decent moral conduct, give us hope we shall not be plunged into riot, and lost in debauchery and libertinism, which, if it were to take place at Court, would soon affect a rich and luxurious nation, and the profaneness and immorality of Charles the Second’s days would, from the more prosperous state of our nation at present, be outdone.... “I will now thank your Lordship for your letter and the Highland compositions. Your remarks go far in staggering my faith as to their authenticity. I think they convince me the poems cannot be as ancient as pretended. It seems to me possible, that some great bard might from uncertain and broken tradition, and from the scattered songs of former bards, form an epic poem, which might not agree with history. The pillars in the hall of Fingal struck me at first reading; but I imagined they might not refer to polished marble pillars, but to smooth lime or beech trees which one may suppose to have been used as supporters in very rude buildings, and which would look smooth and shapely to one not used to polished marble; and I imagine convenience taught the use of such supporters long before they were introduced as ornaments.... I hear Lord Marchmont says our old Highland bard is a modern gentleman of his acquaintance; if it is so, we have a living Poet who may dispute the _pas_ on Parnassus with Pindar and the greatest of the ancients, and I honour him for carrying the Muses into the country and letting them step majestic over hills, mountains and rivers instead of tamely walking in the Park or Piccadilly.... The Bishop of Ossory tells me Mr. Macpherson receives an £100 per annum subscription while he stays in the Highlands to translate the poems; if he is writing them, he should have a thousand at least.... “Dr. Gregory, in talking of Mr. Hume, said he had a great respect for your Lordship. The Dialogue of Bayle and Locke could not be agreeable to him.... Dr. Gregory says Mr. Hume told him he spent an evening with me at Mr. Ramsay’s, and he had received very favourable impressions of me, and, I find, said much more of me than I deserve. The Doctor told him I was not of his freethinking system, but Mr. Hume thinks that no fault in a woman.... Dr. Monsey is revenging my coquetry with Lord Bath by an assiduous courtship of Miss Talbot, but he can no more be untrue to me than the needle to the pole!” [Page heading: “GAZETTE EXTRAORDINARY”] The same day, October 31, Lord Lyttelton writes from his house in Hill Street-- “MADONNA,