a glimmering light; there was a hierarchy, though schismatical, and fallen from the principles maintained by those great fathers of the church, Sancroft and his brethren; there was a liturgy, though wofully perverted in some of the principal petitions.  But in Scotland it was utter darkness; and, excepting a sorrowful, scattered, and persecuted remnant, the pulpits were abandoned to Presbyterians, and he feared, to sectaries of every description.  It should be his duty to fortify his dear pupil to resist such unhallowed and pernicious doctrines in church and state, as must necessarily be forced at times upon his unwilling ears.

Here he produced two immense folded packets, which appeared each to contain a whole ream of closely-written manuscript.  They had been the labour of the worthy man’s whole life; and never were labour and zeal more absurdly wasted.  He had at one time gone to London, with the intention of giving them to the world, by the medium of a bookseller in Little Britain, well known to deal in such commodities, and to whom he was instructed to address himself in a particular phrase, and with a certain sign, which, it seems, passed at that time current among the initiated Jacobites.  The moment Mr. Pembroke had uttered the shibboleth, with the appropriate gesture, the bibliopolist greeted him, notwithstanding every disclamation, by the title of Doctor, and conveying him into his back shop, after inspecting every possible and impossible place of concealment, he commenced:  ’Eh, doctor!  Well—­all under the rose—­snug—­I keep no holes here even for a Hanoverian rat to hide in.  And, what—­eh! any good news from our friends over the water?—­and how does the worthy king of France?  Or perhaps you are more lately from Rome?—­it must be Rome will do it at last—­the church must light its candle at the old lamp.  Eh! what, cautious?  I like you the better; but no fear.’

Here Mr. Pembroke, with some difficulty, stopped a torrent of interrogations, eked out with signs, nods, and winks; and, having at length convinced the bookseller that he did him too much honour in supposing him an emissary of exiled royalty, he explained his actual business.

The man of books, with a much more composed air, proceeded to examine the manuscripts.  The title of the first was ’A Dissent from Dissenters, or the Comprehension confuted; showing the Impossibility of any Composition between the Church and Puritans, Presbyterians, or Sectaries of any Description; illustrated from the Scriptures, the fathers of the Church, and the soundest Controversial Divines.’  To this work the bookseller positively demurred.  ‘Well meant,’ he said, ’and learned, doubtless; but the time had gone by.  Printed on small pica it would run to eight hundred pages, and could never pay.  Begged therefore to be excused.  Loved and honoured the true church from his soul; and, had it been a sermon on the martyrdom, or any twelve-penny touch—­why I would venture something for