hypocrisy, and with the officers of St. David’s, than you, Sir, must necessarily be; is it possible that any Divines have so degraded themselves as to have excited or abetted these malicious proceedings? Yet, it should be remembered, that a desire of popularity will transform the noblest spirits, as, in the fable, it makes a lion pride himself upon the accomplishments of an ass. The post of “a door-keeper” is little desirable, whatever may be said about it, and the sentiment of the Devil has more admirers: “Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven.” Those who have been most active in the late prosecution, cannot have felt more real regret, than I have myself experienced. _My_ uneasiness (whatever may have been the nature of _theirs_) consisted in a participation in the distresses of those persons, whose private feelings had been so deeply and (as I fear they supposed) cruelly wounded; and in the reflection, that the disgusting subject of human disinterment must be again agitated, commented upon, written upon; a subject which, of all others, whether relating to a necessity or not, ought to be kept profoundly silent, and almost mysteriously secret. Upon this declaration, I proceed to state, that it is one of my objects in the publication of this letter, to make all the reparation I am able to the friends of the late Mrs. Taylor; assuring them, that I sympathize with them in those distresses, which must have arisen from the violence offered to some of the best of feelings, at the same time declaring, that the choice made (so far as I know, and as I believe) was entirely fortuitous, and by no means intended to affect their family particularly. It is my intention, moreover, by this letter, to apologize to the public in general, for certain imprudent conduct which has led to the late lamentable agitation of the public mind. “Nullum numen abest si sit prudentia.” But after this acknowledgment I must be permitted to explain myself, and to show wherein I allow myself to have acted imprudently. To be fairly understood, I must beg permission to say a few words which would otherwise be entirely irrelevant. Having it in prospect to settle in Devon, (solely from certain notions of its warmth and salubrity,) I determined upon Exeter as my place of residence, without any other knowledge of it than that possessed by every Englishman; viz. that it is a large and important city. It was represented to me as a place of enlightened and elegant pursuits, and upon this opinion a recommendation was founded, that I should offer to its resident gentry a course of Anatomical Lectures. In furtherance of this design, my friend, Mr. Wilton Toulmin, the originator of the proposition, held out to me the following very important inducement; that he could at any time purchase a subject from a certain medical school in London. This, from his influence at that school, I did not doubt for a moment. After some months I proposed my Lectures, by advertisement and by