obliges me to request, by this billet, the loan of the ensuing volume, proceeding, I conclude, with these letters from Swift to Stella. Though I read the oddities as Pistol eats his leek, I have yet, as they are new to me, a desire to go on with them; since they draw, at intervals, the curtains of the court-cabinet, at an interesting period; and since they often present the names of Prior, Congreve, Addison, and Steele, which act upon my imagination like a spell. I am surprised, however, not to meet the name of Pope here, with whom Swift lived in so much intimacy. It is odd he should not have seen him during a year's elapse. His name had been replete with yet stronger magic. I cannot resist the desire of raking yet farther into this journalizing rubbish, for thinly-scattered pearls.

What inevitable wonder that a man of so much ability could disgrace his better sense, and the understanding of his Stella, by such bald, disjointed, canting prate, as would disgrace an old woman, scribbling to her granddaughters.

When I would consider Swift as a man of genius,

"These daily loads of skimble-scamble stuff
Do put me from my faith."

They inspire also the worst possible opinion of Swift's moral rectitude, since we know, that at the very period when these mawkish, doting letters were addressed to his real, though unowned wife, he was seducing the affections and chastity of the young and lovely Esther Vanhomrigh, to whom his letters, which I have read, are equally fond; on whom he wrote the beautiful, though dishonourable, poem, Cadenus and Vanessa, which insinuates that voluptuous connection, which his letters to her more than insinuate, in all the coffee passages. Mark how he avoids exciting the jealousy of Stella in these journals, by not once mentioning to her the young creature, whom his desertion drove to despair and suicide! When he records his frequent visits to Vanessa's mother, he takes care to complain of them as stupid uninteresting lounges.—The hypocrite!

LETTER LXXIV.

MR WHALLEY.

Lichfield, Nov 19, 1801.

IN the kind and extended letter before me, there is expiation for a long and regretted silence. I wish the state of your health had been less answerable for that my deprivation; yet so enchantingly humorous is the description of its mutability, that it mingles smiles with my sighs.

Indeed, I have every honour for Mrs H. More's talents and virtues. It was entirely owing to my recollection how much she had, in the year 1791, when I was your guest, distressed the feelings of that dear saint, that genuine Christian, Mr Inman, by introducing into his pulpit the rank Mehodist, Mr Newton, which induced me to believe, that her endeavours to promote Methodist principles were continued in her neighbourhood. Mrs H. More expressed to me, at her own house, admiration of the despicable rant we had heard, the preceding Sunday, from Newton; of which Mr Inman, yourself, and all our party, had expressed our horror. That good man imputed to

Mrs More the increase of those pernicious principles in your county. I have read nothing of the late controversy on that subject, except from your statement. Notwithstanding your acquittal of the lady, I own I thought it not likely, that she, whom Mr Inman had heretofore so deeply blamed on that subject, should be wholly blameless in the similar arraignment brought against her" by a gownman of a different make.”

The misery, the despair, which the gloomy Calvinistic tenets have produced, makes me abhor them; they are not Christianity; they are not

common sense.

Mrs H. More's ingenious work on education, contains one chapter which proves the continuance of those principles in her mind. It maintains the absurd doctrine of original sin, as if a just God could have made the task of virtue of infinitely increased difficulty to the sons and daughters of Adam, for the sin of their first parents. It is a dreadful, a blasphemous supposition, founded only upon a few dark texts of St Paul, and nowhere authorized by Christ. On the contrary, He repeatedly speaks of the primeval innocence of children, and says, " Of such is the kingdom of heaven."

Every being must be innocent, till, by sin, either of thought or deed, against the light of rea

son committed, and the warnings of conscience, they forfeit that innocence.

Such, and no more, was the innocence of Adam and Eve, who lost it on the first temptation, and that a slight one. There is, therefore, no reason to think their first nature better than ours. Eden was to be theirs conditionally-on their obedience to the will of God. Heaven is to be ours on the same condition. The commission of sin, mentally or corporally, alone renders a Mediator necessary to man. For our nature, if God is just, we cannot be accountable, since our will was not concerned in its formation; and if, indeed, that nature is so inherently corrupt and abominable, as it is represented by Mrs H. More, Mr Wilberforce, &c., the wickedest amongst us is more an object of pity than of just indignation in the eyes of a pure and perfect Being. But the feelings of pity; a strong involuntary sense of justice; of filial obedience due to Him who created us with perceptions of happiness, and powers of enjoyment; of gratitude to that Heavenly Bestower, and to such of our fellow-creatures as have contributed to our welfare; these are innate good properties, and they acquit the Deity of the impiously imputed injustice of having given us a nature utterly depraved, and in itself deserving of damnation, because our first parents sinned.