such a character as only the true and obedient
Christian can present; and in that of his daughter, a girl endowed with
the highest principles, the best heart, and the purest sense of honor--a
woman who would have been precisely such a character as Lady Gourlay
was, had she lived longer and been subjected to the same trials.
Throughout the whole work, however, I trust that I have succeeded in
the purity and loftiness of the moral, which was to show the pernicious
effects of infidelity and scepticism, striving to sustain and justify an
insane ambition; or, in a word, I endeavored

"To vindicate the ways of God to man."

A literary friend of mine told me, a few days ago, that the poet
Massinger had selected the same subject for his play of. "A New Way to
pay Old Debts," the same in which Sir Giles Overreach is the prominent
character. I ought to feel ashamed to say, as I did say, in reply
to this, that I never read the play alluded to, nor a single line of
Massinger's works; neither have I ever seen Sir Giles Overreach even
upon the stage. If, then, there should appear any resemblance in the
scope or conduct of the play or novel, or in the character of Sir
Thomas Gourlay and Overreach, I cannot be charged either with theft or
imitation, as I am utterly ignorant of the play and of the character of
Sir Giles Overreach alluded to.

I fear I have dwelt much too long on this subject, and I shall therefore
close it by a short anecdote.

Some months ago I chanced to read a work--I think by an American
writer--called, as well as I can recollect, "The Reminiscences of
a late Physician." I felt curious to read the book, simply because I
thought that the man who could, after, "The Diary of a late Physician,"
come out with a production so named, must possess at the least either
very great genius or the most astounding assurance. Well, I went on
perusing the work, and found almost at once that it was what is called a
catchpenny, and depended altogether, for its success, upon the fame and
reputation of its predecessor of nearly the same name. I saw the trick
at once, and bitterly regretted that I, in common I suppose with others,
had been taken in and bit. Judge of my astonishment, however, when, as I
proceeded to read the description of an American lunatic asylum, I found
it to be _literatim et verbatim_ taken--stolen--pirated--sentence by
sentence and page by page, from my own description of one in the third
volume of the fir