From the Napier charter-chest, "by a species of retributive justice," there has recently risen up in judgment against him _a letter of his own, proving his own character_. It is, I regret, too long for insertion in your pages _in extenso_, but no abstract can give an adequate idea of its contents. It is, in fact, so mean and abject as almost to overpass belief. I must refer your readers to Mr. Mark Napier's _Montrose and the Covenanters_, vol. i. pp. 13-21. All the reflections of the Whig historian Dalrymple, all the severe remarks of Swift and Lord Dartmouth, as to Burnet's dishonesty and malice, would now seem well bestowed upon a writer so despicable and faithless, and the credit of whose statements, when resting _on his own sole authority_, must be totally destroyed. This curious epistle was written, in an agony of fear, on a Sunday morning, during the memorable crisis of the Rye-House plot, and while Lord Russell was on the eve of his execution. Addressed to Lord Halifax, it was intended to meet the eye of the King. It evidently proves the writer's want of veracity in divers subsequent statements in his history. The future bishop also protests that he never will accept of any preferment, promises never more to oppose the Court, and intimates an intention to paint the King in the fairest light--"if I ever live to finish what I am about;" _i.e._ the _History of his Own Time_, in which the villanous portrait of Charles afterwards appeared. "Here, then," says Mr. Napier, "is Burnet _Redivivus_; and now the bishop may call Montrose a coward or what he likes, and persuade the world of his own super-eminent moral courage, if he can. For our own part, after reading the above letter, we do not believe one malicious word of what Burnet has uttered in the _History of his Own Time_ against Charles I. and Montrose; and he has therein said nothing about them that is not malicious. We do not believe that the apology for Hamilton, which he has given to the world in the memoirs of that House, is by any means so truthful an exposition of the character of that mysterious marquis as the letters and papers entrusted to the bishop enabled him to give. We feel thoroughly persuaded that Bishop Burnet, in that work, as well as in the _History of his Own Time_, reversed the golden maxim of Cicero, '_Ne quid falsi dicere audeat, ne quid veri non audeat_.' The marvellous of himself, and the malicious of others, we henceforth altogether disbelieve, when resting on the sole authority of the bishop's historical record, and will never listen to when retailed traditionally and at second-hand from him. Finally, we do believe the truth of the anecdote, that the bishop, 'after a debate in the House of Lords, usually went home and altered everybody's character as they had pleased or displeased him that day;' and that he kept weaving in secret