Truth creeping back into the bottom of her well, cursing the hour that ever she offered her scorned alliance to the wizard power of Theologic Vision raves abroad on all the winds. "On "earth Discord! a gloomy Heaven above, open ing her jealous gates to the nineteen thou "sandth part of the tithe of mankind! and be"low, an inescapable and inexorable Hell, ex panding its leviathan jaws for the vast residue " of mortals!!!"O doctrine! comfortable and healing to the weary, wounded soul of man! Ye sons and daughters of affliction, ye pauvres miserables, to whom day brings no pleasure, and night yields no rest, be comforted! " 'Tis but "one to nineteen hundred thousand that your "situation will mend in this world;" so, alas ! the experience of the poor and the needy too often affirms; and 'tis nineteen hundred thousand to one, but the dogmas of ********, that you will be damned eternally in the world to come! But of all Nonsense, Religious Nonsense is the most nonsensical; so enough, and more than enough, of it. Only, by the by, will you, or can you tell me, my dear Cunningham, why a sectarian turn of mind has always a tendency to narrow and illiberalize the heart? They are orderly; they may be just; nay, I have known them them merciful; but still your children of sanctity move among their fellow-creatures, with a nostril-snuffing putrescence, and a foot-spurning filth; in short, with a conceited dignity that your titled * * * * or any other of your Scottish lordlings of seven centuries standing, display when they accidentally mix among the many-aproned sons of mechanical life. I remember, in my plough-boy days, I could not conceive it possible that a noble lord could be a fool, or a godly man could be a knave.—How ignorant are plough-boys!— Nay, I have since discovered that a godly woman may be a ***** !—But hold-Here's t'ye again— this rum is generous Antigua, so a very unfit menstruum for scandal. Apropos! How do you like, I mean really like, the married life? Ah, my friend, matrimony is quite a different thing from what your love-sick youths and sighing girls take it to be! But marriage, we are told, is appointed by God, and I shall never quarrel with any of his institutions. I am a husband of older standing than you, and shall give you my ideas of the conjugal state (en passant, you know I am no Latinist : is not conjugal derived from jugum, a yoke ?) Well, then, the scale of good wifeship I divide into ten parts. Good-nature, four; Good Sense, two; two; Wit, one; Personal Charms, viz. a sweet face, eloquent eyes, fine limbs, graceful carriage (I would add a fine waist too, but that is so soon spoilt you know), all these, one; as for the other qualities belonging to, or attending on, a wife, such as Fortune, Connexions, Education' (I mean education extraordinary), Family Blood, &c., divide the two remaining degrees among them as you please; only remember that all these minor properties must be expressed by fractions, for there is not any one of them, in the aforesaid scale, entitled to the dignity of an integer. B As for the rest of my fancies and reveries→→→ how I lately met with Miss L the most beautiful, elegant woman in the world -how I accompanied her and her father's family fifteen miles on their journey out of pure devotion, to admire the loveliness of the works of God, in such an unequalled display of them -how, in gallopping home at night, I made a ballad on her, of which these two stanzas make a part Thou, bonnie L, art a queen, The hearts o' men adore thee. The -Behold all these things are written in the chronicles of my imaginations, and shall be read by thee, my dear friend, and by thy beloved spouse, my other dear friend, at a more convenient season. Now, to thee, and to thy before-designed bosom-companion, be given the precious things brought forth by the sun, and the precious things brought forth by the moon, and the benignest influences of the stars, and the living streams which flow from the fountains of life, and by the tree of life, for ever and ever! Amen! No. No. CXXXIV. To MRS. DUNLOP. Dumfries, 24th September, 1792. HAVE this moment, my dear Madam, yours of the twenty-third. All your other kind reproaches, your news, &c., are out of my head when I read and think on Mrs. H's situation. Good God! a heart-wounded, helpless young woman-in a strange foreign land, and that land convulsed with every horror that can harrow the human feelings-sick--looking, longing for a comforter, but finding none-a mother's feelings, too-but it is too much he who wounded (he only can) may He heal!* I wish *This much-lamented lady was gone to the south of France with her infant son, where she died soon after. E. |