nature, he disliked to hear the Pope treated unlike
a gentleman: his notions regarding Satan are recorded in his
inimitable address.]

_Ellisland, 21st June, 1789._

DEAR MADAM,

Will you take the effusions, the miserable effusions of low spirits,
just as they flow from their bitter spring? I know not of any
particular cause for this worst of all my foes besetting me; but for
some time my soul has been beclouded with a thickening atmosphere of
evil imaginations and gloomy presages.

_Monday Evening._

I have just heard Mr. Kirkpatrick preach a sermon. He is a man famous
for his benevolence, and I revere him; but from such ideas of my
Creator, good Lord deliver me! Religion, my honoured friend, is surely
a simple business, as it equally concerns the ignorant and the
learned, the poor and the rich. That there is an incomprehensible
Great Being, to whom I owe my existence, and that he must be
intimately acquainted with the operations and progress of the internal
machinery, and consequent outward deportment of this creature which he
has made; these are, I think, self-evident propositions. That there is
a real and eternal distinction between virtue and vice, and
consequently, that I am an accountable creature; that from the seeming
nature of the human mind, as well as from the evident imperfection,
nay, positive injustice, in the administration of affairs, both in the
natural and moral worlds, there must be a retributive scene of
existence beyond the grave; must, I think, be allowed by every one who
will give himself a moment's reflection. I will go farther, and affirm
that from the sublimity, excellence, and purity of his doctrine and
precepts, unparalleled by all the aggregated wisdom and learning of
many preceding ages, though, _to appearance_, he himself was the
obscurest and most illiterate of our species; therefore Jesus Christ
was from God.

Whatever mitigates the woes, or increases the happiness of others,
this is my criterion of goodness; and whatever injures society at
large, or any individual in it, this is my measure of iniquity.

What think you, madam, of my creed? I trust that I have said nothing
that will lessen me in the eye of one, whose good opinion I value
almost next to the approbation of my own mind.

R. B.

* * * * *

CLXVIII.

TO MR. ----.

[The name of the person to whom the following letter is addressed is
unknown: he seems, from his letter to