168 THE JOURNEYMAN. 



most engaging and dangerous ? To this I would reply 

 that it is no very honourable safety which is procured by 

 flight. Why should a man who stands upon the ad- 

 vantage ground of truth and virtue yield to the emissaries 

 of vice and error? May he not, as did Gideon the son of 

 Joash, descend into the camp of these Midianites, and 

 listen to the ominous visions which perplex them, or ex- 

 amine the unsocial sophistries upon which they have 

 founded their systems, or expose the futility of the vain 

 beliefs upon which they have founded their hopes ? But 

 to speak in plainer language, there are many advantages 

 which may be derived from a real philosophical perusal 

 of the writings of these men. Many of them were en- 

 dowed with extraordinary talents were the friends of 

 civil liberty, and excelled in the art of reasoning and of 

 writing well. I cannot read the Essays of Hume with- 

 out seeing the necessity of entrenching myself behind the 

 bulwarks of Christianity. All those outworks which are 

 raised in every direction around these bulwarks, some of 

 them by mistaken good, and others by designing bad 

 men, must be forsaken ; for I find I have to do with a 

 foe who can lay bare the designs and demolish the 

 sophistries of the designing priest, who can crush at one 

 blow the boasted illuminations of the enthusiast and 

 fanatic. But when I retire within the citadel of Chris- 

 tianity, I see from it the ingenious philosopher becoming 

 a sophist, the powerful warrior assailing a rock of 

 adamant with a battering-ram of straw .... The Don 

 Juan of Byron is an extraordinary poem, in my opinion 

 ten times more so than the Hudilras of Butler. It dis- 

 plays a thorough knowledge of human character of the 

 crimes and frailties of mankind/ 



' Feb. 20. Since I conversed with you I have toiled 

 and played I have eat and drank, walked and slept ; I 



