ought on the
subject, although his auditors were but the session-clerk, and two elders
of a country parish. We cannot pursue the train of his argument, but we
should do injustice to the philosophy of Malthus, if we suppressed the
observation which Mr. Daff made at the conclusion. "Gude safe's!" said
the good-natured elder, "if it's true that we breed faster than the Lord
provides for us, we maun drown the poor folks' weans like kittlings."
"Na, na!" exclaimed Mr. Craig, "ye're a' out, neighbour; I see now the
utility of church-censures." "True!" said Mr. Micklewham; "and the
ordination of the stool of repentance, the horrors of which, in the
opinion of the fifteen Lords at Edinburgh, palliated child-murder, is
doubtless a Malthusian institution." But Mr. Snodgrass put an end to the
controversy, by fixing a day for the christening, and telling he would do
his best to procure a good collection, according to the benevolent
suggestion of Mr. Daff. To this cause we are indebted for the next
series of the Pringle correspondence; for, on the day appointed, Miss
Mally Glencairn, Miss Isabella Tod, Mrs. Glibbans and her daughter Becky,
with Miss Nanny Eydent, together with other friends of the minister's
family, dined at the manse, and the conversation being chiefly about the
concerns of the family, the letters were produced and read.

LETTER XII

_Andrew Pringle_, _Esq._, _to the Rev. Charles Snodgrass_
WINDSOR, CASTLE-INN.

MY DEAR FRIEND--I have all my life been strangely susceptible of pleasing
impressions from public spectacles where great crowds are assembled.
This, perhaps, you will say, is but another way of confessing, that, like
the common vulgar, I am fond of sights and shows. It may be so, but it
is not from the pageants that I derive my enjoyment. A multitude, in
fact, is to me as it were a strain of music, which, with an irresistible
and magical influence, calls up from the unknown abyss of the feelings
new combinations of fancy, which, though vague and obscure, as those
nebulae of light that astronomers have supposed to be the rudiments of
unformed stars, afterwards become distinct and brilliant acquisitions.
In a crowd, I am like the somnambulist in the highest degree of the
luminous crisis, when it is said a new world is unfolded to his
contemplation, wherein all things have an intimate affinity with the
state of man, and yet b