79^ 



upon an unenlightened, and unpolished people; and that of 

 course, the most effectual remedy to appose to it, is cultiva- 

 vation and refinement: in these the last century, has wit- 

 nessed extraordinary advances, of which we need no greater 

 proof, than the encreasing discredit into which superstitious- 

 stories have fallen ; our mother^, and our aunts may remem-- 

 ber when cows were elf-struck, and when the sudden ap- 

 pearance of a witch or ghost was dreaded on every occasion, 

 but such notions make no part of the present vulgar creed » 

 they have been buried with the dead, and would never again, 

 perhaps, have been summoned up to light, were it not for 

 tlie Gothic propensity of some of our modern writers, to 

 rake up all the antiquated stuff of the darkest ages, as if 

 they thought it a pity it should sink into oblivion. 

 ' A high state of civilisation is a preventive of the power 

 of fiction, in another respect also. Commerce, and much 

 intercourse with the world, will," by degrees, efface those 

 strong and marked characters, by which, nations, at various 

 periods are distinguished ; and the existence of which, is es- 

 sentially necessary, in order that a particular cause may act 

 with the greatest possible energy. Thus, the spirit of war, 

 combined with that of gallantry, formed the distinguishing 

 features of the middle ages ; whence, it is easy to be con- 

 ceived, that at this period, the reading of romances would 

 greatly inflame those passions, which we know to have been 

 the fact; but, as an attempt to pourtray the character of the 

 present times would be difficult indeed, so, it would be 



