e much in Shakspeare. I replied, I dare say _not_. He
felt the equivoke, lookd awkward, and reddish, but soon returnd to the
attack, by saying that he thought Burns was as good as Shakspeare: I
said that I had no doubt he was--to a _Scotchman_. We exchangd no more
words that day.--Your account of the fierce faces in the Hanging, with
the presumed interlocution of the Eagle and the Tyger, amused us
greatly. You cannot be so very bad, while you can pick mirth off from
rotten walls. But let me hear you have escaped out of your oven. May the
Form of the Fourth Person who clapt invisible wet blankets about the
shoulders of Shadrach Meshach and Abednego, be with you in the fiery
Trial. But get out of the frying pan. Your business, I take it, is
bathing, not baking.

Let me hear that you have clamber'd up to Lover's Seat; it is as fine in
that neighbourhood as Juan Fernandez, as lonely too, when the Fishing
boats are not out; I have sat for hours, staring upon a shipless sea.
The salt sea is never so grand as when it is left to itself. One
cock-boat spoils it. A sea-mew or two improves it. And go to the little
church, which is a very protestant Loretto, and seems dropt by some
angel for the use of a hermit, who was at once parishioner and a whole
parish. It is not too big. Go in the night, bring it away in your
portmanteau, and I will plant it in my garden. It must have been erected
in the very infancy of British Christianity, for the two or three first
converts; yet hath it all the appertenances of a church of the first
magnitude, its pulpit, its pews, its baptismal font; a cathedral in a
nutshell. Seven people would crowd it like a Caledonian Chapel. The
minister that divides the word there, must give lumping penny-worths. It
is built to the text of two or three assembled in my name. It reminds me
of the grain of mustard seed. If the glebe land is proportionate, it may
yield two potatoes. Tythes out of it could be no more split than a hair.
Its First fruits must be its Last, for 'twould never produce a couple.
It is truly the strait and narrow way, and few there be (of London
visitants) that find it. The still small voice is surely to be found
there, if any where. A sounding board is merely there for ceremony. It
is secure from earthquakes, not more from sanctity than size, for
'twould feel a mountain thrown upon it no more than a taper-worm would.
Go and see, but not without your spectacles. By the way, there's a
capital fa