[106] The dirtiness of the Scotch churches is taken off in The Tale of a Tub, sect. xi:—'Neither was it possible for the united rhetoric of mankind to prevail with Jack to make himself clean again.' In Humphry Clinker (Letter of Aug. 8) we are told that 'the good people of Edinburgh no longer think dirt and cobwebs essential to the house of God.' Bishop Horne (Essays and Thoughts, p. 45) mentioning 'the maxim laid down in a neighbouring kingdom that cleanliness is not essential to devotion,' continues, 'A Church of England lady once offered to attend the Kirk there, if she might be permitted to have the pew swept and lined. "The pew swept and lined!" said Mess John's wife, "my husband would think it downright popery."' In 1787 he wrote that there are country churches in England 'where, perhaps, three or four noble families attend divine service, which are suffered year after year to be in a condition in which not one of those families would suffer the worst room in their house to continue for a week.' Essays and Thoughts, p. 271.

[107] 'Hume recommended Fergusson's friends to prevail on him to suppress the work as likely to be injurious to his reputation.' When it had great success he said that his opinion remained the same. He had heard Helvetius and Saurin say that they had told Montesquieu that he ought to suppress his Esprit des Lois. They were still convinced that their advice was right. J. H. Burton's Hume, ii. 385-7. It was at Fergusson's house thirteen years later that Walter Scott, a lad of fifteen, saw Burns shed tears over a print by Bunbury of a soldier lying dead on the snow. Lockhart's Scott, i. 185. See ib. vii. 61, for an anecdote of Fergusson.

[108] They were pulled down in 1789. Murray's Handbook for Scotland, ed. 1883, p. 60.

[109] See ante, ii. 128.

[110] See ante, iii. 357, and post, Johnson's Tour into Wales, Aug. 1, 1774.

[111]

'There where no statesman buys,
no bishop sells;
A virtuous palace where no
monarch dwells.'

An Epitaph. Hamilton's Poems, ed. 1760, p. 260. See ante, iii. 150.

[112] The stanza from which he took this line is,

'But then rose up all Edinburgh,
They rose up by thousands three;
A cowardly Scot came John behind,
And ran him through the fair body!'