1768.

And what now, Gentlemen, becomes of the foolish blunder of Celfus, and the infamous ftory founded upon it? Lorenzo. Really, Sir, the ingenious old fathers have contrived an admirable genealogical forgery, to falve this black affair: And you with a true facerdotal modefty expect we should give entire credit to it.

Here you would prove that the fathers really had the account from authentic genealogies.

Floria. Genealogies! I find, Sir, you are an excellent genealogift. Will you do us the favour to give us a genealogy in a direct line from Shenkin ap Shenkin ap Morgan !

Here again in order to bring this witty gentleman back to the subject, you endeavour to fhew him the genealogies of the Jews were very different things from thofe he alludes to, and you refer to the rabbins to prove that they were most carefully preferved, and were strictly authentic.

Milordus. Rabbins! You are well verfed than it feems in Rabbinical learning. Pray, Sir, was not you a pupil of Kennicot's, and an affiftant in that moft excellent and ufeful collection of various readings, which fo convincingly proves and points out the one true reading?

Chorus. Ha! ha! he!

And thus, Sir, you are abfolutely confuted. Your argument muft drop here to make way for fome new matter of triumph to their honours. I have fingled out this instance in order to pay my compliments to the refined tafte of Milordus (a perfonage remarkable too for wisdom and ftrict honour) and to congratulate his happinefs in being poffeffed of a picture, which, to be fure, on account of its fubject, is to be prized as an ineftimable jewel, being an unanswerable confutation, it seems, of all that is, or fhall be written in defence of Chriftianity.Befides all the above, I fancy my friend, you will find another fmall difadvantage in your argument with their honours, which is fuggefted in the old trite obfervation-That a fool can ask more questions in an hour than a wife man can answer in feven years. How can you prove the Divine Legation of Mofes is a fhort queftion; the answer fills five volumes. The fame may be faid of hints, infi

27

nuations, flat denials (to omit bets). You may think perhaps to get off, by putting their honours upon the proof; but pray, Sir, who is the fuperior, the patron, or the ferious defender of religion? Thefe confiderations may poffibly make you fomewhat lefs affured of victory, and give you, fome diflike to thefe huffar difputations, and may alfo account for the excellent Stillingfleet's bursting into tears, and yielding triumph to Lord Rochefter, in a difpute concerning Atheism, which, on a fair footing, he could have maintained to advantage againft all the witty atheists in the world. If this great man could be thus borne down, what remains for you? What will it avail you to say, that what the philofophers call old wives tales, were fincerely believed by Bacon, Newton, Locke, Boyle, Addifon, Grotius, Pafcal, Boerhaave, and many others, who were the greatest geniufes and the ornaments of the age they lived in? Do you think their honours will give credit to your afferting, that Warburton and Leland have as clearly and convincingly confuted, and exploded, the atheistical part of Bolingbroke, concerning the moral attributes, the foul, a future ftate, and his pofitive dogmas against revelation; it is poffible for any thing to be confuted by argument? Will they believe, that what Hume has written against miracles has been proved by Leland, Adams, Douglafs, to be of no more weight than the old exploded arguments; that the experience which is to do fuch feats is a mere cant term, ferving to introduce much obfcurity, and to make nothing clearer, and that in the affair of Abbe Paris, that gentleman has been guilty of great difingenuity, unworthy the firft philofopher in Great Britain? Can you imagine your word will be taken in all thefe points, or that their honours will exercife their patience in hearing you prove fuch unpleafing affertions? What then remains but chagrin to you, and to their honours triumph. I will not prefume to affront their honours infallibily by infinuating that the triumph is unfairly won-there can be no doubt that their own fentiments in fuch cafes are the truelt criterion of juft and right. You ftand aghaft, and cannot believe that gentlemen of politeness and edu

D 2

as

29

irkfome and difagreeable, and you would be avoided, as there is nothing fo terrifying to the people of this generation, as the fear of being righteous over much: Avoid likewife fpeaking too favourably of all fects of people, and particularly when you speak of any one termed a methodist, whether fo or not in reality, in all his actions whether juft, or unjust, condemu him unheard, always carrying this in your mind, that a methodist is always in the wrong. Amongst your poor parifhioners you may, without fear of offending, fometimes vifit them in a neighbourly way, and comfort their bodies with food and cloathing, but if you go farther, and attempt to benefit their fouls, make a daily practile of vifiting them, reproving them when wrong, and taking pains to make them good chriftians; if you do this, you would prefently be called a methodist ; if you carefully avoid these things, your company and converfation may be coveted in the world, little matter what you are in other refpects, fo you are tolerable agreeable; and, if what is called a good fort of man, as is the acceptation of that character at prefent, you will be efteemed. What the methodists and their doctrines really are, I am entirely ignorant of; I do not attempt to take their part; fome good well meaning people no doubt there are amongst them, and I fear a great many bad, and that they have done a great deal of harm is certain, and it is no fmall piece of mifchief I think that every person who dares in this trifling generation to think and act more fuitably to his christian calling, than the generality do, is called one of that fect, and treated and difrefpected accordingly. The influence their good example might have had is loft, and it is fo great a reproach to be religious, that many, I doubt, fearful of the name of methodist, conceal and bury in their hearts a natural love for religion, and a defire to obey it's precepts, but shame forbids their light thining before men: But let me remind fuch of those words of our faviour, "Whofoever shall be afhamed of me and of my words, of him fhall the fon of man be ashamed, when he fhall come in his own glory, and in his father's, and of the holy angels."

0, 2.

AS

'30

A

S we find confiderable merit in A fix Weeks Tour, through the Southern Counties of England and Wales, in feveral Letters to a Friend, we fhall give fome extracts from that performance, and at prefent the writer's defcription of Holkam houfe, in Norfolk.

"Holkam, the celebrated houfe of the countess of Leicester, built by the late earl, cannot be viewed with too much attention. I was informed that it appeared by much the most magnificent when entered by the fouthern approach, and therefore went a small round for that advantage; nor did I in the leaft repent it. The first objects are a few fmall clumps of trees, which just catch your attention, and give you warning of an approach: They sketch out the way to the triumphal arch, under which the road runs. This ftructure is in a beautiful tafte, and finished in an elegant manner; it is extremely light, and the white flint ruftics have a fine effect. A narrow plantation on each fide a broad vifto, leads from hence to the obelisk, a mile and a half: This plantation, I should obferve, ought to be much broader, for you fee the light through many parts of it; but I apprehend it only a sketch of what the late earl defigned, and not meant as complete. At the bottom of the hill, on which the obelifk stands, are the two porters lodges, fmail, but very neat structures. Rifing with the hill, you approach the obelifk, through a very fine plantation and nothing can be attended with a better effect, than the viftos opening at once. There are eight. 1. To the fouth front of the house. 2. To Holkam church, on the top of a teep hill, covered with wood; a moft beautiful object. 3. To the town of Wells, a parcel of scattered houses appearing in the wood. 4. To the triumphal arch-the reft to diftant plantations. Viftos are by no means the taste of the prefent age, but fuch a genius as lord Leicester might be alJowed to deviate from fashion in favour of beauty and propriety. Nothing can be more regular than the front of a great houfe, the approach to it ought therefore to partake of this regularity:

1768.

king. The center is uniform, and if I may be allowed the expreffion, elegantly magnificent: No building can deferve thefe epithets more than this: But I cannot apply them to the whole front, because the parts are not of a uniform taste, and the wings are at best but light and elegant; they have nothing magnificent in them: As to the joining pieces, they are pretty.The fouth front confifts of one row of Venetian windows, over another of common fashes in the ruftics. This front does not pleafe me fo well as the fouth one, but it is by far more of a piece with the wings, &c.

Will you excufe thefe criticisms from one who knows nothing of architecture, but its power of pleafing the rate of individuals.-As one among the many, I give you my opinion, but I with you would pafs over all thefe parts of my letters, till you fee the objects yourself, for I cannot give you an idea of the buildings clear enough by defcription for you to fee the propriety or abfurdity of my remarks.

But the infide of the houfe! fay you Aye, my friend, there lies the forte of Holkam; talk not, ye admirers by wholefale, of the fronts-Contrivance must have been the characteristic of Lord Leicester; for fo convenient a houfe does not exift-fo admirably adapted to the English way of living, and fo ready to be applied to the grand or the comfortable file of life.

You enter what they call the great hall, but is in reality a paffage. It is called a cube of forty eight feet; but eighteen very large and magnificent Corinthian pillars, having their pedeftals rested on a marble paffage around it, and eight or ten feet high from the ground, the area at bottom is but an oblong paffage, walled in with Derbyfhire marble, and upon that wall are the pillars, fix in a line on each fide, and fix in front, in a femi-circle, around a flight of fteps up to the faloon door. The paffage or gallery, as may be called, runs around thefe pillars, and both together take up fo much room that all fort of proportion is loft; to look from it into the area, it appears exactly like a bath. The fouth front was one proof, and this hall is another, that the architect's genius was not of the magnificent or fublime ftamp for in both he aimed at

it

31

to

The faloon is forty-two feet by twenty feven, a proportion much condemned, but it is by no means difpleafing to me. Some call it a gallery; and I think a gallery is infinitely preferable to a cube, or to any proportion near a fquare enormously high: one of the finest rooms in England is the double cube at Wilton, which is more of a gallery than the faloon at Holkam, and yet no one ever entered it without being ftruck with the juftness of the proportions. This ialoon is hung with crimson caffoy; the pier glaffes fmall on account of the narrowness of the piers, each against a pillar of the portico, but in a very elegant tafte. The rooms the left of the faloon are, first, a drawing room 33 by 22, hung with crimfon cafoy. The pier glaffes very large and exceedingly elegant: The agate tables beautiful beyond defcription. From thence we entered the landscape room, which is a dreffing room to the state bedchamber; it is 24 by 2z, hung with crimson damask; a paffage-room leads to the anti-room to the the chapel, and then into the ftate gallery. The walls are of Derbyfhire marble; the altar and all the decorations in a very fine taste. Returning to the landfcape-room, you pass into the state bedchamber, 30 by 24, which is fitted up in a molt elegant tafte. It is hung with French tápeltry, except between the piers, which is by Mr. Saunders of Soho-fquare, the colours of the whole exceedingly brilliant. The bed is a cut velvet, upon a white fattin ground, and as it appears in common is a very hand fome gilt fettee, under a canopy of state: The defign of this bed is equal to any thing you ever faw. The chimney piece remarkably beautiful: Pellicans in white marble. The next apartment is lady Leicester's, confifting of a bed-chamber, dreffing-room,