[562] Hume describes how in 1753 (? 1750) the Pretender, on his secret visit to London, ’came to the house of a lady (who I imagined to be Lady Primrose) without giving her any preparatory information; and entered the room where she had a pretty large company with her, and was herself playing at cards.  He was announced by the servant under another name.  She thought the cards would have dropped from her hands on seeing him.  But she had presence enough of mind to call him by the name he assumed.’  J.H.  Burton’s Hume, ii. 462.  Mr. Croker (Croker’s Boswell, p. 331) prints an autograph letter from Flora Macdonald which shows that Lady Primrose in 1751 had lodged L627 in a friend’s hands for her behoof, and that she had in view to add more.

[563] It seems that the Pretender was only once in London, and that it was in 1750. Ante, i. 279, note 5.  I suspect that 1759 is Boswell’s mistake or his printer’s.  From what Johnson goes on to say it is clear that George II. was in Germany at the time of the Prince’s secret visit.  He was there the greater part of 1750, but not in 1753 or 1759.  In 1750, moreover, ‘the great army of the King of Prussia overawed Hanover.’  Smollett’s England, iii. 297.  This explains what Johnson says about the King of Prussia stopping the army in Germany.

[564] See ante, iv. 165, 170.

[565] COMMENTARIES on the laws of England, book 1. chap. 3.  BOSWELL.

[566] B. VI. chap. 3.  Since I have quoted Mr. Archdeacon Paley upon one subject, I cannot but transcribe, from his excellent work, a distinguished passage in support of the Christian Revelation.—­After shewing, in decent but strong terms, the unfairness of the indirect attempts of modern infidels to unsettle and perplex religious principles, and particularly the irony, banter, and sneer, of one whom he politely calls ‘an eloquent historian,’ the archdeacon thus expresses himself:—­

’Seriousness is not constraint of thought; nor levity, freedom.  Every mind which wishes the advancement of truth and knowledge, in the most important of all human researches, must abhor this licentiousness, as violating no less the laws of reasoning than the rights of decency.  There is but one description of men to whose principles it ought to be tolerable.  I mean that class of reasoners who can see little in christianity even supposing it to be true.  To such adversaries we address this reflection.—­Had Jesus Christ delivered no other declaration than the following, “The hour is coming in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth,—­they that have done well [good] unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation,” [St. John v. 25] he had pronounced a message of inestimable importance, and well worthy of that splendid apparatus of prophecy and miracles with which his mission was introduced and attested:—­a