church, while the moon looks, without a cloud, on the silent, ghastly dwellings of the dead around thee; or taking thy stand by the bedside of the villain, or the murderer, pourtraying on his dreaming fancy, pictures, dreadful as the horrors of unveiled hell, and terrible as the wrath of incensed Deity!-Come, thou spirit, but not in these horrid forms; come with the milder, gentle, easy inspirations, which thou breathest round the wig of a prating advocate, or the tête of a tea-sipping gossip, while their tongues run at the light-horse gallop of clishmaclaver for ever and ever-come and assist a poor devil, who is quite jaded in the attempt to share half an idea among half a hundred words; to fill up four quarto pages, while he has not got one single sentence of recollection, information, or remark worth putting pen to paper for. I feel, I feel the presence of supernatural assistance! circled in the embrace of my elbow chair, my breast labours, like the bloated Sybil on her three-footed stool, and like her too, labours with Nonsense.-Nonsense, auspicious name! Tutor, friend, and finger-post in the mystic mazes of law; the cadaverous paths of physic; and particularly in the sightless soarings of SCHOOL DIVINITY, who, leaving Common Sense confounded at his strength of pinion; Reason, delirious with eyeing his giddy flight; and Truth creeping back into the bottom of her well, cursing the hour that ever she offered her scorned alliance to the wizard power of Theologie Vision-raves abroad on all the winds. On earth Discord! a gloomy Heaven above, opening her jealous gates to the nineteen thousandth part of the tithe of mankind! and below, an inescapable and inexorable hell, expanding 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 amend in this world;' so, alas! the experience of the poor and the needy too often affirms; and 'tis nineteen hundred thousand to one, by 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 bye, 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 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 holdHere'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; 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, Connections, 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. As for the rest of my fancies and reveries-how I lately met with Miss L, B, 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 galloping home at night, I made a ballad on her, of which these two stanzas make a part Thou, bonnie L, art a queen, The very Deil he could na scathe And say, 'I canna wrang thee.' -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 bosomcompanion, 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. 126. TO MRS. DUNLOP. Dumfries, 24th Sep. 1792. I HAVE this moment, my dear Madam, yours of the twenty-third. All your other kind 1 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 wo man-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 the farmer great joy of his new acquisi tion to his family. * I cannot say that I give him joy of his life as a farmer. 'Tis, as a farmer paying a dear, unconscionable rent, a cursed life! As to a laird farming his own property; sowing his own corn in hope; and reaping it, in spite of brittle weather, in glad ness; knowing that none can say unto him, what dost thou?'-fattening his herds; shearing his flocks; rejoicing at Christmas; and begetting sons and daughters, until he be the venerated, grey-haired leader of a little tribe-'tis a heavenly life! but Devil take the life of reaping the fruits that another must eat. Well, your kind wishes will be gratified, as to seeing me when I make my Ayrshire visit. I cannot leave Mrs. B, until her nine months race is run, which may perhaps be in three or four weeks. She, too, seems determined to make me the patriarchal leader of a band. However, if Heaven will be so obliging as let me have them This much lamented lady was gone to the south of France with her infant son, where she died soon after. |