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infamy that should ever be represented as inseparable from 

 immorahty and vice — so clearly, that the most careless reader 

 could not avoid sefeino; the connection. If such a rule is ne- 

 cessary, in order to make novels a medium of usefulness to 

 the community, what must be the consequence, when that 

 rule is always inverted ? — which, with very few exceptions, 

 we know to be the fact. The truth is, that emolument is 

 the chief object about which novel writers are concerned. 

 If this result from their works, every wish is fully gratified, 

 and every end which had been proposed, attained. 



I have, indeed, supposed it possible, that novels might be 

 made productive of beneficial effects : but to multiply them, 

 in the hope of such a result, I am fully of opinion, would 

 })rove a Utopian scheme; for * when the mind is much ha- 

 bituated to, or much conversant with fiction, however inno- 

 cent or moral, it is unfitted for the reception of historic 

 truth; in this exercise, the imagination alone is employed, 

 whilst the mind or reasoning faculty remains perfectly in- 

 active and useless. 



Though it is pretty obvious that most of the evils that 

 ensue from the constant reading of fictitious history, apply 

 to the female, rather than to the male sex, yet, if it can ap- 



* This reason will equally apply to the methods ^hich have been latterly adopted, in 

 erder to c/waf the risijig generation into learninjr, which is to loe offeclcil, according to 

 the modern plan, by means of fictitious histories, which have been multiplied to an 

 amount, which must be alarming to thoie that are really interested for true learning and 

 science. 



