If you go, remark, (indeed you will be forced to do so, in spite of yourself,) remark, I say, the identity (for it is more than proximity) of a disgusting dirtiness in all that concerns the dignity of, and reverence for, the human person; and a persecuting painted cleanliness in every thing connected with property. You must not walk in their gardens; nay, you must hardly look into

them.

And rags, and hags, and hideous wenches,
I counted two and seventy stenches,

All well defined and genuine stinks !—
Ye Nymphs that reign o'er sewers and sinks,
The river Rhine, it is well known,

Doth wash your city of Cologne ;·

But tell me, Nymphs! what power divine
Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine?

In the body and soul stinking town of Cologne.- ED.

The Dutch seem very happy and comfortable, certainly; but it is the happiness of animals. In vain do you look for the sweet breath of hope and advancement among them.*

In fact, as to their villas and gardens, they are not to be compared to an ordinary London merchant's box.

RELIGION

May 5. 1830.

GENTILIZES.

WOMEN AND

MEN. BIBLICAL COMMENTATORS.

WALKERITE CREED.

You may depend upon it, religion is, in its essence, the most gentlemanly thing in the world. It will alone gentilize, if unmixed

* "For every gift of noble origin

Is breathed upon by Hope's perpetual breath."

Wordsworth.

with cant; and I know nothing else that will, alone. Certainly not the army, which is thought to be the grand embellisher of

manners.

A woman's head is usually over ears in her heart. Man seems to have been designed for the superior being of the two; but as things are, I think women are generally better creatures than men. They have, taken universally, weaker appetites and weaker intellects, but they have much stronger affections. A man with a bad heart has been sometimes saved by a strong head; but a corrupt woman is lost for ever.

I never could get much information out of the biblical commentators. Cocceius has told me the most; but he, and all of them, have a notable trick of passing siccissimis pedibus over the parts which puzzle a man of reflection.

This Walkerite creed* is a miscellany of * Meaning, I believe, that of the New Jerusalemites,

witted man.

He had that clearness which

is founded on shallowness. He doubted nothing; and, therefore, gave you all that he himself knew, or meant, with great completeness. His voice was very fine, and his tones exquisitely discriminating. His mind had no progression or developement. that is worth any thing (and that is but little) in the Diversions of Purley is contained in a short pamphlet-letter which he

All

or people of the New Church, hereinbefore mentioned. - ED.

All that is

addressed to Mr. Dunning; then it was enlarged to an octavo, but there was not a foot of progression beyond the pamphlet; at last, a quarto volume, I believe, came out; and yet, verily, excepting Morning Chronicle lampoons and political insinuations, there was no addition to the argument of the pamphlet. It shows a base and unpoetical mind to convert so beautiful, so divine, a subject as language into the vehicle or make-weight of political squibs. true in Horne Tooke's book is taken from Lennep, who gave it for so much as it was worth, and never pretended to make a system of it. Tooke affects to explain the origin and whole philosophy of language by what is, in fact, only a mere accident of its history. His abuse of Harris is most shallow and unfair. Harris, in the Hermes, was dealing― not very profoundly, it is true, with the philosophy of language, the moral and metaphysical causes and conditions of it, &c. Horne Tooke, in writing about the formation of words only, thought he was