with, being a machine much used in former times by youth, as well to try their own activity, as the swiftness of their horfes, in running at it. The cross-piece of it is broad at one end and pierced full of holes; and a bag of fand is hung at the other, and fwings round on being moved with any blow. The paftime was for the youth on horfeback to run at it as faft as poffible, and hit the broad part in his career with much force. He that by chance hit it not at all was treated with loud peals of derision; and he who did hit it made the belt use of his swiftness, left he should have a found blow on his neck from the bag of fand, which inftantly fwung round from the other end of the quintin. The great design of this fport was to try the agility both of horfe and man, and to break the hoard, which whoever did, he was accounted chief of the day's sport."

It is

not clear whether Trinity chapel, p. 497, is the original building of wood which followed the camp, and is now inclosed in brickwork; or whether the wood has given way completely to the bricks, or, like Drake's ship, has searce a fragment of the original ftructure. Mr. George Robfon, fon of the proprietor, may find himself in a more comfortable fituation in his vicarage house at Chirke.

P. $13. Geffery de Say, whose sister Beatrix married Magnaville earl of Eflex, gave Rickling to Walden abbey, Neither Salmon nor Morant notice the infeription.

P. 528, a. line 7 from bottom, read Luguvallum, and line 5, Cataractonium. Col. b. line 9, Mancunium; line 37, Ariconium.

Mr. URBAN,

P. Q.

June 30.

IT is fubmitted to the attention of government, and the confideration of the bithops, whether the cause of Religion and of Morality would not be better promoted by providing Chapels of Fafe in eligible fituations, than in granting licences for erecting Subscription Chapels, although of the Eftablished Church, from which the great mafs of the people is excluded. It is notorious that an immenfe number of respectable families in a middling ftation of life are precluded from attending divine fervice, either on acoount of their diftance from the parish church, or from their want of interest to procure feats in these proprietary chapels

at an annual expence of from one to two guineas each perfon. Every large parish round the Metropolis should be provided with Chapels of Eafe, either by parochial affeffinent or by parlia mentary affistance; and it would perhaps be defirable, if, after ample remuneration to the proprietors, the licensed chapels generally were thrown open to all*.

We are led to these reflections by a circumstance which occurred at Bath on the 3d instant. The Rev. Mr. Home, archdeacon of Limerick, was invited by the proprietor of the Octagon chapel to preach there. The fermon was scarcely begun when a violent knocking was heard at the doors, and, on their being opened, a confiderable number of perfons of both fexes, of refpectable appearance, pressed forward, and filled the ailes and passages. The fermon was moft excellent and impreffive; but the proprietor, probably apprehending that the popularity of the preacher might attract to the chapel more perfons than were able to pay for their feats, withdrew the permilfion he had granted to Mr. Home; and although Bath is filled with minifters amply gifted to promote the caufe of Religion, they are from like confiderations prevented preaching. the chapels in Bath preclude poor people, and all standers in the ailes. Is this political? Is this confiftent with the divine doctrines of the Gofpel? There is already too little devotion in the world; it should not be repressed by a tax on its exercife. The house of God should not be set up to auction; it should not be degraded to the condition of a puppet-show; it should not be made the object of mercenary peddling or uncharitable exclufion.

All

Mr. Warner, in a curious fermon which he delivered on the last fatt-day in St. James's church, Bath, will throw light on this tranfaction. “I had for my affociate in the charge of being righteous overmuch, the respectable, pious, and confcientious chancellor of Limerick, a man whose fole offence had been to preach the humiliating truths of the Gofpel to the taftidions ears of a polished audience, and to miflake the perfumed atmosphere of a fashionable chapel for a place where the living God was worshiped with the • incenfe of the heart' in fpirit and in troth. Whether or not Mr. H. would have made the amende honorable for this breach of politeffi in his fecond addreis, I leave thote to conjecture who are acquainted with this gentleman's conftiency of character; but the opportunity of determining this point was precluded by a notification to Mr. If that the permission to repeat his exhortation was witharawn, in confequence of the inconvenience refulting to the occupiers of the fittings at the Chapel from the common people who went thither to le benefited by his discourse. Mr. H. while he pitied fuch delufion, and finiled at his own mistake, remembered that a fimilar fate had befallen one infinitely greater than himself, who was defpifed and abhorred by the Pharifees and Scribes and chief Priefts; but the common people heard him gladly." Preface to Mr. Warner's Ser "Many others, visited us; but one Davenport was a nonpareil - the wilder the better, the less reaion the more spiritual. But, Sir, I stop here, and leave you to find out a little more by what I now fend you. The book I have obtained for you as a present from my reverend brother Davenport in this town. The author, Dr. Chauncey, told me, that he could have printed more flagrant accourts, if his intelligencers would have allowed him.

mon, vii. n.

Mr URBAN,

T

July 1.

HE originals of the two following letters were formerly in my poffeifion; and are now in one of the moft refpectable public libraries in the kingdom: The contents of them, I have no doubt, will be thought curious. Yours, &c. A TRAVELLER.

Dr. CULLER Of Bofion to Dr. Z.GREY, Sept. 29, 1743.

“WHITFIELD has plagued us with a witness, especially his friends and followers, who are like to be battered to preces by that battering-ram they had provided againft our Church here. It would be an endiefs attempt to deferibe that feene of confufion and difturbance occafioned by him the divifions of families, neighbourhoods, and towns, the contrarie y of husbands and wives, the undutitalnefs of children and fervants, the quarrel harrels among the teachers the di orders of the night, the intermiffion of labour and business, the neglect of buibandry, and of gathering the harvest. Our preffos are for ever seeming with books, and our women with battards, though regeneregion nd couvertion is the whole cry. The teachers have many of them left their porsicular cures, and ftrolled about the country. Some have been ordained by them Evangelizers as they calle them, and had their Armourbearers and Exhorters; and in many

conventicles and places of rendezvous there has been checquered work indeed, feveral preaching and feveral exhorting at the fame time, the rest crving or laughing, yelping, fprawling, fainting; and this revel maintained in some places many days and nights together without intermiffion; and then there were the blesled out-pourings of the Spirit. The New Lights have with fome overdone themselves by ranting and blafphemy, and are quite demolished; others have extremely weakened their interest; aud others are terrified from going the lengths they incline to. On the other hand, the Old Lights (thus are they diftinguished) have been many of them forced to town, and fome have loft their congregations; for they will foon raise up a new conventicle in any new town where they are oppofed, and I don't know but we have 50 in one place or other, and fome of them large and much frequented.

"When Mr. Whitfield first arrived here, the whole town was alarmed. He made his first viit to Church on a Friday, and conversed first with many of our clergy together, and belved them, me especially, when he had done. Being not invited into our pulpits, the Diffenters were highly pleased, and engrofled him; and im mediately the bells rung, and all hands went to lecture; and this show kept on all the while he was here. The town was ever alarmed; the streets filled with people, with coaches and chaifes, all for the benefit of that holy man. The conventicles were crowded; but he chose rather our common, where multitudes might fee him in all his awful postures; befides that, in one crowded conventicle, before he came in, fix people were killed in a fright. The fellow treated the most venerable with an air of fuperiority. But he for ever lafhed and anathematized the Church of England; and that was enough.

"After him came one Tennent, a minitter impudent and fouey; and told them all, they were damned, damned, damned! This charmed them; and, in the dreadfallett winter I ever faw, people wallowed in the fnow night and day for the benefit of his beattly braying, and many ended their days under those fatigues. Both of them carried more money out of these parts than the poor could be thankful for.

"This has turned to the growth of the Church in many places, and its reputation univerfally; and it fuffers no otherwise than as Religion does, and that is fadly enough.

"I am forry to hear that the Rev. Dr. Ashton is very much broken with infirmity. Include in your prayers, worthy tir,

Yours, &c. TIM. CUTLER."

2.Mr. EBENEZER MILLER to Dr.GREY. Braintree in N England,

Οει. 6, 1743.

"YOU know by Mr. Whitfield's Journals that he has been here. The Clergy of the Church of England were unanimous in their refolution not to fuffer him to go into their pulpits; so that a Diffenting Preacher of confiderable note, in a paragraph of a letter that was printed, faid, that " he came to his own, and his own received him not; but we (the Diffenters) received him as an angel of God." The effects of his and his followers' preaching in this country are extravagant beyond defeription, and almost beyond belief. I think the party is on the decline; but Whitfield is foon expected here; and how he may revive the dying work, I cannot say. But I believe he will not be received with the fame refpect as forinerly by the Dissenters themselves; he having raised such contentious and caufed fuch divisions among them, as has much weakened them, and inclined many of the more wife and thinking among them to the Church."

knowledge, in pointing out its impor tance, and the fatal confequences of neglecting it; yét I know not that any writers have touched upon a fubject which is very intimately connected with it, and which I have determined to handle in this paper: I mean the advantages of ignorance. We have fo many encouraging treatises written to remove the difficulties which, impede knowledge, that it would be impoffible to enumerate them; but, as far as my acquaintance with literature extends, we have no book expreffly calculated to point out the difficulty of being ignorant, and the inconveniences arifing from it. Yet many eminent teachers of youth have affured me that they find this one of the greatest impediments in their progress, and that they could have fent out a much greater proportion of able young men from schools and colleges, if they could have perfuaded them to remain ignorant a little longer..

Something like this I have so often observed in the young men of the present day, that I am convinced the complaint is made on a good foundation, and I know not whether it is not the peculiar characterisflic of the clever fellows of our day, that, as Seneca fays in my motto, they "fail in acquiring knowledge, merely because they think they have acquired it already." It is to this, I doubt not, we mult impute the flow progrefs made in our publick schools and feminaries, and, what I deem much worse, the little use that feems to be made of books and libraries: for how can we expect that the one will be studioufly attended, or the other carefully confulted by those who refuse to confess their ignorance?

In former days I can well remember that young men were not ashamed of being ignorant for a much longer period than would now be tolerated. A youth, for example, of fifteen knew scarcely anything, arowed his ignorance, and fat in filence at the feet of his Gamaliel, that he might acquire knowledge, as he acquired strength, in the course of nature. A young man of twenty was not less willing to be ignorant, and when introduced into the company of his elders and superiors, was attentive and fubmiflive, retiring with fome acquisuion of knowledge, but ftill more and more convinced of his ignorance, and fo little ashamed of it, that he often confefled it as a thing unavoidable unavoidable at his age. I can remember too that even at the ages of twentyfive or more it was not the fashion for men to suppose themselves universal scholars, or that nature and science had poured into their capacious minds the whole of their stores. They fill did not blash to be unacquainted with what they had no means of knowing, and were content to wait the flow process of time and study, or information, to remove their ignorance in a fatisfactory and substantial manner.

I can even recollect that some men very far advanced in life preferved the fame wife principles, and to their last hour maintained the diftinction between unavoidable and voluntary ignorance.

We now purfue a very different plan, with what success I shall not fay, but it is certain that we can find very few in the early periods of life who are content to be ignorant; the greater part feem to have overcome every difficulty when they have acquired the alphabet; and every other kind of knowledge pours in upon them so faft, that long before the period of manhood they have acquired all that this world can yield, and are old in every thing which can fit them for a speedy departure into another.

Among other confequences of this plan, it has given rise to the breed of puppies a defcription of the human species very different from that incidentally touched upon by my prede ceffors. Puppies in former days were ignorant, and contented to be fo: knowledge was not in their way; they filled up departments in fociety where it was not wanted. Our modern puppies, however, are diftinguished by an affectation of knowledge, which is so much worfe than downright ignorance as it is more difficult to remove. The wife man has indeed long ago determined that there is more hope of a fool than of a young man "wife in his own conceit;" and I am happy to ftrengthen my poor opinions by by fo venerable authority.

an

All knowledge is comparative; but although among wife men fome are content to know one thing, and fome another, and although all are convinced that human life is infufficient for univerfal fcience, yet the puppy of the prefent times is one who knows every thing, or fays he does fo, which with him is much the fame thing. He holds this, indeed, as a point of

honour, and is so tenacious of it, that the most refpectful mode of setting him right is conftrued into a rude contra. diction which he is bound to resent; and hence so many argumentative positions have lately been adjusted by means of a bet, or a cafe of pittols.

It were a most defireable thing to rectify the prevailing notions refpecting shame, of which a spurious kind is foon likely to destroy the genuine. When we confider how many things a young man cannot be expected to know, and how many things, which he may think of tome importance, he ought not to know; and when we confider how flowly all reatly valuable knowledge can be acquired, we may furely allow that every kind of ignorance is not a disgrace. But unfortu. nately knowledge and courage have hy fome means been confounded, and a young man is unwilling to be thought deficient in a taste for literature, left he Chould be thought to have no tafte for fighting. Two young gentlemen, we were told fome time ago, fought a duel; the difpute was about religion, and of the point in question it was found that they were both ignorant; but then they had both commiflions in the army, where they would have us think that courage and controverfial divinity should be equally flourishing.

In modern times it must be allowed that many perfons incur the fufpicion of knowing fomething at a more eafy rate than formerly. Literature is fprinkled over the nation by means of journals and periodical works in fuch a manner, that many acquire a knack of talking about matters beyond their reach, merely by fuch studies as they can purfue while under the hands of a hairdrefler. In this way the puppy has many advantages over the man of business; the outside of his head being an object of much greater importance, his course of studies are prolonged in proportion to the talents of his operator, and therefore one who is engaged to a dress-ball muft carry with him a prodigious quantity of information, which it is a pity should be loft in the mazes of a new dance. This mode of study, however, is now fo common with both fexes, that the keeper of an eminent circulating library affures me that he can always calenlate the popularity of a new book by the quantity of hair-powder between

the

the leaves, and has often gratified the vanity of a young author by showing him how ably his best thoughts were illuftrated by pomatum, and his finest flowers scented by marechalle. This same gentleman, however, hints that he is afraid he shall ere long be a fufferer by the prevalence of wigs among his male and female customers. "They have no other time for study, Mr. Projector, than when under the hands of their frizeurs; and if they take to wigs, which they are doing very fast, they will give up reading altogether, for it can't be expected they should spare any other time for study, and I have met with fome customers who fince these cursed wigs came in, have

not only returned their books almoft quite clean, but have actually withdrawn their fubfcriptions at the end of the quarter, as having no leifure to read. If it were not for the girls at boarding-schools, who have neither hair-dreffers nor wigs, I don't know what would become of literature, I affure you Mr. Projector. And, bless their little hearts, they read every thing through and through, and are wondrous knowing at an age when you would think they knew nothing."

It has always appeared surprising to me, that while the imputation of ignorance is an infult not to be borne, and while a spirited young man would rather be called a rogue than a fool, no means have been adopted to render ignorance inore reputable. This too is the more surprising, as their afsociating with one another would feem to give countenance and fupport to their caufe; and the care they take to exclude their elders or fuperiors, shews a kind of tacit confciousiness that they are men of knowledge only when in each other's company. But, without attempting to reconcile these contradictions, it certainly were to be withed that no men were ashamed of ignorance, unless those who have neglected the opportunities of acquiring knowledge, and that those who would pass for men of knowledge would patiently wait the times and feasons when it might be fubftantially acquired. Pretenders to knowledge cannot expect to hold out long, the appearances they on may deceive those who trust only in appearances, but they will foon fiod that in en leavouring to ape their

put

yond their income, and must have recourse to borrowing, and other tricks practifed by that class of perfons known by the name of the shabby-genteel, who may now and then give a mifer's feast, but must starve the rest of the year for it.

Another unhappy accompaniment of unacknowledged ignorance is a certain degree of confidence, which, in matters of this kind, is peculiarly offenfive, and forms one of the justest objects of ridicule. On the contrary, it is one of the happieft confequences of the legitimate defire for knowledge, that it leffens a man's confidence, because the more he knows, the more he

finds it neceflary to be unaffuming and fubmiffive. Henning we univerfally find that the beft in formed men are the least prefumptuous, and that all that disturbs focial converfation, and renders it useless as to the purposes of knowledge, arifes from the pert forwardness of those who know nothing, or but a little at secondhand, and who are permitted to deliver their opinions only because modern politeness requires that they should not be defired to hold their tongues.

A confcioufness that knowledge is difficult to be acquired, and that the employment of the longest life is but the advancement of a few steps, would cure this propenfity to reach the end without employing the means. A liule. learning, Pope fays, is a dangerous thing; and it is more dangerous in our days than it was in his, because more easily acquired, and more impofing. The learning which would have been deemed little in his time, would now furnish a dozen literary petits maitres with all they wish to know, and all they wish to acquire; a fund for impertinence, on which they might draw to fupply the deficiencies of study.

As the want of an honest acknowledgment of ignorance is most generally felt in converfation, it is with a view to converfation principally that I have ventured to throw out these remarks. I should run into a ftrain of_obfervation fomewhat too trite, were I to purfue them farther. Yet, as it does not follow, that what is trite is univerfally believed, or that the truths of which we are most fully convinced are those which have most influence on our practice, I shall not be ashamed to conmolt