the world, have had recourse to different modes of writing, for the promotion of virtue.  Some have had recourse to allegories, others to fables.  The fables of Aesop, though a fiction from the beginning to the end, have been useful to many.  But we have a peculiar instance of the use and innocence of fictitious descriptions in the sacred writings.  For the author of the christian religion made use of parables on many and weighty occasions.  We cannot therefore condemn fictitious biography, unless it condemn itself by becoming a destroyer of morals.

The arguments against novels, in which the Quakers agree as a body, are taken from the pernicious influence they have upon the minds of those, who read them.

The Quakers do not say, that all novels have this influence, but that they have it generally.  The great demand for novels, inconsequence of the taste, which the world has shewn for this species of writing, has induced persons of all descriptions, and of course many who have been but ill qualified to write them.  Hence, though some novels have appeared of considerable merit, the worthless have been greatly preponderant.  The demand also has occasioned foreign novels, of a complexion by no means suited to the good sense and character of our country, to be translated into our language.  Hence a fresh weight has only been thrown into the preponderating scale.  From these two causes it has happened, that the contents of a great majority of our novels have been unfavourable to the improvement of the moral character.  Now when we consider this circumstance, and when we consider likewise, that professed novel-readers generally read all the compositions of this sort that come into their way, that they wait for no selection, but that they devour the good, the bad, and the indifferent alike, we shall see the reasons, which have induced the Quakers to believe, that the effect of this species of writing upon the mind has been generally pernicious.

One of the effects, which the Quakers consider to be produced by novels upon those who read them, is an affectation of knowledge, which leads them to become forward and presumptuous.  This effect is highly injurious, for while it raises them unduly in their own estimation, it lowers them in that of the world.  Nothing can be more disgusting, in the opinion of the Quakers, than to see persons assuming the authoritative appearance of men and women before their age or their talents can have given them any pretensions to do it.

Another effect is the following.  The Quakers conceive that there is among professed novel readers a peculiar cast of mind.  They observe in them a romantic spirit, a sort of wonder-loving imagination, and a disposition towards enthusiastic flights of the fancy, which to sober persons has the appearance of a temporary derangement.  As the former effect must become injurious by producing forwardness, so this must become so by producing unsteadiness, of character.