Page:A happy half-century and other essays.djvu/196

 Pennington, who edited Miss Carter's letters, bids us remember that it reflects more credit on the parents who brought their child up with so just a sense of religion than it does on the poor infant himself. "Innocence," says the inflexible Mr. Stanley, in "Cœlebs in Search of a Wife," "can never be pleaded as a ground of acceptance, because the thing does not exist."

With the dawning of the nineteenth century came the controversial novel; and to understand its popularity we have but to glance at the books which preceded it, and compared to which it presented an animated and contentious aspect. One must needs have read "Elements of Morality" at ten, and "Strictures on Female Education" at fifteen, to be able to relish "Father Clement" at twenty. Sedate young women, whose lightest available literature was "Cœlebs," or "Hints towards forming the Character of a Princess," and who had been presented on successive birthdays with Mrs. Chapone's "Letters on the Improvement of the Mind," and Mrs. West's "Letters to a Young Lady," and Miss Hamilton's "Letters to the Daughter of a Nobleman," found a natural