But of all Nonsense, Religious Nonsense is the most nonsensical; so enough, and more than enough, of it. Only, by-the-bye, will you, or can you tell me, my dear Cunningham, why a sectarian turn of mind has always a tendency to narrow and illiberalise the heart? They are orderly; they may be just; nay, I have known them merciful: but still your children of sanctity move among their fellow-creatures with a nostril snuffing putrescence, and a foot spurning filth--in short, with a conceited dignity that your titled Douglases, or any other of your Scottish lordlings of seven centuries standing, display when they accidentally mix among the many-aproned sons of mechanical life. I remember, in my plough-boy days, I could not conceive it possible that a noble lord could be a fool, or a godly man could be a knave. How ignorant are plough-boys!--Nay, I have since discovered that a _godly woman_ may be a--!--But hold--here's t'ye again--this rum is generous Antigua, so a very unfit menstruum for scandal.
Apropos, how do you like, I mean _really_ like, the married life? Ah, my friend! matrimony is quite a different thing from what your love-sick youths and sighing girls take it to be! But marriage, we are told, is appointed by God, and I shall never quarrel with any of His institutions. I am a husband of older standing than you, and shall give you my ideas of the conjugal state, (_en passant_--you know I am no Latinist-is not _conjugal_ derived from _jugum_, a yoke?) Well, then, the scale of good wifeship I divide into ten parts. Good-nature, four; Good Sense, two; Wit, one; Personal Charms, viz., a sweet face, eloquent eyes, fine limbs, graceful carriage (I would add a fine waist too, but that is so soon spoilt, you know), all these, one; as for the other qualities belonging to, or attending on, a wife, such as Fortune, Connections, Education (I mean education extraordinary), Family blood, etc., divide the two remaining degrees among them as you please; only, remember that all these minor properties must be expressed by _fractions,_ for there is not any one of them, in the aforesaid scale, entitled to the dignity of an _integer_.
As for the rest of my fancies and reveries--how I lately met with Miss Lesley Baillie, the most beautiful, elegant woman in the world--how I accompanied her and her father's family fifteen miles on their journey, out of pure devotion, to admire the loveliness of the works of God, in such an unequalled display of them--how, in galloping home at night, I made a ballad on her, of which these two stanzas make a part--