UNPROFITABLE READING. '245 bing the peace and honour of the hus- band, and the barbarous desertion of the innocent babes, or the still deeper wound given to the grown up daugh- ters, is reduced to a venial fault, for which the irresistibleness of the tempt- ation is shamelessly, but too successfully pleaded. In tracing the effect, almost exclu- sively, of the unrestrained indulgence in these soothing pictures of varnished cor- ruption, we could, were it prudent, pro- duce actual instances of this breach of solemn vows, this total abandonment of all the proprieties, and all the duties of life : and it is too probable, that, besides the known instances to which allusion is here made, others might be adduced as having imbibed from the same sources the rudiments of moral misery, which has alarmingly swelled the recent list of divorces, and thus render it more than probable, that the circulating li- brary is no unfrequent road to Doctors' Commons. M3
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