to fawn upon power; he labours under certain insurmountable disabilities for becoming a candidate for its favour: he dares to contradict its opinion and to condemn its usages in the most important article of all. The world will always look cold and askance upon him; and therefore he may defy it with less fear of its censures. The Presbyterian is said to be sour: he is not therefore over-complaisant—
"Or if severe in thought,
"The love he bears to virtue is in fault."
Dissenters are the safest partizans, and the steadiest friends. Indeed they are almost the only people who have an idea of an abstract attachment to a cause or to individuals, from a sense of fidelity, independently of prosperous or adverse circumstances, and in spite of opposition. No patriotism, no public spirit, not reared in that inclement sky and harsh soil, in "the hortius siccus of dissent," will generally last: it will either bend in the storm or droop in the sunshine. Non ex quovis ligno fit Mercurius. You cannot engraft a medlar on a crab-apple. A thorough-bred Dissenter will never make an accomplished Courtier. The antithesis of a Presbyterian Divine of the old school is a Poet-laureate of the new. We have known instances of both; and give it decidedly in favour of old-fashioned honesty over newfangled policy.
We have known instances of both. The one we would willingly forget; the others we hope never to forget, nor can we ever. A Poet-laureate is an excrescence even in a Court; he is doubly nugatory as a Courtier and a Poet; he is a refinement upon insignificance, and a superfluous piece of supererogation. But a Dissenting Minister is a character not so easily to be dispensed with, and whose place cannot well be supplied. It is the fault of sectarianism that it tends to scepticism; and so relaxes the springs of moral courage and patience into levity and indifference. The prospect of future rewards and punishments is a useful set-off against the immediate distribution of places and
