but they are admirably fine, and truly Ossianic.

I must beg your pardon for this lengthened scrawl. I had no idea of it when I began-I should like to know who the author is; but, whoever he be, please present him with my grateful thanks for the entertainment he has afforded me.*

A friend of mine desired me to commission for him two books, Letters on the Religion essential to Man, a book you sent me before; and, The World unmasked, or the Philosopher the greatest Cheat. Send me them by the first opportunity. The Bible you sent me is truly elegant: I only wish it had been in two volumes.

No.

* The poem, entitled An Address to Loch-lomond, is said to be written by a gentleman, now one of the Masters of the High-school at Edinburgh, and the same who translated the beautiful story of the Paria, as published in the Bee of Dr. Anderson.

E.

No. LVIII.

To MRS. DUNLOP, at MOREHAM MAINS.

Mauchline, 13th Nov. 1788.

MADAM,

I HAD the very great pleasure of dining at Dunlop yesterday. Men are said to flatter women because they are weak; if it is so, poets must be weaker still; for Misses R. and K., and Miss G. M'K., with their flattering attentions and artful compliments, absolutely turned my head. I own they did not lard me over as many a poet does his patron * * * * * but they so intoxicated me with their sly insinuations and delicate innuendoes of compliment, that if it had not been for a lucky recollection, how much additional weight and lustre your good opinion and friendship must give me in that circle, I had certainly looked upon myself as a person of no small consequence. I dare not say one word how much

* * * * *

I was charmed with the Major's friendly welcome, elegant manner, and acute remark, lest I should be thought to balance my orientalisms of applause over against the finest quey* in Ayrshire, which he made me a present of to help and adorn my farm-stock. farm-stock. As it was on Hallowday, I am determined annually, as that day returns, to decorate her horns with an ode of gratitude to the Family of Dunlop.

So soon as I know of your arrival at Dunlop, I will take the first conveniency to dedicate a day, or perhaps two, to you and friendship, under the guarantee of the Major's hospitality. There will be soon three score and ten miles of permanent distance between us: and now that your friendship and friendly correspondence is entwisted with the heart-strings of my enjoyment of life, I must indulge myself in a happy day of "The feast of reason and the flow of soul."

*Heifer.

SIR,

No. LIX.

To * * * * *

Nov. 8, 1788.

NOTWITHSTANDING the opprobrious

epithets with which some of our philosophers and gloomy sectaries have branded our nature -the principle of universal selfishness, the proneness to all evil, they have given us; still the detestation in which inhumanity to the distressed, or insolence to the fallen, are held by all mankind, shews that they are not natives of the human heart. Even the unhappy partner of our kind, who is undone, the bitter consequence of his follies or his crimes ;-who but sympathizes with the miseries of this ruined profligate brother? we forget the injuries, and feel for the man.

I went, last Wednesday, to my parishchurch, most cordially to join in grateful acknowledgments to the AUTHOR OF ALL GOOD

for

for the consequent blessings of the glorious Revolution. To that auspicious event we owe no less than our liberties civil and religious; to it we are likewise indebted for the present Royal Family, the ruling features of whose administration have ever been, mildness to the subject, and tenderness of his rights.

Bred and educated in revolution principles, the principles of reason and common sense, it could not be any silly political prejudice which made my heart revolt at the harsh, abusive manner in which the reverend gentleman mentioned the house of Stewart, and which, I am afraid, was too much the language of the day. We may rejoice sufficiently in our deliverance from past evils, without cruelly raking up the ashes of those whose misfortune it was, perhaps as much as their crime, to be the authors of those evils; and we may bless GOD for all his goodness to us as a nation, without, at the same time, cursing a few ruined, powerless exiles, who only harboured ideas, and made attempts, that most of us would have done had we been in their situation.

"The bloody and tyrannical House of Stewart" may be said with propriety and justice when compared with the present royal fa