STUDIES. 167 



with me alone because they found I made a shift to do 

 the usual exercise out of my own reading and observa- 

 tion." ' 



In a letter written about the same time, we have 

 sundry remarks on literary subjects. ' You ask me 

 whether I now read Byron or Ovid. I reply in the 

 affirmative. I do read every work of ability that falls in 

 my way, whatever the opinions or intentions of their 

 authors were ; but in reading these works I always 

 strive to keep in view certain leading truths which serve 

 as tests to discover and separate sophistry from argu- 

 ment, and as lights to dissipate those shades of obliquity 

 which are cast over virtue, both by its artful enemies 

 and injudicious friends. At the birth of our Saviour, 

 the shrine of Apollo at Delphi spake no longer with its 

 mysterious organs of what was or of what was to come. 

 He who was the truth had come into the world, and 

 every oracle of lies had become dumb. At His death, 

 the veil of the temple was rent in twain, and truth 

 was no longer a mystery. Thus by His power that 

 which was false and that which was true became alike 

 evident. The Gospels are still in our hands, and 

 they, like Him of whom they speak, silence falsehood 

 and discover truth. He who takes up the writings 

 of Byron, Ovid, or Moore, or any of the many writings 

 of those men who have so fearfully misapplied the 

 talents which God gave them, will, if impressed with a 

 deep sense of the true religion, run no risk of being 

 allured and led astray by the blandishments of vice. 

 But what can induce, it may be asked, a man of religious 

 principle to peruse a volume in which he must of neces- 

 sity come in contact with the allurements of vice, in 

 which all that he loves will be made to appear in its 

 least lovely form, all that he hates or has to fear in its 



