ture or constitution, be properly said to be perfectly innocent; and, in consequence of this, must not such a man be entitled to all the rewards due to virtue*. Yours, &c. WILLIAM SMellie.

P. S.-Don't score your queriturs so unmercifully; I can scarcely read your last: Farthermore, to avoid the same inconvenience, write your letters in such a manner that the sealing may not overlard the words.

No. XXVI.

To Mr WILLIAM SMELLIE from ***

DEAR SMELLIE,

No date.

My method in this letter shall be, first to answer a question, and then to ask one.

1. THE question to be answered is, “ May not a man who never sins but from an una

This is a mere juvenile and untenable idea, thrown out to elicit an answer from his learned friend, and to keep up the ball of improving correspondence.

voidable necessity, either of nature or constitution, be properly said to be perfectly innocent; and, of consequence, entitled to the rewards due to virtue?"

Ans.-A man who sins, from any cause whatever, cannot be said to be perfectly innocent; because sin is the transgression of a law, which is always connected with the notion of guilt; and the very nature of a law infers some penalty or sanction. Transgression and guilt imply punishment. This answers the second part of your question: I speak as a heathen; but you had certainly an immediate eye to Christianity; and in that view it may be answered in the affirmative; if we attempt the practice of every virtue to the utmost of our power; if we indulge ourselves wilfully in no known sin, then may we find acceptance, but only through a Mediator, and only by faith in him. This is the very meaning of his dying for our offences,—to conciliate the just and mighty God to our imperfect services, to procure an entrance for us, notwithstanding our defects, and notwithstanding the wilful sins we may have formerly been guilty of.

2. I ONCE before questioned you concerning the effects of thunder on the animal, and now do I want to learn of its effects on the potable creation. Two-penny*, and strong ale, and, for what I know, all sorts of malt liquors, are said to be killed dead by a storm of thunder. Query. How is that effect produced? Wherefore does it affect all ales, when only an antrint animal is destroyed? Is there any means of preventing it? Does thunder affect any other liquors besides those made from malt? Again, what are the principles of life in two-penny? How is its natural death effected? And are there any means of resuscitation? Yours, &c.

THE following letter to a friend, of which the remaining copy is entirely without date,

Two-penny was a favourite potation at Edinburgh in former days it was a mild, brisk malt liquor, or table beer; named either from its price of two-pence the Scots pint, nearly half an English wine gallon, or from a tax paid to the City of Edinburgh by the brewer of two Scots pennies, each equal to one twelfth of a penny Sterling, on each Scots pint of the liquor. The prodigious increase of the Excise on brewing has banished this economical, wholesome, and exhilarating liquor from Edinburgh, forcing the labouring people to regale themselves on destructive ardent spirits.

+ Antrin is a Scots word signifying occasional or chance.

commences with the subject then in agitation about the proposed change of his pro. fession, and seems to have been written between the 1759, when he became corrector to MURRAY and COCHRANE, and the 1763, when he married. Soon leaving, however, the incipient topic about his entering into the clerical profession, it discusses some philosophical subjects upon which his friend appears to have consulted him, and narrates the circumstances of an interview between our young philosophical journeyman printer and Dr JOHN Hope, then Professor of Botany in the University of Edinburgh.

No. XXVII.

Mr WILLIAM SMELLIE to **

DEAR SIR,

No date.

SINCE you will have me to wear sables, I must say that, if I had no other earthly objection to the sacred function, I could not answer for it to my conscience. My ideas of

the virtues and endowments which I judge indispensibly necessary to the constitution of a clergyman run so very high, that my heart flatly tells me I am both unqualified and unworthy of that honourable but much abused office.

In compliance with your demands, I shall relate an anecdote concerning the behaviour of Dr HOPE, which I am certain will not entertain you half so much as it surprised myself. The occasion of it was this. GARLAND asked a sight of my discourses on Vegetation and Generation; and, after reading them, he shewed them to the Doctor. Some days after this I accidentally encountered with the Doctor at the Cross * The usual compliments being over, and our hats mutually replaced, he told me that he had seen my discourses, and was K 3

* The Cross is a central situation in the main street of the old city of Edinburgh, where the inhabitants used long to resort at a fixed hour for the purposes of business and ordinary intercourse. The former part of this still exists, especially on Wednesday, the market-day: But, from the vast modern extension of the new city, the latter is now divided among numerous coffee-houses, readingrooms, and various fashionable lounges.