e to the Reviewer in return.
Surely the _Edinburgh Review_ can put a better head on, when it takes
notice of this second portion of my work? I will give it an anecdote.

A lady of my acquaintance was blessed with a son, then about three years
old. She was very indulgent, and he was very much spoiled. At last he
became so unmanageable that she felt it was her imperative duty to
correct him. She would as soon have cut off her right arm, but that
would not have mended the matter, nor the child. So one day, when the
young gentleman had been more than usually uproarious, she pulled up his
petticoats and administered what _she_ considered a most severe
infliction. Having so done, with a palpitating heart she sat down to
recover herself, miserable that she had been compelled to punish, but
attempting to console herself with the reflection that she had done her
duty. What then was her surprise to have her reveries interrupted by
the young urchin, who, appearing only to have been _tickled_, came up to
her, and laying down his head on her lap, pulled up his coats, and
cried, "More whipping, Ma; please, more whipping." So weak has been the
wrist, whether it be feminine or not, that has applied the punishment,
that I also feel inclined to exclaim with the child, "More whipping,
(Miss Martineau?) please, more whipping."

The Reviewer has pronounced that "_no author is cleverer than his
works_." If no author be cleverer than his works, it is equally certain
that _no reviewer is cleverer than his review_. Does the Reviewer
recollect the fable of the jackass who put on the lion's skin? Why did
he not take warning from the fabled folly of his ancestor and _hold his
tongue_? He might still have walked about and have been supposed to be
a Reviewer.

He asserts that I am not capable of serious reflection: he is mistaken.
I have seldom cut the leaves of the _Edinburgh_, having been satisfied
with looking at its outside, and thinking how very appropriate its
colours of _blue and yellow_ were to the opinions which it advocates.
But at times I have been more serious. I have communed with myself as
it lay before me, and I have mentally exclaimed:--Here is a work written
by men whom the Almighty has endowed with talents, and who will, if
there be truth in Scripture, have to answer for the talents committed to
their keeping,--yet these men, like madmen, throw about fire, and cry it
is only in sport; they uphold doctrines as pernici