Note 184 — THURSDAY, AUGUST 19.
Reading edition
In The Rambler, No. 82, Johnson makes a virtuoso write:—'I often lamented that I was not one of that happy generation who demolished the convents and monasteries, and broke windows by law.' He had in 1754 'viewed with indignation the ruins of the Abbeys of Oseney and Rewley near Oxford.' Ante, i. 273. Smollett, in Humphry Clinker (Letrer of Aug. 8), describes St. Andrews as 'the skeleton of a venerable city.'