not still, in some parts of the auld toun of Edinburgh, hear herself greeted with the once familiar sound of Haud your haunde, lassie!" There are but few beggars in Edinburgh; employment and food are dealt out to the indigent, and no excuse is left for mendicants. The Scotch are generally industrious, economical and provident; when they cannot find employment in their Land o' Cakes, they know that "the world is all before them where to choose," and there is hardly a spot of the habitable globe, in which Scotchmen have not tried their fortunes Societies for the suppression of mendicants, and for the encouragement of industry among the poor, have met with great success in Edinburgh. Indeed this evil can never be rooted out of a large city, until beggars are deprived of all pretext for begging, by the establishment of general workhouses, "the gates of which, like the gates of heaven, (says Baretti) should be opened wide to the distressed man, to the helpless babe and orphan, to the repenting prostitute, to every creature that knocks."

LETTER III.

Study and pains were now no more their care,
Texts were explain'd by fasting and by prayer:
This was the fruit the private spirit brought,
Occasioned by great zeal and little thought.

DRYDEN'S Religio Laici.

Edinburgh, December 17, 1818.

I HAVE been reading with great pleasure Laing's History of Scotland, It is a continua

tion of Dr. Robertson, and takes the history down to the union of the kingdoms in Queen Anne's reign. It is written with clearness and precision, but neither with the philosophical depth of Hume, nor with the sprightliness and polish of Robertson. Laing appears to be a rational friend of liberty, and a great enemy of the whole Stuart race, he has a long dissertation at the beginning of his work, to prove the participation of the unfortunate Mary in the murder of Darnley. He presents a very instructive view of the ecclesiastical government of Scotland, and of the gradations and abolition of episcopal jurisdiction. After the reformation, preeminence in sacerdotal rank was abolished in countries enjoying the blessings of a free government, as incompatible with liberty and the humility of the primitive christians. This ecclesiastical equality was transplanted from Geneva to Scotland, and was productive of a striking alliance between a republican church and a monarchical government. After the death of the bonny earl of Murray, the discipline and forms of the Scotish church were recognized and confirmed by parliament, and "the experience of a century (says Laing) demonstrates that the genius of presbytery can repose in peace under the tranquil shade of a limited monarchy."

The presbyterians of the early kirk must have been a most unamiable set of mortals, if we may judge from the writings of those

times.

Hudibras describes them as a stub

born crew of errant saints,"

"Such as do build their faith upon
The holy text of pike and gun;
And prove their doctrine orthodox
By apostolic blows and knocks."

We are presented in "Old Mortality" with a striking picture of the headlong fanaticism of the Cameronians. Mause Headrigg, Poundtext, Mackbriar and Burley are models of manaical devotion to the wild doctrines which then prevailed. Mackbriar's eloquence was free from the grosser and more ludicrous errors of his contemporaries, and the language of Scripture, which in their mouths was sometimes degraded by misapplication, gave, in his exhortation (says the great novelist) a rich and solemn effect, like that which is produced by the beams of the sun streaming through the storied representation of saints and martyrs on the Gothic window of some ancient cathedral. What a horrible picture is drawn of the personal appearance, "wild and glaring visage," and shocking principles of the fanatical Habbakuk! This ghastly apparition, whose voice "made the very beams of the roof quiver," is described with such frightful truth, that he appears present to the reader's imagination; the daring impiety with which he applies Scriptural phrases to his blood-thirsty purposes, makes one shudder with horror, and exclaim "what black magician conjures up this

fiend?" To be sure all the Cameronians and Covenanters were not so frantic as Habbakuk; but the best of them were elated with spiritual pride, and had their good qualities darkened by fierce enthusiasm, which they expressed in strong and emphatic language, rendered more impressive by the orientalism of Scrip

ture.

The gloom which hung over presbyterianism has in a great measure vanished before the enlightening spirit of modern times. Still there are some preachers in Edinburgh, who seem to be relapsing into their former cheerless and repulsive manner. It appears that their intention is to infect their hearers with their own melancholy spirit,

"And force all people, tho' against
Their consciences, to turn saints."

They are perpetually railing against that most elegant source of amusement, the theatre; the players are styled the "servants of Satan," and the stage a "seminary of vice and folly,' the "temple of the father of lies," &c. Every one knows the fuss which they made when the accomplished Mr. Home, a minister of the church of Scotland, ushered forth his tragedy of Douglas. The presbytery of Edinburgh attacked the play as highly immoral and irreligious in its tendency, and "lamented the melancholy fact, that there should be a tragedy written by a minister of the church of Scotland." Mr. Home sent in his demission from

the presbytery, and cared not a pin for all the holy rage of his enemies.

He afterwards received a pension from the prince of Wales; but none of his other dramatic works have been so popular as Douglas, in which he introduced the tragic muse into the wilds of Scotland, rendered the banks of the Carron and the Grampian Hills as interesting as the shores of the Adriatic, and engaged the heart for his Matilda, as if she had been Otway's Belvidera.

One of the most fashionable churches in Edinburgh, is that new and magnificent place of worship, which Andrew Thomson occupies, in the finest square and the most elegant neighbourhood of the city. I went to this kirk last Sunday. After a great deal of trouble, I got into a pew; but I was scarcely well seated, before a tall, awkward fellow stalked in, with his wife I was obliged to make way for them, but received no invitation to reseat myself, although there was "locus pluribus umbris." This polite and saintly personage was so meagre, and so plain in his dress, that, to use Falstaff's language," you might have trussed him and all his apparel into an eel skin!" The Scotch, by the way, are generally thin; indeed, if Mr. S of our city, were to be so mischievous as to come over here, he would be stared at as a perfect non-descript!

Mr. Creech, in his view of Scotch manners in '83, says that the number of abandoned women had increased at Edinburgh more than a