for, notwithstanding the contempt cast upon it by those learned
critics the bucks, neither the subject nor the manner in which it was
treated was altogether contemptible.

But there was still another motive which induced Booth to read the
whole letter, and this was, that he presently thought he knew the
hand. He did, indeed, immediately conclude it was Dr Harrison; for the
doctor wrote a very remarkable one, and this letter contained all the
particularities of the doctor's character.

He had just finished a second reading of this letter when the doctor
himself entered the room. The good man was impatient to know the
success of Amelia's stratagem, for he bore towards her all that love
which esteem can create in a good mind, without the assistance of
those selfish considerations from which the love of wives and children
may be ordinarily deduced. The latter of which, Nature, by very subtle
and refined reasoning, suggests to us to be part of our dear selves;
and the former, as long as they remain the objects of our liking, that
same Nature is furnished with very plain and fertile arguments to
recommend to our affections. But to raise that affection in the human
breast which the doctor had for Amelia, Nature is forced to use a kind
of logic which is no more understood by a bad man than Sir Isaac
Newton's doctrine of colours is by one born blind. And yet in reality
it contains nothing more abstruse than this, that an injury is the
object of anger, danger of fear, and praise of vanity; for in the same
simple manner it may be asserted that goodness is the object of love.

The doctor enquired immediately for his child (for so he often called
Amelia); Booth answered that he had left her asleep, for that she had
had but a restless night. "I hope she is not disordered by the