out food, or anybody to mind her, and after several
stages, they are fixed at present in the neighbourhood of Dumfries.
Their tenets are a strange jumble of enthusiastic jargon; among
others, she pretends to give them the Holy Ghost by breathing on them,
which she does with postures and practices that are scandalously
indecent; they have likewise disposed of all their effects, and hold a
community of goods, and live nearly an idle life, carrying on a great
farce of pretended devotion in barns and woods, where they lodge and
lie all together, and hold likewise a community of women, as it is
another of their tenets that they can commit no mortal sin. I am
personally acquainted with most of them, and I can assure you the
above mentioned are facts.

This, my dear Sir, is one of the many instances of the folly of
leaving the guidance of sound reason and common sense in matters of
religion.

Whenever we neglect or despise these sacred monitors, the whimsical
notions of a perturbated brain are taken for the immediate influences
of the Deity, and the wildest fanaticism, and the most inconstant
absurdities, will meet with abettors and converts. Nay, I have often
thought, that the more out-of-the-way and ridiculous the fancies are,
if once they are sanctified under the sacred name of religion, the
unhappy mistaken votaries are the more firmly glued to them.

R. B.

* * * * *

XI.

TO MISS ----.

[This has generally been printed among the early letters of Burns.
Cromek thinks that the person addressed was the "Peggy" of the
Common-place Book. This is questioned by Robert Chambers, who,
however, leaves both name and date unsettled.]

MY DEAR COUNTRYWOMAN,

I am so impatient to show you that I am once more at peace with you,
that I send you the book I mentioned directly, rather than wait the
uncertain time of my seeing you. I am afraid I have mislaid or lost
Collins' Poems, which I promised to Miss Irvin. If I can find them, I
will forward them by you; if not, you must apologize for me.

I know you will laugh at it when I tell you that your piano and you
together have played the deuce somehow about my heart. My breast has
been widowed these many months, and I thought myself proof against the
fascinating witchcraft; but I am afraid you will "feelingly convince
me what I am." I say, I am afraid, because I am not sure what is the
matter with me. I have one miserable bad symptom; when