ul woman as ever. Dr. Johnson here threw out some jokes against
Scotland. He said, 'You go first to Aberdeen; then to _Enbru_ (the
Scottish pronunciation of Edinburgh); then to Newcastle, to be polished
by the colliers; then to York; then to London.' And he laid hold of a
little girl, Stuart Dallas, niece to Mrs. Riddoch, and, representing
himself as a giant, said, he would take her with him! telling her, in a
hollow voice, that he lived in a cave, and had a bed in the rock, and
she should have a little bed cut opposite to it!

He thus treated the point, as to prescription of murder in
Scotland[272]. 'A jury in England would make allowance for deficiencies
of evidence, on account of lapse of time; but a general rule that a
crime should not be punished, or tried for the purpose of punishment,
after twenty years, is bad. It is cant to talk of the King's advocate
delaying a prosecution from malice. How unlikely is it the King's
advocate should have malice against persons who commit murder, or should
even know them at all. If the son of the murdered man should kill the
murderer who got off merely by prescription, I would help him to make
his escape; though, were I upon his jury, I would not acquit him. I
would not advise him to commit such an act. On the contrary, I would bid
him submit to the determination of society, because a man is bound to
submit to the inconveniences of it, as he enjoys the good: but the
young man, though politically wrong, would not be morally wrong. He
would have to say, 'here I am amongst barbarians, who not only refuse to
do justice, but encourage the greatest of all crimes. I am therefore in
a state of nature: for, so far as there is no law, it is a state of
nature: and consequently, upon the eternal and immutable law of justice,
which requires that he who sheds man's blood should have his blood
shed[273], I will stab the murderer of my father.'

We went to our inn, and sat quietly. Dr. Johnson borrowed, at Mr.
Riddoch's, a volume of _Massillon's Discourses on the Psalms_: but I
found he read little in it. Ogden too he sometimes took up, and glanced
at; but threw it down again. I then entered upon religious conversation.
Never did I see him in a better frame: calm, gentle, wise, holy. I said,
'Would not the same objection hold against the Trinity as against
Transubstantiation?' 'Yes, (said he,) if you take three and one in the
same sense. If you do so, to be sure you cannot believe it: but the
t