Note 898 — TUESDAY, OCTOBER 19.

Had our Tour produced nothing else but this sublime passage, the world must have acknowledged that it was not made in vain. The present respectable President of the Royal Society was so much struck on reading it, that he clasped his hands together, and remained for some time in an attitude of silent admiration, BOSWELL. Boswell again quotes this passage (which is found in Johnson's Works, ix. 145), ante, iii. 173. The President was Sir Joseph Banks, Johnson says in Rasselas, ch. xi:—'That the supreme being may be more easily propitiated in one place than in another is the dream of idle superstition; but that some places may operate upon our own minds in an uncommon manner is an opinion which hourly experience will justify. He who supposes that his vices may be more successfully combated in Palestine will, perhaps, find himself mistaken, yet he may go thither without folly; he who thinks they will be more freely pardoned dishonours at once his reason and religion.'