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to the paths of virtue and of truth. But perhaps you wished to derive to yourself a third share of their righteousness. You have much need of it; and I heartily wish it may do you

a service.

"I CANNOT," you observe, "admit the story of the Highland Sergeant to be true.” But what is become of ORLANDO FURIOSO? In your first letter, you asserted that the anecdote was stolen from that work. Now that this falsehood has likewise been detected, you double about, and affect to deny the genuineness of the anecdote itself. The story is good; whether true or fabulous merits not a serious investigation; and, at any rate, Mr NISBET knows nothing of the matter: he is only here observing his usual trick of denying or affirming, as best suits his sinister purposes, without the smallest regard to truth,

THE following syllogism you imagine to be a demonstration that I did not write my former letter: “You reproach me with having been bred in a printers shop; a sure proof that the letter was not wrote by a printer." It is a sure proof, if proof were necessary, of the very reverse. I regretted that a man

who knew the numberless accidents to which printing is liable should have been base enough to exhibit wrong or transposed types as marks of ignorance in an author!

THE latter part of this paragraph is somewhat singular: "But how," says Mr NISBET,

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you should think it an indignity for one clergyman to be bred in a printing-house any more than for another to be bred in an alehouse, I am at a loss to imagine, and would propose it as a problem to the curious." The allusion to a clergyman bred in an alehouse is to me altogether incomprehensible. Your problem, however, has given rise to conjectures. In this city, it is generally supposed to mean the Reverend Dr DANIEL M'QUEEN. But what phrenzy should have tempted you to insult that gentleman may be proposed as another problem to the curious.

As your letter grows more entertaining towards the conclusion, it encourages me to make the more use of your own words: "You call me a spouter of plays in the General Assembly; but your great learning hindered you from knowing that ST PAUL, in his First Epistle to the Corinthians, and CICERO, in his

oration pro VATINIO, have quoted plays as well as I did. I can bear any epithet that applies to such men as these.” ST PAUL, CICERO, and Mr NISBET, minister of Montrose, is as bizarre a conjunction as could well be imagined! ST PAUL and CICERO, it would appear, Mr NISBET conceives to have been both Christian apostles. PAULS quotation from a play is a hackneyed remark. Mr FOOTE, when in this place, used it as an argument against a certain sermon*; and Mr NISBET seems to think the argument solid! It is a trite observation, that little minds, who have nothing to recommend them to notice, perpetually endeavour to cover their own naughtiness or deformity under the shelter of superior merit. You first link yourself with two Presbyterian divines; now you buckle yourself to PAUL and CICERO, whom you chuse to call spouters of plays, in order to keep up an imaginary connection with yourself. Rise a little higher in your absurd associations, and you will soon find yourself at the very pinacle of blasphemy and distraction.

A LITTLE farther on, we meet with a fresh increase to the catalogue of your falsehoods.

• Preached some years ago in the New Church of Edinburgh.

"You likewise call those who would exalt church-authority in some cases above the rights of conscience, the moderate party; which is as complete Irish as when you tell us, in your last number, p. 403. of a canoe appearing to two persons fast asleep on the banks of lake Ontario." As to the different parties in the church, let them fight their own battles; but I must not lose sight of the canoe. The Irishism, Sir, is a fabrication of your own: For the justice of this charge, I appeal to the meanest of your parishioners, In the tale of the Indians*, which bears striking marks of the taste, judgment, and humanity of its authort, we are told that, af ter SIDNEY and MARANO had been exhausted with fatigue and agitation of mind, they fell asleep on the banks of a lake. The tale goes on in this manner :-" Calm and unruffled was their repose; they enjoyed the happy visions of innocence, and dreamed not of impending danger. The moon, in unrivalled glory, had now attained her meridian, when

*See Edinburgh Magazine and Review, vol. iv. p. 403. the individual page to which Mr NISBET refers when he makes the above infamous remark.

+ Mr RICHARDSON Professor of Humanity in the University of Glasgow.

the intermitting noise of rowers came slowly along the lake. A canoe soon appeared; and the dipping oars, arising at intervals from the water, shone gleaming along the deep," &c.

Now, Sir, if you have a servant-maid or a cow-herd near you, desire them to read the above passage, and ask them to whom the canoe appeared? They will answer, with truth and simplicity, that it appeared to the imagition of the author, who all along describes events and objects as a spectator. Indeed it is impossible to compose a tale or romance in any other manner. The position and features of the persons asleep, the moon, the lake, the rowers, are all particularly described. Who saw these appearances? Not SIDNEY and MARANO surely, but the author of the tale. It is needless to be more explicit. It is painful to remark the appearances of atrocity and of guilt which this example of your dishonesty affords. I really begin to think that you cannot read, or that there is some unaccountable perversion in your understanding, which makes you conceive right to be wrong, and truth to be falsehood.

I Now proceed to examine your political principles, which are not incurious. In Mr

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