nihilated in that country, it will be time enough to confider, whether toleration in all cafes ought to have fo extenfive an operation here. Till then, we fee a clear diftinction between perfonal liberty, and political truft.

We wish not to embark in any theological disputes; and should we ever be inadvertently betrayed into the flighteft appearance of "illiberality in matters of religion," we hope there will never be wanting judicious and difpaffionate friends, who, like our present correfpondents, may remind us of our cenforial dignity, and of what the world expects from the candor of the Monthly Reviewers, the old and ftaunch advocates for religious liberty, in the moft catholic and unconfined sense of the words.

t‡t The letter figned B. is refpectfully acknowledged. Every well-intended admonition will always be thankfully received by us. Such intimations are, no doubt, friendly; and may prove useful, in guarding against inadvertencies. But, with refpect to our correfpondent's charge of inconsistency, we here enter our standing proteft against any comparison of the fentiments of a critic who wrote in remote periods of our journal, with those of the prefent writers. To fuppofe that a living Reviewer is obliged to maintain, or to be, in any measure, cramped by, the opinions of his predeceffors, would be placing him in a ftate of flavery, the most abject that can be imagined-the SLAVERY OF THE MIND! that very ftate from which it has ever been the great endeavour of the Monthly Reviewers, as far as the influence of their publications might extend, to fet mankind free: and of this, their FAVOURITE OBJECT, it is hoped they will never lose fight.

Ist The new royal folio edition of Smellie's original plates, with additions by Dr. Hamilton, has not, to our knowledge, been advertised in London; confequently we have not yet feen it. Our Edinburgh correfpondent however may depend on its being noticed in our Journal when we have procured the book.

S+S We have perufed the monitory reflexions' of HUMA NUS, with fatisfaction. The plan of our Review would not permit our infertion of them; but we have endeavoured to extend their circulation, through the channel of a respectable Evening Paper.

* We have, alas! been too often reminded, that the office of a Reviewer (whatever may become of his works) is by no means an exmption from Mortality.

We

We thank Cantabrigienfis for furnishing another authority for the verb heir, in the following letter to the Reviewers: "Gentlemen,

"Although your obfervations on the uncouthness of the verb " heir," as mentioned in the Review for Auguft, page 156, are undoubtedly true, yet the following paffage, which has fince occurred to me, and had escaped your notice, together with Dryden's authority, will more fatisfactorily justify its use on particular occafions.

"From him defcended good Eunæus heir'd
The glorious gift; and, for Lycaon spar'd,
To brave Patroclus gave the rich reward."

I am,

Pope's II. 23. v. 871, &c.

Your conftant Reader,

CANTABRIGIENSIS."

tit The letter from the author of a Critique on the poetical Effays of the Rev. William Atkinson, is acknowledged. The writer feems to have imagined that Mr. A.'s poems have not yet been noticed in our Review; but he will find a brief account of them in our No. for September laft, p. 242. He appears, therefore, to have been premature in the note, p. 8. of his publication.

Mr. Swayne requests that we would give our reafons for saying, p. 468, in our December Review, that the Box, Birch, and Alder, are not of the fame natural order with the Mulberry'When a Botanift fpeaks of natural orders, he uses that denomination, in contra-diftinction to all other orders that are artificial. The natural orders were firft pointed out in the Philofophia Botanica. They have been published in many fubfequent works, and, lately, by the Litchfield Society. Mr. Swayne is perfectly right in faying, that the Box, Birch, and Alder, are in the fame clafs and order, in the Linnean Syftem, with the Mulberry? and, had he thus expreffed himself, we should then have fpared the obfervation. The Box is of the 38th natural order, Tricocca; the Birch and Alder of the 50th, Amentacea; and the Mulberry of the 52d, Scabrida.

END OF VOL. LXXVII.

BOUCESTER