Because it is a noted fact that such readings
exercise the deepest influence over the mind and heart, so much that
all the resources which the ingeniousness of maternal love can employ
against it avail nothing. God's minister in the pulpit of truth has
no weight with those souls fascinated by the deceitful charms of a
bad book, which addresses itself to their prejudices and passions.
The charitable advice of the confessor in the tribunal of penance is
futile against the intoxicating seductions of those romances whose
only merit consists in flattering the most depraved inclinations of
the human heart.
Indeed it is a subject both of surprise and sorrow to see an author
of the most menial abilities lauded to the skies for a book still
more abject than himself, a book teeming with error and immorality;
while, very often, a discourse, a sermon or an instruction, whatever
may be the authority that they receive either from the character of
the person who pronounces them, or from the gravity of the
circumstances in which he speaks, are heard with indifference. Good
and evil, truth and error, are never so rapidly propagated, never so
powerful in their action, never so certain in their effects as when
they are communicated to us under the form of a book authorized by
fashion or party spirit.
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