unreflective stay-at-home, who looked out
on roofs and chimney-pots from a city room.
His destinies took him to many parts of
England; to France; to Italy; to Hanover;
to Ireland: where, perhaps, he saw the
Galloglasses, soldiers among the wild Irish
who serve on horseback; and the
hobblers, certain Irish knights who served
as light horsemen upon hobbies; all of
which may have exercised his parts (as the
phrase was) quite as well, at any rate, as
ours are exercised now. And, to begin
with, he had not been endowed
unbounteously by Heaven. Ah ! he says
playfully, in imagining the criticisms of an
historian of three hundred years to come: "I
often flatter myself with the honourable
mention which will then be made of me!"
And he goes on to suppose, that, from his
pages, it will be proved that "women of
the first quality used to pass away whole
mornings at a puppet-show; that they
attested their principles by their patches;
that an audience would sit out an evening
to hear a dramatical performance written
in a language which they did not understand;
that chairs and flower-pots were
introduced as actors upon the British
stage," and so forth. No, Joseph Addison,
we, in half of your stipulated three
centuries will not suppose anything so
opposed to our experience, any more than
we will suppose you were very ill and kept
your chamber on that day when Sophia met
a gentleman in the park with a very short
face, and wrote to know whether it was
you. But we will say this: that if, in some
things, we have an inch or two outstripped
you, there is one in which you are (possibly,
more than) abreast of us. You state (No. 519)
that "the whole chasm in nature, from
a plant to a man, is filled up with diverse
kinds of creatures, rising one over another,
by such a gentle and easy ascent, that the
little transitions and deviations from one
species to another are almost insensible;"
and you quote, admiringly, from Mr. Locke
that "in all the visible corporeal world
we see no chasms, no gaps. The several
species are linked together and differ but
in almost insensible degrees." Now, this is
surely embryo, or advanced Darwinianism.
Addison adds : "If the scale of being rises
by a regular progress so high as man, we
may, by a parity of reason, suppose that it
still proceeds gradually through the
infinitely greater space and room between
man and the Supreme Being." And Locke
says: "When we consider the infinite
power and wisdom of the Maker, we have
reason to think that it is suitable to the
magnificent harmony of the universe, that
the species of creatures should also by
gentle degrees ascend upward from us
towards His infinite perfection."

No bad "say" this, we think, on which
thoughtfully and affectionately to linger.

DR. JOHNSON—FROM A SCOTTISH
POINT OF VIEW.

IF I am about to try an encounter in the
lists, and raise my spear against the literary
memory of the great Dr. Samuel Johnson,
Lexicographer and Scoto-maniac, have I not
as much right, being a Scotsman, to say my
say of him, as he had to say his say against
my country? He disliked, or pretended
to dislike, Scotsmen. May I not dislike, or
pretend to dislike, Dr. Johnson? I am not
ashamed of being a Scotsman; on the
contrary, I glory in the fact. I love my
country—not merely because it is my
country—but for the additional, and to my
mind very satisfactory reasons, that its
natural scenery is both sublime and
beautiful, and that its people made a gallant
and successful fight for civil and religious
liberty, that it has a noble history and
traditions, a rich and romantic literature,
and that however sterile it in some
respects may be, it is prolific in those highest
of all earthly productions, "Honest men
and bonnie lasses." My heart warms to
the tartan, and though irreverent Cockneys
may possibly laugh me to scorn for the
avowal, I love the martial strain of the
bag-pipe well played and think no music
in the world can compare with it in the
inspiration of patriotic and martial ardour.
As for the beautiful Doric dialect of the
Lowlands when I hear it spoken, either
in Scotland itself, or thousands of miles
away across the Atlantic it invariably stirs
my blood with the kindliest emotions, and
awakens the tenderest and most delightful
recollections of a brave and high-minded
people, who, notwithstanding their
proverbial "canniness," are never so "canny"
(or so " uncanny") as to be false to a friend,
or ungenerous to a foe.

Loving my country as I do, and knowing
no reason why any one should hate it,
I have often wondered what there could
have been in the political and social
atmosphere of the middle of the eighteenth
century, which rendered Scotland and
Scotsmen so unpopular in the southern
half of the realm. Was it because the