-sipping gossip, while their tongues run
at the light-horse gallop of clishmaclaver for ever and ever--come
and assist a poor devil who is quite jaded in the attempt to share
half an idea among half a hundred words; to fill up four quarto pages,
while he has not got one single sentence of recollection, information,
or remark worth putting pen to paper for.

I feel, I feel the presence of supernatural assistance! circled in the
embrace of my elbowchair, my breast labours, like the bloated Sybil on
her three-footed stool, and like her, too, labours with
Nonsense.--Nonsense, suspicious name! Tutor, friend, and finger-post
in the mystic mazes of law; the cadaverous paths of physic; and
particularly in the sightless soarings of SCHOOL DIVINITY,
who, leaving Common Sense confounded at his strength of pinion,
Reason, delirious with eyeing his giddy flight; and Truth creeping
back into the bottom of her well, cursing the hour that ever she
offered her scorned alliance to the wizard power of Theologic
Vision--raves abroad on all the winds. "On earth Discord! a gloomy
Heaven above, opening her jealous gates to the nineteenth thousandth
part of the tithe of mankind; and below, an inescapable and inexorable
hell, expanding its leviathan jaws for the vast residue of
mortals!!!"--O doctrine! comfortable and healing to the weary,
wounded soul of man! Ye sons and daughters of affliction, ye _pauvres
miserables_, to whom day brings no pleasure, and night yields no rest,
be comforted! "'Tis but _one_ to nineteen hundred thousand that your
situation will mend in this world;" so, alas, the experience of the
poor and the needy too often affirms; and 'tis nineteen hundred
thousand sand to _one_, by the dogmas of * * * * * * * * that you will be
damned eternally in the world to come!

But of all nonsense, religious nonsense is the most nonsensical; so
enough, and more than enough of it. Only, by the by, will you or can
you tell me, my dear Cunningham, why a sectarian turn of mind has
always a tendency to narrow and illiberalize the heart? They are
orderly; they may be just; nay, I have known them merciful: but still
your children of sanctity move among their fellow-creatures with a
nostril-snuffing putrescence, and a foot-spurning filth, in short,
with a conceited dignity that your titled * * * * * * * * or any other
of your Scottish lordlings of seven centuries standing, display when
they accidentally mix among the many-aproned sons of mec