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 which they cannot attain. Figure to yourself the proud Diogenes, who trampled on the pride of Plato—the Scotch Presbyterians do not ill resemble that haughty and beggarly reasoner. They treated their king Charles II. with much less respect than Diogenes showed for Alexander; for when they took up arms for him against Cromwell, who had betrayed them, they made that unfortunate king undergo four sermons a-day.

"Compared with a young and lively French bachelor, gabbling in the morning in the schools of theology, and in the evening carolling with ladies, an Anglican theologian is a Cato; but this Cato would seem a gay youth by the side of a Scotch Presbyterian. He affects a grave deportment, an afflicted air, carries an immense hat, a long cloak over a short coat, preaches through his nose, and gives the name of 'harlot of Babylon' to all Churches in which some ecclesiastics are lucky enough to have two thousand a-year, and where the people are good enough to suffer it, and to call them 'Monseigneur,' 'Your Grandeur, 'Your Eminence.'

"While the Episcopal and Presbyterian sects are the two dominant ones in Great Britain, all the others are welcome, and live well enough together; while most of their preachers hate each other reciprocally with nearly as much cordiality as that with which a Jansenist damns a Jesuit."

And he winds up this letter by saying—

"If there were but one religion in England, its despotism would be formidable; if there were only two, they would throttle each other; but there are thirty, and they live happily and peaceably."

In the same vein he treats other persuasions, and then passes to the Government. He compares the Senates of England and of Rome, and finds no resemblance in them except—

"That in London some members of Parliament are suspected, no doubt wrongfully, of selling their votes on occa-