city, or the man, merely from the report of others, who had it
from others, and so on, through many links of tradition?

'Dech.' I have.

'Shep.' You see then, that there are certain cases, in which the
evidence of things not seen nor either sensibly or
demonstrably perceived, can justly challenge so entire an
assent, that he who should pretend to refuse it in the fullest
measure of acquiescence, would be deservedly esteemed the most
stupid or perverse of mankind.

That there is a sophism here, every one must feel in the very fact of
being 'non-plus'd' without being convinced. The sophism consists in the
instance being 'haud ejusdem generis' ([Greek: elegchos metabaseos eis
allo genos]); and what the allogeneity is between the assurance of the
being of Madrid or Constantinople, and the belief of the fact of the
resurrection of Christ, I have shown elsewhere. The universal belief of
the 'tyrannicidium' of Julius Caesar is doubtless a fairer instance, but
the whole mode of argument is unsound and unsatisfying. Why run off from
the fact in question, or the class at least to which it belongs? The
victory can be but accidental--a victory obtained by the unguarded
logic, or want of logical foresight of the antagonist, who needs only
narrow his positions to narrations of facts and events, in our judgment
of which we are not aided by the analogy of previous and succeeding
experience, to deprive you of the opportunity of skirmishing thus on No
Man's land. But this is Skelton's ruling passion, sometimes his
strength--too often his weakness. He must force the reader to believe:
or rather he has an antagonist, a wilful infidel or heretic always and
exclusively before his imagination; or if he thinks of the reader at
all, it is as of a partizan enjoying every hard thump, and smashing
'fister' he gives the adversary, whom Skelton hates too cordially to
endure to obtain any thing from him with his own liking. No! It must be
against his will, and in spite of it. No thanks to him--the dog could
not help himself! How much more effectual would he have found it to have
commenced by placing himself in a state of sympathy with the supposed
sceptic or unbeliever;--to have stated to him his own feelings, and the
real grounds on which they rested;--to have shown himself the difference
between the historical facts which the sceptic takes for granted and
believes spontaneou