Dr Adam Ferguson, and others. Dr Carlyle, who sometimes witnessed those rehearsals, expresses, in his Memoirs, his surprise and admiration at the acting of Mrs Ward, who performed Lady Randolph. Digges was the Douglas of the piece, his supposed father was played by Hayman, and Glenalvon, by Love; actors of very considerable merit, and afterwards of established reputation on the London stage. But Mrs Ward's beauty (for she was very beautiful,) and feeling, tutored with the most zealous anxiety by the author and his friends, charmed and affected the audience as much, perhaps, as has ever been accomplished by the very superior actresses of after times. I was then a boy, but of an age to be sometimes admitted as a sort of page to the tea-drinking parties of Edinburgh. I have a perfect recollection of the strong sensation which Douglas excited among its inhabitants. The men talked of the rehearsals; the ladies repeated what they had heard of the story; some had procured, as a great favour, copies of the most striking passages, which they recited at the earnest request of the company. I was present at the representation; the applause was enthusiastic; but a better criterion of its merits was the tears of the audience, which the tender part of the drama drew forth unsparingly. "The town," says Dr Carlyle, (and I can vouch how truly,)" was in an uproar of exulta

tion, that a Scotsman should write a tragedy of the first rate, and that its merits were first submitted to them."

But the most remarkable circumstance attending its representation, was the clerical contest which it excited, and the proceedings of the Church of Scotland with regard to it. Religious zeal, and a jealousy of any infringement on the established doctrines of the Presbyterian Kirk, seem to have been more than usually predominant at the time of the appearance of Douglas. About this time was published, " England's Alarm,” a complaint of the gross impiety and atheism of the times, applicable to Great Britain in general, but particularly referring to the corruptions of religion in Scotland; among which were specified the breach of the National Covenant, the subsistence of Episcopacy, and the adoption of Episcopal forms of worship, which the author severely condemns, such as kneeling at receiving the sacrament, ecclesiastical habits, (not moral habits, but the dress and costume of the church,) the Liturgy, &c. On the other hand, Lord Kames had just published a small metaphysical treatise, entitled, " Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion." This was supposed by some of the clergy to contain principles and positions derogatory to the Christain faith, and the rules of morality contained in the Gospel. A zealous clergyman, Mr George Anderson, minister

of Chirnside, gave in a complaint against the book, (its author was then unknown,) and the bookseller by whom it was published, to the Presbytery of Edinburgh, praying that reverend judicature to call before them the bookseller, in order to his giving up the author, that the Presbytery might pronounce against him such censure as the writing and publishing so wicked a book might seem to deserve. Very able legal answers were given in to this complaint by the counsel for the bookseller, Mr, afterwards Sir John, Dalrymple, and Mr Ferguson of Pitfour; and a pamphlet was written in the author's defence, and in his name, but generally supposed to be the production of Dr Hugh Blair. In both, the natural tendency of Lord Kames's work was contended to be altogether the reverse of what the complaint supposed; and for the particular doctrines laid down in the tract, the counsel for the bookseller, and the writer of the pamphlet in behalf of the author, produced very high authority, in numberless quotations from the fathers of the church, and the most eminent as well as orthodox divines. To these defences, Mr Anderson gave in a reply, under the title of "The Complaint Verified." On the 28th January, 1757, the Presbytery pronounced its sentence in the following terms: "The Presbytery, having resumed the consideration of Mr Anderson's complaint, the majority came to the resolution of dismissing it, on the

ground of the author's having, in his explanatory pamphlet, explained and accounted for the unguarded expressions in his Essays, and expressed his regard for religion; and to prevent the Presbytery's entering into so abstruse and metaphysical a question."

It is a singular enough coincidence with some church proceedings, about fifty years after, that Dr Blair, in defence of his friend's Essays, expressly states, that one purpose of those Essays was to controvert what appeared to him to be a very dangerous doctrine, held by the author of certain other Essays, then recently published, (Mr David Hume,) that, by no principle in human nature, can we discover any real connexion between cause and effect. According to Dr Blair, the object of one of Lord Kames's Essays is to shew, that though such connexion is not discoverable by reason, and by a process of argumentative induction, there is, nevertheless, a real and obvious connexion which every one intuitively perceives between an effect and its cause. We feel and acknowledge, that every effect implies a cause; that nothing can begin to exist without a cause of its existence. "We are not left," says the author of the Vindication, "to gather our belief of a Deity, from inferences and conclusions deduced through intermediate steps, many or few. How unhappy would it be, for the great bulk of mankind, if this were necessary! The Deity has dis

played himself to all men by an internal sense common to all, the ignorant as well as the learned; we have the same intuitive perception of Him that we have of our own existence."

In such a temper of the public mind, it was not wonderful if the appearance of a tragedy, written by a Presbyterian clergyman, should scandalize and provoke the Church of Scotland. That party, opposed to Mr Home and his friends, were excited to the severity of their proceedings on this occasion, not only by the conscientious objections which they entertained to such compositions, but perhaps a little by the opposition which then prevailed so keenly between the different parties in the church, and in the supreme judicature of the church, the General Assembly.

The Presbytery of Edinburgh published a solemn admonition on the subject, beginning with expressions of deep regret at the growing irreligion of the times, particularly the neglect of the Sabbath;* but calculated chiefly to warn all persons

*Yet at that time in Edinburgh there was much more regard to the sacredness of Sunday than now. I was then a boy, and I well remember the reverential silence of the streets, and the tip-toe kind of fear with which, when any accident prevented my attendance on church, I used to pass through them. What would the Presbytery have said now, when, in the time of public worship on a Sunday, not only are the public walks crowded, but idle and blackguard boys