temptations. It has already spread far, with much depravation of private morals, and much injury to publick happiness. To warn the people, therefore, against it was not wanton and officious, but necessary and pastoral.

"What then is the fault with which this worthy minister is charged? He has usurped no dominion over conscience. He has exerted no authority in support of doubtful and controverted opinions. He has not dragged into light a bashful and corrigible sinner. His censure was directed against a breach of morality, against an act which no man justifies. The man who appropriated this censure to himself is evidently and notoriously guilty. His consciousness of his own wickedness incited him to attack his faithful reprover with open insolence and printed accusations. Such an attack made defence necessary; and we hope it will be at last decided that the means of defence were just and lawful.”

No. VII.

[DR. JOHNSON'S Letters to Mrs. Thrale, giving an Account of the Journey to the Hebrides.

As these letters have been thought the best Dr. Johnson ever wrote, and been by some persons preferred even to his elaborate account of the Journey," it is thought that they will be acceptable to the reader in this place, as they could not have been introduced into the text.]

"12th August, 1773.

"We left London on Friday the 6th, not very early, and travelled without any memorable accident through a country which I had seen before. In the evening I was not well, and was forced to stop at Stilton, one stage short of Stamford, where we intended to have lodged.

"On the 7th, we passed through Stamford and Grantham, and dined at Newark, where I had only time to observe that the marketplace was uncommonly spacious and neat. In London we should call it a square, though the sides were neither straight nor parallel. We came at night to Doncaster, and went to church in the morning, where Chambers found the monument of Robert of Doncaster, who says on his stone something like this: What I gave, that I have; what I spent, that I had; what I left, that I lost.' So saith Robert of Doncaster, who reigned in the world sixty-seven years, and all that time lived not one. Here we were invited to dinner, and therefore made no great haste away.

"We reached York however that night. I was much disordered

with old complaints. Next morning we saw the Minster, an edifice of loftiness and elegance equal to the highest hopes of architecture. I remember nothing but the dome of St. Paul's that can be compared with the middle walk. The Chapter-house is a circular building, very stately, but I think excelled by the Chapter-house of Lincoln. "I then went to see the ruins of the Abbey, which are almost vanished, and I remember nothing of them distinct.

"The next visit was to the jail, which they call the castle; a fabrick built lately, such is terrestrial mutability, out of the materials of the ruined abbey. The under jailor was very officious to show his fetters, in which there was no contrivance. The head jailor came in, and seeing me look I suppose fatigued, offered me wine, and when I went away would not suffer his servant to take money. jail is accounted the best in the kingdom, and you find the jailor deserving of his dignity.

The

"We dined at York, and went on to Northallerton, a place of which I know nothing, but that it afforded us a lodging on Monday night, and about two hundred and seventy years ago gave birth to Roger Ascham.

"Next morning we changed our horses at Darlington, where Mr. Cornelius Harrison, a cousin-german of mine, was perpetual curate. He was the only one of my relations who ever rose in fortune above penury, or in character above neglect.

"The church is built crosswise, with a fine spire, and might invite a traveller to survey it, but I perhaps wanted vigour, and thought I wanted time.

"The next stage brought us to Durham, a place of which Mr. Thrale bad me take particular notice. The bishop's palace has the appearance of an old feudal castle built upon an eminence, and looking down upon the river, upon which was formerly thrown a drawbridge, as I supposed to be raised at night, lest the Scots should pass it.

"The cathedral has a massiness and solidity such as I have seen in no other place; it rather awes than pleases, as it strikes with a kind of gigantick dignity, and aspires to no other praise than that of rocky solidity and indeterminate duration. I had none of my friends resident, and therefore saw but little. The library is mean and scanty. “At Durham, beside all expectation, I met an old friend: Miss Fordyce is married there to a physician. We met, I think, with honest kindness on both sides. I thought her much decayed, and having since heard that the banker had involved her husband in his extensive ruin, I cannot forbear to think that I saw in her withered features more impression of sorrow than of time.

"Qua terra patet, fera regnat Erinnys."-OVID, Met. i. 241.

"He that wanders about the world sees new forms of human misery, and if he chances to meet an old friend, meets a face darkened with troubles.

66

'On Tuesday night we came hither; yesterday I took some care of myself, and to-day I am quite polite. I have been taking a view of all that could be shown me, and find that all very near to nothing. You have often heard me complain of finding myself disappointed by books of travels; I am afraid travel itself will end likewise in disappointment. One town, one country, is very like another. Civilized nations have the same customs, and barbarous nations have the same nature. There are indeed minute discriminations both of places and of manners, which perhaps are not wanting of curiosity, but which a traveller seldom stays long enough to investigate and compare. The dull utterly neglect them, the acute see a little, and supply the rest with fancy and conjecture.

"I shall set out again to-morrow, but I shall not, I am afraid, see Alnwick, for Dr. Percy is not there. I hope to lodge to-morrow night at Berwick, and the next at Edinburgh, where I shall direct Mr. Drummond, bookseller at Ossian's-head, to take care of my letters.

“15th August.
I am
I run

"Thus far I had written at Newcastle. I forgot to send it. now at Edinburgh; and have been this day running about. pretty well."

66

Edinburgh, 17th August, 1773. "On the 13th I left Newcastle, and in the afternoon came to Alnwick, where we were treated with great civility by the duke. I went through the apartments, walked on the wall, and climbed the towers. That night we lay at Belford, and on the next night came to Edinburgh. On Sunday (15th) I went to the English chapel. After dinner, Dr. Robertson came in, and promised to show me the place. On Monday I saw their public buildings. The cathedral, which I told Robertson I wished to see because it had once been a church, the courts of justice, the parliament-house, the advocate's library, the repository of records, the college and its library, and the palace, particularly the old tower where the king of Scotland seized David Rizzio in the queen's presence. Most of their buildings are very mean; and the whole town bears some resemblance to the old part of Birmingham.

"Boswell has very handsome and spacious rooms; level with the ground on one side of the house, and on the other four stories high.

"At dinner on Monday were the Duchess of Douglas, an old lady who talks broad Scotch with a paralytick voice, and is scarce understood by her own countrymen; the Lord Chief Baron, Sir Adolphus Oughton, and many more. At supper there was such a conflux of

company that I could scarcely support the tumult. I have never been well in the whole journey, and am very easily disordered.

"This morning I saw at breakfast Dr. Blacklock, the blind poet, who does not remember to have seen light, and is read to by a poor scholar in Latin, Greek, and French. He was originally a poor scholar himself. I looked on him with reverence. To-morow our journey begins; I know not when I shall write again. I am but poorly."

6

"Bamff, 25th August, 1773.

“August 18th, I passed with Boswell the Frith of Forth, and began our journey. In the passage we observed an island, which I persuaded my companions to survey. We found it a rock somewhat troublesome to climb, about a mile long, and half a mile broad. In the middle were the ruins of an old fort, which had on one of the stones, Marie Re. 1564.' It had been only a blockhouse one story high. I measured two apartments, of which the walls were entire, and found them twenty-seven feet long, and twenty-three broad. The rock had some grass and many thistles; both cows and sheep were grazing. There was a spring of water. The name is Inchkeith. Look on your maps. This visit took about an hour. We pleased ourselves with being in a country all our own, and then went back to the boat, and landed at Kinghorn, a mean town; and travelling through Kirkaldie, a very long town meanly built, and Cowpar, which I could not see because it was night, we came late to St. Andrew's, the most ancient of the Scotch universities, and once the see of the primate of Scotland. The inn was full, but lodgings were provided for us at the house of the professor of rhetorick, a man of elegant manners, who showed us in the morning the poor remains of a stately cathedral, demolished in Knox's reformation, and now only to be imaged by tracing its foundation, and contemplating the little ruins that are left. Here was once a religious house. Two of the vaults or cellars of the sub-prior are even yet entire. In one of them lives an old woman, who claims an hereditary residence in it, boasting that her husband was the sixth tenant of this gloomy mansion, in a lineal descent, and claims by her marriage with this lord of the cavern an alliance with the Bruces. Mr. Boswell stayed awhile to interrogate her, because he understood her language. She told him, that she and her cat lived together; that she had two sons somewhere, who might perhaps be dead; that when there were quality in the town notice was taken of her, and that now she was neglected, but did not trouble them. Her habitation contained all that she had; her turf for fire was laid in one place, and her balls of coal dust in another, but her bed seemed to be clean. Boswell asked her if she never heard any noises, but she could tell him of nothing supernatural, though

she often wandered in the night among the graves and ruins, only she had sometimes notice by dreams of the death of her relations. We then viewed the remains of a castle on the margin of the sea, in which the archbishops resided, and in which Cardinal Beatoun was killed.

"The professors who happened to be resident in the vacation made a public dinner, and treated us very kindly and respectfully. They showed us their colleges, in one of which there is a library that for luminousness and elegance may vie at least with the new edifice at Streatham. But learning seems not to prosper among them; one of their colleges has been lately alienated, and one of their churches lately deserted. An experiment was made of planting a shrubbery in the church, but it did not thrive.

"Why the place should thus fall to decay I know not; for education, such as is here to be had, is sufficiently cheap. Their term, or as they call it their session, lasts seven months in the year, which the students of the highest rank and greatest expense may pass here for twenty pounds; in which are included board, lodging, books, and the continual instruction of three professors.

"20th. We left St. Andrew's, well satisfied with our reception, and crossing the Frith of Tay came to Dundee, a dirty, despicable We passed afterwards through Aberbrothwick, famous once for an abbey, of which there are only a few fragments left; but those fragments testify that the fabrick was once of great extent, and of stupendous magnificence. Two of the towers are yet standing, though shattered; into one of them Boswell climbed, but found the stairs broken: the way into the other we did not see, and had not time to search; I believe it might be ascended, but the top I think is open.

"We lay at Montrose, a neat place, with a spacious area for the market, and an elegant town-house.

"21st. We travelled towards Aberdeen, another university, and in the way dined at Lord Monboddo's, the Scotch judge, who has lately written a strange book about the origin of language, in which he traces monkeys up to men, and says that in some countries the human species have tails like other beasts. He inquired for these long-tailed men of Banks, and was not well pleased that they had not been found in all his peregrination. He talked nothing of this to me, and I hope we parted friends; for we agreed pretty well, only we disputed in adjusting the claims of merit between a shopkeeper of London and a savage of the American wildernesses. Our opinions were, I think, maintained on both sides without full conviction. Monboddo declared boldly for the savage, and I, perhaps for that reason, sided

with the citizen.