Another letter from another stranger, equally animated by a sincere interest in the undertaking,
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though producing, for the moment, a sensation as warm of resentment, as that just mentioned had excited of gratitude, was next received by the Doctor.
It was written with the most profuse praise of the Musical Tours; but with a view to admonish the Tourist to revise the account drawn up of the expenses, the bad roads, the bad living, the bad carriages, and other various faults and deficiencies upon which the travels in Germany had expatiated: all which this new correspondent was convinced were related from misinformation, or misconception; as he had himself visited the same spots without witnessing any such imperfections. He conjured the Doctor, therefore, to set right these statements in his next edition; which single amendment would render the journal of his Tour in Germany the most delightful now in print: and, with wishes sincerely fervent for all honour and all success to the business, he signed himself, Dr. Burney’s true admirer,
John Hutton,
Of Lindsey House, Chelsea.

Dr. Burney, who felt that his veracity had that unsullied honour that, like the virtue of the wife of
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Cæsar, must not be suspected, read this letter with the amazement, and answered it with the indignation, of offended integrity. He could not, he said, be the dupe of misrepresentation, for he had related only what he had experienced. His narrative was all personal, all individual; and he had documents, through letters, bills, and witnesses in fellow-travellers, and in friends or inhabitants of the several places described, that could easily be produced to verify his assertions: all which he was most able and willing to call forth; not so much, perhaps, for the satisfaction of Mr. Hutton, who so hastily had misjudged him, as for his own; in certifying, upon proof, how little he had deserved the mistrust of his readers, as being capable of giving hearsay intelligence to the public.
Mr. Hutton instantly, and in a tone of mingled alarm and penitence, wrote a humble, yet energetic apology for his letter; earnestly entreating the Doctor’s pardon for his officious precipitancy; and appealing to Dr. Hawkesworth, whom he called his excellent friend, to intercede in his favour. He took shame, he added, to himself, for not having weighed the subject more chronologically before he wrote his strictures; as he had now made out that
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his hasty animadversion was the unreflecting result of the different periods in which the Doctor and himself had travelled; his own German visit having taken place previously to the devastating war between the King of Prussia and the Empress Queen, which had since laid waste the whole country in which, unhappily, it had been waged.
Dr. Burney accepted with pleasure this conceding explanation. The good offices of Dr. Hawkesworth were prompt to accelerate a reconciliation and an interview; and Mr. Hutton, with even tears of eager feelings to repair an unjust accusation, hastened to Queen-Square. Dr. Burney, touched by his ingenuous contrition, received him with open arms. And, from that moment, he became one of the Doctor’s most reverential and most ardent admirers.
He made frequent visits to the house; conceived the most friendly regard for the whole family; and abruptly, and with great singularity, addressed a letter, that was as original in ideas as in diction, to one of the daughters,[39] with whom he demanded permission of the Doctor to correspond. And in
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a postscript, that was nearly as long as the epistle, to obviate, probably, any ambiguous notions from his zeal—though he was already a grey and wrinkled old man—he acquainted his new young correspondent that he had been married four-and-thirty years.
Mr. Hutton was one of the sect of the Moravians, or Hurnhuters, and resided at Lindsey House, Chelsea, as secretary to the united brethren. He was author, also, of an Essay towards giving some just ideas of t............