negative, which she did not quite expect, as she thought he had been
perhaps invited by some of her neighbours, she put in an additional

spoonful on his account; and brought from her corner cupboard with
the glass door, an ancient French pickle-bottle, in which she had

preserved, since the great tea-drinking formerly mentioned, the
remainder of the two ounces of carvey, the best, Mrs. Nanse bought

for that memorable occasion. A short conversation then took place
relative to the Pringles; and, while the tea was masking, for Miss

Mally said it took a long time to draw, she read to him the
following letter:-

LETTER XXII
Mrs. Pringle to Miss Mally Glencairn

My Dear Miss Mally--Trully, it may be said, that the croun of
England is upon the downfal, and surely we are all seething in the

pot of revolution, for the scum is mounting uppermost. Last week,
no farther gone than on Mononday, we came to our new house heer in

Baker Street, but it's nather to be bakit nor brewt what I hav sin
syne suffert. You no my way, and that I like a been house, but no

wastrie, and so I needna tell yoo, that we hav had good diners; to
be sure, there was not a meerakle left to fill five baskets every

day, but an abundance, with a proper kitchen of breed, to fill the
bellies of four dumasticks. Howsomever, lo and behold, what was

clecking downstairs. On Saturday morning, as we were sitting at our
breakfast, the Doctor reading the newspapers, who shoud corn intil

the room but Andrew's grum, follo't by the rest, to give us warning
that they were all going to quat our sairvice, becas they were

starvit. I thocht that I would hav fentit cauld deed, but the
Doctor, who is a consiederat man, inquairt what made them starve,

and then there was such an opprobrious cry about cold meet and bare
bones, and no beer. It was an evendoun resurection--a rebellion

waur than the forty-five. In short, Miss Mally, to make a leettle
of a lang tail, they would have a hot joint day and day about, and a

tree of yill to stand on the gauntress for their draw and drink,
with a cock and a pail; and we were obligated to evacuate to their

terms, and to let them go to their wark with flying colors; so you
see how dangerous it is to live among this piple, and their noshans

of liberty.
You will see by the newspapers that ther's a lection going on for

parliament. It maks my corruption to rise to hear of such doings,
and if I was a government as I'm but a woman, I woud put them doon

with the strong hand, just to be revenged on the proud stomaks of
these het and fou English.

We have gotten our money in the pesents put into our name; but I
have had no peese since, for they have fallen in price three eight

parts, which is very near a half, and if they go at this rate, where
will all our legacy soon be? I have no goo of the pesents; so we

are on the look-out for a landed estate, being a shure thing.
Captain Saber is still sneking after Rachel, and if she were awee

perfited in her accomplugments, it's no saying what might happen,
for he's a fine lad, but she's o'er young to be the heed of a

family. Howsomever, the Lord's will maun be done, and if there is
to be a match, she'll no have to fight for gentility with a

straitent circumstance.
As for Andrew, I wish he was weel settlt, and we have our hopes that

he's beginning to draw up with Miss Argent, who will have, no doobt,
a great fortune, and is a treasure of a creeture in herself, being

just as simple as a lamb; but, to be sure, she has had every
advantage of edication, being brought up in a most fashonible

boarding-school.
I hope you have got the box I sent by the smak, and that you like

the patron of the goon. So no more at present, but remains, dear
Miss Mally, your sinsaire friend,

JANET PRINGLE.
"The box," said Miss Mally, "that Mrs. Pringle speaks about came

last night. It contains a very handsome present to me and to Miss
Bell Tod. The gift to me is from Mrs. P. herself, and Miss Bell's

from Rachel; but that ettercap, Becky Glibbans, is flying through
the town like a spunky, mislikening the one and misca'ing the other:

everybody, however, kens that it's only spite that gars her speak.
It's a great pity that she cou'dna be brought to a sense of religion

like her mother, who, in her younger days, they say, wasna to seek
at a clashing."

Mr. Snodgrass expressed his surprise at this account of the faults
of that exemplary lady's youth; but he thought of her holy anxiety

to sift into the circumstances of Betty, the elder's servant,
becoming in one day Mrs. Craig, and the same afternoon sending for

the midwife, and he prudently made no other comment; for the
characters of all preachers were in her hands, and he had the good

fortune to stand high in her favour, as a young man of great
promise. In order, therefore, to avoid any discussion respecting

moral merits, he read the following letter from Andrew Pringle:-
LETTER XXIII

Andrew Pringle, Esq., to the Reverend Charles Snodgrass
My Dear Friend--London undoubtedly affords the best and the worst

specimens of the British character; but there is a certain townish
something about the inhabitants in general, of which I find it

extremely difficult to convey any idea. Compared with the English
of the country, there is apparently very little difference between

them; but still there is a difference, and of no small importance in
a moral point of view. The country peculiarity" target="_blank" title="n.特色；特性；怪癖">peculiarity is like the bloom of

the plumb, or the down of the peach, which the fingers of infancy
cannot touch without injuring; but this felt but not describable

quality of the town character, is as the varnish which brings out
more vividly the colours of a picture, and which may be freely and

even rudely handled. The women, for example, although as chaste in
principle as those of any other community, possess none of that

innocent untempted simplicity, which is more than half the grace of
virtue; many of them, and even young ones too, "in the first

freshness of their virgin beauty," speak of the conduct and vocation
of "the erring sisters of the sex," in a manner that often amazes

me, and has, in more than one instance, excited unpleasant feelings
towards the fair satirists. This moral taint, for I can consider it

as nothing less, I have heard defended, but only by men who are
supposed to have had a large experience of the world, and who,

perhaps, on that account, are not the best judges of female
delicacy. "Every woman," as Pope says, "may be at heart a rake";

but it is for the interests of the domestic affections, which are
the very elements of virtue, to cherish the notion, that women, as

they are physically more delicate than men, are also so morally.
But the absence of delicacy, the bloom of virtue, is not peculiar to

the females, it is characteristic of all the varieties of the
metropolitan mind. The artifices of the medical quacks are things

of universalridicule; but the sin, though in a less gross form,
pervades the whole of that sinistersystem by which much of the

superiority of this vast metropolis is supported. The state of the
periodical press, that great organ of political instruction--the

unruly tongue of liberty, strikingly confirms the justice of this
misanthropic remark.

G- had the kindness, by way of a treat to me, to collect, the other
day, at dinner, some of the most eminent editors of the London

journals. I found them men of talent, certainly, and much more men
of the world, than "the cloistered student from his paling lamp";

but I was astonished to find it considered, tacitly, as a sort of
maxim among them, that an intermediate party was not bound by any

obligation of honour to withhold, farther than his own discretion
suggested, any information of which he was the accidental

depositary, whatever the consequences might be to his informant, or
to those affected by the communication. In a word, they seemed all

to care less about what might be true than what would produce
effect, and that effect for their own particular advantage. It is

impossible to deny, that if interest is made the criterion by which
the confidences of social intercourse are to be respected, the

persons who admit this doctrine will have but little respect for the
use of names, or deem it any reprehensible delinquency to suppress

truth, or to blazon falsehood. In a word, man in London is not
quite so good a creature as he is out of it. The rivalry of