Answered two letters—­one, answer to a schoolboy, who writes himself Captain of Giggleswick School (a most imposing title), entreating the youngster not to commence editor of a magazine to be entitled the “Yorkshire Muffin,” I think, at seventeen years old; second, to a soldier of the 79th, showing why I cannot oblige him by getting his discharge, and exhorting him rather to bear with the wickedness and profanity of the service, than take the very precarious step of desertion.  This is the old receipt of Durandarte—­Patience, cousin, and shuffle the cards;[65] and I suppose the correspondents will think I have been too busy in offering my counsel where I was asked for assistance.

A third rogue writes to tell me—­rather of the latest, if the matter was of consequence—­that he approves of the first three volumes of the H[eart] of Midlothian, but totally condemns the fourth.  Doubtless he thinks his opinion worth the sevenpence sterling which his letter costs.  However, authors should be reasonably well pleased when three-fourths of their work are acceptable to the reader.  The knave demands of me in a postscript, to get back the sword of Sir W[illiam] Wallace from England, where it was carried from Dumbarton Castle.  I am not Master-General of the Ordnance, that I know.  It was wrong, however, to take away that and Mons Meg.  If I go to town this spring, I will renew my negotiation with the Great Duke for recovery of Mons Meg.

There is no theme more awful than to attempt to cast a glance among the clouds and mists which hide the broken extremity of the celebrated bridge of Mirza.[66] Yet, when every day brings us nearer that termination, one would almost think that our views should become clearer, as the regions we are approaching are brought nigher.  Alas! it is not so:  there is a curtain to be withdrawn, a veil to be rent, before we shall see things as they really are.  There are few, I trust, who disbelieve the existence of a God; nay, I doubt if at all times, and in all moods, any single individual ever adopted that hideous creed, though some have professed it.  With the belief of a Deity, that of the immortality of the soul and of the state of future rewards and punishments is indissolubly linked.  More we are not to know; but neither are we prohibited from our attempts, however vain, to pierce the solemn sacred gloom.  The expressions used in Scripture are doubtless metaphorical, for penal fires and heavenly melody are only applicable to bodies endowed with senses; and, at least till the period of the resurrection of the body, the spirits of men, whether entering into the perfection of the just, or committed to the regions of punishment, are incorporeal.  Neither is it to be supposed that the glorified bodies which shall arise in the last day will be capable of the same gross indulgences with which they are now solaced.  That the idea of Mahomet’s paradise is inconsistent with the purity of our heavenly religion will be readily granted;