Page:Dr Stiggins, His Views and Principles.pdf/130

 me: he said he never read a line of the sporting intelligence, not knowing, as he remarked, one race from another; he was solely interested, he observed, in the front page, which, according to him, was filled by a writer of singular ability, who discoursed on the most important and weighty subjects. Indeed, my friend had such an opinion of this author that he had pasted a number of his articles into a large scrapbook, and he insisted on my accepting the loan of the volume. I took it home with me, expecting moderate entertainment, and perhaps instruction; but what was my surprise and disgust to find the greater number of these essays devoted to a credulous consideration of the darkest superstitions. I could scarcely believe my own eyes; I found a difficulty in imagining that the pages before me had been written by an apparently educated man in the twentieth century, in Protestant England. I asked myself whether my senses were not playing me false, whether these lucubrations were not in fact the gibberings of some old woman