than heretofore-nay, unless W-misinforms me, she numbers among her adherents a very large proportion of the landed gentry all over this part of the island. In the remoter districts, however, the Episcopalian clergy are said to be still labouring under a constraining weight of penury, which there does not seem to be any immediate prospect of relieving. In order to supply in some measure to their Pastors, the defects of the regular maintenances afforded by their small scattered flocks, a fund has been raised by subscription, the produce of which is annually applied, according to the best discretion of a committee of the most eminent members of the sect in Scotland. Of the subscriptions by which this fund is supported, a very large part is said to come from England. Nothing surely can be more laudable than the sympathizing zeal, which has led so many of the dignitaries of our church to come forward liberally in behalf of their less fortunate brethren in the North. But I think the Scottish Episcopalians ought to remember that independence was the old boast of their country, and insist upon providing for their own clergy entirely from their own funds. For the bishops of this church, however, from whatever quarter it may be derived, there is no question some more liberal provision should be made. It is a shame in those who profess to think, as good Episcopalians do, concerning the nature of the episcopal office, that they should permit excellent and learned bishops of their own church to be poorer, as is often the case, than the simple presbyters of the Established Kirk around them.

I have told you, that, in general, the Church of Scotland holds her ground more firmly against Dissenters than that of England-and yet there are abundance of Dissenters in Edinburgh, over and above the Episcopalians, who would perhaps object to be included under that name. There are Tabernaclites, and Haldanites, and Wesleyan Methodists, and other independents, of several different kinds, and a very few Unitarians and there are some Catholics-all these congregations, for the most part, consisting of persons in very humble ranks of society. But the most formidable enemies of the Kirk are those who have dissented from her on very trivial grounds, and are not, indeed, very easy to be distinguished from her in any way adapted to the comprehension of the uninitiated stranger. Such are the Burghers and AntiBurghers, both of whom separated themselves from the Established Church, in consequence of their adopting different

views, concerning the lawfulness of a certain oath required to be taken by the burgesses of a few towns in Scotland. The Anti-burghers are, I believe, the more numerous body of the two, and they again have fallen out among themselves, and so given rise to rival sects of Old Light Anti-burghers and New Light Anti-burghers. From what particular circumstances these most picturesque designations have been derived, I know not and care not, and I am sure your curiosity is as small as mine. It so happens, however, that both the Old Light and the New Light are in some considerable estimation at present in Edinburgh, by reason of the more than common talents and respectability of their respective pastors, both of whom, as it happens, are among the most distinguished Scottish literati of the day. The New Light Anti-burghers enjoy the ministrations of no less a person than Dr. M'Crie, the author of the Life of John Knox-and the natural obscurity of the sect accounts for what at the time I could by no means understand-the ignorance, namely, under which the Edinburgh Reviewers professed themselves to have been even of the existence of such a person as Dr. M'Crie, till the day his history was published. The Old Light, on the other hand, are ruled in spiritualibus by Dr. Jamieson, the author of the admirable Dictionary of the Scottish Language, and many other works illustrative of the ancient history and manners of his country. Notwithstanding the eminent abilities and learning possessed by both of these individuals, their labours have not, 30 far as I have understood, attracted any considerable addition to the adberents of their respective sects-but the authority of their names must, without doubt, be efficacious in preventing those who have been educated in either of the Lights, from reverting to the darkness of the Established Kirk-to say nothing of the more than Cimmerian obscurity and "night palpable" of the Episcopalians.

And yet nothing surely can be more absurd, than that two such clergymen should be lending support to two such pitiable sets of schismatics. I can understand very well, that there are many cases in which it would be wrong to interpret too strictly the great Scriptural denunciations against the errors of schism-but I am, indeed, very sorely mistaken if such matters as the disputes upon which these New and Old Light-men have separated from the Kirk of Scotland, can by any possible logic be brought into the number of allowable exceptions to so great and important a rule. If

any thing were wanting to make the cup of their absurdities overflow, it is the pettish and splenetic hatred which they seem to bear to each other-for I believe the New thinks the Auld Light devotee in a much worse condition than the adherent of the Kirk itself-and, of course, vice versa. Nay-such is the extreme of the folly--that these little Lilliputian controversies about burgess oaths, &c. have been carried into America by Scottish emigrants, and are at this moment disturbing the harmony of the Church of Christ in a country where no burgess oath ever existed, or, it is probable, ever will exist. Beyond the mere letter of their formal disputes, these Dissenters can have no excuse to offer for their dereliction of the Kirk. They cannot accuse her clergy of any want of zeal, worth, or learning. In short, their dissent is only to be accounted for by the extravagant vanity and self-importance of a few particular theorists-absurdly inherited and maintained by men whose talents, to say nothing of their piety, should have taught them to know better.*

I went, however, to hear Dr. M'Crie preach, and was not disappointed in the expectations I had formed from a perusal of his book. He is a tall, slender man, with a pale face, full of shrewdness, and a pair of black piercing eyesa shade of deep secluded melancholy passing ever and anon across their surface, and dimming their brilliancy. His voice, too, has a wild but very impressive kind of shrillness in it at times. He prays and preaches very much in the usual style of the Presbyterian divines--but about all that he says there is a certain unction of sincere, old-fashioned, haughty Puritanism, peculiar, so far as I have seen, to himself, and by no means displeasing in the historian of Knox. He speaks, too, with an air of authority, which his high talents render excusable, nay, proper-but which few could venture upon with equal success. I went on the same day to hear Dr. Jamieson, and found him also a sensible and learned preacher. He is a very sagacious-looking person, with bright grey eyes, and a full round face--the tones of his voice are kindly and smooth, and altogether he exhibits the very reverse of that anchoretic aspect and air which I had remarked in Dr. M'Crie. I could see that the

*I have since heard that the Burghers and Anti-burghers are taking measures to form a coalition, and, willing, bona fide, to drop all remembrance of their feuds. This is excellent, and does honour to their respective leaders: I would hope it may prepare the way for the return of all these dissenters (who can scarcely be said to have even a pretence for dissent) to their allegiance to the Mother Kirk.

congregations of both these men regard them with an intense degree of interest and affectionate humility---all which, to be sure, is extremely natural and proper. So much for the New and Auld Lights.

As I am so very soon to visit the West of Scotland, where I am assured the head quarters of Presbyterianism are still to be found in the old haunts of the Covenanters, I shall defer any farther remarks I may have to make upon the state of religion in Scotland, till I have added the whole of that rich field to the domain of my observation.

P. M...

P. S. Many thanks for your hint about Old Potts. I fear I have been behaving very badly indeed---but shall endeaYour to find time for scribbling a few pages suitable to his tastes, before I set off for Glasgow. As for the £500---Í rather think you ought to fight shy---but, no doubt, you are as well up to that matter as I am. I shall advise Potts to come down to the North, where, in good truth, I do think he would make a noble figure. There is no Dandy in Edinburgh worthy to hold the candle to our friend.

P.M.

LETTER LXIII.

TO FERDINAND AUGUSTUS POTTS, ESQ.

Clarendon Hotel, Bond-Street.

I wish to God, my dear Potts, you would come down to Edinburgh, and let me engage apartments for you at the Royal Hotel. Are you never to extend your conquests beyond London or Cardigan? Are you to lavish your captivations for ever on Bond-street milliners and blowsy Welchwomen? Why, my dear sir, your face must be as well known about St. James's as the sign of the White-Horse Cellar, and your tilbury and dun gelding as familiar to the cockneys as the Lord Mayor's coach. Even Stulze himself cannot possibly disguise you as formerly. Your surtouts, your

upper Benjamins, your swallow-tails, your club-coats, your orange tawny Cossacks, are now displayed without the slightest effect. It matters not whether Blake gives you the cut of the Fox, the Bear, or the Lion, whether you sport moustaches or dock your whiskers, yours is an old face upon

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town, and, you may rely on it, it is well known to be so. Not a girl that raises her quizzing-glass to stare at you but exclaims, "Poor Potts! how altered he must be. I have heard mamma say, in her time, he was good-looking; who could have believed it?" Every young Dandy that enquires your name is answered with, "Don't you know Old Potts ?""Old Potts! why, that gentleman is not old." "No! bless your soul, he has been on town for the last twenty years.' Yet let not all this mortify you, my dear fellow, for you are not old. Six-and-thirty is a very good age, and you are still a devlish good-looking fellow. What you want is a change of scene to extend your sphere of action, to go where your face will be a new one; and, whenever you do so, you may rely on it you will never be called "Old Potts." Now, if you will take my advice, and decide on shifting your quarters, I know of no place that would suit you half so well as Edinburgh. Your ti!hury and dun gelding (though they will stand no comparison with Scrub and the shandrydan) will cut a much greater dash in Prince'sstreet than in Hyde-Park; and your upper Benjamin and orange tawny Cossacks will render you a perfect Drawcansir among the ladies. As a Jehu, you will have no rivals in Scotland. A brace of heavy dragoons, to be sure, are occasionally to be seen parading in a crazy dog-cart, in the seat of which their broad bottoms appear to have been wedged with much dexterity, and a writer or two, particu larly a Mr. the Lambert of the Law, (weighing about twenty-stone,) is sometimes to be met with in a lumbering buggy, moving at the rate of the Newcastle wagon, and drawn by a horse, whose tenuity of carcase forms a striking contrast to the rotund abdomen of his master. Scotland, to say the truth, has produced many painters, poets, heroes, and philosophers, but not a single whip. Indeed, since my arrival in Edinburgh, I have heard of a Scotsman having discovered the perpetuum mobile, but never of any one who could drive four spanking tits in real bang-up style. Your talents in that department will, therefore, cast them all into the shade; and I will venture to predict, that neither writer nor heavy dragoon will dare to show his nose in a buggy after your first appearance in the north..

,

I assure you, by coming down to Edinburgh you will add In London you are but a mightily to your importance. star (a star of the first magnitude, I admit,) in the mighty

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