it lightly elsewhere, as an expletive and
a mere way of speaking, and it will come to nothing as it deserves, and
follow the obsolete "plagues" and "murrains" of our ancestors.

The only persons who profess to swear to any purpose, are the Roman
Catholics; and they, indeed, may well be said to swear "terribly"--or
rather they would do so, if any poor set of human creatures, fallible by
the necessity of their natures, could of a surety know what is
infallible, and be commissioned by a writing on the sun or moon to let
us hear it. Lord Thurlow, with all his damns, and his big voice, and his
power of imprisonment to boot, was a babe of grace compared with the
Roman Catholic Bishop of Rochester who thundered forth the famous
excommunication which the Protestant chapter-clerk of that city gave to
the author of _Tristram Shandy_ to put in his book; to the immortal
honor of said Protestant, and disgrace of the unalterable and infallible
Roman Catholic Churchmen; who, when delivered from their bonds, and
complimented on partaking of the progress and civilization common to the
rest of the world, take the first opportunity for showing us we are
mistaken, and crying damnation to their deliverers.

We shall not repeat the document alluded to, lest we should be thought
to give the light matter of which we have been treating, a tone of too
much importance. Suffice it to say, that when all the powers, and
angels, and very virgins of heaven are called upon by the
excommunication to "curse" and "damn" the object of it limb by limb
(literally so), his eyes, his brains, and his heart (how unlike fair
human readers, who doubt whether the very word "damn" should be
uttered), good Uncle Toby interposes one of those world-famous
pleasantries which have shaken the old Vatican beyond recovery.

"'Our armies swore terribly in Flanders,' cried my Uncle Toby; 'but
nothing to this. For my own part, I could not have the heart to curse my
dog so.'"

FOOTNOTES:

[P] Thurlow politely calls Kenyon _Taffy_, because the latter was a
Welshman. _Scott_ is Lord Eldon himself.

[Q] _Lives of the Chancellors._ Second Series. Vol. v. pp. 644, 664.

From Chambers' Edinbourgh Journal.

THE LAST OF THE FIDDLERS.

A VILLAGE TALE.

BY BERTHOLD AUERBACH.

The midnight silence of the village is broken by unusual clattering
sounds--a horse comes galloping along at the top of his speed, his rider
crying aloud, "Fire--fire! Help, ho! Fire!" Away he