read with vague inquisitiveness, they continue to read with growing indifference, and at last, with secret satisfaction, they cease to read. The candid are not pleased, the prejudiced are not convinced, the indolent are wearied, and the impertinent or the malevolent alone are gratified. Even the members of those petty cabals, which are sometimes formed in consequence of petty disputes among their acquaintance, cannot long retain their importance or their ardour. When they tell the tale which has often been told before, and tell it with fresh vehemence, unaccompanied by fresh evidence, they soon find themselves unable to allure a hearer, or to provoke an opponent. Parties of this kind start up like a bubble, suddenly and noisily, and like a bubble too, they dissolve and pass away, without notice and without effect.

By that countless and harmless swarm of scribblers who amuse themselves, and readers equally idle with themselves, by paragraphs upon my opinions in politics, my peculiarities in dress, or my love of antient literature, I have too much firmness, and indeed too much understanding, to be offended for one moment. My character, I am told, presents a wide front of attack to these puny assailants, and so long as they abstained from the poisoned weapons of malevolence, I often smiled, as no doubt I often shall smile again at the light and feeble shafts of ridicule. But when a person shews a fixed determination to inflict, if he can, some deep

and deadly wound upon my moral feelings, I will not refrain from doing that justice which I alike owe to him and to myself. The regard which I have generally, and justly paid to literary reputation, must, in this one instance give way to the sense I entertain of personal honour. "Omnino probabiliora sunt quæ lacessiti dicimus quàm quæ priores."-Vide Cicero de Orat. lib. ii.

A

LETTER

FROM IRENOPOLIS

TO THE

INHABITANTS OF ELEUTHERO POLIS;

OR,

A SERIOUS ADDRESS

ΤΟ

THE DISSENTERS OF BIRMINGHAM.