic contempt of judgment and sense. But should these compositions by any chance happen to deviate into sence; we may rest fully assured that every inch of these glorious pages which is not replete with folly, teems with knavery. Such of this kind are in general a descrip tive manual of speculative debauchery, with infallible rules for reducing it into practice; and may properly be considered as the licensed vehicles of immorality or profligacy. A lively fancy, fair reasoning, and false reprepresentations will soon deceive, and imperceptibly lead astray those unaccustomed to their arts, and ignorant of their consequences. But let not above all, THESE SACRED RETREATS, be stained and corrupted with their specious evasions and idle absurdity. The imagination fed with these extravagant notions, looses its relish for truth, and can only be satisfied with what is supernatural and violent. It has been well observed, that the reading of novels is to the mind what dram-drinking is to the body. We neglect every good and honourable pursuit, and give up the vigorous and unremitting prosecution of noble and well-directed studies, to the illiterate profligacy, blasphemous sneers, and insuperable folly of these odious and parti-coloured productions. Ꭲ. To contemplate Mankind in the infancy of society, to trace the gradual progress of nations from a state of ignorance and barbarism, to refinement and civilization, is a subject not merely of curiosity, but of infinite instruction. The human mind, when free from the restraint which polished society, imposes on its affections and propensities, is more open to the researches of philosophy; and the events which are then continually changing the aspect of the political horizon, demand more particularly the attention of History; since it is from the observation alone of Mankind in their primary condition, that the E |