Romances, maudlin dramas, shallow homilies, which triﬂe with so called (though falsely so) noble sentiments, but in fact make the heart enervated, insensitive to the stern precepts of duty, and incapable of respect for the worth of humanity in our own person and the rights of human beings (which is something quite other than their happiness), and in general incapable of all firm principles; even a religious discourse which recommends a cringing and abject grace begging and favour seeking, abandoning all reliance on our own ability to resist the evil within us, in place of the vigorous resolution to try to get the better of our inclinations by means of those powers which, frail though we may be, are still left to us; that false humility by which self abasement, whining hypocritical repentance and a merely passive frame of mind are set down as the method by which alone we can become acceptable to the Supreme Being these have nothing to do with what may be reckoned to belong to beauty, not to speak of the sublimity of mental temperament.