His Abyssinian tale hath many beauties, yet the characters are insipid, the narrative ridiculous, the moral invisible, and the reader disappointed. '_Intercepting interruptions_ and _volant_ animals' are above common comprehension. The Newtonian system had reached the happy valley; for its inhabitants talk of the earth's _attraction_ and the body's _gravity_[25]. To tell a tale is not the Doctor's most happy talent; he can hardly be proud of his success in _that_ species of fiction. Speaking of Scotland, he says, 'The variety of sun and shade is here[26] utterly unknown. There is no tree for either shelter or timber. The oak and the thorn _is_ equally a stranger. They have neither wood for palisades, nor thorns for hedges. A tree may be shown in Scotland as a horse in Venice[27].' An _English_ reader may, perhaps, require to be told, that there are thousands of trees of all ages and dimensions, within a mile of Edinburgh; that there are numerous and thriving plantations in Fife; and that, as some of them overshadow part of the post-road to St Andrew's, the Doctor must have been blinder than darkness, if he did not see them. But why would any man travel at all, who is determined to believe nothing which he _hears_, and who, at the same time, cannot _see_ six inches beyond his nose? 'We are not very sure that the bull is ever _without horns_, though we have been told that such bulls there are[28].' Who are the _we_ he refers to? and who but the Doctor ever started so weak a question? His ignorance is below ridicule. It is true, that, in England, bulls which _want_ horns are less numerous than husbands who _have_ them; yet such bulls are always to be found. For the performance which contains this profound remark, this _agglomerated ramification of torpid imbecility_, be it known, that _we_ have paid six shillings, which verifies the proverb, that _a fool and his money are soon parted_. 'We found a small church, clean to a degree unknown in any other part of Scotland[29]!' Here the fact _may_ be true; but Dr Johnson _must_ be ignorant whether it is or not. It is certain, that some buildings of that kind in Edinburgh, are no high specimens of national taste; but, if the Rambler would insinuate that this want of elegance is general, we must impeach his veracity; we must remind him, that there are gloomy, dirty, and unwholesome cathedrals in _both_ countries; and we must lament, that, when entering Scotland, the Doctor _left every thing behind him but_ HIMSELF.