any thing in their new situation peculiarly favourable to such a supposition. They cannot have more liberty of conscience than they had; at least, if that liberty was under any restraint, it was a restraint of their own making. Perhaps a new settlement in church and state may leave them less. Well, all will be over soon. The time is at hand when an empire will be established that shall fill the earth. Neither statesmen nor generals will lay the foundation of it, but it shall rise at the sound of the trumpet. Mr. Scott's last child is dead, died this morning at four o'clock. The great blemish it had in its face made it a desirable thing that it should not live; and a virulent humour, which consumed the flesh from the bones, made it desirable that it should die soon. It lived a little time in a world of which it knew nothing, and is gone to another, in which it is already become wiser than the wisest it has left behind. Our united thanks both for the worsted and the satin; they are remarkably well dyed; the former arrived in the shape of a pair of breeches. I am well in body, but with a mind that would wear out a frame of adamant; yet upon my frame, which is not very robust, its effects are not discernible. Mrs. Unwin is in health. Accept our unalienable love to you both. Yours, my dear friend, truly, W. C. TO THE REV. WILLIAM BULL. MY DEAR FRIEND, March 7, 1783. WHEN will you come and tell us what you think of the peace? Is it a good peace in itself, or a good peace only in reference to the ruinous condition of our country? I quarrelled most bitterly with it at first, finding nothing in the terms of it but disgrace and destruction to Great Britain. But having learned since, that we are already destroyed and disgraced, as much as we can be, I like it better, and think myself deeply indebted to the King of France for treating us with so much lenity. The olive-branch, indeed, has neither leaf nor fruit, but it is still an olive-branch. Mr. Newton and I have exchanged several letters on the subject; sometimes considering, like grave politicians as we are, the state of Europe at large; sometimes the state of England in particular; sometimes the conduct of the House of Bourbon ; sometimes that of the Dutch; but most especially that of the Ameri cans. We have not differed perhaps very widely, nor even so widely as we seemed to do; but still we have differed. We have, however, managed our dispute with temper, and brought it to a peaceable conclusion. So far, at least, we have given proof of a wisdom which abler politicians than myself would do well to imitate. How do you like your northern mountaineers ? Can a man be a good Christian that goes without breeches? You are better qualified to solve me this question than any man I know, having, as I am informed, preached to many of them, and conversed, no doubt, with some. You must know, I love a Highlander, and think I can see in them what Englishmen once were, but never will be again. Such have been the effects of luxury! You know that I kept two hares. I have written nothing since I saw you but an epitaph on one of them, which died last week. I send you the first impression WERE my letters composed of materials worthy of your acceptance, they should be longer. There is a subject upon which they who know themselves interested in it are never weary of writing. That subject is not within my reach; and there are few others that do not soon fatigue me. Upon these, however, I might possibly be more diffuse, could I forget that I am writing to you, to whom I think it just as improper and absurd to send a sheet full of trifles, as it would be to allow myself that liberty, were I writing to one of the four Evangelists. But since you measure me with so much exactness, give me leave to requite you in your own way. Your manuscript, indeed, is close, and I do not reckon mine very lax. You make no margin, it is true; if you did you would have need of their Lilliputian art, who can enclose the creed within the circle of a shilling; for, upon the nicest comparison, I find your paper an inch smaller every way than mine. Were my writing, therefore, as compact as yours, my letters with a margin would be as long as yours without one. Let this consideration, added to that of their futility, prevail with you to think them, if not long, yet long enough. Corporal East has paid us two visits. We thank you for recommending it to him to call: he entertained us agreeably with a very modest, though, at the same time, a very extraordinary narrative of his Christian adventures in the camp. Twice he prayed here, and in his prayers and in his conversation discovered a vein of good sense not common in people of his rank, and a warmth of heart peculiar to persons truly spiritual. The poor fellow, not having received his pay, found himself in some distress, and would have been obliged to have left some part of his slender means in pawn at his quarters, had we not supplied him with half a guinea. He marched for Northampton yesterday. Yesterday, a body of Highlanders passed through Olney. They are part of that regiment which lately mutinied at Portsmouth. Convinced to a man, that General M had sold them to the East India Company, they breathe nothing but vengeance, and swear they will pull down his house in Scotland, as soon as they arrive there. This determination is, no doubt, a very unchristian one; but, as men, if their charge against the General be well supported, I cannot blame them. The rest of them are quartered at Dunstable, Woburn, and Newport; in all eleven hundred. A party of them, it is said, are to continue some days at Olney. None of their principal officers are with them; either conscious of guilt, or, at least, knowing themselves to be suspected as privy to, and partners in, the iniquitous bargain, they fear the resentment of the corps. The design of government seems to be to break them into small divisions, that they may find themselves, when they reach Scotland, too weak to do much mischief. Forty of them attended Mr. Bull, who found himself singularly happy in an opportunity to address himself to a flock bred upon the Caledonian mountains. He told them he would walk to John O'Groat's house to hear a soldier pray. They are in general so far religious, that they will hear none but evangelical preaching; and many of them are said to be truly so. Nevertheless, General M's skull was in some danger among them; for he was twice felled to the ground with the butt-end of a musket. The sergeant-major rescued him, or he would have been for ever rendered incapable of selling Highlanders to the India Company. I am obliged to you for your extract from Mr. Bowman's letter. I feel myself sensibly pleased by the approbation of men of taste and learning; but that my vanity may not get too much to windward, my spirits are kept under by a total inability to renew my enterprises in the poetical way. |