53 
Mr. James Edward Smith to his Father. 
Honoured Sir, Edinburgh, August 6, 1782. 
I left Carlisle on Tuesday night at eight o'clock, 
and arrived at Moffat next morning by five. This is 
a neat pleasant town, where there is a sulphureous 
spring much resorted to: the town is at present full 
of genteel company, and they have dancing almost 
every night. Herel found Dr. Walker, as I expected: 
he has a good house and noble garden here, which 
he will leave in November, as he will then remove 
to a place three miles only from Edinburgh, where 
he has got a living in exchange for Moffat. I spent 
that day and the next very happily with the Doctor: 
he is a very agreeable man, the life and soul of 
Wickliffe seems to have been in religion, what Lord Bacon was in 
philosophy ; that is, the first light, and of the most amazing bright- 
ness. Huss was a man of uncommon virtue and great parts; 
Jerome,of more refined abilities and greater learning ; and Zisca,a 
most extraordinary military reformer, and of talents and capacity 
to war, equal to any man that we read of in history. So is his 
history one of the most uncommon, and the fullest of great events 
to be met with. He was the founder of the city of Tabor in 
Bohemia on the river Maldaw, which was his strong retreat, and 
from which his sect was called Taborites. 
“It would be wrong to omit the mention of Lord Cobham, who 
is a shining example of a military man in a very high station and 
of eminent abilities, converted from the irregularities of such a 
life and the errors of popery, by the force of the truths delivered 
by Wickliffe, and most heroically maintaining his virtue and his 
truth at the expense of his life. His magnanimous and pathetic 
behaviour at his examination and tryal before the convocation, 
afford a most interesting, noble, and moving scene.”—From 
Mr. Smith's common-place book. 
