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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Consolations in Travel, by Humphrey Davy,
+Edited by Henry Morley
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Consolations in Travel
+       or, the Last Days of a Philosopher
+
+
+Author: Humphrey Davy
+
+Editor: Henry Morley
+
+Release Date: February 28, 2006  [eBook #17882]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONSOLATIONS IN TRAVEL***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1889 Cassell & Company edition by David Price, email
+ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+
+
+CONSOLATIONS IN TRAVEL;
+OR, THE LAST DAYS OF A PHILOSOPHER.
+
+
+BY SIR HUMPHRY DAVY, BART.,
+_Late President of the Royal Society_.
+
+CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED:
+_LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK & MELBOURNE_. 1889
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+Humphry Davy was born at Penzance, in Cornwall, on the 17th of December,
+1778, and died at Geneva on the 29th of May, 1829, at the age of fifty.
+He was a philosopher who turned knowledge to wisdom; he was one of the
+foremost of our English men of science; and this book, written when he
+was dying, which makes Reason the companion of Faith, shows how he passed
+through the light of earth into the light of heaven.
+
+His father had a small patrimony at Varfell, in Ludgvan.  His mother had
+lost in early childhood both her parents within a few hours of each
+other, and had been adopted by John Tonkin, an eminent surgeon in
+Penzance, to whom, therefore, so to speak, Humphry Davy became grandson
+by adoption.  There were five such grandchildren--Humphry, the elder of
+two boys, the other boy being named John, and three girls.
+
+At a preparatory school and at the Penzance Grammar School Humphry Davy
+was a noticeable boy.  He read eagerly and showed great quickness of
+imagination, delighted in legends, when eight years old told stories to
+his companions, and as a boy wrote verse.  There was a Quaker saddler who
+made for himself an electrical machine and mechanical models, in which
+young Davy took keen interest, and from that saddler, Robert Dunkin, came
+the first impulse towards experiments in science.  At fifteen Davy was
+placed for further education at a school in Truro.  A year later his
+father died, and John Tonkin apprenticed him, on the 10th of February,
+1795, to Dr. Borlase, a surgeon in large practice at Penzance.  Medical
+practitioners in those days dispensed their own medicines, and the
+inquiring mind of this young apprentice being let loose upon a store-room
+of chemicals, experimental chemistry became his favourite pursuit.  His
+grandfather, by adoption, allowed him to fit up a garret as a laboratory,
+notwithstanding the fears of the household that "This boy, Humphry, will
+blow us all into the air."
+
+Activity and originality of mind, with a persistent habit of inquiry and
+experiment, brought Davy friends who could appreciate and help him.  When
+Dr. Beddoes, of Bristol, was examining the Cornish coast, in 1798, he
+came upon young Humphry Davy, was told of researches made by him, and
+urged to engage him as laboratory assistant in a Pneumatic Institution
+that he was then establishing in Bristol.  Davy went in October, 1798,
+then in his twentieth year; but his good friend, and grandfather by
+adoption, had set his heart upon Humphry's becoming an eminent burgeon,
+and even altered his will when his boy yielded to the temptation of a
+laboratory for research.  Men also know something of the trouble of the
+hen who has a chance duckling in her brood, and sees that contumacious
+chicken run into the water deaf to all the warnings of her love.
+
+At Bristol Humphry Davy came into companionship with Coleridge and
+Southey, who were then also at the outset of their career, and there are
+poems of his in the Poetical Anthology then published by Southey.  But at
+the same time Davy contributed papers on "Heat, Light, and the
+Combinations of Light," on "Phos-Oxygen and its Combinations," and on
+"The Theory of Respiration," to a volume of West Country Collections,
+that filled more than half the volume.  He was experimenting then on
+gases and on galvanism, and one day by experiment upon himself, in the
+breathing of carburetted hydrogen, he almost put an end to his life.
+
+In 1799 Count Rumford was founding the Royal Institution, and its home in
+Albemarle Street was then bought for it.  The first lecturer appointed
+was in bad health, and in 1801 he was obliged to resign.  Young Davy was
+now known to men of science for the number and freshness of his
+experiments, and for the substantial value of his chemical discoveries.
+It was resolved by the managers, in July, 1801, that Humphry Davy be
+appointed Assistant-Lecturer in Chemistry, Director of the Chemical
+Laboratory, and assistant-editor of the journals of the Royal
+Institution.  His first remuneration was a room in the house, coals and
+candles, and 100 pounds a year.  Count Rumford held out the prospect of a
+professorship with 300 pounds a year, and the certainty of full support
+in the use of the laboratory for his own private research.  His age then
+was twenty-three.  He at once satisfied men of science and amused people
+of fashion.  His energy was unbounded; there was a fascination in his
+personal character and manner.  He was a genial and delightful lecturer,
+and his inventive genius was continually finding something new.  A first
+suggestion of the process of photography was dropped incidentally among
+the records of researches that attracted more attention.  Davy had been
+little more than a year at the Royal Institution when he was made its
+Professor of Chemistry.  After another year he was made a Fellow.  Dr.
+Paris, his biographer, says that "the enthusiastic admiration which his
+lectures obtained is at this period scarcely to be imagined.  Men of the
+first rank and talent--the literary and the scientific, the practical,
+the theoretical--blue-stockings and women of fashion, the old and the
+young, all crowded--eagerly crowded--the lecture-room."  At the beginning
+of the year 1805 his salary was raised to 400 pounds a year.  In May of
+that year the Royal Society awarded to him the Copley Medal.  Within the
+next two years he was elected Secretary of the Royal Society.  Since 1800
+he had been advancing knowledge by experiments with galvanism.  The Royal
+Institution raised a special fund to place at his disposal a more
+powerful galvanic battery than any that had been constructed.  The fame
+of his discoveries spread over Europe.
+
+The Institute of France gave Davy the Napoleon Prize of three thousand
+francs for the best experiments in galvanism.  Dublin, in 1810, paid Davy
+four hundred guineas for some lectures upon his discoveries.  The Farming
+Society of Ireland gave him 750 pounds for six lectures on chemistry
+applied to agriculture.  In the following year he received more than a
+thousand pounds for two courses of lectures at Dublin, and was sent home
+with the honorary degree of LL.D.  In April, 1812, he was knighted,
+resigned his professorship at the Royal Institution, and "in order more
+strongly to mark the high sense of his merits" he was elected Honorary
+Professor of Chemistry.  In the same month Davy married a young and rich
+widow, who had charmed all Edinburgh by her beauty and her wit.  Two
+months after marriage Sir Humphry Davy dedicated to his wife his
+"Elements of Chemical Philosophy."  In March, 1813, he published his
+"Elements of Agricultural Chemistry."  He travelled abroad, and was
+received with honour by the chief men of science in all places that he
+visited.  When, at Pavia, he first met Volta: he found that Volta had put
+on full-dress to receive him.
+
+In August, 1815, Davy's attention was drawn to the loss of life by
+explosions of fire-damp, and by the end of the year he had devised his
+safety-lamp.  The coal owners subscribed 1,500 pounds for a testimonial,
+gave him also a dinner and a service of plate.  In October, 1818, he was
+made a baronet.  In November, 1820, he was elected President of the Royal
+Society.
+
+His next researches were chiefly on electro-magnetism and the protection
+of the copper sheathing on ships' bottoms.  At the end of 1826 his health
+failed seriously.  He went to Italy; resigned, in July, 1827, the
+Presidency of the Royal Society; came back to England, longing for "the
+fresh air of the mountains;" wrote and published his "Salmonia, or Days
+of Fly-fishing."  In the spring of 1828 he left England again.  He was at
+Rome in the winter of 1829, still engaged in quiet research, and it was
+then that he wrote his "Consolations in Travel; or, the Last Days of a
+Philosopher."  His wife, who shone in London society, did not go with him
+upon this last journey, but travelled day and night to reach him when
+word came to her and to his brother John, who was a physician, that he
+had again been struck with palsy and was dying.  That stroke of palsy
+followed immediately upon the finishing of the book now in the reader's
+hand.  Davy lived to see again his wife and brother, rallied enough to
+leave Rome with them, and had got as far as Geneva on the 28th of May,
+1829.  He died in the next night.
+
+H. M.
+
+
+
+
+A NOTE,
+
+
+_Prefixed to the First Edition, by Sir Humphry Davy's Brother_.
+
+As is stated in the Preface which follows, this work was composed during
+a period of bodily indisposition;--it was concluded at the very moment of
+the invasion of the Author's last illness.  Had his life been prolonged,
+it is probable that some additions and some changes would have been made.
+The editor does not consider himself warranted to do more than give to
+the world a faithful copy, making only a few omissions and a few verbal
+alterations.  The characters of the persons of the dialogue were intended
+to be ideal, at least in great part such they should be considered by the
+reader; and, it is to be hoped, that the incidents introduced, as well as
+the persons, will be viewed only as subordinate and subservient to the
+sentiments and doctrines.  The dedication, it may be specially noticed,
+is the author's own, and in the very words dictated by him, at a time
+when he had lost the power of writing except with extreme difficulty,
+owing to the paralytic attack, although he retained in a very remarkable
+manner all his mental faculties unimpaired and unclouded.
+
+JOHN DAVY.
+_London_,
+_January 6th_, 1830.
+
+TO THOMAS POOLE, ESQ. OF NETHER STOWEY
+IN REMEMBRANCE OF
+THIRTY YEARS OF CONTINUED AND FAITHFUL
+FRIENDSHIP.
+
+
+
+
+AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
+
+
+Salmonia was written during the time of a partial recovery from a long
+and dangerous illness.  The present work was composed immediately after,
+under the same unfavourable and painful circumstances, and at a period
+when the constitution of the Author suffered from new attacks.  He has
+derived some pleasure and some consolation, when most other sources of
+consolation and pleasure were closed to him, from this exercise of his
+mind; and he ventures to hope that these hours of sickness may be not
+altogether unprofitable to persons in perfect health.
+
+_Rome_,
+_February_ 21, 1829.
+
+
+
+
+DIALOGUE THE FIRST.  THE VISION.
+
+
+I passed the autumn and the early winter of the years 18-- and 18-- at
+Rome.  The society was, as is usual in that metropolis of the old
+Christian world, numerous and diversified.  In it there were found many
+intellectual foreigners and amongst them some distinguished Britons, who
+had a higher object in making this city their residence than mere
+idleness or vague curiosity.  Amongst these my countrymen, there were two
+gentlemen with whom I formed a particular intimacy and who were my
+frequent companions in the visits which I made to the monuments of the
+grandeur of the old Romans and to the masterpieces of ancient and modern
+art.  One of them I shall call Ambrosio: he was a man of highly
+cultivated taste, great classical erudition, and minute historical
+knowledge.  In religion he was of the Roman Catholic persuasion; but a
+Catholic of the most liberal school, who in another age might have been
+secretary to Ganganelli.  His views upon the subjects of politics and
+religion were enlarged; but his leaning was rather to the power of a
+single magistrate than to the authority of a democracy or even of an
+oligarchy.  The other friend, whom I shall call Onuphrio, was a man of a
+very different character.  Belonging to the English aristocracy, he had
+some of the prejudices usually attached to birth and rank; but his
+manners were gentle, his temper good, and his disposition amiable.  Having
+been partly educated at a northern university in Britain, he had adopted
+views in religion which went even beyond toleration and which might be
+regarded as entering the verge of scepticism.  For a patrician he was
+very liberal in his political views.  His imagination was poetical and
+discursive, his taste good and his tact extremely fine, so exquisite,
+indeed, that it sometimes approached to morbid sensibility, and disgusted
+him with slight defects and made him keenly sensible of small perfections
+to which common minds would have been indifferent.
+
+In the beginning of October on a very fine afternoon I drove with these
+two friends to the Colosaeum, a monument which, for the hundredth time
+even, I had viewed with a new admiration; my friends partook of my
+sentiments.  I shall give the conversation which occurred there in their
+own words.  Onuphrio said, "How impressive are those ruins!--what a
+character do they give us of the ancient Romans, what magnificence of
+design, what grandeur of execution!  Had we not historical documents to
+inform us of the period when this structure was raised and of the
+purposes for which it was designed, it might be imagined the work of a
+race of giants, a Council Chamber for those Titans fabled to have warred
+against the gods of the pagan mythology.  The size of the masses of
+travertine of which it is composed is in harmony with the immense
+magnitude of the building.  It is hardly to be wondered at that a people
+which constructed such works for their daily sports, for their usual
+amusements, should have possessed strength, enduring energy, and
+perseverance sufficient to enable them to conquer the world.  They appear
+always to have formed their plans and made their combinations as if their
+power were beyond the reach of chance, independent of the influence of
+time, and founded for unlimited duration--for eternity!"
+
+Ambrosio took up the discourse of Onuphrio, and said, "The aspect of this
+wonderful heap of ruins is so picturesque that it is impossible to regret
+its decay; and at this season of the year the colours of the vegetation
+are in harmony with those of the falling ruins, and how perfectly the
+whole landscape is in tone!  The remains of the palace of the Caesars and
+of the golden halls of Nero appear in the distance, their gray and
+tottering turrets and their moss-stained arches reposing, as it were,
+upon the decaying vegetation: and there is nothing that marks the
+existence of life except the few pious devotees, who wander from station
+to station in the arena below, kneeling before the cross, and
+demonstrating the triumph of a religion, which received in this very spot
+in the early period of its existence one of its most severe persecutions,
+and which, nevertheless, has preserved what remains of that building,
+where attempts were made to stifle it almost at its birth; for, without
+the influence of Christianity, these majestic ruins would have been
+dispersed or levelled to the dust.  Plundered of their lead and iron by
+the barbarians, Goths, and Vandals, and robbed even of their stones by
+Roman princes, the Barberini, they owe what remains of their relics to
+the sanctifying influence of that faith which has preserved for the world
+all that was worth preserving, not merely arts and literature but
+likewise that which constitutes the progressive nature of intellect and
+the institutions which afford to us happiness in this world and hopes of
+a blessed immortality in the next.  And, being of the faith of Rome, I
+may say, that the preservation of this pile by the sanctifying effect of
+a few crosses planted round it, is almost a miraculous event.  And what a
+contrast the present application of this building, connected with holy
+feelings and exalted hopes, is to that of the ancient one, when it was
+used for exhibiting to the Roman people the destruction of men by wild
+beasts, or of men, more savage than wild beasts, by each other, to
+gratify a horrible appetite for cruelty, founded upon a still more
+detestable lust, that of universal domination!  And who would have
+supposed, in the time of Titus, that a faith, despised in its
+insignificant origin, and persecuted from the supposed obscurity of its
+founder and its principles, should have reared a dome to the memory of
+one of its humblest teachers, more glorious than was ever framed for
+Jupiter or Apollo in the ancient world, and have preserved even the ruins
+of the temples of the pagan deities, and have burst forth in splendour
+and majesty, consecrating truth amidst the shrines of error, employing
+the idols of the Roman superstition for the most holy purposes and rising
+a bright and constant light amidst the dark and starless night which
+followed the destruction of the Roman empire!"
+
+Onuphrio now resumed the discourse.  He said, "I have not the same
+exalted views on the subject which our friend Ambrosio has so eloquently
+expressed.  Some little of the perfect state in which these ruins exist
+may have been owing to causes which he has described; but these causes
+have only lately begun to operate, and the mischief was done before
+Christianity was established at Rome.  Feeling differently on these
+subjects, I admire this venerable ruin rather as a record of the
+destruction of the power of the greatest people that ever existed, than
+as a proof of the triumph of Christianity; and I am carried forward in
+melancholy anticipation to the period when even the magnificent dome of
+St. Peter's will be in a similar state to that in which the Colosaeum now
+is, and when its ruins may be preserved by the sanctifying influence of
+some new and unknown faith; when, perhaps, the statue of Jupiter, which
+at present receives the kiss of the devotee, as the image of St. Peter,
+may be employed for another holy use, as the personification of a future
+saint or divinity; and when the monuments of the papal magnificence shall
+be mixed with the same dust as that which now covers the tombs of the
+Caesars.  Such, I am sorry to say, is the general history of all the
+works and institutions belonging to humanity.  They rise, flourish, and
+then decay and fall; and the period of their decline is generally
+proportional to that of their elevation.  In ancient Thebes or Memphis
+the peculiar genius of the people has left us monuments from which we can
+judge of their arts, though we cannot understand the nature of their
+superstitions.  Of Babylon and of Troy the remains are almost extinct;
+and what we know of these famous cities is almost entirely derived from
+literary records.  Ancient Greece and Rome we view in the few remains of
+their monuments; and the time will arrive when modern Rome shall be what
+ancient Rome now is; and ancient Rome and Athens will be what Tyre or
+Carthage now are, known only by coloured dust in the desert, or coloured
+sand, containing the fragments of bricks or glass, washed up by the wave
+of a stormy sea.  I might pursue these thoughts still further, and show
+that the wood of the cross, or the bronze of the statue, decay as quickly
+as if they had not been sanctified; and I think I could show that their
+influence is owing to the imagination, which, when infinite time is
+considered, or the course of ages even, is null and its effect
+imperceptible; and similar results occur, whether the faith be that of
+Osiris, of Jupiter, of Jehovah, or of Jesus."
+
+To this Ambrosio replied, his countenance and the tones of his voice
+expressing some emotion: "I do not think, Onuphrio, that you consider
+this question with your usual sagacity or acuteness; indeed, I never hear
+you on the subject of religion without pain and without a feeling of
+regret that you have not applied your powerful understanding to a more
+minute and correct examination of the evidences of revealed religion.  You
+would then, I think, have seen, in the origin, progress, elevation,
+decline and fall of the empires of antiquity, proofs that they were
+intended for a definite end in the scheme of human redemption; you would
+have found prophecies which have been amply verified; and the foundation
+or the ruin of a kingdom, which appears in civil history so great an
+event, in the history of man, in his religious institutions, as
+comparatively of small moment; you would have found the establishment of
+the worship of one God amongst a despised and contemned people as the
+most important circumstance in the history of the early world; you would
+have found the Christian dispensation naturally arising out of the
+Jewish, and the doctrines of the pagan nations all preparatory to the
+triumph and final establishment of a creed fitted for the most
+enlightened state of the human mind and equally adapted to every climate
+and every people."
+
+To this animated appeal of Ambrosio, Onuphrio replied in the most
+tranquil manner and with the air of an unmoved philosopher:--"You mistake
+me, Ambrosio, if you consider me as hostile to Christianity.  I am not of
+the school of the French Encyclopaedists, or of the English infidels.  I
+consider religion as essential to man, and belonging to the human mind in
+the same manner as instincts belong to the brute creation, a light, if
+you please of revelation to guide him through the darkness of this life,
+and to keep alive his undying hope of immortality: but pardon me if I
+consider this instinct as equally useful in all its different forms, and
+still a divine light through whatever medium or cloud of human passion or
+prejudice it passes.  I reverence it in the followers of Brahmah, in the
+disciple of Mahomet, and I wonder at in all the variety of forms it
+adopts in the Christian world.  You must not be angry with me that I do
+not allow infallibility to your Church, having been myself brought up by
+Protestant parents, who were rigidly attached to the doctrines of
+Calvin."
+
+I saw Ambrosio's countenance kindle at Onuphrio's explanation of his
+opinions, and he appeared to be meditating an angry reply.  I endeavoured
+to change the conversation to the state of the Colosaeum, with which it
+had begun.  "These ruins," I said, "as you have both observed, are highly
+impressive; yet when I saw them six years ago they had a stronger effect
+on my imagination; whether it was the charm of novelty, or that my mind
+was fresher, or that the circumstances under which I saw them were
+peculiar, I know not, but probably all these causes operated in affecting
+my mind.  It was a still and beautiful evening in the end of May; the
+last sunbeams were dying away in the western sky and the first moonbeams
+shining in the eastern; the bright orange tints lighted up the ruins and
+as it were kindled the snows that still remained on the distant
+Apennines, which were visible from the highest accessible part of the
+amphitheatre.  In this glow of colouring, the green of advanced spring
+softened the grey and yellow tints of the decaying stones, and as the
+lights gradually became fainter, the masses appeared grander and more
+gigantic; and when the twilight had entirely disappeared, the contrast of
+light and shade in the beams of the full moon and beneath a sky of the
+brightest sapphire, but so highly illuminated that only Jupiter and a few
+stars of the first magnitude were visible, gave a solemnity and
+magnificence to the scene which awakened the highest degree of that
+emotion which is so properly termed the sublime.  The beauty and the
+permanency of the heavens and the principle of conservation belonging to
+the system of the universe, the works of the Eternal and Divine
+Architect, were finely opposed to the perishing and degraded works of man
+in his most active and powerful state.  And at this moment so humble
+appeared to me the condition of the most exalted beings belonging to the
+earth, so feeble their combinations, so minute the point of space, and so
+limited the period of time in which they act, that I could hardly avoid
+comparing the generations of man, and the effects of his genius and
+power, to the swarms of luceoli or fire-flies which were dancing around
+me and that appeared flitting and sparkling amidst the gloom and darkness
+of the ruins, but which were no longer visible when they rose above the
+horizon, their feeble light being lost and utterly obscured in the
+brightness of the moonbeams in the heavens."
+
+Onuphrio said: "I am not sorry that you have changed the conversation.
+You have given us the history of a most interesting recollection and well
+expressed a solemn though humiliating feeling.  In such moments and among
+such scenes it is impossible not to be struck with the nothingness of
+human glory and the transiency of human works.  This, one of the greatest
+monuments on the face of the earth, was raised by a people, then its
+masters, only seventeen centuries ago; in a few ages more it will be but
+as dust, and of all the testimonials of the vanity or power of man,
+whether raised to immortalise his name, or to contain his decaying bones
+without a name, no one is known to have a duration beyond what is
+measured by the existence of a hundred generations; and it is only to
+multiply centuple for instance the period of time, and the memorials of a
+village and the monuments of a country churchyard may be compared with
+those of an empire and the remains of the world."
+
+Ambrosio, to whom the conversation seemed disagreeable, put us in mind of
+an engagement we had made to spend the evening at the conversazione of a
+celebrated lady, and proposed to call the carriage.  The reflections
+which the conversation and the scene had left in my mind little disposed
+me for general society.  I requested them to keep their engagement, and
+said I was resolved to spend an hour amidst the solitude of the ruins,
+and desired them to send back the carriage for me.  They left me,
+expressing a hope that my poetical or melancholy fancy might not be the
+occasion of a cold, and wished me the company of some of the spectres of
+the ancient Romans.
+
+When I was left alone, I seated myself in the moonshine, on one of the
+steps leading to the seats supposed to have been occupied by the
+patricians in the Colosaeum at the time of the public games.  The train
+of ideas in which I had indulged before my friends left me continued to
+flow with a vividness and force increased by the stillness and solitude
+of the scene; and the full moon has always a peculiar effect on these
+moods of feeling in my mind, giving to them a wildness and a kind of
+indefinite sensation, such as I suppose belong at all times to the true
+poetical temperament.  It must be so, I thought to myself; no new city
+will rise again out of the double ruins of this; no new empire will be
+founded upon these colossal remains of that of the old Romans.  The
+world, like the individual, flourishes in youth, rises to strength in
+manhood, falls into decay in age; and the ruins of an empire are like the
+decrepit frame of an individual, except that they have some tints of
+beauty which nature bestows upon them.  The sun of civilisation arose in
+the East, advanced towards the West, and is now at its meridian; in a few
+centuries more it will probably be seen sinking below the horizon even in
+the new world, and there will be left darkness only where there is a
+bright light, deserts of sand where there were populous cities, and
+stagnant morasses where the green meadow or the bright cornfield once
+appeared.  I called up images of this kind in my imagination.  "Time," I
+said, "which purifies, and as it were sanctifies the mind, destroys and
+brings into utter decay the body; and, even in nature, its influence
+seems always degrading.  She is represented by the poets as eternal in
+her youth, but amongst these ruins she appears to me eternal in her age,
+and here no traces of renovation appear in the ancient of days."  I had
+scarcely concluded this ideal sentence when my reverie became deeper, the
+ruins surrounding me appeared to vanish from my sight, the light of the
+moon became more intense, and the orb itself seemed to expand in a flood
+of splendour.  At the same time that my visual organs appeared so
+singularly affected, the most melodious sounds filled my ear, softer yet
+at the same time deeper and fuller than I had ever heard in the most
+harmonious and perfect concert.  It appeared to me that I had entered a
+new state of existence, and I was so perfectly lost in the new kind of
+sensation which I experienced that I had no recollections and no
+perceptions of identity.  On a sudden the music ceased, but the brilliant
+light still continued to surround me, and I heard a low but extremely
+distinct and sweet voice, which appeared to issue from the centre of it.
+The sounds were at first musical like those of a harp, but they soon
+became articulate, as if a prelude to some piece of sublime poetical
+composition.  "You, like all your brethren," said the voice, "are
+entirely ignorant of every thing belonging to yourselves, the world you
+inhabit, your future destinies, and the scheme of the universe; and yet
+you have the folly to believe you are acquainted with the past, the
+present, and the future.  I am an intelligence somewhat superior to you,
+though there are millions of beings as much above me in power and in
+intellect as man is above the meanest and weakest reptile that crawls
+beneath his feet; yet something I can teach you: yield your mind wholly
+to the influence which I shall exert upon it, and you shall be undeceived
+in your views of the history of the world, and of the system you
+inhabit."  At this moment the bright light disappeared, the sweet and
+harmonious voice, which was the only proof of the presence of a superior
+intelligence, ceased; I was in utter darkness and silence, and seemed to
+myself to be carried rapidly upon a stream of air, without any other
+sensation than that of moving quickly through space.  Whilst I was still
+in motion, a dim and hazy light, which seemed like that of twilight in a
+rainy morning, broke upon my sight, and gradually a country displayed
+itself to my view covered with forests and marshes.  I saw wild animals
+grazing in large savannahs, and carnivorous beasts, such as lions and
+tigers, occasionally disturbing and destroying them; I saw naked savages
+feeding upon wild fruits, or devouring shell-fish, or fighting with clubs
+for the remains of a whale which had been thrown upon the shore.  I
+observed that they had no habitations, that they concealed themselves in
+caves, or under the shelter of palm trees, and that the only delicious
+food which nature seemed to have given to them was the date and the cocoa-
+nut, and these were in very small quantities and the object of
+contention.  I saw that some few of these wretched human beings that
+inhabited the wide waste before my eyes, had weapons pointed with flint
+or fish-bone, which they made use of for destroying birds, quadrupeds, or
+fishes, that they fed upon raw; but their greatest delicacy appeared to
+be a maggot or worm, which they sought for with great perseverance in the
+buds of the palm.  When I had cast my eyes on the varied features of this
+melancholy scene, which was now lighted by a rising sun, I heard again
+the same voice which had astonished me in the Colosaeum, and which
+said,--"See the birth of Time!  Look at man in his newly created state,
+full of youth and vigour.  Do you see aught in this state to admire or
+envy?"  As the last words fell on my ear, I was again, as before, rapidly
+put in motion, and I seemed again resistless to be hurried upon a stream
+of air, and again in perfect darkness.  In a moment, an indistinct light
+again appeared before my eyes and a country opened upon my view which
+appeared partly wild and partly cultivated; there were fewer woods and
+morasses than in the scene which I had just before seen; I beheld men who
+were covered with the skins of animals, and who were driving cattle to
+enclosed pastures; I saw others who were reaping and collecting corn,
+others who were making it into bread; I saw cottages furnished with many
+of the conveniences of life, and a people in that state of agricultural
+and pastoral improvement which has been imagined by the poets as
+belonging to the golden age.  The same voice, which I shall call that of
+the Genius, said, "Look at these groups of men who are escaped from the
+state of infancy: they owe their improvement to a few superior minds
+still amongst them.  That aged man whom you see with a crowd around him
+taught them to build cottages; from that other they learnt to domesticate
+cattle; from others to collect and sow corn and seeds of fruit.  And
+these arts will never be lost; another generation will see them more
+perfect; the houses, in a century more, will be larger and more
+convenient; the flocks of cattle more numerous; the corn-fields more
+extensive; the morasses will be drained, the number of fruit-trees
+increased.  You shall be shown other visions of the passages of time, but
+as you are carried along the stream which flows from the period of
+creation to the present moment, I shall only arrest your transit to make
+you observe some circumstances which will demonstrate the truths I wish
+you to know, and which will explain to you the little it is permitted me
+to understand of the scheme of the universe."  I again found myself in
+darkness and in motion, and I was again arrested by the opening of a new
+scene upon my eyes.  I shall describe this scene and the others in the
+succession in which they appeared before me, and the observations by
+which they were accompanied in the voice of the wonderful being who
+appeared as my intellectual guide.  In the scene which followed that of
+the agricultural or pastoral people, I saw a great extent of cultivated
+plains, large cities on the sea-shore, palaces--forums and temples
+ornamenting them; men associated in groups, mounted on horses, and
+performing military exercises; galleys moved by oars on the ocean; roads
+intersecting the country covered with travellers and containing carriages
+moved by men or horses.  The Genius now said, "You see the early state of
+civilisation of man; the cottages of the last race you beheld have become
+improved into stately dwellings, palaces, and temples, in which use is
+combined with ornament.  The few men to whom, as I said before, the
+foundations of these improvements were owing, have had divine honours
+paid to their memory.  But look at the instruments belonging to this
+generation, and you will find that they are only of brass.  You see men
+who are talking to crowds around them, and others who are apparently
+amusing listening groups by a kind of song or recitation; these are the
+earliest bards and orators; but all their signs of thought are oral, for
+written language does not yet exist."  The next scene which appeared was
+one of varied business and imagery.  I saw a man, who bore in his hands
+the same instruments as our modern smiths, presenting a vase, which
+appeared to be made of iron, amidst the acclamations of an assembled
+multitude engaged in triumphal procession before the altars dignified by
+the name of Apollo at Delphi; and I saw in the same place men who carried
+rolls of papyrus in their hands and wrote upon them with reeds containing
+ink made from the soot of wood mixed with a solution of glue.  "See," the
+Genius said, "an immense change produced in the condition of society by
+the two arts of which you here see the origin; the one, that of rendering
+iron malleable, which is owing to a single individual, an obscure Greek;
+the other, that of making thought permanent in written characters, an art
+which has gradually arisen from the hieroglyphics which you may observe
+on yonder pyramids.  You will now see human life more replete with power
+and activity."  Again, another scene broke upon my vision.  I saw the
+bronze instruments, which had belonged to the former state of society,
+thrown away; malleable iron converted into hard steel, this steel applied
+to a thousand purposes of civilised life; I saw bands of men who made use
+of it for defensive armour and for offensive weapons; I saw these iron-
+clad men, in small numbers subduing thousands of savages, and
+establishing amongst them their arts and institutions; I saw a few men on
+the eastern shores of Europe, resisting, with the same materials, the
+united forces of Asia; I saw a chosen band die in defence of their
+country, destroyed by an army a thousand times as numerous; and I saw
+this same army, in its turn, caused to disappear, and destroyed or driven
+from the shores of Europe by the brethren of that band of martyred
+patriots; I saw bodies of these men traversing the sea, founding
+colonies, building cities, and wherever they established themselves,
+carrying with them their peculiar arts.  Towns and temples arose
+containing schools, and libraries filled with the rolls of the papyrus.
+The same steel, such a tremendous instrument of power in the hands of the
+warrior, I saw applied, by the genius of the artist, to strike forms even
+more perfect than those of life out of the rude marble; and I saw the
+walls of the palaces and temples covered with pictures, in which
+historical events were portrayed with the truth of nature and the poetry
+of mind.  The voice now awakened my attention by saying, "You have now
+before you the vision of that state of society which is an object of
+admiration to the youth of modern times, and the recollections of which,
+and the precepts founded on these recollections, constitute an important
+part of your education.  Your maxims of war and policy, your taste in
+letters and the arts, are derived from models left by that people, or by
+their immediate imitators, whom you shall now see."  I opened my eyes,
+and recognised the very spot in which I was sitting when the vision
+commenced.  I was on the top of an arcade under a silken canopy, looking
+down upon the tens of thousands of people who were crowded in the seats
+of the Colosaeum, ornamented with all the spoils that the wealth of a
+world can give; I saw in the arena below animals of the most
+extraordinary kind, and which have rarely been seen living in modern
+Europe--the giraffe, the zebra, the rhinoceros, and the ostrich from the
+deserts of Africa beyond the Niger, the hippopotamus from the Upper Nile,
+and the royal tiger and the gnu from the banks of the Ganges.  Looking
+over Rome, which, in its majesty of palaces and temples, and in its
+colossal aqueducts bringing water even from the snows of the distant
+Apennines, seemed more like the creation of a supernatural power than the
+work of human hands; looking over Rome to the distant landscape, I saw
+the whole face, as it were, of the ancient world adorned with miniature
+images of this splendid metropolis.  Where the Roman conquered, there he
+civilised; where he carried his arms, there he fixed likewise his
+household gods; and from the deserts of Arabia to the mountains of
+Caledonia there appeared but one people, having the same arts, language,
+and letters--all of Grecian origin.  I looked again, and saw an entire
+change in the brilliant aspect of this Roman world--the people of
+conquerors and heroes was no longer visible; the cities were filled with
+an idle and luxurious population; those farms which had been cultivated
+by warriors, who left the plough to take the command of armies, were now
+in the hands of slaves; and the militia of freemen were supplanted by
+bands of mercenaries, who sold the empire to the highest bidder.  I saw
+immense masses of warriors collecting in the north and east, carrying
+with them no other proofs of cultivation but their horses and steel arms;
+I saw these savages everywhere attacking this mighty empire, plundering
+cities, destroying the monuments of arts and literature, and, like wild
+beasts devouring a noble animal, tearing into pieces and destroying the
+Roman power.  Ruin, desolation, and darkness were before me, and I closed
+my eyes to avoid the melancholy scene.  "See," said the Genius, "the
+melancholy termination of a power believed by its founders invincible,
+and intended to be eternal.  But you will find, though the glory and
+greatness belonging to its military genius have passed away, yet those
+belonging to the arts and institutions, by which it adorned and dignified
+life, will again arise in another state of society."  I opened my eyes
+again, and I saw Italy recovering from her desolation--towns arising with
+governments almost upon the model of ancient Athens and Rome, and these
+different small states rivals in arts and arms; I saw the remains of
+libraries, which had been preserved in monasteries and churches by a holy
+influence which even the Goth and Vandal respected, again opened to the
+people; I saw Rome rising from her ashes, the fragments of statues found
+amidst the ruins of her palaces and imperial villas becoming the models
+for the regeneration of art; I saw magnificent temples raised in this
+city become the metropolis of a new and Christian world, and ornamented
+with the most brilliant masterpieces of the arts of design; I saw a
+Tuscan city, as it were, contending with Rome for pre-eminence in the
+productions of genius, and the spirit awakened in Italy spreading its
+influence from the South to the North.  "Now," the Genius said, "society
+has taken its modern and permanent aspect.  Consider for a moment its
+relations to letters and to arms as contrasted with those of the ancient
+world."  I looked, and saw, that in the place of the rolls of papyrus,
+libraries were now filled with books.  "Behold," the Genius said, "the
+printing-press; by the invention of Faust the productions of genius are,
+as it were, made imperishable, capable of indefinite multiplication, and
+rendered an unalienable heritage of the human mind.  By this art,
+apparently so humble, the progress of society is secured, and man is
+spared the humiliation of witnessing again scenes like those which
+followed the destruction of the Roman Empire.  Now look to the warriors
+of modern times; you see the spear, the javelin, the shield, and the
+cuirass are changed for the musket and the light artillery.  The German
+monk who discovered gunpowder did not meanly affect the destinies of
+mankind; wars are become less bloody by becoming less personal; mere
+brutal strength is rendered of comparatively little avail; all the
+resources of civilisation are required to maintain and move a large army;
+wealth, ingenuity, and perseverance become the principal elements of
+success; civilised man is rendered in consequence infinitely superior to
+the savage, and gunpowder gives permanence to his triumph, and secures
+the cultivated nations from ever being again overrun by the inroads of
+millions of barbarians.  There is so much identity of feature in the
+character of the two or three centuries that are just passed, that I wish
+you only to take a very transient view of the political and military
+events belonging to them.  You will find attempts made by the chiefs of
+certain great nations to acquire predominance and empire; you will see
+those attempts, after being partially successful, resisted by other
+nations, and the balance of power, apparently for a moment broken, again
+restored.  Amongst the rival nations that may be considered as forming
+the republic of modern Europe, you will see one pre-eminent for her
+maritime strength and colonial and commercial enterprise, and you will
+find she retains her superiority only because it is favourable to the
+liberty of mankind.  But you must not yet suffer the vision of modern
+Europe to pass from your eyes without viewing some other results of the
+efforts of men of genius, which, like those of gunpowder and the press,
+illustrate the times to which they belong, and form brilliant epochs in
+the history of the world.  If you look back into the schools of
+regenerated Italy, you will see in them the works of the Greek masters of
+philosophy; and if you attend to the science taught in them, you will
+find it vague, obscure, and full of erroneous notions.  You will find in
+this early period of improvement branches of philosophy even applied to
+purposes of delusion; the most sublime of the departments of human
+knowledge--astronomy--abused by impostors, who from the aspect of the
+planetary world pretended to predict the fortunes and destinies of
+individuals.  You will see in the laboratories alchemists searching for a
+universal medicine, an elixir of life, and for the philosopher's stone,
+or a method of converting all metals into gold; but unexpected and useful
+discoveries you will find, even in this age, arise amidst the clouds of
+deception and the smoke of the furnace.  Delusion and error vanish and
+pass away, and truths seized upon by a few superior men become permanent,
+and the property of an enlightening world.  Amongst the personages who
+belong to this early period, there are two whom I must request you to
+notice--one an Englishman, who pointed out the paths to the discovery of
+scientific truths, and the other a Tuscan, who afforded the happiest
+experimental illustrations of the speculative views of his brother in
+science.  You will see academies formed a century later in Italy, France,
+and Britain, in which the sciences are enlarged by new and varied
+experiments, and the true system of the universe developed by an
+illustrious Englishman taught and explained.  The practical results of
+the progress of physics, chemistry, and mechanics, are of the most
+marvellous kind, and to make them all distinct would require a comparison
+of ancient and modern states: ships that were moved by human labour in
+the ancient world are transported by the winds; and a piece of steel,
+touched by the magnet, points to the mariner his unerring course from the
+old to the new world; and by the exertions of one man of genius, aided by
+the resources of chemistry, a power, which by the old philosophers could
+hardly have been imagined, has been generated and applied to almost all
+the machinery of active life; the steam-engine performs not only the
+labour of horses, but of man, by combinations which appear almost
+possessed of intelligence; waggons are moved by it, constructions made,
+vessels caused to perform voyages in opposition to wind and tide, and a
+power placed in human hands which seems almost unlimited.  To these novel
+and still extending improvements may be added others, whish, though of a
+secondary kind, yet materially affect the comforts of life, the
+collecting from fossil materials the elements of combustion, and applying
+them so as to illuminate, by a single operation, houses, streets, and
+even cities.  If you look to the results of chemical arts you will find
+new substances of the most extraordinary nature applied to various novel
+purposes; you will find a few experiments in electricity leading to the
+marvellous result of disarming the thunder-cloud of its terrors, and you
+will see new instruments created by human ingenuity, possessing the same
+powers as the electrical organs of living animals.  To whatever part of
+the vision of modern times you cast your eyes you will find marks of
+superiority and improvement, and I wish to impress upon you the
+conviction that the results of intellectual labour or of scientific
+genius are permanent and incapable of being lost.  Monarchs change their
+plans, governments their objects, a fleet or an army effect their purpose
+and then pass away; but a piece of steel toached by the magnet preserves
+its character for ever, and secures to man the dominion of the trackless
+ocean.  A new period of society may send armies from the shores of the
+Baltic to those of the Euxine, and the empire of the followers of Mahomet
+may be broken in pieces by a northern people, and the dominion of the
+Britons in Asia may share the fate of that of Tamerlane or Zengiskhan;
+but the steam-boat which ascends the Delaware or the St. Lawrence will be
+continued to be used, and will carry the civilisation of an improved
+people into the deserts of North America and into the wilds of Canada.  In
+the common history of the world, as compiled by authors in general,
+almost all the great changes of nations are confounded with changes in
+their dynasties, and events are usually referred either to sovereigns,
+chiefs, heroes, or their armies, which do, in fact, originate from
+entirely different causes, either of an intellectual or moral nature.
+Governments depend far more than is generally supposed upon the opinion
+of the people and the spirit of the age and nation.  It sometimes happens
+that a gigantic mind possesses supreme power and rises superior to the
+age in which he is born, such was Alfred in England and Peter in Russia,
+but such instances are very rare; and, in general, it is neither amongst
+sovereigns nor the higher classes of society that the great improvers or
+benefactors of mankind are to be found.  The works of the most
+illustrious names were little valued at the times when they were
+produced, and their authors either despised or neglected; and great,
+indeed, must have been the pure and abstract pleasure resulting from the
+exertion of intellectual superiority and the discovery of truth and the
+bestowing benefits and blessings upon society, which induced men to
+sacrifice all their common enjoyments and all their privileges as
+citizens to these exertions.  Anaxagoras, Archimedes, Roger Bacon,
+Galileo Galilei, in their deaths or their imprisonments, offer instances
+of this kind, and nothing can be more striking than what appears to have
+been the ingratitude of men towards their greatest benefactors; but
+hereafter, when you understand more of the scheme of the universe, you
+will see the cause and the effect of this, and you will find the whole
+system governed by principles of immutable justice.  I have said that in
+the progress of society all great and real improvements are perpetuated;
+the same corn which four thousand years ago was raised from an improved
+grass by an inventor worshipped for two thousand years in the ancient
+world under the name of Ceres, still forms the principal food of mankind;
+and the potato, perhaps the greatest benefit that the Old has derived
+from the New World, is spreading over Europe, and will continue to
+nourish an extensive population when the name of the race by whom it was
+first cultivated in South America is forgotten.
+
+"I will now call your attention to some remarkable laws belonging to the
+history of society, and from the consideration of which you will be able
+gradually to develop the higher and more exalted principles of being.
+There appears nothing more accidental than the sex of an infant, yet take
+any great city or any province and you will find that the relations of
+males and females are unalterable.  Again, a part of the pure air of the
+atmosphere is continually consumed in combustion and respiration; living
+vegetables emit this principle during their growth; nothing appears more
+accidental than the proportion of vegetable to animal life on the surface
+of the earth, yet they are perfectly equivalent, and the balance of the
+sexes, like the constitution of the atmosphere, depends upon the
+principles of an unerring intelligence.  You saw in the decline of the
+Roman empire a people enfeebled by luxury, worn out by excess, overrun by
+rude warriors; you saw the giants of the North and East mixing with the
+pigmies of the South and West.  An empire was destroyed, but the seeds of
+moral and physical improvement in the new race were sown; the new
+population resulting from the alliances of the men of the North with the
+women, of the South was more vigorous, more full of physical power, and
+more capable of intellectual exertion than their apparently ill-suited
+progenitors; and the moral effects or final causes of the migration of
+races, the plans of conquest and ambition which have led to revolutions
+and changes of kingdoms designed by man for such different objects have
+been the same in their ultimate results--that of improving by mixture the
+different families of men.  An Alaric or an Attila, who marches with
+legions of barbarians for some gross view of plunder or ambition, is an
+instrument of divine power to effect a purpose of which he is wholly
+unconscious--he is carrying a strong race to improve a weak one, and
+giving energy to a debilitated population; and the deserts he makes in
+his passage will become in another age cultivated fields, and the
+solitude he produces will be succeeded by a powerful and healthy
+population.  The results of these events in the moral and political world
+may be compared to those produced in the vegetable kingdom by the storms
+and heavy gales so usual at the vernal equinox, the time of the formation
+of the seed; the pollen or farina of one flower is thrown upon the pistil
+of another, and the crossing of varieties of plants so essential to the
+perfection of the vegetable world produced.  In man moral causes and
+physical ones modify each other; the transmission of hereditary qualities
+to offspring is distinct in the animal world, and in the case of
+disposition to disease it is sufficiently obvious in the human being.  But
+it is likewise a general principle that powers or habits acquired by
+cultivation are transmitted to the next generation and exalted or
+perpetuated; the history of particular races of men affords distinct
+proofs of this.  The Caucasian stock has always preserved its
+superiority, whilst the negro or flat-nosed race has always been marked
+for want of intellectual power and capacity for the arts of life.  This
+last race, in fact, has never been cultivated, and a hundred generations,
+successively improved, would be required to bring it to the state in
+which the Caucasian race was at the time of the formation of the Greek
+republics.  The principle of the improvement of the character of races by
+the transmission of hereditary qualities has not escaped the observations
+of the legislators of the ancient people.  By the divine law of Moses the
+Israelites were enjoined to preserve the purity of their blood, and there
+was no higher crime than that of forming alliances with the idolatrous
+nations surrounding them.  The Brahmins of Hindostan have established
+upon the same principle the law of caste, by which certain professions
+were made hereditary.  In this warm climate, where labour is so
+oppressive, to secure perfection in any series of operations it seems
+essential to strengthen the powers by the forces acquired from this
+principle of hereditary descent.  It will at first perhaps strike your
+mind that the mixing or blending of races is in direct opposition to this
+principle of perfection; but here I must require you to pause and
+consider the nature of the qualities belonging to the human being.  Excess
+of a particular power, which in itself is a perfection, becomes a defect;
+the organs of touch may be so refined as to show a diseased sensibility;
+the ear may become so exquisitely sensitive as to be more susceptible to
+the uneasiness produced by discords than to the pleasures of harmony.  In
+the nations which have been long civilised the defects are generally
+those dependent on excess of sensibility--defects which are cured in the
+next generation by the strength and power belonging to a ruder tribe.  In
+looking back upon the vision of ancient history, you will find that there
+never has been an instance of a migration to any extent of any race but
+the Caucasian, and they have usually passed from the North to the South.
+The negro race has always been driven before these conquerors of the
+world; and the red men, the aborigines of America, are constantly
+diminishing in number, and it is probable that in a few centuries more
+their pure blood will be entirely extinct.  In the population of the
+world, the great object is evidently to produce organised frames most
+capable of the happy and intellectual enjoyment of life--to raise man
+above the mere animal state.  To perpetuate the advantages of
+civilisation, the races most capable of these advantages are preserved
+and extended, and no considerable improvement made by an individual is
+ever lost to society.  You see living forms perpetuated in the series of
+ages, and apparently the quantity of life increased.  In comparing the
+population of the globe as it now is with what it was centuries ago, you
+would find it considerably greater; and if the quantity of life is
+increased, the quantity of happiness, particularly that resulting from
+the exercise of intellectual power, is increased in a still higher ratio.
+Now, you will say, 'Is mind generated, is spiritual power created; or are
+those results dependent upon the organisation of matter, upon new
+perfections given to the machinery upon which thought and motion depend?'
+I proclaim to you," said the Genius, raising his voice from its low and
+sweet tone to one of ineffable majesty, "neither of these opinions is
+true.  Listen, whilst I reveal to you the mysteries of spiritual natures,
+but I almost fear that with the mortal veil of your senses surrounding
+you, these mysteries can never be made perfectly intelligible to your
+mind.  Spiritual natures are eternal and indivisible, but their modes of
+being are as infinitely varied as the forms of matter.  They have no
+relation to space, and, in their transitions, no dependence upon time, so
+that they can pass from one part of the universe to another by laws
+entirely independent of their motion.  The quantity, or the number of
+spiritual essences, like the quantity or number of the atoms of the
+material world, are always the same; but their arrangements, like those
+of the materials which they are destined to guide or govern, are
+infinitely diversified; they are, in fact, parts more or less inferior of
+the infinite mind, and in the planetary systems, to one of which this
+globe you inhabit belongs, are in a state of probation, continually
+aiming at, and generally rising to a higher state of existence.  Were it
+permitted me to extend your vision to the fates of individual existences,
+I could show you the same spirit, which in the form of Socrates developed
+the foundations of moral and social virtue, in the Czar Peter possessed
+of supreme power and enjoying exalted felicity in improving a rude
+people.  I could show you the monad or spirit, which with the organs of
+Newton displayed an intelligence almost above humanity, now in a higher
+and better state of planetary existence drinking intellectual light from
+a purer source and approaching nearer to the infinite and divine Mind.
+But prepare your mind, and you shall at least catch a glimpse of those
+states which the highest intellectual beings that have belonged to the
+earth enjoy after death in their transition to now and more exalted
+natures."  The voice ceased, and I appeared in a dark, deep, and cold
+cave, of which the walls of the Colosaeum formed the boundary.  From
+above a bright and rosy light broke into this cave, so that whilst below
+all was dark, above all was bright and illuminated with glory.  I seemed
+possessed at this moment of a new sense, and felt that the light brought
+with it a genial warmth; odours like those of the most balmy flowers
+appeared to fill the air, and the sweetest sounds of music absorbed my
+sense of hearing; my limbs had a new lightness given to them, so that I
+seemed to rise from the earth, and gradually mounted into the bright
+luminous air, leaving behind me the dark and cold cavern, and the ruins
+with which it was strewed.  Language is inadequate to describe what I
+felt in rising continually upwards through this bright and luminous
+atmosphere.  I had not, as is generally the case with persons in dreams
+of this kind, imagined to myself wings; but I rose gradually and securely
+as if I were myself a part of the ascending column of light.  By degrees
+this luminous atmosphere, which was diffused over the whole of space,
+became more circumscribed, and extended only to a limited spot around me.
+I saw through it the bright blue sky, the moon and stars, and I passed by
+them as if it were in my power to touch them with my hand.  I beheld
+Jupiter and Saturn as they appear through our best telescopes, but still
+more magnified, all the moons and belts of Jupiter being perfectly
+distinct, and the double ring of Saturn appearing in that state in which
+I have heard Herschel often express a wish he could see it.  It seemed as
+if I was on the verge of the solar system, and my moving sphere of light
+now appeared to pause.  I again heard the low and sweet voice of the
+Genius, which said, "You are now on the verge of your own system: will
+you go further, or return to the earth?"  I replied, "I have left an
+abode which is damp, dreary, dark and cold; I am now in a place where all
+is life, light, and enjoyment; show me, at least before I return, the
+glimpse which you promised me of those superior intellectual natures and
+the modes of their being and their enjoyments."  "There are creatures far
+superior," said the Genius, "to any idea your imagination can form in
+that part of the system now before you, comprehending Saturn, his moons
+and rings.  I will carry you to the verge of the immense atmosphere of
+this planet.  In that space you will see sufficient to wonder at, and far
+more than with your present organisation it would be possible for me to
+make you understand."  I was again in motion, and again almost as
+suddenly at rest.  I saw below me a surface infinitely diversified,
+something like that of an immense glacier covered with large columnar
+masses, which appeared as if formed of glass, and from which were
+suspended rounded forms of various sizes, which, if they had not been
+transparent, I might have supposed to be fruit.  From what appeared to me
+to be analogous to masses of bright blue ice, streams of the richest tint
+of rose-colour or purple burst forth and flowed into basins, forming
+lakes or seas of the same colour.  Looking through the atmosphere towards
+the heavens, I saw brilliant opaque clouds of an azure colour that
+reflected the light of the sun, which had to my eyes an entirely new
+aspect, and appeared smaller, as if seen through a dense blue mist.  I
+saw moving on the surface below me immense masses, the forms of which I
+find it impossible to describe; they had systems for locomotion similar
+to those of the morse or sea-horse, but I saw with great surprise that
+they moved from place to place by six extremely thin membranes, which
+they used as wings.  Their colours were varied and beautiful, but
+principally azure and rose-colour.  I saw numerous convolutions of tubes,
+more analogous to the trunk of the elephant than to anything else I can
+imagine, occupying what I supposed to be the upper parts of the body, and
+my feeling of astonishment almost became one of disgust, from the
+peculiar character of the organs of these singular beings; and it was
+with a species of terror that I saw one of them mounting upwards,
+apparently flying towards those opaque clouds which I have before
+mentioned.  "I know what your feelings are," said the Genius; "you want
+analogies and all the elements of knowledge to comprehend the scene
+before you.  You are in the same state in which a fly would be whose
+microscopic eye was changed for one similar to that of man; and you are
+wholly unable to associate what you now see with your former knowledge.
+But those beings who are before you, and who appear to you almost as
+imperfect in their functions as the zoophytes of the Polar Sea, to which
+they are not unlike in their apparent organisation to your eyes, have a
+sphere of sensibility and intellectual enjoyment far superior to that of
+the inhabitants of your earth.  Each of those tubes which appears like
+the trunk of an elephant is an organ of peculiar motion or sensation.
+They have many modes of perception of which you are wholly ignorant, at
+the same time that their sphere of vision is infinitely more extended
+than yours, and their organs of touch far more perfect and exquisite.  It
+would be useless for me to attempt to explain their organisation, which
+you could never understand; but of their intellectual objects of pursuit
+I may perhaps give you some notion.  They have used, modified, and
+applied the material world in a manner analogous to man; but with far
+superior powers they have gained superior results.  Their atmosphere
+being much denser than yours and the specific gravity of their planet
+less, they have been enabled to determine the laws belonging to the solar
+system with far more accuracy than you can possibly conceive, and any one
+of those beings could show you what is now the situation and appearance
+of your moon with a precision that would induce you to believe that he
+saw it, though his knowledge is merely the result of calculation.  Their
+sources of pleasure are of the highest intellectual nature; with the
+magnificent spectacle of their own rings and moons revolving round them,
+with the various combinations required to understand and predict the
+relations of these wonderful phenomena their minds are in unceasing
+activity and this activity is a perpetual source of enjoyment.  Your view
+of the solar system is bounded by Uranus, and the laws of this planet
+form the ultimatum of your mathematical results; but these beings catch a
+sight of planets belonging to another system and even reason on the
+phenomena presented by another sun.  Those comets, of which your
+astronomical history is so imperfect, are to them perfectly familiar, and
+in their ephemerides their places are shown with as much accurateness as
+those of Jupiter or Venus in your almanacks; the parallax of the fixed
+stars nearest them is as well understood as that of their own sun, and
+they possess a magnificent history of the changes taking place in the
+heavens and which are governed by laws that it would be vain for me to
+attempt to give you an idea of.  They are acquainted with the revolutions
+and uses of comets; they understand the system of those meteoric
+formations of stones which have so much astonished you on earth; and they
+have histories in which the gradual changes of nebulas in their progress
+towards systems have been registered, so that they can predict their
+future changes.  And their astronomical records are not like yours which
+go back only twenty centuries to the time of Hipparchus; they embrace a
+period a hundred times as long, and their civil history for the same time
+is as correct as their astronomical one.  As I cannot describe to you the
+organs of these wonderful beings, so neither can I show to you their
+modes of life; but as their highest pleasures depend upon intellectual
+pursuits, so you may conclude that those modes of life bear the strictest
+analogy to that which on the earth you would call exalted virtue.  I will
+tell you however that they have no wars, and that the objects of their
+ambition are entirely those of intellectual greatness, and that the only
+passion that they feel in which comparisons with each other can be
+instituted are those dependent upon a love of glory of the purest kind.
+If I were to show you the different parts of the surface of this planet,
+you would see marvellous results of the powers possessed by these highly
+intellectual beings and of the wonderful manner in which they have
+applied and modified matter.  Those columnar masses, which seem to you as
+if arising out of a mass of ice below, are results of art, and processes
+are going on in them connected with the formation and perfection of their
+food.  The brilliant coloured fluids are the results of such operations
+as on the earth would be performed in your laboratories, or more properly
+in your refined culinary apparatus, for they are connected with their
+system of nourishment.  Those opaque azure clouds, to which you saw a few
+minutes ago one of those beings directing his course, are works of art
+and places in which they move through different regions of their
+atmosphere and command the temperature and the quantity of light most
+fitted for their philosophical researches, or most convenient for the
+purposes of life.  On the verge of the visible horizon which we perceive
+around us, you may see in the east a very dark spot or shadow, in which
+the light of the sun seems entirely absorbed; this is the border of an
+immense mass of liquid analogous to your ocean, but unlike your sea it is
+inhabited by a race of intellectual beings inferior indeed to those
+belonging to the atmosphere of Saturn, but yet possessed of an extensive
+range of sensations and endowed with extraordinary power and
+intelligence.  I could transport you to the different planets and show
+you in each peculiar intellectual beings bearing analogies to each other,
+but yet all different in power and essence.  In Jupiter you would see
+creatures similar to those in Saturn, but with different powers of
+locomotion; in Mars and Venus you would find races of created forms more
+analogous to those belonging to the earth; but in every part of the
+planetary system you would find one character peculiar to all intelligent
+natures, a sense of receiving impressions from light by various organs of
+vision, and towards this result you cannot but perceive that all the
+arrangements and motions of the planetary bodies, their satellites and
+atmospheres are subservient.  The spiritual natures therefore that pass
+from system to system in progression towards power and knowledge preserve
+at least this one invariable character, and their intellectual life may
+be said to depend more or less upon the influence of light.  As far as my
+knowledge extends, even in other parts of the universe the more perfect
+organised systems still possess this source of sensation and enjoyment;
+but with higher natures, finer and more ethereal kinds of matter are
+employed in organisation, substances that bear the same analogy to common
+matter that the refined or most subtle gases do to common solids and
+fluids.  The universe is everywhere full of life, but the modes of this
+life are infinitely diversified, and yet every form of it must be enjoyed
+and known by every spiritual nature before the consummation of all
+things.  You have seen the comet moving with its immense train of light
+through the sky; this likewise has a system supplied with living beings
+and their existence derives its enjoyment from the diversity of
+circumstances to which they are exposed; passing as it were through the
+infinity of space they are continually gratified by the sight of new
+systems and worlds, and you can imagine the unbounded nature of the
+circle of their knowledge.  My power extends so far as to afford you a
+glimpse of the nature of a cometary world."  I was again in rapid motion,
+again passing with the utmost velocity through the bright blue sky, and I
+saw Jupiter and his satellites and Saturn and his ring behind me, and
+before me the sun, no longer appearing as through a blue mist but in
+bright and unsupportable splendour, towards which I seemed moving with
+the utmost velocity; in a limited sphere of vision, in a kind of red hazy
+light similar to that which first broke in upon me in the Colosaeum, I
+saw moving round me globes which appeared composed of different kinds of
+flame and of different colours.  In some of these globes I recognised
+figures which put me in mind of the human countenance, but the
+resemblance was so awful and unnatural that I endeavoured to withdraw my
+view from them.  "You are now," said the Genius, "in a cometary system;
+those globes of light surrounding you are material forms, such as in one
+of your systems of religious faith have been attributed to seraphs; they
+live in that element which to you would be destruction; they communicate
+by powers which would convert your organised frame into ashes; they are
+now in the height of their enjoyment, being about to enter into the blaze
+of the solar atmosphere.  These beings so grand, so glorious, with
+functions to you incomprehensible, once belonged to the earth; their
+spiritual natures have risen through different stages of planetary life,
+leaving their dust behind them, carrying with them only their
+intellectual power.  You ask me if they have any knowledge or
+reminiscence of their transitions; tell me of your own recollections in
+the womb of your mother and I will answer you.  It is the law of divine
+wisdom that no spirit carries with it into another state and being any
+habit or mental qualities except those which may be connected with its
+new wants or enjoyments; and knowledge relating to the earth would be no
+more useful to these glorified beings than their earthly system of
+organised dust, which would be instantly resolved into its ultimate atoms
+at such a temperature; even on the earth the butterfly does not transport
+with it into the air the organs or the appetites of the crawling worm
+from which it sprung.  There is, however, one sentiment or passion which
+the monad or spiritual essence carries with it into all its stages of
+being, and which in these happy and elevated creatures is continually
+exalted; the love of knowledge or of intellectual power, which is, in
+fact, in its ultimate and most perfect development the love of infinite
+wisdom and unbounded power, or the love of God.  Even in the imperfect
+life that belongs to the earth this passion exists in a considerable
+degree, increases even with age, outlives the perfection of the corporeal
+faculties, and at the moment of death is felt by the conscious being, and
+its future destinies depend upon the manner in which it has been
+exercised and exalted.  When it has been misapplied and assumed the forms
+of vague curiosity, restless ambition, vain glory, pride or oppression,
+the being is degraded, it sinks in the scale of existence and still
+belongs to the earth or an inferior system, till its errors are corrected
+by painful discipline.  When, on the contrary, the love of intellectual
+power has been exercised on its noblest objects, in discovering and in
+contemplating the properties of created forms and in applying them to
+useful and benevolent purposes, in developing and admiring the laws of
+the eternal Intelligence, the destinies of the sentient principle are of
+a nobler kind, it rises to a higher planetary world.  From the height to
+which you have been lifted I could carry you downwards and show you
+intellectual natures even inferior to those belonging to the earth, in
+your own moon and in the lower planets, and I could demonstrate to you
+the effects of pain or moral evil in assisting in the great plan of the
+exaltation of spiritual natures; but I will not destroy the brightness of
+your present idea of the scheme of the universe by degrading pictures of
+the effects of bad passions and of the manner in which evil is corrected
+and destroyed.  Your vision must end with the glorious view of the
+inhabitants of the cometary worlds; I cannot show you the beings of the
+system to which I, myself, belong, that of the sun; your organs would
+perish before our brightness, and I am only permitted to be present to
+you as a sound or intellectual voice.  _We_ are likewise in progression,
+but we see and know something of the plans of infinite wisdom; we feel
+the personal presence of that supreme Deity which you only imagine; to
+you belongs faith, to us knowledge; and our greatest delight results from
+the conviction that we are lights kindled by His light and that we belong
+to His substance.  To obey, to love, to wonder and adore, form our
+relations to the infinite Intelligence.  We feel His laws are those of
+eternal justice and that they govern all things from the most glorious
+intellectual natures belonging to the sun and fixed stars to the meanest
+spark of life animating an atom crawling in the dust of your earth.  We
+know all things begin from and end in His everlasting essence, the cause
+of causes, the power of powers."
+
+The low and sweet voice ceased; it appeared as if I had fallen suddenly
+upon the earth, but there was a bright light before me and I heard my
+name loudly called; the voice was not of my intellectual guide--the
+genius before me was my servant bearing a flambeau in his hand.  He told
+me he had been searching me in vain amongst the ruins, that the carriage
+had been waiting for me above an hour, and that he had left a large party
+of my friends assembled in the Palazzo F---.
+
+
+
+
+DIALOGUE THE SECOND.  DISCUSSIONS CONNECTED WITH THE VISION IN THE
+COLOSAEUM.
+
+
+The same friends, Ambrosio and Onuphrio, who were my companions at Rome
+in the winter, accompanied me in the spring to Naples.  Many
+conversations occurred in the course of our journey which were often to
+me peculiarly instructive, and from the difference of their opinions
+generally animated and often entertaining.  I shall detail one of these
+conversations, which took place in the evening on the summit of Vesuvius,
+and the remembrance of which from its connection with my vision in the
+Colosaeum has always a peculiar interest for me.  We had reached with
+some labour the edge of the crater and were admiring the wonderful scene
+around us.  I shall give the conversation in the words of the persons of
+the drama.
+
+_Philalethes_.--It is difficult to say whether there is more of sublimity
+or beauty in the scene around us.  Nature appears at once smiling and
+frowning, in activity and repose.  How tremendous is the volcano, how
+magnificent this great laboratory of Nature in its unceasing fire, its
+subterraneous lightnings and thunder, its volumes of smoke, its showers
+of stones and its rivers of ignited lava!  How contrasted the darkness of
+the scoriae, the ruins and the desolation round the crater with the scene
+below!  There we see the rich field covered with flax, or maize, or
+millet, and intersected by rows of trees which support the green and
+graceful festoons of the vine; the orange and lemon tree covered with
+golden fruit appear in the sheltered glens; the olive trees cover the
+lower hills; islands purple in the beams of the setting sun are scattered
+over the sea in the west, and the sky is tinted with red softening into
+the brightest and purest azure; the distant mountains still retain a part
+of the snows of winter, but they are rapidly melting and they absolutely
+seem to melt reflecting the beams of the setting sun, glowing as if on
+fire.  And man appears emulous of Nature, for the city below is full of
+activity; the nearest part of the bay is covered with boats, busy
+multitudes crowd the strand, and at the same time may be seen a number of
+the arts belonging to civilised society in operation--house-building,
+ship-building, rope-making, the manipulations of the smith and of the
+agriculturist, and not only the useful arts, but even the amusements and
+luxuries of a great metropolis may be witnessed from the spot in which we
+stand; that motley crowd is collected round a policinello, and those
+smaller groups that surround the stalls are employed in enjoying the
+favourite food and drink of the lazzaroni.
+
+_Ambrosio_.--We see not only the power and activity of man, as existing
+at present, and of which the highest example may be represented by the
+steam-boat which is now departing for Palermo, but we may likewise view
+scenes which carry us into the very bosom of antiquity, and, as it were,
+make us live with the generations of past ages.  Those small square
+buildings, scarcely visible in the distance, are the tombs of
+distinguished men amongst the early Greek colonists of the country; and
+those rows of houses, without roofs, which appear as if newly erecting,
+constitute a Roman town restored from its ashes, that remained for
+centuries as if it had been swept from the face of the earth.  When you
+study it in detail you will hardly avoid the illusion that it is a rising
+city; you will almost be tempted to ask where are the workmen, so perfect
+art the walls of the houses, so bright and uninjured the painting upon
+them.  Hardly anything is wanting to make this scene a magnificent
+epitome of all that is most worthy of admiration in Nature and art; had
+there been in addition to the other objects a fine river and a waterfall
+the epitome would, I think, have been absolutely perfect.
+
+_Phil_.--You are most unreasonable in imagining additions to a scene
+which it is impossible to embrace in one view, and which presents so many
+objects to the senses, the memory, and to the imagination; yet there is a
+river in the valley between Naples and Castel del Mare; you may see its
+silver thread and the white foam of its torrents in the distance, and if
+you were geologists you would find a number of sources of interest, which
+have not been mentioned, in the scenery surrounding us.  Somma which is
+before us, for instance, affords a wonderful example of a mountain formed
+of marine deposits, and which has been raised by subterraneous fire, and
+those large and singular veins which you see at the base and rising
+through the substance of the strata are composed of volcanic porphyry,
+and offer a most striking and beautiful example of the generation and
+structure of rocks and mineral formations.
+
+_Onuphrio_.--As we passed through Portici, on the road to the base of
+Vesuvius, it appeared to me that I saw a stone which had an ancient Roman
+inscription upon it, and which occupied the place of a portal in the
+modern palace of the Barberini.
+
+_Phil_.--This is not an uncommon circumstance: Most of the stones used in
+the palaces of Portici had been employed more than two thousand years
+before in structures raised by the ancient Romans or Greek colonists; and
+it is not a little remarkable that the buildings of Herculaneum, a town
+covered with ashes, tufa, and lava, from the first recorded eruption of
+Vesuvius more than seventeen hundred years ago, should have been
+constructed of volcanic materials produced by some antecedent igneous
+action of the mountain in times beyond the reach of history; and it is
+still more remarkable that men should have gone on for so many ages
+making erections in spots where their works have been so often destroyed,
+inattentive to the voice of time or the warnings of nature.
+
+_Onu_.--This last fact recalls to my recollection an idea which
+Philalethes started in the remarkable dream which he would have us
+believe occurred to him in the Colosaeum, namely--that no important facts
+which can be useful to society are ever lost; and that, like these
+stones, which though covered with ashes or hidden amongst ruins, they are
+sure to be brought forward again and made use of in some new form.
+
+_Amb_.--I do not see the justness of the analogy to which Onuphrio
+refers; but there are many parts of that vision on which I should wish to
+hear the explanations of Philalethes.  I consider it in fact as a sort of
+poetical epitome of his philosophical opinions, and I regard this vision
+or dream as a mere web of his imagination in which he intended to catch
+us, his summer-flies and travelling companions.
+
+_Phil_.--There, Ambrosio, you do me wrong.  I will acknowledge, if you
+please, that the vision in the Colosaeum is a fiction; but the most
+important parts of it really occurred to me in sleep, particularly that
+in which I seemed to leave the earth and launch into the infinity of
+space under the guidance of a tutelary genius.  And the origin and
+progress of civil society form likewise parts of another dream which I
+had many years ago, and it was in the reverie which happened when you
+quitted me in the Colosaeum that I wove all these thoughts together, and
+gave them the form in which I narrated them to you.
+
+_Amb_.--Of course we may consider them as an accurate representation of
+your waking thoughts.
+
+_Phil_.--I do not say that they strictly are so, for I am not quite
+convinced that dreams are always representations of the state of the mind
+modified by organic diseases or by associations.  There are certainly no
+absolutely new ideas produced in sleep, yet I have had more than one
+instance, in the course of my life, of most extraordinary combinations
+occurring in this state, which have had considerable influence on my
+feelings, my imagination, and my health.
+
+_Onu_.--Why Philalethes, you are becoming a visionary, a dreamer of
+dreams.  We shall perhaps set you down by the side of Jacob Behmen or of
+Emanuel Swedenbourg, and in an earlier age you might have been a prophet,
+and have ranked perhaps with Mahomet.  But pray give us one of these
+instances in which such a marvellous influence was produced on your
+imagination and your health by a dream that we may form some judgment of
+the nature of your second sight or inspirations; and whether they have
+any foundation, or whether they are not, as I believe, really unfounded,
+inventions of the fancy, dreams respecting dreams.
+
+_Phil_.--I anticipate unbelief, and I expose myself to your ridicule in
+the statement I am about to make, yet I shall mention nothing but a
+simple fact.  Almost a quarter of a century ago, as you know, I
+contracted that terrible form of typhus-fever known by the name of gaol-
+fever, I may say, not from any imprudence of my own, but whilst engaged
+in putting in execution a plan for ventilating one of the great prisons
+of the metropolis.  My illness was severe and dangerous.  As long as the
+fever continued, my dreams or delirium were most painful and oppressive;
+but when the weakness consequent to exhaustion came on, and when the
+probability of death seemed to my physicians greater than that of life,
+there was an entire change in all my ideal combinations.  I remained in
+an apparently senseless or lethargic state, but in fact my mind was
+peculiarly active; there was always before me the form of a beautiful
+woman, with whom I was engaged in the most interesting and intellectual
+conversation.
+
+_Amb_.--The figure of a lady with whom you were in love.
+
+_Phil_.--No such thing; I was passionately in love at the time, but the
+object of my admiration was a lady with black hair, dark eyes, and pale
+complexion; this spirit of my vision, on the contrary, had brown hair,
+blue eyes, and a bright rosy complexion, and was, as far as I can
+recollect, unlike any of the amatory forms which in early youth had so
+often haunted my imagination.  Her figure for many days was so distinct
+in my mind, as to form almost a visual image.  As I gained strength, the
+visits of my good angel (for so I called it) became less frequent, and
+when I was restored to health they were altogether discontinued.
+
+_Onu_.--I see nothing very strange in this--a mere reaction of the mind
+after severe pain--and, to a young man of twenty-five, there are few more
+pleasurable images than that of a beautiful maiden with blue eyes,
+blooming cheeks, and long nut-brown hair.
+
+_Phil_.--But all my feelings and all my conversations with this visionary
+maiden were of an intellectual and refined nature.
+
+_Onu_.--Yes, I suppose, as long as you were ill.
+
+_Phil_.--I will not allow you to treat me with ridicule on this point
+till you have heard the second part of my tale.  Ten years after I had
+recovered from the fever, and when I had almost lost the recollection of
+the vision, it was recalled to my memory by a very blooming and graceful
+maiden, fourteen or fifteen years old, that I accidentally met during my
+travels in Illyria; but I cannot say that the impression made upon my
+mind by this female was very strong.  Now comes the extraordinary part of
+the narrative.  Ten years after, twenty years after my first illness, at
+a time when I was exceedingly weak from a severe and dangerous malady,
+which for many weeks threatened my life, and when my mind was almost in a
+desponding state, being in a course of travels ordered by my medical
+advisers, I again met the person who was the representative of my
+visionary female, and to her kindness and care I believe I owe what
+remains to me of existence.  My despondency gradually disappeared, and
+though my health still continued weak, life began to possess charms for
+me which I had thought were for ever gone; and I could not help
+identifying the living angel with the vision which appeared as my
+guardian genius during the illness of my youth.
+
+_Onu_.--I really see nothing at all in this fact, whether the first or
+the second part of the narrative be considered, beyond the influence of
+an imagination excited by disease.  From youth, even to age, women are
+our guardian angels, our comforters; and I dare say any other handsome
+young female, who had been your nurse in your last illness, would have
+coincided with your remembrance of the vision, even though her eyes had
+been hazel and her hair flaxen.  Nothing can be more loose than the
+images represented in dreams following a fever, and with the nervous
+susceptibility produced by your last illness, almost any agreeable form
+would have become the representative of your imaginary guardian genius.
+Thus it is, that by the power of fancy, material forms are clothed in
+supernatural attributes; and in the same manner imaginary divinities have
+all the forms of mortality bestowed upon them.  The gods of the pagan
+mythology were in all their characters and attributes exalted human
+beings; the demon of the coward, and the angelic form that appears in the
+dream of some maid smitten by devotion, and who, having lost her earthly
+lover, fixes her thoughts on heaven, are clothed in the character and
+vestments of humanity changed by the dreaminess of passion.
+
+_Amb_.--With such a tendency, Philalethes, as you have shown to believe
+in something like a supernatural or divine influence on the human mind, I
+am astonished there should be so much scepticism belonging to your vision
+in the Colosaeum.  And your view of the early state of man, after his
+first creation, is not only incompatible with revelation, but likewise
+with reason and everything that we know respecting the history or
+traditions of the early nations of antiquity.
+
+_Phil_.--Be more distinct and detailed in your statements, Ambrosio, that
+I may be able to reply to them; and whilst we are waiting for the sunrise
+we may discuss the subject, and for this, let us seat ourselves on these
+stones, where we shall be warmed by the vicinity of the current of lava.
+
+_Amb_.--You consider man, in his early or first created state, a savage,
+like those who now inhabit New Holland or New Zealand, acquiring by the
+little use that they make of a feeble reason the power of supporting and
+extending life.  Now, I contend, that if man had been so created, he must
+inevitably have been destroyed by the elements or devoured by savage
+beasts, so infinitely his superiors in physical force.  He must,
+therefore, have been formed with various instinctive faculties and
+propensities, with a perfection of form and use of organs fitting him to
+become the master of the earth; and, it appears to me, that the account
+given in Genesis of the first parents of mankind having been placed in a
+garden fitted with everything necessary to their existence and enjoyment,
+and ordered to increase and multiply there, is strictly in harmony with
+reason, and accordant with all just metaphysical views of the human mind.
+Man as he now exists can only be raised with great care and difficulty
+from the infant to the mature state; all his motions are at first
+automatic, and become voluntary by association; he has to learn
+everything by slow and difficult processes, many months elapse before he
+is able to stand, and many years before he is able to provide for the
+common wants of life.  Without the mother or the nurse in his infant
+state, he would die in a few hours; and without the laborious discipline
+of instruction and example, he would remain idiotic and inferior to most
+other animals.  His reason is only acquired gradually, and when in its
+highest perfection is often uncertain in its results.  He must,
+therefore, have been created with instincts that for a long while
+supplied the want of reason, and which enabled him from the first moment
+of his existence to provide for his wants, to gratify his desires, and
+enjoy the power and the activity of life.
+
+_Phil_.--I acknowledge that your objection has some weight, but not so
+much as you would attribute to it.  I will suppose that the first created
+man or men had certain powers or instincts, such as now belong to the
+rudest savages of the southern hemisphere; I will suppose them created
+with the use of their organs for defence and offence and with passions
+and propensities enabling them to supply their own wants.  And I oppose
+the fact of races who are now actually in this state to your vague
+historical or traditionary records; and their gradual progress or
+improvement from this early state of society to that of the highest state
+of civilisation or refinement may, I think, be easily deduced from the
+exertions of reason assisted by the influence of the moral powers and of
+physical circumstances.  Accident, I conceive, must have had some
+influence in laying the foundations of certain arts; and a climate in
+which labour was not too oppressive, and in which the exertion of
+industry was required to provide for the wants of life must have fixed
+the character of the activity of the early improving people; where nature
+is too kind a mother, man is generally a spoiled child; where she is
+severe, and a stepmother, his powers are usually withered and destroyed.
+The people of the south and the north and those between the tropics
+offer, even at this day, proof of the truth of this principle; and it is
+even possible now to find on the surface of the earth, all the different
+gradations of the states of society, from that in which man is scarcely
+removed above the brute, to that in which he appears approaching in his
+nature to a divine intelligence.  Besides, reason being the noblest gift
+of God to man, I can hardly suppose that an infinitely powerful and all-
+wise Creator would bestow upon the early inhabitants of the globe a
+greater proportion of instinct than was at first necessary to preserve
+their existence, and that he would not leave the great progress of their
+improvement to the development and exaltation of their reasoning powers.
+
+_Amb_.--You appear to me in your argument to have forgotten the influence
+that any civilised race must possess over savages; and many of the
+nations which you consider as in their original state, may have descended
+from nations formerly civilised; and, it is quite as easy to trace the
+retrograde steps of a people as their advances; the savage hordes who now
+inhabit the northern coast of Africa are probably descended from the
+opulent, commercial, and ingenious Carthaginians who once contended with
+Rome for the empire of the world; and even nearer home, we might find in
+Southern Italy and her islands, proofs of a degradation not much
+inferior.  What I contend for is the civilisation of the first
+patriarchal races who peopled the East, and who passed into Europe from
+Armenia, in which paradise is supposed to have been placed.  The early
+civilisation of this race could only have been in consequence of their
+powers and instincts having been of a higher character than those of
+savages.  They appear to have been small families--a state not at all
+fitted for the discovery of arts by the exercise of the mind; and they
+professed the most sublime form of religion, the worship of one Supreme
+Intelligence--a truth which, after a thousand years of civilisation, was
+with difficulty attained by the most powerful efforts of reasoning by the
+Greek sages.  It appears to me, that in the history of the Jews, nothing
+can be more in conformity to our ideas of just analogy than this series
+of events.  Our first parents were created with everything necessary for
+their wants and their happiness; they had only one duty to perform, by
+their obedience to prove their love and devotion to their Creator.  In
+this they failed, and death--or the fear of death--became a curse upon
+their race; but the father of mankind repented, and his instinctive or
+intellectual powers given by revelation were transmitted to his offspring
+more or less modified by their reason, which they had gained as the fruit
+of their disobedience.  One branch of his offspring, however, in whom
+faith shone forth above reason, retained their peculiar powers and
+institutions and preserved the worship of Jehovah pure, whilst many of
+the races sprung from their brethren became idolatrous, and the clear
+light of heaven was lost through the mist of the senses; and that Being,
+worshipped by the Israelites only as a mysterious word, was forgotten by
+many of the nations who lived in the neighbouring countries, and men,
+beasts, the parts of the visible universe, and even stocks and stones,
+were set up as objects of adoration.  The difficulty which the divine
+legislators of the Jewish people had to preserve the purity of their
+religion amongst the idolatrous nations by whom they were surrounded,
+proves the natural evil tendency of the human mind after the fall of man.
+And, whoever will consider the nature of the Mosaical or ceremonial law
+and the manner in which it was suspended before the end of the Roman
+Empire, the expiatory sacrifice of the Messiah, the fear of death
+destroyed by the blessed hopes of immortality established by the
+resurrection of Jesus Christ, the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, and
+the triumphs of Christianity over paganism in the time of Constantine,
+can I think, hardly fail to acknowledge the reasonableness of the truth
+of revealed religion as founded upon the early history of man; and
+whoever acknowledges this reasonableness and this truth, must I think be
+dissatisfied with the view which Philalethes or his genius has given of
+the progress of society, and will find in it one instance, amongst many
+others that might be discovered, of the vague and erring results of his
+so much boasted human reason.
+
+_Onu_.--I fear I shall shock Ambrosio, but I cannot help vindicating a
+little the philosophical results of human reason, which it must be
+allowed are entirely hostile to his ideas.  I agree with Philalethes that
+it is the noblest gift of God to man; and I cannot think that Ambrosio's
+view of the paradisaical condition and the fall of man and the progress
+of society is at all in conformity with the ideas we ought to form of the
+institutions of an infinitely wise and powerful Being.  Besides, Ambrosio
+speaks of the reasonableness of his own opinions; of course his notions
+of reason must be different from mine, or we have adopted different forms
+of logic.  I do not find in the biblical history any idea of the supreme
+Intelligence conformable to those of the Greek philosophers; on the
+contrary, I find Jehovah everywhere described as a powerful material
+being, endowed with organs, feelings, and passions similar to those of a
+great and exalted human agent.  He is described as making man in His own
+image, as walking in the garden in the cool of the evening, as being
+pleased with sacrificial offerings, as angry with Adam and Eve, as
+personally cursing Cain for his crime of fratricide, and even as
+providing our first parents with garments to hide their nakedness; then
+He appears a material form in the midst of flames, thunder and lightning,
+and was regarded by the Levites as having a fixed residence in the Ark.
+He is contrasted throughout the whole of the Old Testament with the gods
+of the heathens, only as being more powerful; and in the strange scene
+which took place in Pharaoh's court He seemed to have measured His
+abilities with those of certain seers or magicians, and to have proved
+His superiority only by producing greater and more tremendous plagues.  In
+all the early history of the Jewish nation there is no conception
+approaching to the sublimity of that of Anaxagoras, who called God the
+Intelligence or [Greek text].  He appears always, on the contrary, like
+the genii of Arabian romance, living in clouds, descending on mountains,
+urging His chosen people to commit the most atrocious crimes, to destroy
+all the races not professing the same worship, and to exterminate even
+the child and the unborn infant.  Then, I find in the Old Testament no
+promise of a spiritual Messiah, but only of a temporal king, who, as the
+Jews believe, is yet to come.  The serpent in Genesis has no connection
+with the spirit of evil, but is described only as the most subtle beast
+of the field, and, having injured man, there was to be a perpetual enmity
+between their races--the serpent when able was to bite the heel of the
+man, and the man when an opportunity occurred was to bruise the head of
+the serpent.  I will allow, if you please, that an instinct of religion
+or superstition belongs to the human mind, and that the different forms
+which this instinct assumes depend upon various circumstances and
+accidents of history and climate; but I am not sure that the religion of
+the Jews was superior to that of the Sabaeans who worshipped the stars,
+or the ancient Persians who adored the sun as the visible symbol of
+divine power, or the eastern nations who in the various forms of the
+visible universe worshipped the powers and energies of the Divinity.  I
+feel like the ancient Romans with respect to toleration; I would give a
+place to all the gods in my Pantheon, but I would not allow the followers
+of Brahmah or of Christ to quarrel about the modes of incarnation or the
+superiority of the attributes of their trien God.
+
+_Amb_.--You have mistaken me, Onuphrio, if you think I am shocked by your
+opinions; I have seen too much of the wanderings of human reason ever to
+be surprised by them, and the views you have adopted are not uncommon
+amongst young men of very superior talents, who have only slightly
+examined the evidences of revealed religion.  But I am glad to find that
+you have not adopted the code of infidelity of many of the French
+revolutionists and of an English school of sceptics, who find in the
+ancient astronomy all the germs of the worship of the Hebrews, who
+identify the labours of Hercules with those of the Jewish heroes, and who
+find the life, death and resurrection of the Messiah in the history of
+the solar day.  You, at least, allow the existence of a peculiar
+religious instinct, or, as you are pleased to call it, superstition,
+belonging to the human mind, and I have hopes that upon this foundation
+you will ultimately build up a system of faith not unworthy a philosopher
+and a Christian.  Man, with whatever religious instincts he was created,
+was intended to communicate with the visible universe by sensations and
+act upon it by his organs, and in the earliest state of society he was
+more particularly influenced by his gross senses.  Allowing the existence
+of a supreme Intelligence and His beneficent intentions towards man, the
+ideas of His presence which He might think fit to impress upon the mind,
+either for the purpose of veneration, or of love, of hope or fear, must
+have been in harmony with the general train of His sensations--I am not
+sure that I make myself intelligible.  The same infinite power which in
+an instant could create a universe, could of course so modify the ideas
+of an intellectual being as to give them that form and character most
+fitted for his existence; and I suppose in the early state of created man
+he imagined that he enjoyed the actual presence of the Divinity and heard
+His voice.  I take this to be the first and simplest result of religious
+instinct.  In early times amongst the patriarchs I suppose these ideas
+were so vivid as to be confounded with impressions; but as religious
+instinct probably became feebler in their posterity, the vividness of the
+impressions diminished, and they then became visions or dreams, which
+with the prophets seem to have constituted inspiration.  I do not suppose
+that the Supreme Being ever made Himself known to man by a real change in
+the order of Nature, but that the sensations of men were so modified by
+their instincts as to induce the belief in His presence.  That there was
+a divine intelligence continually acting upon the race of Seth as his
+chosen people, is, I think, clearly proved by the events of their
+history, and also that the early opinions of a small tribe in Judaea were
+designed for the foundation of the religion of the most active and
+civilised and powerful nations of the world, and that after a lapse of
+three thousand years.  The manner in which Christianity spread over the
+world with a few obscure mechanics or fishermen for its promulgators; the
+mode in which it triumphed over paganism even when professed and
+supported by the power and philosophy of a Julian; the martyrs who
+subscribed to the truth of Christianity by shedding their blood for the
+faith; the exalted nature of those intellectual men by whom it has been
+professed who had examined all the depths of nature and exercised the
+profoundest faculties of thought, such as Newton, Locke, and Hartley, all
+appear to me strong arguments in favour of revealed religion.  I prefer
+rather founding my creed upon the fitness of its doctrines than upon
+historical evidences or the nature of its miracles.  The Divine
+Intelligence chooses that men should be convinced according to the
+ordinary train of their sensations, and on all occasions it appears to me
+more natural that a change should take place in the human mind than in
+the order of nature.  The popular opinion of the people of Judaea was
+that certain diseases were occasioned by devils taking possession of a
+human being; the disease was cured by our Saviour, and this in the Gospel
+is expressed by his casting out devils.  But without entering into
+explanations respecting the historical miracles belonging to
+Christianity, it is sufficient to say that its truth is attested by a
+constantly existing miracle, the present state of the Jews, which was
+predicted by Jesus; their temple and city were destroyed, and all
+attempts made to rebuild it have been vain, and they remain the despised
+and outcasts of the world.
+
+_Onu_.--But you have not answered my objections with respect to the
+cruelties exercised by the Jews under the command of Jehovah, which
+appear to me in opposition to all our views of divine justice.
+
+_Amb_.--I think even Philalethes will allow that physical and moral
+diseases are hereditary, and that to destroy a pernicious unbelief or
+demoniacal worship it was necessary to destroy the whole race root and
+branch.  As an example, I will imagine a certain contagions disease which
+is transmitted by parents to children, and which, like the plague, is
+communicated to sound persons by contact; to destroy a family of men who
+would spread this disease over the whole earth would unquestionably be a
+mercy.  Besides, I believe in the immortality of the sentient principle
+in man; destruction of life is only a change of existence, and supposing
+the new existence a superior one it is a gain.  To the Supreme
+Intelligence the death of a million of human beings is the mere
+circumstance of so many spiritual essences changing their habitations,
+and is analogous to the myriad millions of larvae that leave their coats
+and shells behind them and rise into the atmosphere, as flies in a summer
+day.  When man measures the works of the Divine Mind by his own feeble
+combinations, he must wander in gross error; the infinite can never be
+understood by the finite.
+
+_Onu_.--As far as I can comprehend your reasoning, the priests of
+Juggernaut might make the same defence for their idol, and find in such
+views a fair apology for the destruction of thousands of voluntary
+victims crushed to pieces by the feet of the sacred elephant.
+
+_Amb_.--Undoubtedly they might, and I should allow the justness of their
+defence if I saw in their religion any germs of a divine institution
+fitted to become, like the religion of Jehovah, the faith of the whole
+civilised world, embracing the most perfect form of theism and the most
+refined and exalted morality.  I consider the early acts of the Jewish
+nation as the lowest and rudest steps of a temple raised by the Supreme
+Being to contain the altar of sacrifice to His glory.  In the early
+periods of society rude and uncultivated men could only be acted upon by
+gross and temporal rewards and punishments; severe rites and heavy
+discipline were required to keep the mind in order, and the punishment of
+the idolatrous nation served as an example for the Jews.  When
+Christianity took the place of Judaism the ideas of the Supreme Being
+became more pure and abstracted, and the visible attributes of Jehovah
+and His angels appear to have been less frequently presented to the mind;
+yet even for many ages it seemed as if the grossness of our material
+senses required some assistance from the eye in fixing or perpetuating
+the character of religious instinct, and the Church to which I belong,
+and I may say the whole Christian Church in early times, allowed visible
+images, pictures, statues, and relics as the means of awakening the
+stronger devotional feelings.  We have been accused of worshipping merely
+inanimate objects, but this is a very false notion of the nature of our
+faith; we regard them merely as vivid characters representing spiritual
+existences and we no more worship them than the Protestant does his Bible
+when he kisses it under a solemn religious adjuration.  The past, the
+present, and the future being the same to the infinite and divine
+Intelligence, and man being created in love for the purposes of
+happiness, the moral and religious discipline to which he was submitted
+was in strict conformity to his progressive faculties and to the primary
+laws of his nature.  It is but a rude analogy, yet it is the only one I
+can find, that of comparing the Supreme Being to a wise and good father
+who, to secure the well-being of his offspring, is obliged to adopt a
+system of rewards and punishments in which the senses at first and
+afterwards the imagination and reason are concerned; he terrifies them by
+the example of others, awakens their love of glory by pointing out the
+distinction and the happiness gained by superior men by adopting a
+particular line of conduct; he uses at first the rod, and gradually
+substitutes for it the fear of immediate shame; and having awakened the
+fear of shame and the love of praise or honour with respect to temporary
+and immediate actions he extends them to the conduct of the whole of
+life, and makes what was a momentary feeling a permanent and immutable
+principle.  And obedience in the child to the will of such a parent may
+be compared to faith in and obedience to the will of the Supreme Being;
+and a wayward and disobedient child who reasons upon and doubts the
+utility of the discipline of such a father is much in the same state in
+which the adult man is who doubts if there be good in the decrees of
+Providence and who questions the harmony of the plan of the moral
+universe.
+
+_Onu_.--Allowing the perfection of your moral scheme of religion and its
+fitness for the nature of man, I find it impossible to believe the
+primary doctrines on which this scheme is founded.  You make the Divine
+Mind, the creator of infinite worlds, enter into the form of a man born
+of a virgin, you make the eternal and immortal God the victim of shameful
+punishment and suffering death on the cross, recovering His life after
+three days, and carrying His maimed and lacerated body into the heaven of
+heavens.
+
+_Amb_.--You, like all other sceptics, make your own interpretations of
+the Scriptures and set up a standard for divine power in human reason.
+The infinite and eternal mind, as I said before, fits the doctrines of
+religion to the minds by which they are to be embraced.  I see no
+improbability in the idea that an integrant part of His essence may have
+animated a human form; there can be no doubt that this belief has existed
+in the human mind, and the belief constitutes the vital part of the
+religion.  We know nothing of the generation of the human being in the
+ordinary course of nature; how absurd then to attempt to reason upon the
+acts of the Divine Mind! nor is there more difficulty in imagining the
+event of a divine conception than of a divine creation.  To God the
+infinite, little and great, as measured by human powers, are equal; a
+creature of this earth, however humble and insignificant, may have the
+same weight with millions of superior beings inhabiting higher systems.
+But I consider all the miraculous parts of our religion as effected by
+changes in the sensations or ideas of the human mind, and not by physical
+changes in the order of nature; a man who has to repair a piece of
+machinery, as a clock, must take it to pieces, and, in fact, re-make it,
+but to infinite wisdom and power a change in the intellectual state of
+the human being may be the result of a momentary will, and the mere act
+of faith may produce the change.  How great the powers of imagination
+are, even in ordinary life, is shown by many striking facts, and nothing
+seems impossible to this imagination when acted upon by divine influence.
+To attempt to answer all the objections which may be derived from the
+want of conformity in the doctrines of Christianity to the usual order of
+events would be an interminable labour.  My first principle is, that
+religion has nothing to do with the common order of events; it is a pure
+and divine instinct intended to give results to man which he cannot
+obtain by the common use of his reason, and which at first view often
+appear contradictory to it, but which when examined by the most refined
+tests, and considered in the most extensive and profound relations, are,
+in fact, in conformity with the most exalted intellectual knowledge, so
+that, indeed, the results of pure reason ultimately become the same with
+those of faith--the tree of knowledge is grafted upon the tree of life,
+and that fruit which brought the fear of death into the world, budding on
+an immortal stock, becomes the fruit of the promise of immortality.
+
+_Onu_.--You derive Christianity from Judaism; I cannot see their
+connection, and it appears to me that the religion of Mahomet is more
+naturally a scion from the stock of Moses.  Christ was a Jew, and was
+circumcised; this rite was continued by Mahomet, and is to this day
+adopted by his disciples, though rejected by the Christians; and the
+doctrines of Mahomet appear to me to have a higher claim to divine origin
+than those of Jesus; his morality is as pure, his theism purer, and his
+system of rewards and punishments after death as much in conformity with
+our ideas of eternal justice.
+
+_Amb_.--I will willingly make the decision of the general question
+dependent upon the decision of this particular one.  No attempts have
+been made by the Mahometans to find any predictions respecting their
+founder in the Old Testament, and they have never pretended even that he
+was the Messiah; therefore, as far as prophecy is concerned, there is no
+ground for admitting the truth of the religion of Mahomet.  It has been
+the fashion with a particular sect of infidels to praise the morality of
+the Mahometans, but I think unjustly; they are said to be honest in their
+dealings and charitable to those of their own persuasion; but they allow
+polygamy and a plurality of women, and are despisers and persecutors of
+the nations professing a different faith.  And what a contrast does this
+morality present to that of the Gospel which inculcates charity to all
+mankind, and orders benevolent actions to be performed even to enemies!
+and the purity and simplicity of the infant is held up by Christ as the
+model of imitation for His followers.  Then, in the rewards and
+punishments of the future state of the Mahometans, how gross are all the
+ideas, how unlike the promises of a divine and spiritual being; their
+paradise is a mere earthly garden of sensual pleasure, and their Houris
+represent the ladies of their own harems rather than glorified angelic
+natures.  How different is the Christian heaven, how sublime in its idea,
+indefinite, yet well suited to a being of intellectual and progressive
+faculties; "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into
+the heart of man to conceive the joys that He hath prepared for those who
+love Him."
+
+_Onu_.--I confess your answer to my last argument is a triumphant one;
+but I cannot allow a question of such extent and of such a variety of
+bearings to be decided by so slight an advantage as that which you have
+gained by this answer.  I will now offer another difficulty to you.  The
+law of the Jews, you will allow, was established by God Himself and
+delivered to Moses from the seat of His glory amongst storms, thunder,
+and lightnings, on Mount Sinai; why should this law, if pure and divine,
+have been overturned by the same Being who established it?  And all the
+ceremonies of the Hebrews have been abolished by the first Christians.
+
+_Amb_.--I deny that the divine law of Moses was abolished by Christ, who
+Himself says, "I came to confirm the law, not to destroy it."  And the
+Ten Commandments form the vital parts of the foundation of the creed of
+the true Christian.  It appears that the religion of Christ was the same
+pure theism with that of the patriarchs; and the rites and ceremonies
+established by Moses seem to have been only adjuncts to the spiritual
+religion intended to suit a particular climate and a particular state of
+the Jewish nation, rather a dress or clothing of the religion than
+forming a constituent part of it, a system of discipline of life and
+manners rather than an essential part of doctrine.  The rites of
+circumcision and ablution were necessary to the health and perhaps even
+to the existence of a people living on the hottest part of the shores of
+the Mediterranean.  And in the sacrifices made of the first fruits and of
+the chosen of the flock, we may see a design not merely connected with
+the religious faith of the people but even with their political economy.
+To offer their choicest and best property as a proof of their gratitude
+to the Supreme Being was a kind of test of devotedness and obedience to
+the theocracy; and these sacrifices by obliging them to raise more
+produce and provide more cattle than were essential to their ordinary
+support, preserved them from the danger of famine, as in case of a dearth
+it was easy for the priests under the divine permission to apply those
+offerings to the necessities of the people.  All the pure parts of the
+faith which had descended from Abraham to David were preserved by Jesus
+Christ; but the ceremonial religion was fitted only for a particular
+nation and a particular country; Christianity, on the contrary, was to be
+the religion of the world and of a civilised and improving world.  And it
+appears to me to be an additional proof of its divine nature and origin,
+that it is exactly in conformity to the principles of the improvement and
+perfection of the human mind.  When given to a particular race fixed in a
+peculiar climate, its objects were sensible, its discipline was severe,
+and its rites and ceremonies numerous and imposing, fitted to act upon
+weak, ignorant, and consequently obstinate men.  In its gradual
+development it threw off its local character and its particular forms,
+and adopted ceremonies more fitted for mankind in general; and in its
+ultimate views, it preserves only pure, spiritual, and I may say
+philosophical doctrines, the unity of the divine nature and a future
+state, embracing a system of rewards and punishments suited to an
+accountable and immortal being.
+
+_Phil_.--I have been attentively listening to your discussion.  The views
+which Ambrosio has taken of Christianity certainly throw a light over it
+perfectly new to me; and, I must say in candour, that I am disposed to
+adopt his notion of the early state of society rather than that of my
+Genius.  I have always been accustomed to consider religious feeling as
+instinctive; but Ambrosio's arguments have given me something approaching
+to a definite faith for an obscure and indefinite notion.  I am willing
+to allow that man was created, not a savage, as he is represented in my
+vision, but perfect in his faculties and with a variety of instinctive
+powers and knowledge; that he transmitted these powers and knowledge to
+his offspring; but that by an improper use of reason in disobedience to
+the divine will, the instinctive faculties of most of his descendants
+became deteriorated and at last lost, but that these faculties were
+preserved in the race of Abraham and David, and the full power again
+bestowed upon or recovered by Christ.  I am ready to allow the importance
+of religion in cultivating and improving the world; and Ambrosio's view
+appears to me capable of being referred to a general law of our nature;
+and revelation may be regarded not as a partial interference but as a
+constant principle belonging to the mind of man, and the belief in
+supernatural forms and agency, the results of prophecies and the
+miracles, as one only of the necessary consequences of it.  Man, as a
+reasoning animal, must always have doubted of his immortality and plan of
+conduct; in all the results of faith, there is immediate submission to a
+divine will, which we are sure is good.  We may compare the destiny of
+man in this respect to that of a migratory bird; if a slow flying bird,
+as a landrail in the Orkneys in autumn, had reason and could use it as to
+the probability of his finding his way over deserts, across seas, and of
+securing his food in passing to a warm climate 3,000 miles off, he would
+undoubtedly starve in Europe; under the direction of his instinct he
+securely arrives there in good condition.  I have allowed the force of
+your objections to that part of my vision relating to the origin of
+society, but I hope you will admit that the conclusion of it is not
+inconsistent with the ideas derived from revelation respecting the future
+state of the human being.
+
+_Amb_.--Revelation has not disclosed to us the nature of this state, but
+only fixed its certainty.  We are sure from geological facts, as well as
+from sacred history, that man is a recent animal on the globe, and that
+this globe has undergone one considerable revolution, since the creation,
+by water; and we are taught that it is to undergo another, by fire,
+preparatory to a new and glorified state of existence of man; but this is
+all we are permitted to know, and as this state is to be entirely
+different from the present one of misery and probation, any knowledge
+respecting it would be useless and indeed almost impossible.
+
+_Phil_.--My Genius has placed the more exalted spiritual natures in
+cometary worlds, and this last fiery revolution may be produced by the
+appulse of a comet.
+
+_Amb_.--Human fancy may imagine a thousand manners in which it may be
+produced, but upon such notions it is absurd to dwell.  I will not allow
+your Genius the slightest approach to inspiration, and I can admit no
+verisimility in a reverie which is fixed on a foundation you now allow to
+be so weak.  But see, the twilight is beginning to appear in the orient
+sky, and there are some dark clouds on the horizon opposite to the crater
+of Vesuvius, the lower edges of which transmit a bright light, showing
+the sun is already risen in the country beneath them.  I would say that
+they may serve as an image of the hopes of immortality derived from
+revelation; for we are sure from the light reflected in those clouds that
+the lands below us are in the brightest sunshine, but we are entirely
+ignorant of the surface and the scenery; so, by revelation, the light of
+an imperishable and glorious world is disclosed to us; but it is in
+eternity, and its objects cannot be seen by mortal eye or imaged by
+mortal imagination.
+
+_Phil_.--I am not so well read in the Scriptures as I hope I shall be at
+no very distant time; but I believe the pleasures of heaven are mentioned
+more distinctly than you allow in the sacred writings.  I think I
+remember that the saints are said to be crowned with palms and amaranths,
+and that they are described as perpetually hymning and praising God.
+
+_Amb_.--This is evidently only metaphorical; music is the sensual
+pleasure which approaches nearest to an intellectual one, and probably
+may represent the delight resulting from the perception of the harmony of
+things and of truth seen in God.  The palm as an evergreen tree and the
+amaranth a perdurable flower are emblems of immortality.  If I am allowed
+to give a metaphorical allusion to the future state of the blest, I
+should image it by the orange grove in that sheltered glen, on which the
+sun is now beginning to shine, and of which the trees are at the same
+time loaded with sweet golden fruit and balmy silver flowers.  Such
+objects may well portray a state in which hope and fruition become one
+eternal feeling.
+
+_Onu_.--This glorious sunrise seems to have made you both poetical.
+Though with the darkest and most gloomy mind of the party I cannot help
+feeling its influence, I cannot help believing with you that the night of
+death will be succeeded by a bright morning; but, as in the scene below
+us, the objects are nearly the same as they were last evening, with more
+of brightness and brilliancy, with a fairer prospect in the east and more
+mist in the west, so I cannot help believing that our new state of
+existence must bear an analogy to the present one, and that the order of
+events will not be entirely different.
+
+_Amb_.--Your view is not an unnatural one; but I am rejoiced to find some
+symptoms of a change in your opinions.
+
+_Onu_.--I wish with all my heart they were stronger; I begin to feel my
+reason a weight and my scepticism a very heavy load.  Your discussions
+have made me a Philo-Christian, but I cannot understand nor embrace all
+the views you have developed, though I really wish to do so.
+
+_Amb_.--Your wish, if sincere, I doubt not will be gratified.  Fix your
+powerful mind upon the harmony of the moral world, as you have been long
+accustomed to do upon the order of the physical universe, and you will
+see the scheme of the eternal intelligence developing itself alike in
+both.  Think of the goodness and mercy of omnipotence, and aid your
+contemplation by devotional feelings and mental prayer and aspirations to
+the source of all knowledge, and wait with humility for the light which I
+doubt not will be so produced in your mind.
+
+_Onu_.--You again perplex me; I cannot believe that the adorations or
+offerings of so feeble a creature can influence the decrees of
+omnipotence.
+
+_Amb_.--You mistake me: as to their influencing or affecting the supreme
+mind it is out of the question, but they affect your own mind, they
+perpetuate a habit of gratitude and of obedience which may gradually end
+in perfect faith, they discipline the affections and keep the heart in a
+state of preparation to receive and preserve all good and pious feelings.
+Whoever passes from utter darkness into bright sunshine finds that he
+cannot at first distinguish objects better in one than in the other, but
+in a feeble light he acquires gradually the power of bearing a brighter
+one, and gains at last the habit not only of supporting it, but of
+receiving delight as well as instruction from it.  In the pious
+contemplations that I recommend to you there is the twilight or sober
+dawn of faith which will ultimately enable you to support the brightness
+of its meridian sun.
+
+_Onu_.--I understand you, but your metaphor is more poetical than just;
+your discipline, however, I have no doubt, is better fitted to enable me
+to bear the light than to contemplate it through the smoked or coloured
+glasses of scepticism.
+
+_Amb_.--Yes, for they not only diminish its brightness but alter its
+nature.
+
+
+
+
+DIALOGUE THE THIRD.  THE UNKNOWN.
+
+
+The same persons accompanied me in many journeys by land and water to
+different parts of the Phlegraean fields, and we enjoyed in a most
+delightful season, the beginning of May, the beauties of the glorious
+country which encloses the Bay of Naples, so rich, so ornamented with the
+gifts of nature, so interesting from the monuments it contains and the
+recollections it awakens.  One excursion, the last we made in southern
+Italy, the most important both from the extraordinary personage with whom
+it made me acquainted and his influence upon my future life, merits a
+particular detail which I shall now deliver to paper.
+
+It was on the 16th of May, 18-- that we left Naples at three in the
+morning for the purpose of visiting the remains of the temples of Paestum,
+and having provided relays of horses we found ourselves at about half-
+past one o'clock descending the hill of Eboli towards the plain which
+contains these stupendous monuments of antiquity.  Were my existence to
+be prolonged through ten centuries, I think I could never forget the
+pleasure I received on that delicious spot.  We alighted from our
+carriage to take some refreshment, and we reposed upon the herbage under
+the shade of a magnificent pine contemplating the view around and below
+us.  On the right were the green hills covered with trees stretching
+towards Salerno; beyond them were the marble cliffs which form the
+southern extremity of the Bay of Sorento; immediately below our feet was
+a rich and cultivated country filled with vineyards and abounding in
+villas, in the gardens of which were seen the olive and the cypress tree
+connected as if to memorialise how near to each other are life and death,
+joy and sorrow; the distant mountains stretching beyond the plain of
+Paestum were in the full luxuriance of vernal vegetation; and in the
+extreme distance, as if in the midst of a desert, we saw the white
+temples glittering in the sunshine.  The blue Tyrrhene sea filled up the
+outline of this scene, which, though so beautiful, was not calm; there
+was a heavy breeze which blew full from the southwest; it was literally a
+zephyr, and its freshness and strength in the middle of the day were
+peculiarly balmy and delightful; it seemed a breath stolen by the spring
+from the summer.  I never saw a deeper, brighter azure than that of the
+waves which rolled towards the shore, and which was rendered more
+striking by the pure whiteness of their foam.  The agitation of nature
+seemed to be one of breathing and awakening life; the noise made by the
+waving of the branches of the pine above our heads and by the rattling of
+its cones was overpowered by the music of a multitude of birds which sung
+everywhere in the trees that surrounded us, and the cooing of the turtle-
+doves was heard even more distinctly than the murmuring of the waves or
+the whistling of the winds, so that in the strife of nature the voice of
+love was predominant.  With our hearts touched by this extraordinary
+scene we descended to the ruins, and having taken at a farmhouse a person
+who acted as guide or cicerone, we began to examine those wonderful
+remains which have outlived even the name of the people by whom they were
+raised, and which continue almost perfect whilst a Roman and a Saracen
+city since raised have been destroyed.  We had been walking for half an
+hour round the temples in the sunshine when our guide represented to us
+the danger that there was of suffering from the effects of malaria, for
+which, as is well known, this place is notorious, and advised us to
+retire into the interior of the temple of Neptune.  We followed his
+advice, and my companions began to employ themselves in measuring the
+circumference of one of the Doric columns, when they suddenly called my
+attention to a stranger who was sitting on a camp-stool behind it.  The
+appearance of any person in this place at this time was sufficiently
+remarkable, but the man who was before us from his dress and appearance
+would have been remarkable anywhere.  He was employed in writing in a
+memorandum book when we first saw him, but he immediately rose and
+saluted us by bending the head slightly though gracefully; and this
+enabled me to see distinctly his person and dress.  He was rather above
+the middle stature, slender, but with well-turned limbs; his countenance
+was remarkably intelligent, his eye hazel but full and strong, his front
+was smooth and unwrinkled, and but for some grey hairs, which appeared
+silvering his brown and curly locks, he might have been supposed to have
+hardly reached the middle age; his nose was aquiline, the expression of
+the lower part of his countenance remarkably sweet, and when he spoke to
+our guide, which he did with uncommon fluency in the Neapolitan dialect,
+I thought I had never heard a more agreeable voice, sonorous yet gentle
+and silver-sounded.  His dress was very peculiar, almost like that of an
+ecclesiastic, but coarse and light; and there was a large soiled white
+hat on the ground beside him, on which was fastened a pilgrim's cockle
+shell, and there was suspended round his neck a long antique blue
+enamelled phial, like those found in the Greek tombs, and it was attached
+to a rosary of coarse beads.  He took up his hat, and appeared to be
+retiring to another part of the building, when I apologised for the
+interruption we had given to his studies, begged him to resume them, and
+assured him that our stay in the building would be only momentary, for I
+saw that there was a cloud over the sun, the brightness of which was the
+cause of our retiring.  I spoke in Italian; he replied in English,
+observing that he supposed the fear of contracting the malaria fever had
+induced us to seek the shelter of the shade: but it is too early in the
+season to have much reasonable fear of this insidious enemy; yet, he
+added, this bottle which you may have observed here at my breast, I carry
+about with me, as a supposed preventive of the effects of malaria, and as
+far as my experience, a very limited one, however, has gone, it is
+effectual.  I ventured to ask him what the bottle might contain, as such
+a benefit ought to be made known to the world.  He replied, "It is a
+mixture which slowly produces the substance called by chemists chlorine,
+which is well known to be generally destructive to contagious matters;
+and a friend of mine who has lived for many years in Italy, and who has
+made a number of experiments with it, by exposing himself to the danger
+of fever in the worst seasons and in the worst places, believes that it
+is a secure preventive.  I am not convinced of this; but it can do no
+harm; and in waiting for more evidence of its utility, I employ it
+without putting the least confidence in its power; nor do I expose myself
+to the same danger as my friend has done for the sake of an experiment."
+I said, "I believe several scientific persons--Brocchi amongst
+others--have doubted the existence of any specific matter in the
+atmosphere producing intermittent fevers in marshy countries and hot
+climates; and have been more disposed to attribute the disease to
+physical causes, dependent upon the great differences of temperature
+between day and night and to the refrigerating effects of the dense fogs
+common in such situations in the evening and morning; and, on this
+hypothesis, they have recommended warm woollen clothing and fires at
+night as the best preventives against these destructive diseases, so
+fatal to the peasants who remain in the summer and autumn in the
+neighbourhood of the maremme of Rome, Tuscany, or Naples."  The stranger
+said, "I am acquainted with the opinions of the gentlemen, and they
+undoubtedly have weight; but that a specific matter of contagion has not
+been detected by chemical means in the atmosphere of marshes does not
+prove its non-existence.  We know so little of those agents that affect
+the human constitution, that it is of no use to reason on this subject.
+There can be no doubt that the line of malaria above the Pontine marshes
+is marked by a dense fog morning and evening, and most of the old Roman
+towns were placed upon eminences out of the reach of this fog.  I have
+myself experienced a peculiar effect upon the organs of smell in the
+neighbourhood of marshes in the evening after a very hot day; and the
+instances in which people have been seized with intermittents by a single
+exposure in a place infested by malaria in the season of fevers gives, I
+think, a strong support to something like a poisonous material existing
+in the atmosphere in such spots; but I merely offer doubts.  I hope the
+progress of physiology and of chemistry will at no very distant time
+solve this important problem."  Ambrosio now came forward, and bowing to
+the stranger, said he took the liberty, as he saw from his familiarity
+with the cicerone that he was well acquainted with Paestum, of asking him
+whether the masses of travertine, of which the Cyclopean walls and the
+temples were formed, were really produced by aqueous deposition from the
+River Silaro, as he had often heard reported.  The stranger replied,
+"that they were certainly produced by deposition from water; and such
+deposits are made by the Silaro.  But I rather believe," he said, "that a
+lake in the immediate neighbourhood of the city furnished the quarry from
+which these stones were excavated; and, in half an hour, if you like,
+after you have finished your examinations of the temples with your guide,
+I will accompany you to the spot from which it is evident that large
+masses of the travertine, marmor tiburtinum, or calcareous tufa, have
+been raised."  We thanked him for his attention, accepted his invitation,
+took the usual walk round the temples, and returned to our new
+acquaintance, who led the way through the gate of the city to the banks
+of a pool or lake a short distance off.  We walked to the borders on a
+mass of calcareous tufa, and we saw that this substance had even
+encrusted the reeds on the shore.  There was something peculiarly
+melancholy in the character of this water; all the herbs around it were
+grey, as if encrusted with marble; a few buffaloes were slaking their
+thirst in it, which ran wildly away on our approach, and appeared to
+retire into a rocky excavation or quarry at the end of the lake; there
+were a number of birds, which, on examination, I found were sea swallows,
+flitting on the surface and busily employed with the libella or dragon-
+fly in destroying the myriads of gnats which rose from the bottom and
+were beginning to be very troublesome by their bites to us.  "There,"
+said the stranger, "is what I believe to be the source of those large and
+durable stones which you see in the plain before you.  This water rapidly
+deposits calcareous matter, and even if you throw a stick into it, a few
+hours is sufficient to give it a coating of this substance.  Whichever
+way you turn your eyes you see masses of this recently-produced marble,
+the consequence of the overflowing of the lake during the winter floods,
+and in that large excavation where you saw the buffaloes disappear you
+may observe that immense masses have been removed, as if by the hand of
+art and in remote times.  The marble that remains in the quarry is of the
+same texture and character as that which you see in the ruins of Paestum,
+and I think it is scarcely possible to doubt that the builders of those
+extraordinary structures derived a part of their materials from this
+spot."  Ambrosio gave his assent to this opinion of the stranger; and I
+took the liberty of asking him as to the quantity of calcareous matter
+contained in solution in the lake, saying that it appeared to me, for so
+rapid and considerable an effect of deposition, there must be an unusual
+quantity of solid matter dissolved by the water or some peculiar
+circumstance of solution.  The stranger replied, "This water is like
+many, I may say most of the sources which rise at the foot of the
+Apennines: it holds carbonic acid in solution which has dissolved a
+portion of the calcareous matter of the rock through which it has passed.
+This carbonic acid is dissipated in the atmosphere, and the marble,
+slowly thrown down, assumes a crystalline form and produces coherent
+stones.  The lake before us is not particularly rich in the quantity of
+calcareous matter that it contains, for, as I have found by experience, a
+pint of it does not afford more than five or six grains; but the quantity
+of fluid and the length of time are sufficient to account for the immense
+quantities of tufa and rock which in the course of ages have accumulated
+in this situation."  Onuphrio's curiosity was excited by this statement
+of the stranger, and he said, "May I take the liberty of asking if you
+have any idea as to the cause of the large quantity of carbonic acid
+which you have been so good as to inform us exists in most of the waters
+in this country?"  The stranger replied, "I certainly have formed an
+opinion on this subject, which I willingly state to you.  It can, I
+think, be scarcely doubted that there is a source of volcanic fire at no
+great distance from the surface in the whole of southern Italy; and, this
+fire acting upon the calcareous rocks of which the Apennines are
+composed, must constantly detach from them carbonic acid, which rising to
+the sources of the springs, deposited from the waters of the atmosphere,
+must give them their impregnation and enable them to dissolve calcareous
+matter.  I need not dwell upon Etna, Vesuvius, or the Lipari Islands to
+prove that volcanic fires are still in existence; and there can be no
+doubt that in earlier periods almost the whole of Italy was ravaged by
+them; oven Rome itself, the eternal city, rests upon the craters of
+extinct volcanoes; and I imagine that the traditional and fabulous record
+of the destruction made by the conflagration of Phaeton in the chariot of
+the sun and his falling into the Po had reference to a great and
+tremendous igneous volcanic eruption, which extended over Italy and
+ceased only near the Po at the foot of the Alps.  Be this as it may, the
+sources of carbonic acid are numerous, not merely in the Neapolitan, but
+likewise in the Roman and Tuscan states.  The most magnificent waterfall
+in Europe, that of the Velino, near Terni, is partly fed by a stream
+containing calcareous matter dissolved by carbonic acid, and it deposits
+marble, which crystallises even in the midst of its thundering descent
+and foam in the bed in which it falls.  The Anio or Teverone, which
+almost approaches in beauty to the Velino in the number and variety of
+its falls and cascatelle, is likewise a calcareous water; and there is
+still a more remarkable one which empties itself into this river below
+Tivoli, and which you have probably seen in your excursions in the
+campagna of Rome, called the lacus Albula or the lake of the Solfatara."
+Ambrosio said, "We remember it well, we saw it this very spring; we were
+carried there to examine some ancient Roman baths, and we were struck by
+the blue milkiness of the water, by the magnitude of the source, and by
+the disagreeable smell of sulphuretted hydrogen which everywhere
+surrounded the lake."  The stranger said, "When you return to Latium I
+advise you to pay another visit to a spot which is interesting from a
+number of causes, some of which I will take the liberty of mentioning to
+you.  You have only seen one lake, that where the ancient Romans erected
+their baths, but there is another a few yards above it, surrounded by
+very high rushes, and almost hidden by them from the sight.  This lake
+sends down a considerable stream of tepid water to the larger lake, but
+this water is less strongly impregnated with carbonic acid; the largest
+lake is actually a saturated solution of this gas, which escapes from it
+in such quantities in some parts of its surface that it has the
+appearance of being actually in ebullition.  I have found by experiment
+that the water taken from the most tranquil part of the lake, even after
+being agitated and exposed to the air, contained in solution more than
+its own volume of carbonic acid gas with a very small quantity of
+sulphuretted hydrogen, to the presence of which, I conclude, its ancient
+use in curing cutaneous disorders may be referred.  Its temperature, I
+ascertained, was in the winter in the warmest parts above 80 degrees of
+Fahrenheit, and it appears to be pretty constant, for I have found it
+differ a few degrees only, in the ascending source, in January, March,
+May, and the beginning of June; it is therefore supplied with heat from a
+subterraneous source, being nearly twenty degrees above the mean
+temperature of the atmosphere.  Kircher has detailed in his "Mundus
+Subterraneus" various wonders respecting this lake, most of which are
+unfounded, such as that it is unfathomable, that it has at the bottom the
+heat of boiling water, and that floating islands rise from the gulf which
+emits it.  It must certainly be very difficult, or even impossible, to
+fathom a source which rises with so much violence from a subterraneous
+excavation, and, at a time when chemistry had made small progress, it was
+easy to mistake the disengagement of carbonic acid for an actual
+ebullition.  The floating islands are real, but neither the Jesuit nor
+any of the writers who have since described this lake had a correct idea
+of their origin, which is exceedingly curious.  The high temperature of
+this water, and the quantity of carbonic acid that it contains, render it
+peculiarly fitted to afford a pabulum or nourishment to vegetable life.
+The banks of travertine are everywhere covered with reeds, lichens,
+confervae, and various kinds of aquatic vegetables, and, at the same time
+that the process of vegetable life is going on, the crystallisations of
+the calcareous matter, which is everywhere deposited in consequence of
+the escape of carbonic acid, likewise proceed, giving a constant
+milkiness to what, from its tint, would otherwise be a blue fluid.  So
+rapid is the vegetation, owing to the decomposition of the carbonic acid,
+that, even in winter, masses of confervae and lichens, mixed with
+deposited travertine, are constantly detached by the currents of water
+from the bank and float down the stream, which being a considerable river
+is never without many of these small islands on its surface; they are
+sometimes only a few inches in size, and composed merely of dark-green
+confervae or purple or yellow lichens, but they are sometimes even of
+some feet in diameter, and contain seeds and various species of common
+water-plants, which are usually more or less encrusted with marble.  There
+is, I believe, no place in the world where there is a more striking
+example of the opposition or contrast of the laws of animate and
+inanimate Nature, of the forces of inorganic chemical affinity and those
+of the powers of life.  Vegetables in such a temperature, and everywhere
+surrounded by food, are produced with a wonderful rapidity, but the
+crystallisations are formed with equal quickness, and they are no sooner
+produced than they are destroyed together.  Notwithstanding the
+sulphureous exhalations from the lake, the quantity of vegetable matter
+generated there and its heat make it the resort of an infinite variety of
+insect tribes, and even in the coldest days in winter numbers of flies
+may be observed on the vegetables surrounding its banks or on its
+floating island's, and a quantity of their larvae may be seen there
+sometimes encrusted and entirely destroyed by calcareous matter, which is
+likewise often the fate of the insects themselves, as well as of various
+species of shell-fish that are found amongst the vegetables, which grow
+and are destroyed in the travertine on its banks.  Snipes, ducks, and
+various water-birds, often visit those lakes, probably attracted by the
+temperature and the quantity of food in which they abound; but they
+usually confine themselves to the banks, as the carbonic acid disengaged
+from the surface would be fatal to them if they ventured to swim upon it
+when tranquil.  In May, 18--, I fixed a stick on a mass of travertine
+covered by the water, and I examined it in the beginning of the April
+following for the purpose of determining the nature of the depositions.
+The water was lower at this time, yet I had some difficulty, by means of
+a sharp-pointed hammer, in breaking the mass which adhered to the bottom
+of the stick; it was several inches in thickness.  The upper part was a
+mixture of light tufa and the leaves of confervae; below this was a
+darker and more solid travertine, containing black and decomposed masses
+of confervae; in the inferior part the travertine was more solid and of a
+grey colour, but with cavities which I have no doubt were produced by the
+decomposition of vegetable matter.  I have passed many hours, I may say
+many days, in studying the phenomena of this wonderful lake; it has
+brought many trains of thought into my mind connected with the early
+changes of our globe, and I have sometimes reasoned from the forms of
+plants and animals preserved in marble in this warm source to the grander
+depositions in the secondary rocks, where the zoophytes or coral insects
+have worked upon a grand scale, and where palms, and vegetables now
+unknown are preserved with the remains of crocodiles, turtles, and
+gigantic extinct animals of the _sauri genus_, and which appear to have
+belonged to a period when the whole globe possessed a much higher
+temperature.  I have, likewise, often been led, from the remarkable
+phenomena surrounding me in that spot, to compare the works of man with
+those of Nature.  The baths, erected there nearly twenty centuries ago,
+present only heaps of ruins, and even the bricks of which they were
+built, though hardened by fire, are crumbled into dust, whilst the masses
+of travertine around it, though formed by a variable source from the most
+perishable materials, have hardened by time, and the most perfect remains
+of the greatest ruins in the eternal city, such as the triumphal arches
+and the Colosaeum, owe their duration to this source.  Then, from all we
+know, this lake, except in some change in its dimensions, continues
+nearly in the same state in which it was described 1,700 years ago by
+Pliny, and I have no doubt contains the same kinds of floating islands,
+the same plants, and the same insects.  During the fifteen years that I
+have known it it has appeared precisely identical in these respects, and
+yet it has the character of an accidental phenomenon depending upon
+subterraneous fire.  How marvellous then are those laws by which even the
+humblest types of organic existence are preserved though born amidst the
+sources of their destruction, and by which a species of immortality is
+given to generations floating, as it were, like evanescent bubbles, on a
+stream raised from the deepest caverns of the earth, and instantly losing
+what may be called its spirit in the atmosphere."  These last
+observations of the stranger recalled to my recollection some phenomena
+which I had observed many years ago, and of which I could then give no
+satisfactory explanation.  I was shooting in the marshes which surround
+the ruins of Gabia, and where there are still remains supposed to be of
+the Alexandrine aqueduct; I observed a small insulated hill, apparently
+entirely composed of travertine, and from its summit there were
+formations of tufa which had evidently been produced by running water,
+but the whole mass was now perfectly dry and encrusted by vegetables.  At
+first I suspected that this little mountain had been formed by a jet of
+calcareous water, a kind of small fountain analogous to the Geiser, which
+had deposited travertine and continued to rise through the basin flowing
+from a higher level; but the irregular form of the eminence did not
+correspond to this idea, and I remained perplexed with the fact and
+unable to satisfy myself as to its cause.  The views of the stranger
+appeared to me now to make it probable that the calcareous water had
+issued from ancient leaks in the aqueduct and formed a hillock that had
+encased the bricks of the erection, which in other parts, where not
+encrusted by travertine, had become entirely decayed, degraded, and
+removed from the soil.  I mentioned the circumstance and my suspicion of
+its nature.  The stranger said: "You are perfectly correct in your idea.
+I know the spot well, and if you had not mentioned it I should probably
+have quoted it as an instance in which the works of art are preserved, as
+it were, by the accidents of Nature.  I was so struck by this appearance
+last year that I had the travertine partially removed by some workmen,
+and I found beneath it the canal of the aqueduct in a perfect state, and
+the bricks of the arches as uninjured as if freshly laid."  The stranger
+had hardly concluded this sentence when he was interrupted by Onuphrio,
+who said, "I have always supposed that in every geological system water
+is considered as the cause of the destruction or degradation of the
+surface, but in all the instances that you have mentioned it appears
+rather as a conservative power, not destroying but rather producing."  "It
+is the general vice of philosophical systems," replied the stranger,
+"that they are usually founded upon a few facts, which they well explain,
+and are extended by the human fancy to all the phenomena of Nature, to
+many of which they must be contradictory.  The human intellectual powers
+are so feeble that they can with difficulty embrace a single series of
+phenomena, and they consequently must fail when extended to the whole of
+Nature.  Water by its common operation, as poured down from the
+atmosphere in rain and torrents, tends to level and degrade the surface,
+and carries the material of the land into the bosom of the ocean.  Fire,
+on the contrary, in volcanic eruptions usually raises mountains, exalts
+the surface, and creates islands even in the midst of the sea.  But these
+laws are not invariable, as the instances to which we have just referred
+prove, and parts of the surface of the globe are sometimes destroyed even
+by fire, of which examples may be seen in the Phlegraean fields, and
+islands raised by one volcanic eruption have been immerged in the sea by
+another.  There are, in fact, no accidents in Nature; what we call
+accidents are the results of general laws in particular operation, but we
+cannot deduce these laws from the particular operation or the general
+order from the partial result."  Ambrosio said to the stranger: "You
+appear, sir, to have paid so much attention to physical phenomena that
+few things would give us more pleasure than to know your opinion
+respecting the early changes and physical history of the globe, for I
+perceive you do not belong to the modern geological schools."  The
+stranger said, "I have certainly formed opinions or rather speculations
+on these subjects, but I fear they are hardly worth communicating; they
+have sometimes amused me in hours of idleness, but I doubt if they will
+amuse others."  I said, "The observations which you have already been so
+kind as to communicate to us, on the formation of the travertine, lead us
+not only to expect amusement but likewise instruction."
+
+_The Stranger_.--On these matters I had facts to communicate; on the
+geological scheme of the early history of the globe there are only
+analogies to guide us, which different minds may apply and interpret in
+different ways; but I will not trifle with a long preliminary discourse.
+Astronomical deductions and actual measures by triangulation prove that
+the globe is an oblate spheroid flattened at the poles, and this form we
+know, by strict mathematical demonstrations, is precisely the one which a
+fluid body revolving round its axis, and become solid at its surface by
+the slow dissipation of its heat or other causes, would assume.  I
+suppose, therefore, that the globe, in the first state in which the
+imagination can venture to consider it, was a fluid mass with an immense
+atmosphere revolving in space round the sun, and that by its cooling a
+portion of its atmosphere was condensed in water which occupied a part of
+the surface.  In this state no forms of life such as now belong to our
+system could have inhabited it; and, I suppose, the crystalline rocks
+(or, as they are called by geologists, the primary rocks), which contain
+no vestiges of a former order of things, were the results of the first
+consolidation on its surface.  Upon the further cooling the water which
+more or less had covered it contracted, depositions took place, shell-
+fish and coral insects of the first creation began their labours, and
+islands appeared in the midst of the ocean raised from the deep by the
+productive energies of millions of zoophytes.  Those islands became
+covered with vegetables fitted to bear a high temperature, such as palms
+and various species of plants similar to those which now exist in the
+hottest parts of the world; and the submarine rocks or shores of these
+new formations of land became covered with aquatic vegetables, on which
+various species of shell-fish and common fishes found their nourishment.
+The fluids of the globe in cooling deposited a large quantity of the
+materials they held in solution, and these deposits agglutinating
+together the sand, the immense masses of coral rocks, and some of the
+remains of the shells and fishes found round the shores of the primitive
+lands, produced the first order of secondary rocks.  As the temperature
+of the globe became lower, species of the oviparous reptiles were created
+to inhabit it; and the turtle, crocodile, and various gigantic animals of
+the sauri kind, seem to have haunted the bays and waters of the primitive
+lands.  But in this state of things there was no order of events similar
+to the present; the crust of the globe was exceedingly slender, and the
+source of fire a small distance from the surface.  In consequence of
+contraction in one part of the mass, cavities were opened, which caused
+the entrance of water, and immense volcanic explosions took place,
+raising one part of the surface, depressing another, producing mountains,
+and causing new and extensive depositions from the primitive ocean.
+Changes of this kind must have been extremely frequent in the early
+epochas of nature, and the only living forms of which the remains are
+found in the strata that are the monuments of these changes, are those of
+plants, fishes, birds, and oviparous reptiles, which seem most fitted to
+exist in such a war of the elements.  When these revolutions became less
+frequent, and the globe became still more cooled, and the inequalities of
+its temperature preserved by the mountain chains, more perfect animals
+became its inhabitants, many of which, such as the mammoth, megalonix,
+megatherium, and gigantic hyena, are now extinct.  At this period the
+temperature of the ocean seems to have been not much higher than it is at
+present, and the changes produced by occasional eruptions of it have left
+no consolidated rocks.  Yet one of these eruptions appears to have been
+of great extent and some duration, and seems to have been the cause of
+those immense quantities of water-worn stones, gravel and sand, which are
+usually called diluvian remains; and it is probable that this effect was
+connected with the elevation of a new continent in the southern
+hemisphere by volcanic fire.  When the system of things became so
+permanent that the tremendous revolutions depending upon the destruction
+of the equilibrium between the heating and cooling agencies were no
+longer to be dreaded, the creation of man took place; and since that
+period there has been little alteration in the physical circumstances of
+our globe.  Volcanoes sometimes occasion the rise of new islands,
+portions of the old continent are constantly washed by rivers into the
+sea; but these changes are too insignificant to affect the destinies of
+man, or the nature of the physical circumstances of things.  On the
+hypothesis that I have adopted, however, it must be remembered that the
+present surface of the globe is merely a thin crust surrounding a nucleus
+of fluid ignited matter, and consequently we can hardly be considered as
+actually safe from the danger of a catastrophe by fire.
+
+Onuphrio said: "From the view you have taken, I conclude that you
+consider volcanic eruptions as owing to the central fire; indeed, their
+existence offers, I think, an argument for believing that the interior of
+the globe is fluid."  The stranger answered: "I beg you to consider the
+views I have been developing as merely hypothetical, one of the many
+resting places that may be taken by the imagination in considering this
+subject.  There are, however, distinct facts in favour of the idea that
+the interior of the globe has a higher temperature than the surface; the
+heat increasing in mines the deeper we penetrate, and the number of warm
+sources which rise from great depths in almost all countries, are
+certainly favourable to the idea.  The opinion that volcanoes are owing
+to this general and simple cause is, I think, likewise more agreeable to
+the analogies of things than to suppose them dependent upon partial
+chemical changes, such as the action of air and water upon the
+combustible bases of the earths and alkalies, though it is extremely
+probable that these substances may exist beneath the surface, and may
+occasion some results of volcanic fire; and on this subject my notion
+may, perhaps, be more trusted, as for a long while I thought volcanic
+eruptions were owing to chemical agencies of the newly discovered metals
+of the earths and alkalies, and I made many, and some dangerous,
+experiments in the hope of confirming this notion, but in vain."
+
+_Amb_.--We are very much obliged to you for your geological
+illustrations; but they remind me a little of some of the ideas of our
+friend Philalethes in his remarkable vision, and with which we may at
+some time amuse you in return for your geology should we be honoured with
+more of your company.  You are obliged to have recourse to creations for
+all the living beings in your philosophical romance.  I do not see why
+you should not suppose creations or arrangements of dead matter by the
+same laws of infinite wisdom, and why our globe should not rise at once a
+divine work fitted for all the objects of living and intelligent natures.
+
+The stranger replied: "I have merely attempted a philosophical history
+founded upon the facts known respecting rocks and strata and the remains
+they contain.  I begin with what may be considered a creation, a fluid
+globe supplied with an immense atmosphere, and the series of phenomena
+which I imagine consequent to the creation, I supposed produced by powers
+impressed upon matter by Omnipotence."
+
+Ambrosio said: "There is this verisimility in your history, that it is
+not contradictory to the little we are informed by Revelation as to the
+origin of the globe, the order produced in the chaotic state, and the
+succession of living forms generated in the days of creation, which may
+be what philosophers call the 'epochas of nature,' for a day with
+Omnipotence is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day."
+
+"I must object," Onuphrio said, "to your interpretation of the scientific
+view of our new acquaintance, and to your disposition to blend them with
+the cosmogony of Moses.  Allowing the divine origin of the Book of
+Genesis, you must admit that it was not intended to teach the Jews
+systems of philosophy, but the laws of life and morals; and a great man
+and an exalted Christian raised his voice two centuries ago against this
+mode of applying and of often wresting the sense of the Scriptures to
+make them conformable to human fancies; 'from which,' says Lord Bacon,
+'arise not only false and fantastical philosophies, but likewise
+heretical religions.'  If the Scriptures are to be literally interpreted
+and systems of science found in them, Gallileo Gallilei merited his
+persecution, and we ought still to believe that the sun turns round the
+earth."
+
+_Amb_.--You mistake my view, Onuphrio, if you imagine I am desirous of
+raising a system of geology on the Book of Genesis.  It cannot be doubted
+that the first man was created with a great variety of instinctive or
+inspired knowledge, which must have been likewise enjoyed by his
+descendants; and some of this knowledge could hardly fail to have related
+to the globe which he inhabited, and to the objects which surrounded him.
+It would have been impossible for the human mind to have embraced the
+mysteries of creation, or to have followed the history of the moving
+atoms from their chaotic disorder into their arrangement in the visible
+universe, to have seen dead matter assuming the forms of life and
+animation, and light and power arising out of death and sleep.  The ideas
+therefore transmitted to or presented by Moses respecting the origin of
+the world and of man were of the most simple kind, and such as suited the
+early state of society; but, though general and simple truths, they were
+divine truths, yet clothed in a language and suited to the ideas of a
+rude and uninstructed people.  And, when I state my satisfaction in
+finding that they are not contradicted by the refined researches of
+modern geologists, I do not mean to deduce from them a system of science.
+I believe that light was the creation of an act of the Divine will; but I
+do not mean to say that the words, "Let there be light, and there was
+light," were orally spoken by the Deity, nor do I mean to imply that the
+modern discoveries respecting light are at all connected with this
+sublime and magnificent passage.
+
+_Onu_.--Having resided for a long time in Edinburgh, and having heard a
+number of discussions on the theory of Dr. Hutton, or the plutonic theory
+of geology, and having been exceedingly struck both by its simplicity and
+beauty, its harmony with existing facts, and the proofs afforded to it by
+some beautiful chemical experiments, I do not feel disposed immediately
+to renounce it for the views which I have just heard explained; for the
+principal facts which our new acquaintance has stated are, I think, not
+inconsistent with the refined philosophical systems of Professor Playfair
+and Sir James Hall.
+
+_The Unknown_.--I have no objection to the refined plutonic view, as
+capable of explaining many existing phenomena; indeed, you must be aware
+that I have myself had recourse to it.  What I contend against is, its
+application to explain the formations of the secondary rocks, which I
+think clearly belong to an order of facts not at all embraced by it.  In
+the plutonic system there is one simple and constant order assumed, which
+may be supposed eternal.  The surface is constantly imagined to be
+disintegrated, destroyed, degraded, and washed into the bosom of the
+ocean by water, and as constantly consolidated, elevated, and regenerated
+by fire, and the ruins of the old form the foundations of the new world.
+It is supposed that there are always the same types, both of dead and
+living matter; that the remains of rocks, of vegetables, and animals of
+one age are found embedded in rocks raised from the bottom of the ocean
+in another.  Now, to support this view, not only the remains of living
+beings which at present people the globe might be expected to be found in
+the oldest secondary strata, but even those of the arts of man, the most
+powerful and populous of its inhabitants, which is well known not to be
+the case.  On the contrary, each stratum of the secondary rocks contains
+remains of peculiar and mostly now unknown species of vegetables and
+animals.  In those strata which are deepest, and which must consequently
+be supposed to be the earliest deposited, forms even of vegetable life
+are rare; shells and vegetable remains are found in the next order; the
+bones of fishes and oviparous reptiles exist in the following class; the
+remains of birds, with those of the same genera mentioned before, in the
+next order; those of quadrupeds of extinct species, in a still more
+recent class; and it is only in the loose and slightly consolidated
+strata of gravel and sand, and which are usually called diluvian
+formations, that the remains of animals such as now people the globe are
+found, with others belonging to extinct species.  But in none of these
+formations, whether called secondary, tertiary, or diluvial, have the
+remains of man or any of his works been discovered.  It is, I think,
+impossible to consider the organic remains found in any of the earlier
+secondary strata, the lias-limestone and its congenerous formations for
+instance, without being convinced that the beings, whose organs they
+formed, belonged to an order of things entirely different from the
+present.  Gigantic vegetables, more nearly allied to the palms of the
+equatorial countries than to any other plants, can only be imagined to
+have lived in a very high temperature; and the immense reptiles, the
+megalosauri with paddles instead of legs and clothed in mail, in size
+equal or even superior to the whale; and the great amphibia,
+plethiosauri, with bodies like turtles, but furnished with necks longer
+than their bodies, probably to enable them to feed on vegetables growing
+in the shallows of the primitive ocean, seem to show a state in which low
+lands or extensive shores rose above an immense calm sea, and when there
+were no great mountain, chains to produce inequalities of temperature,
+tempests, or storms.  Were the surface of the earth now to be carried
+down into the depths of the ocean, or were some great revolution of the
+waters to cover the existing land, and it was again to be elevated by
+fire, covered with consolidated depositions of sand or mud, how entirely
+different would it be in its characters from any of the secondary strata.
+Its great features would undoubtedly be the works of man--hewn stones,
+and statues of bronze and marble, and tools of iron--and human remains
+would be more common than those of animals on the greatest part of the
+surface; the columns of Paestum or of Agrigentum, or the immense iron and
+granite bridges of the Thames, would offer a striking contrast to the
+bones of the crocodiles or sauri in the older rocks, or even to those of
+the mammoth or elephas primogenius in the diluvial strata.  And whoever
+dwells upon this subject must be convinced that the present order of
+things, and the comparatively recent existence of man as the master of
+the globe, is as certain as the destruction of a former and a different
+order and the extinction of a number of living forms which have now no
+types in being, and which have left their remains wonderful monuments of
+the revolutions of Nature.
+
+_Onu_.--I am not quite convinced by your arguments.  Supposing the lands
+of New Holland were to be washed into the depths of the ocean, and to be
+raised according to the Huttonian view, as a secondary stratum, by
+subterraneous fire, they would contain the remains of both vegetables and
+animals entirely different from any found in the strata of the old
+continents; and may not those peculiar formations to which you have
+referred be, as it were, accidents of Nature belonging to peculiar parts
+of the globe?  And you speak of a diluvian formation, which I conclude
+you would identify with that belonging to the catastrophe described in
+the sacred writings, in which no human remains are found.  Now, you
+surely will not deny that man existed at the time of this catastrophe,
+and he consequently may have existed at the period of the other
+revolutions, which are supposed to be produced in the Huttonian views by
+subterraneous fire.
+
+_The Unknown_.--I have made use of the term "diluvian," because it has
+been adopted by geologists, but without meaning to identify the cause of
+the formations with the deluge described in the sacred writings.  I apply
+the term merely to signify loose and water-worn strata not at all
+consolidated, and deposited by an inundation of water, and in these
+countries which they have covered man certainly did not exist.  With
+respect to your argument derived from New Holland, it appears to me to be
+without weight.  In a variety of climates, and in very distant parts of
+the globe, secondary strata of the same order are found, and they contain
+always the same kind of organic remains, which are entirely different
+from any of those now afforded by beings belonging to the existing order
+of things.  The catastrophes which produced the secondary strata and
+diluvian depositions could not have been local and partial phenomena, but
+must have extended over the whole, or a great part of the surface, of the
+globe.  The remains of similar shell-fishes are found in the limestones
+of the old and new continents; the teeth of the mammoth are not uncommon
+in various parts of Europe; entire skeletons have been found in America,
+and even the skin covered with hair and the entire body of one of these
+enormous extinct animals has been discovered in Siberia preserved in a
+mass of ice.  In the oldest secondary strata there are no remains of such
+animals as now belong to the surface; and in the rocks which may be
+regarded as more recently deposited, these remains occur but rarely, and
+with abundance of extinct species.  There seems, as it were, a gradual
+approach to the present system of things, and a succession of
+destructions and creations preparatory to the existence of man.  It will
+be useless to push these arguments farther.  You must allow that it is
+impossible to defend the proposition, that the present order of things is
+the ancient and constant order of Nature, only modified by existing laws,
+and, consequently, the view which you have supported must be abandoned.
+The monuments of extinct generations of animals are as perfect as those
+of extinct nations; and it would be more reasonable to suppose that the
+pillars and temples of Palmyra were raised by the wandering Arabs of the
+desert, than to imagine that the vestiges of peculiar animated forms in
+the strata beneath the surface belonged to the early and infant families
+of the beings that at present inhabit it.
+
+_Onu_.--I am convinced.  I shall push my arguments no further, for I will
+not support the sophisms of that school which supposes that living nature
+has undergone gradual changes by the effects of its irritabilities and
+appetencies; that the fish has in millions of generations ripened into
+the quadruped, and the quadruped into the man; and that the system of
+life by its own inherent powers has fitted itself to the physical changes
+in the system of the universe.  To this absurd, vague, atheistical
+doctrine, I prefer even the dream of plastic powers, or that other more
+modern dream, that the secondary strata were created, filled with
+remains, as it were, of animal life, to confound the speculations of our
+geological reasoners.
+
+_The Unknown_.--I am glad you have not retreated into the desert and
+defenceless wilderness of scepticism, or of false and feeble philosophy.
+I should not have thought it worth my while to have followed you there; I
+should as soon think of arguing with the peasant who informs me that the
+basaltic columns of Antrim or of Staffa were the works of human art and
+raised by the giant Finmacoul.
+
+At this moment, one of our servants came to inform me that a dinner which
+had been preparing for us at the farmhouse was ready; we asked the
+stranger to do us the honour to partake of our repast; he assented, and
+the following conversation took place at table.
+
+_Phil_.--In reflecting upon our discussions this morning, I cannot help
+being a little surprised at their nature; we have been talking only of
+geological systems, when a more natural subject for our conversation
+would have been these magnificent temples, and an inquiry into the race
+by whom they were raised and the gods to whom they wore dedicated.  We
+are now treading on a spot which contains the bones of a highly civilised
+and powerful people; yet we are almost ignorant of the names they bore,
+and the period of their greatness is lost in the obscurity of time.
+
+_Amb_.--There can be no doubt that the early inhabitants of this city
+were Grecians and a maritime and commercial people; they have been
+supposed to belong to the Sybarite race, and the roses producing flowers
+twice a year in the spring and autumn in ancient times here, might
+sanction the idea that this balmy spot was chosen by a colony who carried
+luxury and refinement to the highest pitch.
+
+_Onu_.--To attempt to form any opinion with respect to the people that
+anciently inhabited these now deserted plains is useless and a vain
+labour.  In the geological conversation which took place before dinner,
+some series of interesting facts were presented to us; and the monuments
+of Nature, though they do not speak a distinct language, yet speak an
+intelligible one; but with respect to Paestum, there is neither history
+nor tradition to guide us; and we shall do wisely to resume our
+philosophical inquiries, if we have not already exhausted the patience of
+our new guest by doubts or objections to his views.
+
+_The Stranger_.--One of you referred in our conversation this morning to
+a vision, which had some relation to the subject of our discussion, and I
+was promised some information on this matter.
+
+I immediately gave a sketch of my vision, and of the opinions which had
+been expressed by Ambrosio on the early history of man, and the
+termination of our discussions on religion.
+
+_The Stranger_.--I agree with Ambrosio in opinion on the subjects you
+have just mentioned.  In my youth, I was a sceptic; and this I believe is
+usually the case with young persons given to general and discursive
+reading, and accustomed to adopt something like a mathematical form in
+their reasonings; and it was in considering the nature of the
+intellectual faculties of brutes, as compared with those of man, and in
+examining the nature of instinctive powers, that I became a believer.
+After I had formed the idea that Revelation was to man in the place of an
+instinct, my faith constantly became stronger; and it was exalted by many
+circumstances I had occasion to witness in a journey that I made through
+Egypt and a part of Asia Minor, and by no one more than by a very
+remarkable dream which occurred to me in Palestine, and which, as we are
+now almost at the hour of the siesta, I will relate to you, though
+perhaps you will be asleep before I have finished it.  I was walking
+along that deserted shore which contains the ruins of Ptolemais, one of
+the most ancient ports of Judaea.  It was evening; the sun was sinking in
+the sea; I seated myself on a rock, lost in melancholy contemplations on
+the destinies of a spot once so famous in the history of man.  The calm
+Mediterranean, bright in the glowing light of the west, was the only
+object before me.  "These waves," I said to myself, "once bore the ships
+of the monarch of Jerusalem which were freighted with the riches of the
+East to adorn and honour the sanctuary of Jehovah; here are now no
+remains of greatness or of commerce; a few red stones and broken bricks
+only mark what might have been once a flourishing port, and the citadel
+above, raised by the Saracens, is filled with Turkish soldiers."  The
+janissary, who was my guide, and my servant, were preparing some food for
+me in a tent which had been raised for the purpose, and whilst waiting
+for their summons to my repast, I continued my reveries, which must
+gradually have ended in slumber.  I saw a man approaching towards me,
+whom, at first, I took for my janissary, but as he came nearer I found a
+very different figure.  He was a very old man with a beard as white as
+snow; his countenance was dark but paler than that of an Arab, and his
+features stern, wild, and with a peculiar savage expression; his form was
+gigantic, but his arms were withered and there was a large scar on the
+left side of his face which seemed to have deprived him of an eye.  He
+wore a black turban and black flowing robes, and there was a large chain
+round his waist which clanked as he moved.  It occurred to me that he was
+one of the santons or sacred madmen so common in the East, and I retired
+as he approached towards me.  He called out: "Fly not, stranger; fear me
+not, I will not harm you.  You shall hear my story, it may be useful to
+you."  He spoke in Arabic but in a peculiar dialect and to me new, yet I
+understood every word.  "You see before you," he said, "a man who was
+educated a Christian, but who renounced the worship of the one supreme
+God for the superstitions of the pagans.  I became an apostate in the
+reign of the Emperor Julian, and I was employed by that Sovereign to
+superintend the re-erection of the temple of Jerusalem, by which it was
+intended to belie the prophecies and give the deathblow to the holy
+religion.  History has informed you of the result: my assistants were
+most of them destroyed in a tremendous storm, I was blasted by lightning
+from heaven (he raised his withered hand to his face and eye), but
+suffered to live and expiate my crime in the flesh.  My life has been
+spent in constant and severe penance, and in that suffering of the spirit
+produced by guilt, and is to be continued as long as any part of the
+temple of Jupiter, in which I renounced my faith, remains in this place.
+I have lived through fifteen tedious centuries, but I trust in the
+mercies of Omnipotence, and I hope my atonement is completed.  I now
+stand in the dust of the pagan temple.  You have just thrown the last
+fragment of it over the rock.  My time is arrived, I come!"  As he spake
+the last words, he rushed towards the sea, threw himself from the rock
+and disappeared.  I heard no struggling, and saw nothing but a gleam of
+light from the wave that closed above him.  I was now roused by the cries
+of my servant and of the janissary, who were shaking my arm, and who
+informed me that my sleep was so sound that they were alarmed for me.
+When I looked on the sea, there was the same light, and I seemed to see
+the very spot in the wave where the old man had sunk.  I was so struck by
+the vision, that I asked if they had not seen something dash into the
+wave, and if they had not heard somebody speaking to me as they arrived.
+Of course their answers were negative.  In passing through Jerusalem and
+in coasting the Dead Sea I had been exceedingly struck by the present
+state of Judaea and the conformity of the fate of the Jewish nation to
+the predictions of our Saviour; I had likewise been reading Gibbon's
+eulogy of Julian, and his account of the attempts made by that Emperor to
+rebuild the temple: so that the dream at such a time and in such a place
+was not an unnatural occurrence.  Yet it was so vivid, and the image of
+the subject of it so peculiar, that it long affected my imagination, and
+whenever I recurred to it, strengthened my faith.
+
+_Onu_.--I believe all the narratives of apparitions and ghost stories are
+founded upon dreams of the same kind as that which occurred to you: an
+ideal representation of events in the local situation, in which the
+person is at the moment, and when the imaginary picture of the place in
+sleep exactly coincides with its reality in waking.
+
+_The Stranger_.--I agree with you in your opinion.  If my servant had not
+been with me, and my dream had been a little less improbable, it would
+have been difficult to have persuaded me that I had not been visited by
+an apparition.
+
+I mentioned the dream of Brutus, and said, "His supposed evil genius
+appeared in his tent; had the philosophical hero dreamt that his genius
+had appeared to him in Rome, there could have been no delusion."  I cited
+the similar vision, recorded of Dion before his death, by Plutarch, of a
+gigantic female, one of the fates or furies, who was supposed to have
+been seen by him when reposing in the portico of his palace.  I referred
+likewise to my own vision of the beautiful female, the guardian angel of
+my recovery, who always seemed to me to be present at my bedside.
+
+_Amb_.--In confirmation of this opinion of Onuphrio, I can mention many
+instances.  I once dreamt that my door had been forced, that there were
+robbers in my room, and that one of them was actually putting his hand
+before my mouth to ascertain if I was sleeping naturally.  I awoke at
+this moment, and was some minutes before I could be sure whether it was a
+dream or a reality.  I felt the pressure of the bedclothes on my lips,
+and still in the fear of being murdered continued to keep my eyes closed
+and to breathe slowly, till, hearing nothing and finding no motion, I
+ventured to open my eyes; but even then, when I saw nothing, I was not
+sure that my impression was a dream till I had risen from my bed and
+ascertained that the door was still locked.
+
+_Onu_.--I am the only one of the party unable to record any dreams of the
+vivid and peculiar nature you mention from my own experience; I conclude
+it is owing to the dulness of my imagination.  I suppose the more intense
+power of reverie is a symptom of the poetical temperament; and perhaps,
+if I possessed more enthusiasm, I should always have possessed more of
+the religious instinct.  To adopt the idea of Philalethes of hereditary
+character, I fear my forefathers have not been correct in their faith.
+
+_Amb_.--Your glory will be greater in establishing a new character, and I
+trust even the conversation of this day has given you an additional
+reason to adopt _our_ faith.
+
+Ambrosio spoke these words with an earnestness unusual in him, and with
+something of a tone which marked a zeal for proselytism, and at the same
+time he cast his eyes on the rosary which was suspended round the neck of
+the stranger, and said, "I hope I am not indiscreet in saying _our_
+faith."
+
+_The Stranger_.--I was educated in the ritual of the church of England; I
+belong to the Church of Christ; the rosary which you see suspended round
+my neck is a memorial of sympathy and respect for an illustrious man.  I
+will, if you will allow me, give you the history of it, which, I think
+from the circumstances with which it is connected, you will not find
+devoid of interest.  I was passing through France in the reign of
+Napoleon, by the peculiar privilege granted to a scavan, on my road into
+Italy.  I had just returned from the Holy Land, and had in my possession
+two or three of the rosaries which are sold to pilgrims at Jerusalem as
+having been suspended in the Holy Sepulchre.  Pius VII. was then in
+imprisonment at Fontainebleau.  By a special favour, on the plea of my
+return from the Holy Land, I obtained permission to see this venerable
+and illustrious Pontiff.  I carried with me one of my rosaries.  He
+received me with great kindness.  I tendered my services to execute any
+commissions, not political ones, he might think fit to entrust me with in
+Italy, informing him that I was an Englishman.  He expressed his thanks,
+but declined troubling me.  I told him I was just returned from the Holy
+Land, and bowing with great humility, offered to him my rosary from the
+Holy Sepulchre.  He received it with a smile, touched it with his lips,
+gave his benediction over it, and returned it into my hands, supposing,
+of course, that I was a Roman Catholic.  I had meant to present it to his
+Holiness, but the blessing he had bestowed upon it and the touch of his
+lips, made it a precious relic to me and I restored it to my neck, round
+which it has ever since been suspended.  He asked me some unimportant
+questions respecting the state of the Christians at Jerusalem; and on a
+sudden, turned the subject, much to my surprise, to the destruction of
+the French in Russia, and in an exceedingly low tone of voice, as if
+afraid of being overheard, he said, "The _nefas_ has long been triumphant
+over the _fas_, but I do not doubt that the balance of things is even now
+restoring; that God will vindicate his Church, clear his polluted altars,
+and establish society upon its permanent basis of justice and faith.  We
+shall meet again.  Adieu!" and he gave me his paternal blessing.  It was
+eighteen months after this interview, that I went out with almost the
+whole population of Rome, to receive and welcome the triumphal entry of
+this illustrious father of the Church into his capital.  He was borne on
+the shoulders of the most distinguished artists, headed by Canova; and
+never shall I forget the enthusiasm with which he was received--it is
+impossible to describe the shouts of triumph and of rapture sent up to
+heaven by every voice.  And when he gave his benediction to the people,
+there was an universal prostration, a sobbing and marks of emotions of
+joy almost like the bursting of the heart.  I heard, everywhere around
+me, cries of "The holy Father!  The most holy Father!  His restoration is
+the work of God!"  I saw tears streaming from the eyes of almost all the
+women about me, many of them were sobbing hysterically, and old men were
+weeping as if they had been children.  I pressed my rosary to my breast
+on this occasion, and repeatedly touched with my lips that part of it
+which had received the kiss of the most venerable Pontiff.  I preserve it
+with a kind of hallowed feeling, as the memorial of a man whose sanctity,
+firmness, meekness and benevolence are an honour to his Church and to
+human nature; and it has not only been useful to me, by its influence
+upon my own mind, but it has enabled me to give pleasure to others, and
+has, I believe, been sometimes beneficial in insuring my personal safety.
+I have often gratified the peasants of Apulia and Calabria by presenting
+them to kiss a rosary from the Holy Sepulchre which had been hallowed by
+the touch of the lips and benediction of the Pope; and it has been even
+respected by and procured me a safe passage through a party of brigands
+who once stopped me in the passes of the Apennines.
+
+_Onu_.--The use you have made of this relic puts me in mind of a device
+of a very ingenious geological philosopher now living.  He was on Etna
+and busily employed in making a collection of the lavas formed from the
+igneous currents of that mountain; the peasants were often troublesome to
+him, suspecting that he was searching for treasures.  It occurred to him
+to make the following speech to them: "I have been a great sinner in my
+youth and, as a penance, I have made a vow to carry away with me pieces
+of every kind of stone found upon the mountain; permit me quietly to
+perform my pious duty, that I may receive absolution for my sins."  The
+speech produced the desired effect; the peasants shouted, "The holy man!
+The saint!" and gave him every assistance in their power to enable him to
+carry off his burthen, and he made his ample collections with the utmost
+security and in the most agreeable manner.
+
+_The Stranger_.--I do not approve of pious frauds even for philosophical
+purposes; my rosary excited in others the same kind of feeling which it
+excited in my own bosom, and which I hold to be perfectly justifiable,
+and of which I shall never be ashamed.
+
+_Amb_.--You must have travelled in Italy in very dangerous times; have
+you always been secure?
+
+_The Stranger_.--Always; I have owed my security, partly, as I have said,
+to my rosary, but more to my dress and my acquaintance with the dialect
+of the natives.  I have always carried with me a peasant as a guide, who
+has been intrusted with the small sums of money I wanted for my immediate
+purposes, and my baggage has been little more than a Cynic philosopher
+would have carried with him; and when I have been unable to walk, I have
+trusted myself to the conduct of a vetturino, a native of the province,
+with his single mule and caratella.
+
+The sun was now setting and the temple of Neptune was glowing with its
+last purple rays.  We were informed that our horses were waiting, and
+that it was time for us to depart to our lodgings at Eboli.  I asked the
+stranger to be our companion and to do us the honour to accept of a seat
+in our carriage.  He declined the invitation, and said: "My bed is
+prepared in the casina here for this night, and to-morrow I proceed on a
+journey connected with scientific objects in the parts of Calabria the
+scene of the terrible earthquakes of 1783."  I held out my hand to him in
+parting; he gave it a strong and warm pressure, and said, "Adieu! we
+shall meet again."
+
+
+
+
+DIALOGUE THE FOURTH.  THE PROTEUS, OR IMMORTALITY.
+
+
+The impression made upon my mind by the stranger with whom we became
+acquainted at Paestum was of the strongest and most extraordinary kind.
+The memory of his person, his dress, his manners, the accents of his
+voice, and the tone of his philosophy, for a long while haunted my
+imagination in a most unaccountable manner, and even formed a part of my
+dreams.  It often occurred to me that this was not the first time that I
+had seen him; and I endeavoured, but in vain, to find some type or image
+of him in former scenes of my life.  I continually made inquiries
+respecting him amongst my acquaintance, but I could never be sure that
+any of them knew him, or even had seen him.  So great were his
+peculiarities, that he must have escaped observation altogether; for, had
+he entered the world at all, he must have made some noise in it.  I
+expressed so much interest on this subject, that at last it became a
+source of ridicule amongst my acquaintance, who often asked me if I had
+not yet obtained news of my spirit-friend or ghost-seer.
+
+After my return from Naples to Rome, I was almost immediately recalled to
+England by a melancholy event--the death of a very near and dear
+relation--and I left my two friends, Ambrosio and Onuphrio, to pursue
+their travels, which were intended to be of some extent and duration.
+
+In my youth, and through the prime of manhood, I never entered London
+without feelings of pleasure and hope.  It was to me as the grand theatre
+of intellectual activity, the field of every species of enterprise and
+exertion, the metropolis of the world of business, thought, and action.
+There I was sure to find the friends and companions of my youth, to hear
+the voice of encouragement and praise.  There, society of the most
+refined kind offered daily its banquets to the mind with such variety
+that satiety had no place in them, and new objects of interest and
+ambition were constantly exciting attention either in politics,
+literature, or science.
+
+I now entered this great city in a very different tone of mind--one of
+settled melancholy; not merely produced by the mournful event which
+recalled me to my country, but owing, likewise, to an entire change in
+the condition of my physical, moral, and intellectual being.  My health
+was gone, my ambition was satisfied, I was no longer excited by the
+desire of distinction; what I regarded most tenderly was in the grave,
+and, to take a metaphor derived from the change produced by time in the
+juice of the grape, my cup of life was no longer sparkling, sweet, and
+effervescent;--it had lost its sweetness without losing its power, and it
+had become bitter.
+
+After passing a few months in England and enjoying (as much as I could
+enjoy anything) the society of the few friends who still remained alive,
+the desire of travel again seized me.  I had preserved amidst the wreck
+of time one feeling strong and unbroken: the love of natural scenery; and
+this, in advanced life, formed a principal motive for my plans of conduct
+and action.  Of all the climates of Europe, England seems to me most
+fitted for the activity of the mind, and the least suited to repose.  The
+alterations of a climate so various and rapid continually awake new
+sensations; and the changes in the sky from dryness to moisture, from the
+blue ethereal to cloudiness and fogs, seem to keep the nervous system in
+a constant state of disturbance.  In the mild climate of Nice, Naples, or
+Sicily, where even in winter it is possible to enjoy the warmth of the
+sunshine in the open air, beneath palm trees or amidst evergreen groves
+of orange trees covered with odorous fruit and sweet-scented leaves, mere
+existence is a pleasure, and even the pains of disease are sometimes
+forgotten amidst the balmy influence of nature, and a series of agreeable
+and uninterrupted sensations invite to repose and oblivion.  But in the
+changeful and tumultuous atmosphere of England, to be tranquil is a
+labour, and employment is necessary to ward off the attacks of ennui.  The
+English as a nation is pre-eminently active, and the natives of no other
+country follow their objects with so much force, fire, and constancy.
+And, as human powers are limited, there are few examples of very
+distinguished men living in this country to old age: they usually fail,
+droop, and die before they have attained the period naturally marked for
+the end of human existence.  The lives of our statesmen, warriors, poets,
+and even philosophers offer abundant proofs of the truth of this opinion;
+whatever burns, consumes--ashes remain.  Before the period of youth is
+passed, grey hairs usually cover those brows which are adorned with the
+civic oak or the laurel; and in the luxurious and exciting life of the
+man of pleasure, their tints are not even preserved by the myrtle wreath
+or the garland of roses from the premature winter of time.
+
+In selecting the scenes for my new journey I was guided by my former
+experience.  I know no country more beautiful than that which may be
+called the Alpine country of Austria, including the Alps of the southern
+Tyrol, those of Illyria, the Noric and the Julian Alps, and the Alps of
+Styria and Salzburg.  The variety of the scenery, the verdure of the
+meadows and trees, the depths of the valleys, the altitude of the
+mountains, the clearness and grandeur of the rivers and lakes give it, I
+think, a decided superiority over Switzerland; and the people are far
+more agreeable.  Various in their costumes and manners, Illyrians,
+Italians, or Germans, they have all the same simplicity of character, and
+are all distinguished by their love of their country, their devotion to
+their sovereign, the warmth and purity of their faith, their honesty, and
+(with very few exceptions) I may say their great civility and courtesy to
+strangers.
+
+In the prime of life I had visited this region in a society which
+afforded me the pleasures of intellectual friendship and the delights of
+refined affection; later I had left the burning summer of Italy and the
+violence of an unhealthy passion, and had found coolness, shade, repose,
+and tranquillity there; in a still more advanced period I had sought for
+and found consolation, and partly recovered my health after a dangerous
+illness, the consequence of labour and mental agitation; there I had
+found the spirit of my early vision.  I was desirous, therefore, of again
+passing some time in these scenes in the hope of re-establishing a broken
+constitution; and though this hope was a feeble one, yet at least I
+expected to spend a few of the last days of life more tranquilly and more
+agreeably than in the metropolis of my own country.  Nature never
+deceives us.  The rocks, the mountains, the streams always speak the same
+language.  A shower of snow may hide the verdant woods in spring, a
+thunderstorm may render the blue limpid streams foul and turbulent; but
+these effects are rare and transient: in a few hours or at least days all
+the sources of beauty are renovated.  And Nature affords no continued
+trains of misfortunes and miseries, such as depend upon the constitution
+of humanity; no hopes for ever blighted in the bud; no beings full of
+life, beauty, and promise taken from us in the prime of youth.  Her
+fruits are all balmy, bright, and sweet; she affords none of those
+blighted ones so common in the life of man and so like the fabled apples
+of the Dead Sea--fresh and beautiful to the sight, but when tasted full
+of bitterness and ashes.  I have already mentioned the strong effect
+produced on my mind by the stranger whom I had met so accidentally at
+Paestum; the hope of seeing him again was another of my motives for
+wishing to leave England, and (why, I know not) I had a decided
+presentiment that I was more likely to meet him in the Austrian states
+than in England, his own country.
+
+For this journey I had one companion, an early friend and medical
+adviser.  He had lived much in the world, had acquired a considerable
+fortune, had given up his profession, was now retired, and sought, like
+myself, in this journey repose of mind and the pleasures derived from
+natural scenery.  He was a man of a very powerful and acute
+understanding, but had less of the poetical temperament than any person
+whom I had ever known with similar vivacity of mind.  He was a severe
+thinker, with great variety of information, an excellent physiologist,
+and an accomplished naturalist.  In his reasonings he adopted the
+precision of a geometer, and was always upon his guard against the
+influence of imagination.  He had passed the meridian of life, and his
+health was weak, like my own, so that we were well suited as travelling
+companions, moving always slowly from place to place without hurry or
+fatigue.  I shall call this friend Eubathes.  I will say nothing of the
+progress of our journey through France and Germany; I shall dwell only
+upon that part of it which has still a strong interest for me, and where
+events occurred that I shall never forget.  We passed into the Alpine
+country of Austria by Lintz, on the Danube, and followed the course of
+the Traun to Gmunden, on the Traun See or lake of the Traun, where we
+halted for some days.  If I were disposed to indulge in minute
+picturesque descriptions I might occupy hours with details of the various
+characters of the enchanting scenery in this neighbourhood.  The vales
+have that pastoral beauty and constant verdure which is so familiar to us
+in England, with similar enclosures and hedge-rows and fruit and forest
+trees.  Above are noble hills planted with beeches and oaks.  Mountains
+bound the view, here covered with pines and larches, there raising their
+marble crests capped with eternal snows above the clouds.  The lower part
+of the Traun See is always, even in the most rainy season, perfectly
+pellucid; and the Traun pours out of it over ledges of rocks a large and
+magnificent river, beautifully clear and of the purest tint of the beryl.
+The fall of the Traun, about ten miles below Gmunden, was one of our
+favourite haunts.  It is a cataract which, when the river is full, may be
+almost compared to that of Schaffhausen for magnitude, and possesses the
+same peculiar characters of grandeur in the precipitous rush of its awful
+and overpowering waters, and of beauty in the tints of its streams and
+foam, and in the forms of the rocks over which it falls, and the cliffs
+and woods by which it is overhung.  In this spot an accident, which had
+nearly been fatal to me, occasioned the renewal of my acquaintance in an
+extraordinary manner with the mysterious unknown stranger.  Eubathes, who
+was very fond of fly-fishing, was amusing himself by catching graylings
+for our dinner in the stream above the fall.  I took one of the boats
+which are used for descending the canal or lock artificially cut in the
+rock by the side of the fall, on which salt and wood are usually
+transported from Upper Austria to the Danube; and I desired two of the
+peasants to assist my servant in permitting the boat to descend by a rope
+to the level of the river below.  My intention was to amuse myself by
+this rapid species of locomotion along the descending sluice.  For some
+moments the boat glided gently along the smooth current, and I enjoyed
+the beauty of the moving scene around me, and had my eye fixed upon the
+bright rainbow seen upon the spray of the cataract above my head; when I
+was suddenly roused by a shout of alarm from my servant, and, looking
+round, I saw that the piece of wood to which the rope had been attached
+had given way, and the boat was floating down the river at the mercy of
+the stream.  I was not at first alarmed, for I saw that my assistants
+were procuring long poles with which it appeared easy to arrest the boat
+before it entered the rapidly descending water of the sluice, and I
+called out to them to use their united force to reach the longest pole
+across the water that I might be able to catch the end of it in my hand.
+And at this moment I felt perfect security; but a breeze of wind suddenly
+came down the valley and blew from the nearest bank, the boat was turned
+by it out of the side current and thrown nearer to the middle of the
+river, and I soon saw that I was likely to be precipitated over the
+cataract.  My servant and the boatmen rushed into the water, but it was
+too deep to enable them to reach the boat; I was soon in the white water
+of the descending stream, and my danger was inevitable.  I had presence
+of mind enough to consider whether my chance of safety would be greater
+by throwing myself out of the boat or by remaining in it, and I preferred
+the latter expedient.  I looked from the rainbow upon the bright sun
+above my head, as if taking leave for ever of that glorious luminary; I
+raised one pious aspiration to the divine source of light and life; I was
+immediately stunned by the thunder of the fall, and my eyes were closed
+in darkness.  How long I remained insensible I know not.  My first
+recollections after this accident were of a bright light shining above
+me, of warmth and pressure in different parts of my body, and of the
+noise of the rushing cataract sounding in my ears.  I seemed awakened by
+the light from a sound sleep, and endeavoured to recall my scattered
+thoughts, but in vain; I soon fell again into slumber.  From this second
+sleep I was awakened by a voice which seemed not altogether unknown to
+me, and looking upwards I saw the bright eye and noble countenance of the
+Unknown Stranger whom I had met at Paestum.  I faintly articulated: "I am
+in another world."  "No," said the stranger, "you are safe in this; you
+are a little bruised by your fall, but you will soon be well; be tranquil
+and compose yourself.  Your friend is here, and you will want no other
+assistance than he can easily give you."  He then took one of my hands,
+and I recognised the same strong and warm pressure which I had felt from
+his parting salute at Paestum.  Eubathes, whom I now saw with an
+expression of joy and of warmth unusual to him, gave a hearty shake to
+the other hand, and they both said, "You must repose a few hours longer."
+After a sound sleep till the evening, I was able to take some
+refreshment, and found little inconvenience from the accident except some
+bruises on the lower part of the body and a slight swimming in the head.
+The next day I was able to return to Gmunden, where I learnt from the
+Unknown the history of my escape, which seemed almost miraculous to me.
+He said that he was often in the habit of combining pursuits of natural
+history with the amusements derived from rural sports and was fishing the
+day that my accident happened below the fall of the Traun for that
+peculiar species of the large _salmo_ of the Danube which, fortunately
+for me, is only to be caught by very strong tackle.  He saw, to his very
+great astonishment and alarm, the boat and my body precipitated by the
+fall, and was so fortunate as to entangle his hooks in a part of my dress
+when I had been scarcely more than a minute under water, and by the
+assistance of his servant, who was armed with the gaff or curved hook for
+landing large fish, I was safely conveyed to the shore, undressed, put
+into a warm bed, and by the modes of restoring suspended animation, which
+were familiar to him, I soon recovered my sensibility and consciousness.
+I was desirous of reasoning with him and Eubathes upon the state of
+annihilation of power and transient death which I had suffered when in
+the water; but they both requested me to defer those inquiries, which
+required too profound an exertion of thought, till the effects of the
+shock on my weak constitution were over and my strength was somewhat re-
+established: and I was the more contented to comply with their request as
+the Unknown said it was his intention to be our companion for at least
+some days longer, and that his objects of pursuit lay in the very country
+in which we were making our summer tour.  It was some weeks before I was
+sufficiently strong to proceed on our journey, for my frame was little
+fitted to bear such a trial as that which it had experienced; and,
+considering the weak state of my body when I was immerged in the water, I
+could hardly avoid regarding my recovery as providential, and the
+presence and assistance of the Stranger as in some way connected with the
+future destiny and utility of my life.  In the middle of August we
+pursued our plans of travel.  We first visited those romantic lakes,
+Hallsstadt, Aussee, and Toplitz See, which collect the melted snows of
+the higher mountains of Styria to supply the unfailing sources of the
+Traun.  We visited that elevated region of the Tyrol which forms the
+crest of the Pusterthal, and where the same chains of glaciers send down
+streams to the Drave and the Adige, to the Black Sea and to the Adriatic.
+We remained for many days in those two magnificent valleys which afford
+the sources of the Save, where that glorious and abundant river rises, as
+it were, in the very bosom of beauty, leaping from its subterraneous
+reservoirs in the snowy mountains of Terglou and Manhardt in thundering
+cataracts amongst cliffs and woods into the pure and deep cerulean lakes
+of Wochain and Wurzen, and pursuing its course amidst pastoral meadows so
+ornamented with plants and trees as to look the garden of Nature.  The
+subsoil or strata of this part of Illyria are entirely calcareous and
+full of subterranean caverns, so that in every declivity large funnel-
+shaped cavities, like the craters of volcanoes, may be seen, in which the
+waters that fall from the atmosphere are lost: and almost every lake or
+rives has a subterraneous source, and often a subterraneous exit.  The
+Laibach river rises twice from the limestone rock, and is twice again
+swallowed up by the earth before it makes its final appearance and is
+lost in the Save.  The Zirknitz See or Lake is a mass of water entirely
+filled and emptied by subterraneous sources, and its natural history,
+though singular, has in it nothing of either prodigy, mystery, or wonder.
+The Grotto of the Maddalena at Adelsberg occupied more of our attention
+than the Zirknitz See.  I shall give the conversation that took place in
+that extraordinary cavern entire, as well as I can remember it, in the
+words used by my companions.
+
+_Eub_.--We must be many hundred feet below the surface, yet the
+temperature of this cavern is fresh and agreeable.
+
+_The Unknown_.--This cavern has the mean temperature of the atmosphere,
+which is the case with all subterraneous cavities removed from the
+influence of the solar light and heat; and, in so hot a day in August as
+this, I know no more agreeable or salutary manner of taking a cold bath
+than in descending to a part of the atmosphere out of the influence of
+those causes which occasion its elevated temperature.
+
+_Eub_.--Have you, sir, been in this country before?
+
+_The Unknown_.--This is the third summer that I have made it the scene of
+an annual visit.  Independently of the natural beauties found in Illyria,
+and the various sources of amusement which a traveller fond of natural
+history may find in this region, it has had a peculiar object of interest
+for me in the extraordinary animals which are found in the bottom of its
+subterraneous cavities: I allude to the Proteus anguinus, a far greater
+wonder of nature than any of those which the Baron Valvasa detailed to
+the Royal Society a century and half ago as belonging to Carniola, with
+far too romantic an air for a philosopher.
+
+_Phil_.--I have seen these animals in passing through this country
+before; but I should be very glad to be better acquainted with their
+natural history.
+
+_The Unknown_.--We shall soon be in that part of the grotto where they
+are found, and I shall willingly communicate the little that I have been
+able to learn respecting their natural characters and habits.
+
+_Eub_.--The grotto now becomes really magnificent; I have seen no
+subterraneous cavity with so many traits of beauty and of grandeur.  The
+irregularity of its surface, the magnitude of the masses broken in pieces
+which compose its sides, and which seem torn from the bosom of the
+mountain by some great convulsion of nature, their dark colours and deep
+shades form a singular contrast with the beauty, uniformity, I may say,
+order and grace of the white stalactical concretions which hang from the
+canopy above, and where the light of our torches reflected from the
+brilliant or transparent calcareous gems create a scene which almost
+looks like one produced by enchantment.
+
+_Phil_.--If the awful chasms of dark masses of rock surrounding us appear
+like the work of demons who might be imagined to have risen from the
+centre of the earth, the beautiful works of Nature above our heads may be
+compared to a scenic representation of a temple or banquet hall for
+fairies or genii, such as those fabled in the Arabian romances.
+
+_The Unknown_.--A poet might certainly place here the palace of the King
+of the Gnomes, and might find marks of his creative power in the small
+lake close by on which the flame of the torch is now falling, for there
+it is that I expect to find the extraordinary animals which have been so
+long the objects of my attention.
+
+_Eub_.--I see three or four creatures, like slender fish, moving on the
+mud below the water.
+
+_The Unknown_.--I see them; they are the Protei.  Now I have them in my
+fishing-net, and now they are safe in the pitcher of water.  At first
+view you might suppose this animal to be a lizard, but it has the motions
+of a fish.  Its head and the lower part of its body and its tail bear a
+strong resemblance to those of the eel; but it has no fins, and its
+curious bronchial organs are not like the gills of fishes: they form a
+singular vascular structure, as you see, almost like a crest, round the
+throat, which may be removed without occasioning the death of the animal,
+which is likewise furnished with lungs.  With this double apparatus for
+supplying air to the blood, it can live either below or above the surface
+of the water.  Its fore-feet resemble hands, but they have only three
+claws or fingers, and are too feeble to be of use in grasping or
+supporting the weight of the animal; the hinder feet have only two claws
+or toes, and in the larger specimens are found so imperfect as to be
+almost obliterated.  It has small points in place of eyes, as if to
+preserve the analogy of Nature.  It is of a fleshy whiteness and
+transparency in its natural state; but when exposed to light, its skin
+gradually becomes darker, and at last gains an olive tint.  Its nasal
+organs appear large, and it is abundantly furnished with teeth: from
+which it may be concluded that it is an animal of prey; yet in its
+confined state it has never been known to eat, and it has been kept alive
+for many years by occasionally changing the water in which it was placed.
+
+_Eub_.--Is this the only place in Carniola where these animals are found?
+
+_The Unknown_.--They were first discovered here by the late Baron Zois;
+but they have since been found, though rarely, at Sittich, about thirty
+miles distant, thrown up by water from a subterraneous cavity; and I have
+lately heard it reported that some individuals of the same species have
+been recognised in the calcareous strata in Sicily.
+
+_Eub_.--This lake in which we have seen these animals is a very small
+one.  Do you suppose they are bred here?
+
+_The Unknown_.--Certainly not.  In dry seasons they are seldom found
+here, but after great rains they are often abundant.  I think it cannot
+be doubted that their natural residence is in an extensile deep
+subterranean lake, from which in great floods they sometimes are forced
+through the crevices of the rocks into this place where they are found;
+and it does not appear to me impossible, when the peculiar nature of the
+country in which we are is considered, that the same great cavity may
+furnish the individuals which have been found at Adelsberg and at
+Sittich.
+
+_Eub_.--This is a very extraordinary view of the subject.  Is it not
+possible that it may be the larva of some large unknown animal inhabiting
+these limestone cavities?  Its feet are not in harmony with the rest of
+its organisation; and were they removed, it would have all the characters
+of a fish.
+
+_The Unknown_.--I cannot suppose that they are larvae.  There is, I
+believe, in Nature no instance of a transition by this species of
+metamorphosis from a more perfect to a less perfect animal.  The tadpole
+has a resemblance to a fish before it becomes a frog; the caterpillar and
+the maggot gain not only more perfect powers of motion on the earth in
+their new state, but acquire organs by which they inhabit a new element.
+This animal, I dare say, is much larger than we now see it when mature in
+its native place; but its comparative anatomy is exceedingly hostile to
+the idea that it is an animal in a state of transition.  It has been
+found of various sizes, from that of the thickness of a quill to that of
+the thumb, but its form of organs has been always the same.  It is surely
+a perfect animal of a peculiar species.  And it adds one instance more to
+the number already known of the wonderful manner in which life is
+produced and perpetuated in every part of our globe, even in places which
+seem the least suited to organised existences.  And the same infinite
+power and wisdom which has fitted the camel and the ostrich for the
+deserts of Africa, the swallow that secretes its own nest for the caves
+of Java, the whale for the Polar seas, and the morse and white bear for
+the Arctic ice, has given the proteus to the deep and dark subterraneous
+lakes of Illyria--an animal to whom the presence of light is not
+essential, and who can live indifferently in air and in water, on the
+surface of the rock, or in the depths of the mud.
+
+_Phil_.--It is now ten years since I first visited this spot.  I was
+exceedingly anxious to see the proteus, and came here with the guide in
+the evening of the day I arrived at Adelsberg; but though we examined the
+bottom of the cave with the greatest care, we could find no specimens.  We
+returned the next morning and were more fortunate, for we discovered five
+close to the bank on the mud covering the bottom of the lake; the mud was
+smooth and perfectly undisturbed, and the water quite clear.  This fact
+of their appearance during the night seemed to me so extraordinary, that
+I could hardly avoid the fancy that they were new creations.  I saw no
+cavities through which they could have entered, and the undisturbed state
+of the lake seemed to give weight to my notion.  My reveries became
+discursive; I was carried in imagination back to the primitive state of
+the globe, when the great animals of the sauri kind were created under
+the pressure of a heavy atmosphere; and my notion on this subject was not
+destroyed when I heard from a celebrated anatomist, to whom I sent the
+specimens I had collected, that the organisation of the spine of the
+proteus was analogous to that of one of the sauri, the remains of which
+are found in the older secondary strata.  It was said at this time that
+no organs of reproduction had been discovered in any of the specimens
+examined by physiologists, and this lent a weight to my opinion of the
+possibility of their being actually new creations, which I suppose you
+will condemn as wholly visionary and unphilosophical.
+
+_Eub_.--From the tone in which you make your statements, I think you
+yourself consider them as unworthy of discussion.  On such ground eels
+might be considered new creations, for their mature ovaria have not yet
+been discovered, and they come from the sea into rivers under
+circumstances when it is difficult to trace their course.
+
+_The Unknown_.--The problem of the reproduction of the proteus, like that
+of the common eel, is not yet solved; but ovaria have been discovered in
+animals of both species, and in this instance, as in all others belonging
+to the existing order of things, Harvey's maxim of "omne vivum ab ovo"
+will apply.
+
+_Eub_.--You just now said that this animal has been long an object of
+attention to you; have you studied it as a comparative anatomist, in
+search of the solution of the problem of its reproduction?
+
+_The Unknown_.--No; this inquiry has been pursued by much abler
+investigators: by Schreiber and Configliachi; my researches were made
+upon its respiration and the changes occasioned in water by its bronchia.
+
+_Eub_.--I hope they have been satisfactory.
+
+_The Unknown_.--They proved to me, at least, that not merely the oxygen
+dissolved in water, but likewise a part of the azote, was absorbed in the
+respiration of this animal.
+
+_Eub_.--So that your researches confirm those of the French savants and
+Alexander von Humboldt, that in the respiration of animals which separate
+air from water, both principles of the atmosphere are absorbed.
+
+_Phil_.--I have heard so many and such various opinions on the nature of
+the function of respiration during my education and since, that I should
+like to know what is the modern doctrine on this subject.  I can hardly
+refer to better authority than yourself, and I have an additional reason
+for wishing for some accurate knowledge on this matter, having, as you
+well know, been the subject of an experiment in relation to it which, but
+for your kind and active assistance, must have terminated fatally.
+
+_The Unknown_.--I shall gladly state what I know, which is very little.
+In physics and in chemistry, the science of dead matter, we possess many
+facts and a few principles or laws; but whenever the functions of life
+are considered, though the facts are numerous, yet there is, as yet,
+scarcely any approach to general laws, and we must usually end where we
+begin by confessing our entire ignorance.
+
+_Eub_.--I will not allow this ignorance to be entire.  Something,
+undoubtedly, has been gained by the knowledge of the circulation of the
+blood and its aeration in the lungs--these, if not laws, are at least
+fundamental principles.
+
+_The Unknown_.--I speak only of the functions in their connection with
+life.  We are still ignorant of the source of animal heat, though half a
+century ago the chemists thought they had proved it was owing to a sort
+of combustion of the carbon of the blood.
+
+_Phil_.--As we return to our inn I hope you will both be so good as give
+me your views of the nature of this function, so important to all living
+things; tell me what you _know_, or what you _believe_, or what others
+_imagine they know_.
+
+_The Unknown_.--The powers of the organic system depend upon a continued
+state of change.  The waste of the body produced in muscular action,
+perspiration, and various secretions, is made up for by the constant
+supply of nutritive matter to the blood by the absorbents, and by the
+action of the heart the blood is preserved in perpetual motion through
+every part of the body.  In the lungs, or bronchia, the venous blood is
+exposed to the influence of air and undergoes a remarkable change, being
+converted into arterial blood.  The obvious chemical alteration of the
+air is sufficiently simple in this process: a certain quantity of carbon
+only is added to it, and it receives an addition of heat or vapour; the
+volumes of elastic fluid inspired and expired (making allowance for
+change of temperature) are the same, and if ponderable agents only were
+to be regarded it would appear as if the only use of respiration were to
+free the blood from a certain quantity of carbonaceous matter.  But it is
+probable that this is only a secondary object, and that the change
+produced by respiration upon the blood is of a much more important kind.
+Oxygen, in its elastic state, has properties which are very
+characteristic: it gives out light by compression, which is not certainly
+known to be the case with any other elastic fluid except those with which
+oxygen has entered without undergoing combustion; and from the fire it
+produces in certain processes, and from the manner in which it is
+separated by positive electricity in the gaseous state from its
+combinations, it is not easy to avoid the supposition that it contains,
+besides its ponderable elements, some very subtle matter which is capable
+of assuming the form of heat and light.  My idea is that the common air
+inspired enters into the venous blood entire, in a state of dissolution,
+carrying with it its subtle or ethereal part, which in ordinary cases of
+chemical change is given off; that it expels from the blood carbonic acid
+gas and azote; and that in the course of the circulation its ethereal
+part and its ponderable part undergo changes which belong to laws that
+cannot be considered as chemical--the ethereal part probably producing
+animal heat and other effects, and the ponderable part contributing to
+form carbonic acid and other products.  The arterial blood is necessary
+to all the functions of life, and it is no less connected with the
+irritability of the muscles and the sensibility of the nerves than with
+the performance of all the secretions.
+
+_Eub_.--No one can be more convinced than I am of the very limited extent
+of our knowledge in chemical physiology, and when I say that, having been
+a disciple and friend of Dr. Black, I am still disposed to prefer his
+ancient view to your new one, I wish merely to induce you to pause and to
+hear my reasons; they may appear insufficient to you, but I am anxious to
+explain them.  First, then, in all known chemical changes in which oxygen
+gas is absorbed and carbonic acid gas formed, heat is produced.  I could
+mention a thousand instances, from the combustion of wood or spirits of
+wine to the fermentation of fruit or the putrefaction of animal matter.
+This general fact, which may be almost called a law, is in favour of the
+view of Dr. Black.  Another circumstance in favour of it is, that those
+animals which possess the highest temperature consume the greatest
+quantity of air, and, under different circumstances of action and repose,
+the heat is in great measure proportional to the quantity of oxygen
+consumed.  Then those animals which absorb the smallest quantity of air
+are cold-blooded.  Another argument in favour of Dr. Black's opinion is
+the change of colour of blood from black to red, which seems to show that
+it loses carbon.
+
+_The Unknown_.--With the highest respect for the memory of Dr. Black, and
+for the opinion of his disciple, I shall answer the arguments I have just
+heard.  I will not allow any facts or laws from the action of dead matter
+to apply to living structures; the blood is a living fluid, and of this
+we are sure that it does not burn in respiration.  The terms warmth and
+cold, as applied to the blood of animals, are improper in the sense in
+which they have been just used; all animals are, in fact, warm-blooded,
+and the degrees of their temperature are fitted to the circumstances
+under which they live, and those animals, the life of which is most
+active, possess most heat, which may be the result of general actions,
+and not a particular effect of respiration.  Besides, a distinguished
+physiologist has rendered it probable that the animal heat depends more
+upon the functions of the nerves than upon any result of respiration.  The
+argument derived from change of colour is perfectly delusive; it would
+not follow if carbon were liberated from the blood that it must
+necessarily become brighter; sulphur combining with charcoal becomes a
+clear fluid, and a black oxide of copper becomes red in uniting with a
+substance which abounds in carbon.  No change in sensible qualities can
+ever indicate with precision the nature of chemical change.  I shall
+resume my view, which I cannot be said to have fully developed.  When I
+stated that carbonic acid was formed in the venous blood in the processes
+of life, I meant merely to say that this blood, in consequence of certain
+changes, became capable of giving off carbon and oxygen in union with
+each other, for the moment inorganic matter enters into the composition
+of living organs it obeys new laws.  The action of the gastric juice is
+chemical, and it will only dissolve dead matters, and it dissolves them
+when they are in tubes of metal as well as in the stomach, but it has no
+action upon living matter.  Respiration is no more a chemical process
+than the absorption of chyle; and the changes that take place in the
+lungs, though they appear so simple, may be very complicated; it is as
+little philosophical to consider them as a mere combustion of carbon as
+to consider the formation of muscle from the arterial blood as
+crystallisation.  There can be no doubt that all the powers and agencies
+of matter are employed in the purposes of organisation, but the phenomena
+of organisation can no more be referred to chemistry than those of
+chemistry to mechanics.  As oxygen stands in that electrical relation to
+the other elements of animal matter which has been called
+electropositive, it may be supposed that some electrical function is
+exercised by oxygen in the blood; but this is a mere hypothesis.  An
+attempt has been made founded on experiments on the decomposition of
+bodies by electricity to explain secretion by weak electrical powers, and
+to suppose the glands electrical organs, and even to imagine the action
+of the nerves dependent upon electricity; these, like all other notions
+of the same kind, appear to me very little refined.  If electrical
+effects be the exhibition of certain powers belonging to matter, which is
+a fair supposition, then no change can take place without their being
+more or less concerned; but to imagine the presence of electricity to
+solve phenomena the cause of which is unknown is merely to substitute one
+undefined word for another.  In some animals electrical organs are found,
+but then they furnish the artillery of the animal and means of seizing
+its prey and of its defence.  And speculations of this kind must be
+ranked with those belonging to some of the more superficial followers of
+the Newtonian philosophy, who explained the properties of animated nature
+by mechanical powers, and muscular action by the expansion and
+contraction of elastic bladders; man, in this state of vague
+philosophical inquiry, was supposed a species of hydraulic machine.  And
+when the pneumatic chemistry was invented, organic structures were soon
+imagined to be laboratories in which combinations and decompositions
+produced all the effects of living actions; then muscular contractions
+were supposed to depend upon explosions like those of the detonating
+compounds, and the formation of blood from chyle was considered as a pure
+chemical solution.  And, now that the progress of science has opened new
+and extraordinary views in electricity, these views are not unnaturally
+applied by speculative reasoners to solve some of the mysterious and
+recondite phenomena of organised beings.  But the analogy is too remote
+and incorrect; the sources of life cannot be grasped by such machinery;
+to look for them in the powers of electro-chemistry is seeking the living
+among the dead: that which touches will not be felt, that which sees will
+not be visible, that which commands sensations will not be their subject.
+
+_Phil_.--I conclude, from what you last said, that though you are
+inclined to believe that some unknown subtle matter is added to the
+organised system by respiration, yet you would not have us believe that
+this is electricity, or that there is any reason to suppose that
+electricity has a peculiar and special share in producing the functions
+of life.
+
+_The Unknown_.--I wish to guard you against the adoption of any
+hypothesis on this recondite and abstruse subject.  But however difficult
+it may be to define the exact nature of respiration, yet the effect of it
+and its connexions with the functions of the body are sufficiently
+striking.  By the action of air on the blood it is fitted for the
+purposes of life, and from the moment that animation is marked by
+sensation or volition, this function is performed, the punctum saliens in
+the ovum seems to receive as it were the breath of life in the influence
+of air.  In the economy of the reproduction of the species of animals,
+one of the most important circumstances is the aeration of the ovum, and
+when this is not performed, from the blood of the mother as in the
+mammalia by the placenta, there is a system for aerating as in the
+oviparous reptiles or fishes, which enables the air freely to pass
+through the receptacles in which the eggs are deposited, or the egg
+itself is aerated out of the body through its coats or shell, and when
+air is excluded, incubation or artificial heat has no effect.  Fishes
+which deposit their eggs in water that contains only a limited portion of
+air, make combinations which would seem almost the result of scientific
+knowledge or reason, though depending upon a more unerring principle,
+their instinct for preserving their offspring.  Those fishes that spawn
+in spring or the beginning of summer and winch inhabit deep and still
+waters, as the carp, bream, pike, tench, &c., deposit their eggs upon
+aquatic vegetables, which by the influence of the solar light constantly
+preserve the water in a state of aeration.  The trout, salmon, hucho, and
+others of the Salmo genus, which spawn in the beginning or end of winter,
+and which inhabit rivers fed by cold and rapid streams which descend from
+the mountains, deposit their eggs in shallows on heaps of gravel, as near
+as possible to the source of the stream where the water is fully combined
+with air; and to accomplish this purpose they travel for hundreds of
+miles against the current, and leap over cataracts and dams: thus the
+Salmo salar ascends by the Rhone and the Aar to the glaciers of
+Switzerland, the hucho by the Danube, the Isar, and the Save, passing
+through the lakes of the Tyrol and Styria to the highest torrents of the
+Noric and Julian Alps.
+
+_Phil_.--My own experience proves in the strongest manner the immediate
+connection of sensibility with respiration; all that I can remember in my
+accident was a certain violent and painful sensation of oppression in the
+chest, which must have been immediately succeeded by loss of sense.
+
+_Eub_.--I have no doubt that all your suffering was over at the moment
+you describe; as far as sensibility is concerned, you were inanimate when
+your friend raised you from the bottom.  This distinct connection of
+sensibility with the absorption of air by the blood is, I think, in
+favour of the idea advanced by our friend, that some subtle and ethereal
+matter is supplied to the system in the elastic air which may be the
+cause of vitality.
+
+_The Unknown_.--Softly, if you please; I must not allow you to mistake my
+view.  I think it probable that some subtle matter is derived from the
+atmosphere connected with the functions of life; but nothing can be more
+remote from my opinion than to suppose it the cause of vitality.
+
+_Phil_.--This might have been fully inferred from the whole tenor of your
+conversation, and particularly from that expression, "that which commands
+sensation will not be their subject."  I think I shall not mistake your
+views when I say that you do not consider vitality dependent upon any
+material cause or principle.
+
+_The Unknown_.--You do not.  We are entirely ignorant on this subject,
+and I confess in the utmost humility my ignorance.  I know there have
+been distinguished physiologists who have imagined that by organisation
+powers not naturally possessed by matter were developed, and that
+sensibility was a property belonging to some unknown combination of
+unknown ethereal elements.  But such notions appear to me
+unphilosophical, and the mere substitution of unknown words for unknown
+things.  I can never believe that any division, or refinement, or
+subtilisation, or juxtaposition, or arrangement of the particles of
+matter, can give to them sensibility; or that intelligence can result
+from combinations of insensate and brute atoms.  I can as easily imagine
+that the planets are moving by their will or design round the sun, or
+that a cannon ball is reasoning in making its parabolic curve.  The
+materialists have quoted a passage of Locke in favour of their doctrine,
+who seemed to doubt "whether it might not have pleased God to bestow a
+power of thinking on matter."  But with the highest veneration for this
+great reasoner, the founder of modern philosophical logic, I think there
+is little of his usual strength of mind in this doubt.  It appears to me
+that he might as well have asked whether it might not have pleased God to
+make a house its own tenant.
+
+_Eub_.--I am not a professed materialist; but I think you treat rather
+too lightly the modest doubts of Locke on this subject.  And without
+considering me as a partisan, you will, I hope, allow me to state some of
+the reasons which I have heard good physiologists advance in favour of
+that opinion to which you are so hostile.  In the first accretion of the
+parts of animated beings they appear almost like the crystallised matter,
+with the simplest kind of life, scarcely sensitive.  The gradual
+operations by which they acquire new organs and new powers, corresponding
+to these organs, till they arrive at full maturity, forcibly strikes the
+mind with the idea that the powers of life reside in the arrangement by
+which the organs are produced.  Then, as there is a gradual increase of
+power corresponding to the increase of perfection of the organisation, so
+there is a gradual diminution of it connected with the decay of the body.
+As the imbecility of infancy corresponds to the weakness of organisation,
+so the energy of youth and the power of manhood are marked by its
+strength; and the feebleness and dotage of old age are in the direct
+ratio of the decline of the perfection of the organisation, and the
+mental powers in extreme old age seem destroyed at the same time with the
+corporeal ones, till the ultimate dissolution of the frame, when the
+elements are again restored to that dead nature from which they were
+originally derived.  Then, there was a period when the greatest
+philosopher, statesman, or hero, that ever existed was a mere living
+atom, an organised form with the sole power of perception; and the
+combinations that a Newton formed before birth or immediately after
+cannot be imagined to have possessed the slightest intellectual
+character.  If a peculiar principle be supposed necessary to
+intelligence, it must exist throughout animated nature.  The elephant
+approaches nearer to man in intellectual power than the oyster does to
+the elephant; and a link of sensitive nature may be traced from the
+polypus to the philosopher.  Now, in the polypus the sentient principle
+is divisible, and from one polypus or one earthworm may be formed two or
+three, all of which become perfect animals, and have perception and
+volition; therefore, at least, the sentient principle has this property
+in common with matter, that it is divisible.  Then to these difficulties
+add the dependence of all the higher faculties of the mind upon the state
+of the brain; remember that not only all the intellectual powers, but
+even sensibility is destroyed by the pressure of a little blood upon the
+cerebellum, and the difficulties increase.  Call to mind likewise the
+suspension of animation in cases similar to that of our friend, when
+there are no signs of life and when animation returns only with the
+return of organic action.  Surely in all these instances everything which
+you consider as belonging to spirit appears in intimate dependence upon
+the arrangements and properties of matter.
+
+_The Unknown_.--The arguments you have used are those which are generally
+employed by physiologists.  They have weight in appearance, but not in
+reality.  They prove that a certain perfection of the machinery of the
+body is essential to the exercise of the powers of the mind, but they do
+not prove that the machine is the mind.  Without the eye there can be no
+sensations of vision, and without the brain there could be no recollected
+visible ideas; but neither the optic nerve nor the brain can be
+considered as the percipient principle--they are but the instruments of a
+power which has nothing in common with them.  What may be said of the
+nervous system may be applied to a different part of the frame; stop the
+motion of the heart, and sensibility and life cease, yet the living
+principle is not in the heart, nor in the arterial blood which it sends
+to every part of the system.  A savage who saw the operation of a number
+of power-looms weaving stockings cease at once on the stopping of the
+motion of a wheel, might well imagine that the motive force was in the
+wheel; he could not divine that it more immediately depended upon the
+steam, and ultimately upon a fire below a concealed boiler.  The
+philosopher sees the fire which is the cause of the motion of this
+complicated machinery, so unintelligible to the savage; but both are
+equally ignorant of the divine fire which is the cause of the mechanism
+of organised structures.  Profoundly ignorant on this subject, all that
+we can do is to give a history of our own minds.  The external world or
+matter is to us in fact nothing but a heap or cluster of sensations; and,
+in looking back to the memory of our own being, we find one principle,
+which may be called the _monad_, or _self_, constantly present,
+intimately associated with a particular class of sensations, which we
+call our own body or organs.  These organs are connected with other
+sensations, and move, as it were, with them in circles of existence,
+quitting for a time some trains of sensation to return to others; but the
+monad is always present.  We can fix no beginning to its operations; we
+can place no limit to them.  We sometimes, in sleep, lose the beginning
+and end of a dream, and recollect the middle of it, and one dream has no
+connection with another; and yet we are conscious of an infinite variety
+of dreams, and there is a strong analogy for believing in an infinity of
+past existences, which must have had connection; and human life may be
+regarded as a type of infinite and immortal life, and its succession of
+sleep and dreams as a type of the changes of death and birth to which
+from its nature it is liable.  That the ideas belonging to the mind were
+originally gained from those classes of sensations called organs it is
+impossible to deny, as it is impossible to deny that mathematical truths
+depend upon the signs which express them; but these signs are not
+themselves the truths, nor are the organs the mind.  The whole history of
+intellect is a history of change according to a certain law; and we
+retain the memory only of those changes which may be useful to us--the
+child forgets what happened to it in the womb; the recollections of the
+infant likewise before two years are soon lost, yet many of the habits
+acquired in that age are retained through life.  The sentient principle
+gains thoughts by material instruments, and its sensations change as
+those instruments change; and, in old age, the mind, as it were, falls
+asleep to awake to a new existence.  With its present organisation, the
+intellect of man is naturally limited and imperfect, but this depends
+upon its material machinery; and in a higher organised form, it may be
+imagined to possess infinitely higher powers.  Were man to be immortal
+with his present corporeal frame, this immortality would only belong to
+the machinery; and with respect to acquisitions of mind, he would
+virtually die every two or three hundred years--that is to say, a certain
+quantity of ideas only could be remembered, and the supposed immortal
+being would be, with respect to what had happened a thousand years ago,
+as the adult now is with respect to what happened in the first year of
+his life.  To attempt to reason upon the manner in which the organs are
+connected with sensation would be useless; the nerves and brain have some
+immediate relation to these vital functions, but how they act it is
+impossible to say.  From the rapidity and infinite variety of the
+phenomena of perception, it seems extremely probable that there must be
+in the brain and nerves matter of a nature far more subtle and refined
+than anything discovered in them by observation and experiment, and that
+the immediate connection between the sentient principle and the body may
+be established by kinds of ethereal matter, which can never be evident to
+the senses, and which may bear the same relations to heat, light, and
+electricity that these refined forms or modes of existence of matter bear
+to the gases.  Motion is most easily produced by the lighter species of
+matter; and yet imponderable agents, such as electricity, possess force
+sufficient to overturn the weightiest structures.  Nothing can be farther
+from my meaning than to attempt any definition on this subject, nor would
+I ever embrace or give authority to that idea of Newton, who supposes
+that the immediate cause of sensation may be in undulations of an
+ethereal medium.  It does not, however, appear improbable to me that some
+of the more refined machinery of thought may adhere, even in another
+state, to the sentient principle; for, though the organs of gross
+sensation--the nerves and brain--are destroyed by death, yet something of
+the more ethereal nature, which I have supposed, may be less
+destructible.  And I sometimes imagine that many of those powers, which
+have been called instinctive, belong to the more refined clothing of the
+spirit; conscience, indeed, seems to have some undefined source, and may
+bear relation to a former state of being.
+
+_Eub_.--All your notions are merely ingenious speculations.  Revelation
+gives no authority to your ideas of spiritual nature; the Christian
+immortality is founded upon the resurrection of the body.
+
+_The Unknown_.--This I will not allow.  Even in the Mosaic history of the
+creation of man his frame is made in the image of God--that is, capable
+of intelligence; and the Creator breathes into it the breath of life, His
+own essence.  Then our Saviour has said, "of the God of Abraham, of
+Isaac, and of Jacob."  "He is not the God of the dead, but of the
+living."  St. Paul has described the clothing of the spirit in a new and
+glorious body, taking the analogy from the living germ in the seed of the
+plant, which is not quickened till after apparent death; and the
+catastrophe of our planet, which, it is revealed, is to be destroyed and
+purified by fire before it is fitted for the habitation of the blest, is
+in perfect harmony with the view I have ventured to suggest.
+
+_Eub_.--I cannot make your notions coincide with what I have been
+accustomed to consider the meaning of Holy Writ.  You allow everything
+belonging to the material life to be dependent upon the organisation of
+the body, and yet you imagine the spirit after death clothed with a new
+body; and, in the system of rewards and punishments, this body is
+rendered happy or miserable for actions committed by another and extinct
+frame.  A particular organisation may impel to improper and immoral
+gratification; it does not appear to me, according to the principles of
+eternal justice, that the body of the resurrection should be punished for
+crimes dependent upon a conformation now dissolved and destroyed.
+
+_The Unknown_.--Nothing is more absurd, I may say more impious, than for
+man, with a ken surrounded by the dense mists of sense, to reason
+respecting the decrees of eternal justice.  You adopt here the same
+limited view that you embraced in reasoning against the indestructibility
+of the sentient principle in man from the apparent division of the living
+principle in the polypus, not recollecting that to prove a quality can be
+increased or exalted does not prove that it can be annihilated.  If there
+be, which I think cannot be doubted, a consciousness of good and evil
+constantly belonging to the sentient principle in man, then rewards and
+punishments naturally belong to acts of this consciousness, to obedience,
+or disobedience; and the indestructibility of the sentient being is
+necessary to the decrees of eternal justice.  On your view, even in this
+life, just punishments for crimes would be almost impossible; for the
+materials of which human beings are composed change rapidly, and in a few
+years probably not an atom of the primitive structure remains yet even
+the materialist is obliged in old age to do penance for the sins of his
+youth, and does not complain of the injustice of his decrepit body,
+entirely changed and made stiff by time, suffering for the intemperance
+of his youthful flexible frame.  On my idea, conscience is the frame of
+the mind, fitted for its probation in mortality.  And this is in exact
+accordance with the foundations of our religion, the Divine origin of
+which is marked no less by its history than its harmony with the
+principles of our nature.  Obedience to its precepts not only prepares
+for a better state of existence in another world, but is likewise
+calculated to make us happy here.  We are constantly taught to renounce
+sensual pleasure and selfish gratifications, to forget our body and
+sensible organs, to associate our pleasures with mind, to fix our
+affections upon the great ideal generalisation of intelligence in the one
+Supreme Being.  And that we are capable of forming to ourselves an
+imperfect idea even of the infinite mind is, I think, a strong
+presumption of our own immortality, and of the distinct relation which
+our finite knowledge bears to eternal wisdom.
+
+_Phil_.--I am pleased with your views; they coincide with those I had
+formed at the time my imagination was employed upon the vision of the
+Colosaeum, which I repeated to you, and are not in opposition with the
+opinions that the cool judgment and sound and humble faith of Ambrosio
+have led me since to embrace.  The doctrine of the materialists was
+always, even in my youth, a cold, heavy, dull, and insupportable doctrine
+to me, and necessarily tending to Atheism.  When I had heard, with
+disgust, in the dissecting-rooms the plan of the physiologist of the
+gradual accretion of matter, and its becoming endowed with irritability,
+ripening into sensibility and acquiring such organs as were necessary, by
+its own inherent forces, and at last rising into intellectual existence,
+a walk into the green fields or woods by the banks of rivers brought back
+my feelings from nature to God; I saw in all the powers of matter the
+instruments of the Deity; the sunbeams, the breath of the zephyr,
+awakened animation in forms prepared by Divine intelligence to receive
+it; the insensate seed, the slumbering egg, which were to be vivified,
+appeared like the new-born animal, works of a Divine mind; I saw love as
+the creative principle in the material world, and this love only as a
+Divine attribute.  Then, my own mind, I felt connected with new
+sensations and indefinite hopes, a thirst for immortality; the great
+names of other ages and of distant nations appeared to me to be still
+living around me; and, even in the funeral monuments of the heroic and
+the great, I saw, as it were, the decree of the indestructibility of
+mind.  These feelings, though generally considered as poetical, yet, I
+think, offer a sound philosophical argument in favour of the immortality
+of the soul.  In all the habits and instincts of young animals their
+feelings or movements may be traced in intimate relation to their
+improved perfect state; their sports have always affinities to their
+modes of hunting or catching their food, and young birds, even in the
+nest, show marks of fondness which, when their frames are developed,
+become signs of actions necessary to the reproduction and preservation of
+the species.  The desire of glory, of honour, of immortal fame, and of
+constant knowledge, so usual in young persons of well-constituted minds,
+cannot, I think, be other than symptoms of the infinite and progressive
+nature of intellect--hopes which, as they cannot be gratified here,
+belong to a frame of mind suited to a nobler state of existence.
+
+_The Unknown_.--Religion, whether natural or revealed, has always the
+same beneficial influence on the mind.  In youth, in health, and
+prosperity, it awakens feelings of gratitude and sublime love, and
+purifies at the same time that it exalts; but it is in misfortune, in
+sickness, in age, that its effects are most truly and beneficially felt;
+when submission in faith and humble trust in the Divine will, from duties
+become pleasures, undecaying sources of consolation; then it creates
+powers which were believed to be extinct, and gives a freshness to the
+mind which was supposed to have passed away for ever, but which is now
+renovated as an immortal hope; then it is the Pharos, guiding the wave-
+tost mariner to his home, as the calm and beautiful still basins or
+fiords, surrounded by tranquil groves and pastoral meadows, to the
+Norwegian pilot escaping from a heavy storm in the north sea, or as the
+green and dewy spot gushing with fountains to the exhausted and thirsty
+traveller in the midst of the desert.  Its influence outlives all earthly
+enjoyments, and becomes stronger as the organs decay and the frame
+dissolves; it appears as that evening star of light in the horizon of
+life, which, we are sure, is to become in another season a morning star,
+and it throws its radiance through the gloom and shadow of death.
+
+
+
+
+DIALOGUE THE FIFTH.  THE CHEMICAL PHILOSOPHER.
+
+
+I had been made religious by the conversations of Ambrosio in Italy; my
+faith was strengthened and exalted by the opinions of the Unknown, for
+whom I had not merely that veneration awakened by exalted talents, but a
+strong affection founded upon the essential benefit of the preservation
+of my life owing to him.  I ventured, the evening after our visit to the
+cave of Adelsberg, to ask him some questions relating to his history and
+adventures.  He said, "To attempt to give you any idea of the formation
+of my character would lead me into the history of my youth, which almost
+approaches to a tale of romance.  The source of the little information
+and intelligence I possess I must refer to a restless activity of spirit,
+a love of glory which ever belonged to my infancy, and a sensibility
+easily excited and not easily conquered.  My parentage was humble, yet I
+can believe a traditional history of my paternal grandmother, that the
+origin of our family was from an old Norman stock; I found this belief
+upon certain feelings which I can only refer to an hereditary source, a
+pride of decorum, a tact and refinement even in boyhood, and which are
+contradictory to the idea of an origin from a race of peasants.  Accident
+opened to me in early youth a philosophical career, which I pursued with
+success.  In manhood fortune smiled upon me and made me independent; I
+then really became a philosopher, and pursued my travels with the object
+of instructing myself and of benefiting mankind.  I have seen most parts
+of Europe, and conversed, I believe, with all the illustrious men of
+science belonging to them.  My life has not been unlike that of the
+ancient Greek sages.  I have added some little to the quantity of human
+knowledge, and I have endeavoured to add something to the quantity of
+human happiness.  In my early life I was a sceptic; I have informed you
+how I became a believer, and I constantly bless the Supreme Intelligence
+for the favour of some gleams of Divine light which have been vouchsafed
+to me in this our state of darkness and doubt."
+
+_Phil_.--I am surprised that with your powers you did not enter into a
+professional career either of law or politics; you would have gained the
+highest honours and distinctions.
+
+_The Unknown_.--To me there never has been a higher source of honour or
+distinction than that connected with advances in science.  I have not
+possessed enough of the eagle in my character to make a direct flight to
+the loftiest altitudes in the social world, and I certainly never
+endeavoured to reach those heights by using the creeping powers of the
+reptile who, in ascending, generally chooses the dirtiest path, because
+it is the easiest.
+
+_Eub_.--I have often wondered that men of fortune and of rank do not
+apply themselves more to philosophical pursuits; they offer a delightful
+and enviable road to distinction, one founded upon the blessings and
+benefits conferred on our fellow-creatures; they do not supply the same
+sources of temporary popularity as successes in the senate or at the bar,
+but the glory resulting from them is permanent and independent of vulgar
+taste or caprice.  In looking back to the history of the last five reigns
+in England, we find Boyles, Cavendishes, and Howards, who rendered those
+great names more illustrious by their scientific honours; but we may in
+vain search the aristocracy now for philosophers, and there are very few
+persons who pursue science with true dignity; it is followed more as
+connected with objects of profit than those of fame, and there are fifty
+persons who take out patents for supposed inventions for one who makes a
+real discovery.
+
+_Phil_.--The information we have already received from you proves to me
+that chemistry has been your favourite pursuit.  I am surprised at this.
+The higher-mathematics and pure physics appear to me to offer much more
+noble objects of contemplation and fields of discovery, and, practically
+considered, the results of the chemist are much more humble, belonging
+principally to the apothecary's shop and the kitchen.
+
+_Eub_.--I feel disposed to join you in attacking this favourite study of
+our friend, but merely to provoke him to defend it.  I wish our attack
+would induce him to vindicate his science, and that we might enjoy a
+little of the sport of literary gladiators, at least, in order to call
+forth his skill and awaken his eloquence.
+
+_The Unknown_.--I have no objection.  Let there be a fair discussion;
+remember we fight only with foils, and the point of mine shall be covered
+with velvet.  In your attack upon chemistry, Philalethes, you limited the
+use of it to the apothecary's shop and the kitchen.  The first is an
+equivocal use; by introducing it into the kitchen you make it an art
+fundamental to all others.  But if what you had stated had really meant
+to be serious, it would not have deserved a reply; as it is in mere
+playfulness, it shall not be thrown away.  I want eloquence, however, to
+adorn my subject, yet it is sufficiently exciting even to awaken feeling.
+Persons in general look at the magnificent fabric of civilized society as
+the result of the accumulated labour, ingenuity, and enterprise of man
+through a long course of ages, without attempting to define what has been
+owing to the different branches of human industry and science; and
+usually attribute to politicians, statesmen, and warriors a much greater
+share than really belongs to them in the work: what they have done is in
+reality little.  The beginning of civilization is the discovery of some
+useful arts by which men acquire property, comforts, or luxuries.  The
+necessity or desire of preserving them leads to laws and social
+institutions.  The discovery of peculiar arts gives superiority to
+particular nations; and the love of power induces them to employ this
+superiority to subjugate other nations, who learn their arts, and
+ultimately adopt their manners; so that in reality the origin, as well as
+the progress and improvement, of civil society is founded in mechanical
+and chemical inventions.  No people have ever arrived at any degree of
+perfection in their institutions who have not possessed in a high degree
+the useful and refined arts.  The comparison of savage and civilized man,
+in fact, demonstrates the triumph of chemical and mechanical philosophy
+as the causes not only of the physical, but ultimately even of moral
+improvement.  Look at the condition of man in the lowest state in which
+we are acquainted with him.  Take the native of New Holland, advanced
+only a few steps above the animal creation, and that principally by the
+use of fire; naked, defending himself against wild beasts or killing them
+for food only by weapons made of wood hardened in the fire, or pointed
+with stones or fish bones; living only in holes dug out of the earth, or
+in huts rudely constructed of a few branches of trees covered with grass;
+having no approach to the enjoyment of luxuries or even comforts; unable
+to provide for his most pressing wants; having a language scarcely
+articulate, relating only to the great objects of nature, or to his most
+pressing necessities or desires, and living solitary or in single
+families, unacquainted with religion, government, or laws, submitted to
+the mercy of nature or the elements.  How different is man in his highest
+state of cultivation; every part of his body covered with the products of
+different chemical and mechanical arts made not only useful in protecting
+him from the inclemency of the seasons but combined in forms of beauty
+and variety; creating out of the dust of the earth from the clay under
+his feet instruments of use and ornament; extracting metals from the rude
+ore and giving to them a hundred different shapes for a thousand
+different purposes; selecting and improving the vegetable productions
+with which he covers the earth; not only subduing but taming and
+domesticating the wildest, the fleetest, and the strongest inhabitants of
+the wood, the mountain, and the air; making the winds carry him on every
+part of the immense ocean; and compelling the elements of air, water, and
+even fire as it were to labour for him; concentrating in small space
+materials which act as the thunderbolt, and directing their energies so
+as to destroy at immense distances; blasting the rock, removing the
+mountain, carrying water from the valley to the hill; perpetuating
+thought in imperishable words, rendering immortal the exertion of genius,
+and presenting them as common property to all awakening minds, becoming
+as it were the true image of divine intelligence receiving and bestowing
+the breath of life in the influence of civilization.
+
+_Eub_.--Really you are in the poetical, not the chemical chair, or rather
+on the tripod.  We claim from you some accuracy of detail, some minute
+information, some proofs of what you assert.  What you attribute to the
+chemical and mechanical arts, we might with the same propriety attribute
+to the fine arts, to letters, to political improvement, and to those
+inventions of which Minerva and Apollo and not Vulcan are the patrons.
+
+_The Unknown_.--I will be more minute.  You will allow that the rendering
+skins insoluble in water by combining with them the astringent principle
+of certain vegetables is a chemical invention, and that without leather,
+our shoes, our carriages, our equipages would be very ill made; you will
+permit me to say, that the bleaching and dying of wool and silk, cotton,
+and flax, are chemical processes, and that the conversion of them into
+different clothes is a mechanical invention; that the working of iron,
+copper, tin, and lead, and the other metals, and the combining them in
+different alloys by which almost all the instruments necessary for the
+turner, the joiner, the stone-mason, the ship-builder, and the smith are
+made, are chemical inventions; even the press, to the influence of which
+I am disposed to attribute as much as you can do, could not have existed
+in any state of perfection without a metallic alloy; the combining of
+alkali and sand, and certain clays and flints together to form glass and
+porcelain is a chemical process; the colours which the artist employs to
+frame resemblances of natural objects, or to create combinations more
+beautiful than ever existed in Nature, are derived from chemistry; in
+short, in every branch of the common and fine arts, in every department
+of human industry, the influence of this science is felt, and we may find
+in the fable of Prometheus taking the flame from heaven to animate his
+man of clay an emblem of the effects of fire in its application to
+chemical purposes in creating the activity and almost the life of civil
+society.
+
+_Phil_.--It appears to me that you attribute to science what in many
+cases has been the result of accident.  The processes of most of the
+useful arts, which you call chemical, have been invented and improved
+without any refined views, without any general system of knowledge.
+Lucretius attributes to accident the discovery of the fusion of the
+metals; a person in touching a shell-fish observes that it emits a purple
+liquid as a dye, hence the Tyrian purple; clay is observed to harden in
+the fire, and hence the invention of bricks, which could hardly fail
+ultimately to lead to the discovery of porcelain; oven glass, the most
+perfect and beautiful of those manufactures you call chemical, is said to
+have been discovered by accident; Theophrastus states that some merchants
+who were cooking on lumps of soda or natron, near the mouth of the river
+Belus, observed that a hard and vitreous substance was formed where the
+fused natron ran into the sand.
+
+_The Unknown_.--I will readily allow that accident has had much to do
+with the origin of the arts as with the progress of the sciences.  But it
+has been by scientific processes and experiments that these accidental
+results have been rendered really applicable to the purposes of common
+life.  Besides, it requires a certain degree of knowledge and scientific
+combination to understand and seize upon the facts which have originated
+in accident.  It is certain that in all fires alkaline substances and
+sand are fused together, and clay hardened; yet for ages after this
+discovery of fire, glass and porcelain were unknown till some men of
+genius profited by scientific combination often observed but never
+applied.  It suits the indolence of those minds which never attempt
+anything, and which probably if they did attempt anything would not
+succeed, to refer to accident that which belongs to genius.  It is
+sometimes said by such persons, that the discovery of the law of
+gravitation was owing to accident: and a ridiculous story is told of the
+falling of an apple as the cause of this discovery.  As well might the
+invention of fluxions or the architectural wonders of the dome of St.
+Peter's, or the miracles of art the St. John of Raphael or the Apollo
+Belvidere, be supposed to be owing to accidental combinations.  In the
+progress of an art, from its rudest to its more perfect state, the whole
+process depends upon experiments.  Science is in fact nothing more than
+the refinement of common sense making use of facts already known to
+acquire new facts.  Clays which are yellow are known to burn red;
+calcareous earth renders flint fusible--the persons who have improved
+earthenware made their selections accordingly.  Iron was discovered at
+least one thousand years before it was rendered malleable; and from what
+Herodotus says of this discovery, there can be little doubt that it was
+developed by a scientific worker in metals.  Vitruvius tells us that the
+ceruleum, a colour made of copper, which exists in perfection in all the
+old paintings of the Greeks and Romans and on the mummies of the
+Egyptians, was discovered by an Egyptian king; there is therefore every
+reason to believe that it was not the result of accidental combination,
+but of experiments made for producing or improving colours.  Amongst the
+ancient philosophers, many discoveries are attributed to Democritus and
+Anaxagoras; and, connected with chemical arts, the narrative of the
+inventions of Archimedes alone, by Plutarch, would seem to show how great
+is the effect of science in creating power.  In modern times, the
+refining of sugar, the preparation of nitre, the manufacturing of acids,
+salts, &c., are all results of pure chemistry.  Take gunpowder as a
+specimen; no person but a man infinitely diversifying his processes and
+guided by analogy could have made such a discovery.  Look into the books
+of the alchemists, and some idea may be formed of the effects of
+experiments.  It is true, these persons were guided by false views, yet
+they made most useful researches; and Lord Bacon has justly compared them
+to the husbandman who, searching for an imaginary treasure, fertilised
+the soil.  They might likewise be compared to persons who, looking for
+gold, discover the fragments of beautiful statues, which separately are
+of no value, and which appear of little value to the persons who found
+them; but which, when selected and put together by artists and their
+defective parts supplied, are found to be wonderfully perfect and worthy
+of conservation.  Look to the progress of the arts since they have been
+enlightened by a system of science, and observe with what rapidity they
+have advanced.  Again, the steam-engine in its rudest form was the result
+of a chemical experiment; in its refined state it required the
+combinations of all the most recondite principles of chemistry and
+mechanics, and that excellent philosopher who has given this wonderful
+instrument of power to civil society was led to the great improvements he
+made by the discoveries of a kindred genius on the heat absorbed when
+water becomes steam, and of the heat evolved when steam becomes water.
+Even the most superficial observer must allow in this case a triumph of
+science, for what a wonderful impulse has this invention given to the
+progress of the arts and manufactories in our country, how much has it
+diminished labour, how much has it increased the real strength of the
+country!  Acting as it were with a thousand hands, it has multiplied our
+active population; and receiving its elements of activity from the bowels
+of the earth, it performs operations which formerly were painful,
+oppressive, and unhealthy to the labourers, with regularity and
+constancy, and gives security and precision to the efforts of the
+manufacturer.  And the inventions connected with the steam-engine, at the
+same time that they have greatly diminished labour of body, have tended
+to increase power of mind and intellectual resources.  Adam Smith well
+observes that manufacturers are always more ingenious than husbandmen;
+and manufacturers who use machinery will probably always be found more
+ingenious than handicraft manufacturers.  You spoke of porcelain as a
+result of accident; the improvements invented in this country, as well as
+those made in Germany and France, have been entirely the result of
+chemical experiments; the Dresden and the Sevres manufactories have been
+the work of men of science, and it was by multiplying his chemical
+researches that Wedgewood was enabled to produce at so cheap a rate those
+beautiful imitations which while they surpass the ancient vases in
+solidity and perfection of material, equal them in elegance, variety, and
+tasteful arrangement of their forms.  In another department, the use of
+the electrical conductor was a pure scientific combination, and the
+sublimity of the discovery of the American philosopher was only equalled
+by the happy application he immediately made of it.  In our own times it
+would be easy to point out numerous instances in which great improvements
+and beneficial results connected with the comforts, the happiness, and
+even life of our fellow creatures have been the results of scientific
+combinations; but I cannot do this without constituting myself a judge of
+the works of philosophers who are still alive, whose researches are
+known, whose labours are respected, and who will receive from posterity
+praises that their contemporaries hardly dare to bestow upon them.
+
+_Eub_.--We will allow that you have shown in many cases the utility of
+scientific investigation as connected with the progress of the useful
+arts.  But, in general, both the principles of chemistry are followed,
+and series of experiments performed without any view to utility; and a
+great noise is made if a new metal or a new substance is discovered, or
+if some abstracted law is made known relating to the phenomena of nature;
+yet, amongst the variety of new substances, few have been applied to any
+trifling use even, and the greater number have had no application at all.
+And with respect to the general views of the science, it would be
+difficult to show that any real good had resulted from the discovery or
+extension of them.  It does not add much to the dignity of a pursuit that
+those persons who have followed it for profit have really been most
+useful, and that the mere artisan or chemical manufacturer has done more
+for society than the chemical philosopher.  Besides, it has always
+appeared to me that it is in the nature of this science to encourage
+mediocrity and to attach importance to insignificant things; very slight
+chemical labours seem to give persons a claim to the title of
+philosopher--to have dissolved a few grains of chalk in an acid, to have
+shown that a very useless stone contains certain known ingredients, or
+that the colouring matter of a flower is soluble in acid and not in
+alkali, is thought by some a foundation for chemical celebrity.  I once
+began to attend a course of chemical lectures and to read the journals
+containing the ephemeral productions of this science; I was dissatisfied
+with the nature of the evidence which the professor adopted in his
+demonstrations, and disgusted with the series of observations and
+experiments which were brought forward one month to be overturned the
+next.  In November there was a Zingeberic acid, which in January was
+shown to have no existence; one year there was a vegetable acid, which
+the next was shown to be the same as an acid known thirty years ago; to-
+day a man was celebrated for having discovered a new metal or a new
+alkali, and they flourished like the scenes in a new pantomime only to
+disappear.  Then, the great object of the hundred triflers in the science
+appeared to be to destroy the reputation of the three or four great men
+whose labours were really useful, and had in them something of dignity.
+And, there not being enough of trifling results or false experiments to
+fill up the pages of the monthly journals, the deficiency was supplied by
+some crude theories or speculations of unknown persons, or by some ill-
+judged censure or partial praise of the editor.
+
+_The Unknown_.--I deny _in toto_ the accuracy of what you are advancing.
+I have already shown that real philosophers, not labouring for profit,
+have done much by their own inventions for the useful arts; and, amongst
+the new substances discovered, many have had immediate and very important
+applications.  The chlorine, or oxymuriatic gas of Scheele, was scarcely
+known before it was applied by Berthollet to bleaching; scarcely was
+muriatic acid gas discovered by Priestley, when Guyton de Morveau used it
+for destroying contagion.  Consider the varied and diversified
+applications of platinum, which has owed its existence as a useful metal
+entirely to the labours of an illustrious chemical philosopher; look at
+the beautiful yellow afforded by one of the new metals, chrome; consider
+the medical effects of iodine in some of the most painful and disgusting
+maladies belonging to human nature, and remember how short a time
+investigations have been made for applying the new substances.  Besides,
+the mechanical or chemical manufacturer has rarely discovered anything;
+he has merely applied what the philosopher has made known, he has merely
+worked upon the materials furnished to him.  We have no history of the
+manner in which iron was rendered malleable; but we know that platinum
+could only have been worked by a person of the most refined chemical
+resources, who made multiplied experiments upon it after the most
+ingenious and profound views.  But, waiving all common utility, all
+vulgar applications, there is something in knowing and understanding the
+operation of Nature, some pleasure in contemplating the order and harmony
+of the arrangements belonging to the terrestrial system of things.  There
+is no absolute utility in poetry, but it gives pleasure, refines and
+exalts the mind.  Philosophic pursuits have likewise a noble and
+independent use of this kind, and there is a double reason offered for
+pursuing them, for whilst in their sublime speculations they reach to the
+heavens, in their application they belong to the earth; whilst they exalt
+the intellect, they provide food for our common wants, and likewise
+minister to the noblest appetites and most exalted views belonging to our
+nature.  The results of this science are not like the temples of the
+ancients, in which statues of the gods were placed, where incense was
+offered and sacrifices were performed, and which were presented to the
+adoration of the multitude founded upon superstitious feelings; but they
+are rather like the palaces of the moderns, to be admired and used, and
+where the statues, which in the ancients raised feelings of adoration and
+awe, now produce only feelings of pleasure, and gratify a refined taste.
+It is surely a pure delight to know how and by what processes this earth
+is clothed with verdure and life, how the clouds, mists, and rain are
+formed, what causes all the changes of this terrestrial system of things,
+and by what divine laws order is preserved amidst apparent confusion.  It
+is a sublime occupation to investigate the cause of the tempest and the
+volcano, and to point out their use in the economy of things, to bring
+the lightning from the clouds and make it subservient to our experiments,
+to produce, as it were, a microcosm in the laboratory of art, and to
+measure and weigh those invisible atoms which, by their motions and
+changes according to laws impressed upon them by the Divine Intelligence,
+constitute the universe of things.  The true chemical philosopher sees
+good in all the diversified forms of the external world.  Whilst he
+investigates the operations of infinite power guided by infinite wisdom,
+all low prejudices, all mean superstitions, disappear from his mind.  He
+sees man an atom amidst atoms fixed upon a point in space, and yet
+modifying the laws that are around him by understanding them, and
+gaining, as it were, a kind of dominion over time and an empire in
+material space, and exerting on a scale infinitely small a power seeming
+a sort of shadow or reflection of a creative energy, and which entitles
+him to the distinction of being made in the image of God and animated by
+a spark of the Divine Mind.  Whilst chemical pursuits exalt the
+understanding, they do not depress the imagination or weaken genuine
+feeling; whilst they give the mind habits of accuracy by obliging it to
+attend to facts, they likewise extend its analogies, and though
+conversant with the minute forms of things, they have for their ultimate
+end the great and magnificent objects of Nature.  They regard the
+formation of a crystal, the structure of a pebble, the nature of a clay
+or earth; and they apply to the causes of the diversity of our mountain
+chains, the appearances of the winds, thunderstorms, meteors, the
+earthquake, the volcano, and all those phenomena which offer the most
+striking images to the poet and the painter.  They keep alive that
+inextinguishable thirst after knowledge which is one of the greatest
+characteristics of our nature, for every discovery opens a new field for
+investigation of facts, shows us the imperfection of our theories.  It
+has justly been said that the greater the circle of light, the greater
+the boundary of darkness by which it is surrounded.  This strictly
+applies to chemical inquiries, and hence they are wonderfully suited to
+the progressive nature of the human intellect, which by its increasing
+efforts to acquire a higher kind of wisdom, and a state in which truth is
+fully and brightly revealed, seems, as it were, to demonstrate its
+birthright to immortality.
+
+_Eub_.--I am glad that our opposition has led you to so complete a
+vindication of your favourite science.  I want no further proof of its
+utility.  I regret that I have not before made it a particular object of
+study.
+
+_Phil_.--As our friend has so fully convinced us of the importance of
+chemistry, I hope he will descend to some particulars as to its real
+nature, its objects, its instruments.  I would willingly have a
+definition of chemistry and some idea of the qualifications necessary to
+become a chemist, and of the apparatus essential for understanding what
+has been already done in the science, and for pursuing new inquiries.
+
+_The Unknown_.--There is nothing more difficult than a good definition,
+for it is scarcely possible to express in a few words the abstracted view
+of an infinite variety of facts.  Dr. Black has defined chemistry to be
+that science which treats of the changes produced in bodies by motions of
+their ultimate particles or atoms, but this definition is hypothetical,
+for the ultimate particles or atoms are mere creations of the
+imagination.  I will give you a definition, which will have the merit of
+novelty and which is probably general in its application.  Chemistry
+relates to those operations by which the intimate nature of bodies is
+changed, or by which they acquire new properties.  This definition will
+not only apply to the effects of mixture, but to the phenomena of
+electricity, and, in short, to all the changes which do not merely depend
+upon the motion or division of masses of matter.  However difficult it
+may have been to have given you a definition of chemistry, it is still
+more difficult to give you a detail of all the qualities necessary for a
+chemical philosopher.  I will not name as many as Athenaeus has named for
+a cook, who, he says, ought to be a mathematician, a theoretical
+musician, a natural philosopher, a natural historian, &c., though you had
+a disposition just now to make chemistry merely subservient to the uses
+of the kitchen.  But I will seriously mention some of the studies
+fundamental to the higher departments of this science; a man may be a
+good practical chemist perhaps without possessing them, but he never can
+become a great chemical philosopher.  The person who wishes to understand
+the higher departments of chemistry, or to pursue them in their most
+interesting relations to the economy of Nature, ought to be well-grounded
+in elementary mathematics; he will oftener have to refer to arithmetic
+than algebra, and to algebra than to geometry.  But all these sciences
+lend their aid to chemistry; arithmetic, in determining the proportions
+of analytical results and the relative weights of the elements of bodies;
+algebra, in ascertaining the laws of the pressure of elastic fluids, the
+force of vapour as dependent upon temperature, and the effects of masses
+and surfaces on the communication and radiation of heat; the applications
+of geometry are principally limited to the determination of the
+crystalline forms of bodies, which constitute the most important type of
+their nature, and often offer useful hints for analytical researches
+respecting their composition.  The first principles of natural philosophy
+or general physics ought not to be entirely unknown to the chemist.  As
+the most active agents are fluids, elastic fluids, heat, light, and
+electricity, he ought to have a general knowledge of mechanics,
+hydrodynamics, pneumatics, optics, and electricity.  Latin and Greek
+among the dead and French among the modern languages are necessary, and,
+as the most important after French, German and Italian.  In natural
+history and in literature what belongs to a liberal education, such as
+that of our universities, is all that is required; indeed, a young man
+who has performed the ordinary course of college studies which are
+supposed fitted for common life and for refined society, has all the
+preliminary knowledge necessary to commence the study of chemistry.  The
+apparatus essential to the modern chemical philosopher is much less bulky
+and expensive than that used by the ancients.  An air pump, an electrical
+machine, a voltaic battery (all of which may be upon a small scale), a
+blow-pipe apparatus, a bellows and forge, a mercurial and water-gas
+apparatus, cups and basins of platinum and glass, and the common reagents
+of chemistry, are what are required.  All the implements absolutely
+necessary may be carried in a small trunk, and some of the best and most
+refined researches of modern chemists have been made by means of an
+apparatus which might with ease be contained in a small travelling
+carriage, and the expense of which is only a few pounds.  The facility
+with which chemical inquiries are carried on, and the simplicity of the
+apparatus, offer additional reasons, to those I have already given, for
+the pursuit of this science.  It is not injurious to the health; the
+modern chemist is not like the ancient one, who passed the greater part
+of his time exposed to the heat and smoke of a furnace and the
+unwholesome vapours of acids and alkalies and other menstrua, of which,
+for a single experiment, he consumed several pounds.  His processes may
+be carried on in the drawing-room, and some of them are no less beautiful
+in appearance than satisfactory in their results.  It was said, by an
+author belonging to the last century, of alchemy, "that its beginning was
+deceit, its progress labour, and its end beggary."  It may be said of
+modern chemistry, that its beginning is pleasure, its progress knowledge,
+and its objects truth and utility.  I have spoken of the scientific
+attainments necessary for the chemical philosopher; I will say a few
+words of the intellectual qualities necessary for discovery or for the
+advancement of the science.  Amongst them patience, industry, and
+neatness in manipulation, and accuracy and minuteness in observing and
+registering the phenomena which occur, are essential.  A steady hand and
+a quick eye are most useful auxiliaries; but there have been very few
+great chemists who have preserved these advantages through life; for the
+business of the laboratory is often a service of danger, and the
+elements, like the refractory spirits of romance, though the obedient
+slave of the magician, yet sometimes escape the influence of his talisman
+and endanger his person.  Both the hands and eyes of others, however, may
+be sometimes advantageously made use of.  By often repeating a process or
+an observation, the errors connected with hasty operations or imperfect
+views are annihilated; and, provided the assistant has no preconceived
+notions of his own, and is ignorant of the object of his employer in
+making the experiment, his simple and bare detail of facts will often be
+the best foundation for an opinion.  With respect to the higher qualities
+of intellect necessary for understanding and developing the general laws
+of the science, the same talents I believe are required as for making
+advancement in every other department of human knowledge; I need not be
+very minute.  The imagination must be active and brilliant in seeking
+analogies; yet entirely under the influence of the judgment in applying
+them.  The memory must be extensive and profound; rather, however,
+calling up general views of things than minute trains of thought.  The
+mind must not be, like an encyclopedia, a burthen of knowledge, but
+rather a critical dictionary which abounds in generalities, and points
+out where more minute information may be obtained.  In detailing the
+results of experiments and in giving them to the world, the chemical
+philosopher should adopt the simplest style and manner; he will avoid all
+ornaments as something injurious to his subject, and should bear in mind
+the saying of the first king of Great Britain respecting a sermon which
+was excellent in doctrine but overcharged with poetical allusions and
+figurative language, "that the tropes and metaphors of the speaker were
+like the brilliant wild flowers in a field of corn--very pretty, but
+which did very much hurt the corn."  In announcing even the greatest and
+most important discoveries, the true philosopher will communicate his
+details with modesty and reserve; he will rather be a useful servant of
+the public, bringing forth a light from under his cloak when it is needed
+in darkness, than a charlatan exhibiting fireworks and having a trumpeter
+to announce their magnificence.  I see you are smiling, and think what I
+am saying in bad taste; yet, notwithstanding, I will provoke your smiles
+still further by saying a word or two on his other moral qualities.  That
+he should be humble-minded, you will readily allow, and a diligent
+searcher after truth, and neither diverted from this great object by the
+love of transient glory or temporary popularity, looking rather to the
+opinion of ages than to that of a day, and seeking to be remembered and
+named rather in the epochas of historians than in the columns of
+newspaper writers or journalists.  He should resemble the modern
+geometricians in the greatness of his views and the profoundness of his
+researches, and the ancient alchemists in industry and piety.  I do not
+mean that he should affix written prayers and inscriptions of
+recommendations of his processes to Providence, as was the custom of
+Peter Wolfe, and who was alive in my early days, but his mind should
+always be awake to devotional feeling, and in contemplating the variety
+and the beauty of the external world, and developing its scientific
+wonders, he will always refer to that infinite wisdom through whose
+beneficence he is permitted to enjoy knowledge; and, in becoming wiser,
+he will become better, he will rise at once in the scale of intellectual
+and moral existence, his increased sagacity will be subservient to a more
+exalted faith, and in proportion as the veil becomes thinner through
+which he sees the causes of things he will admire more the brightness of
+the divine light by which they are rendered visible.
+
+
+
+
+DIALOGUE THE SIXTH.  POLA, OR TIME.
+
+
+During our stay in Illyria, I made an excursion by water with the
+Unknown, my preserver, now become my friend, and Eubathes, to Pola, in
+Istria.  We entered the harbour of Pola in a felucca when the sun was
+setting; and I know no scene more splendid than the amphitheatre seen
+from the sea in this light.  It appears not as a building in ruins, but
+like a newly erected work, and the reflection of the colours of its
+brilliant marble and beautiful forms seen upon the calm surface of the
+waters gave to it a double effect--that of a glorious production of art
+and of a magnificent picture.  We examined with pleasure the remains of
+the arch of Augustus and the temple, very perfect monuments of imperial
+grandeur.  But the splendid exterior of the amphitheatre was not in
+harmony with the bare and naked walls of the interior; there were none of
+those durable and grand seats of marble, such as adorn the amphitheatre
+of Verona, from which it is probable that the whole of the arena and
+conveniences for the spectators had been constructed of wood.  Their
+total disappearance led us to reflect upon the causes of the destruction
+of so many of the works of the older nations.  I said, in our
+metaphysical abstractions, we refer the changes, the destruction of
+material forms, to time, but there must be physical laws in Nature by
+which they are produced; and I begged our new friend to give us some
+ideas on this subject in his character of chemical philosopher.  If human
+science, I said, has discovered the principle of the decay of things, it
+is possible that human art may supply means of conservation, and bestow
+immortality on some of the works which appear destined by their
+perfection for future ages.
+
+_The Unknown_.--I shall willingly communicate to you my views of the
+operation of time, philosophically considered.  A great philosopher has
+said, man can in no other way command Nature but in obeying her laws;
+and, in these laws, the principle of change is a principle of life;
+without decay, there can be no reproduction; and everything belonging to
+the earth, whether in its primitive state, or modified by human hands, is
+submitted to certain and immutable laws of destruction, as permanent and
+universal as those which produce the planetary motions.  The property
+which, as far as our experience extends, universally belongs to matter,
+gravitation, is the first and most general cause of change in our
+terrestrial system; and, whilst it preserves the great mass of the globe
+in a uniform state, its influence is continually producing alterations
+upon the surface.  The water, raised in vapour by the solar heat, is
+precipitated by the cool air in the atmosphere; it is carried down by
+gravitation to the surface, and gains its mechanical force from this law.
+Whatever is elevated above the superfices by the powers of vegetation or
+animal life, or by the efforts of man, by gravitation constantly tends to
+the common centre of attraction; and the great reason of the duration of
+the pyramid above all other forms is, that it is most fitted to resist
+the force of gravitation.  The arch, the pillar, and all perpendicular
+constructions, are liable to fall when a degradation from chemical or
+mechanical causes takes place in their inferior parts.  The forms upon
+the surface of the globe are preserved from the influence of gravitation
+by the attraction of cohesion, or by chemical attraction; but if their
+parts had freedom of motion, they would all be levelled by this power,
+gravitation, and the globe would appear as a plane and smooth oblate
+spheroid, flattened at the poles.  The attraction of cohesion or chemical
+attraction, in its most energetic state, is not liable to be destroyed by
+gravitation; this power only assists the agencies of other causes of
+degradation.  Attraction, of whatever kind, tends, as it were, to produce
+rest--a sort of eternal sleep in Nature.  The great antagonist power is
+heat.  By the influence of the sun the globe is exposed to great
+varieties of temperature; an addition of heat expands bodies, and an
+abstraction of heat causes them to contract; by variation of heat,
+certain kinds of matter are rendered fluid, or elastic, and changes from
+fluids into solids, or from solids or fluids into elastic substances, and
+_vice versa_, are produced; and all these phenomena are connected with
+alterations tending to the decay or destruction of bodies.  It is not
+probable that the mere contraction or expansion of a solid, from the
+subtraction or addition of heat, tends to loosen its parts; but if water
+exists in these parts, then its expansion, either in becoming vapour or
+ice, tends not only to diminish their cohesion, but to break them into
+fragments.  There is, you know, a very remarkable property of water--its
+expansion by cooling, and at the time of becoming ice--and this is a
+great cause of destruction in the northern climates; for where ice forms
+in the crevices or cavities of stones, or when water which has penetrated
+into cement freezes, its expansion acts with the force of the lever or
+the screw in destroying or separating the parts of bodies.  The
+mechanical powers of water, as rain, hail, or snow, in descending from
+the atmosphere, are not entirely without effect; for in acting upon the
+projections of solids, drops of water or particles of snow, and still
+more of hail, have a power of abrasion, and a very soft substance, from
+its mass assisting gravitation, may break a much harder one.  The
+glacier, by its motion, grinds into powder the surface of the granite
+rock; and the Alpine torrents, that have their origin under glaciers, are
+always turbid, from the destruction of the rocks on which the glacier is
+formed.  The effect of a torrent in deepening its bed will explain the
+mechanical agency of fluid-water, though this effect is infinitely
+increased, and sometimes almost entirely dependent, upon the solid
+matters which are carried down by it.  An angular fragment of stone in
+the course of ages moved in the cavity of a rock makes a deep round
+excavation, and is worn itself into a spherical form.  A torrent of rain
+flowing down the side of a building carries with it the silicious dust,
+or sand, or matter which the wind has deposited there, and acts upon a
+scale infinitely more minute, but according to the same law.  The
+buildings of ancient Rome have not only been liable to the constant
+operation of the rain-courses, or minute torrents produced by rains, but
+even the Tiber, swollen with floods of the Sabine mountains and the
+Apennines, has often entered into the city, and a winter seldom passes
+away in which the area of the Pantheon has not been filled with water,
+and the reflection of the cupola seen in a smooth lake below.  The
+monuments of Egypt are perhaps the most ancient and permanent of those
+belonging to the earth, and in that country rain is almost unknown.  And
+all the causes of degradation connected with the agency of water act more
+in the temperate climates than in the hot ones, and most of all in those
+countries where the inequalities of temperature are greatest.  The
+mechanical effects of air are principally in the action of winds in
+assisting the operation of gravitation, and in abrading by dust, sand,
+stones, and atmospheric water.  These effects, unless it be in the case
+of a building blown down by a tempest, are imperceptible in days, or even
+years; yet a gentle current of air carrying the silicious sand of the
+desert, or the dust of a road for ages against the face of a structure,
+must ultimately tend to injure it, for with infinite or unlimited
+duration, an extremely small cause will produce a very great effect.  The
+mechanical agency of electricity is very limited; the effects of
+lightning have, however, been witnessed, even in some of the great
+monuments of antiquity, the Colosaeum at Rome, for instance; and only
+last year, in a violent thunderstorm, some of the marble, I have been
+informed, was struck from the top of one of the arches in this building,
+and a perpendicular rent made, of some feet in diameter.  But the
+chemical effects of electricity, though excessively slow and gradual, yet
+are much more efficient in the great work of destruction.  It is to the
+general chemical doctrines of the changes produced by this powerful agent
+that I must now direct your especial attention.
+
+_Eub_.--Would not the consideration of the subject have been more
+distinct, and your explanations of the phenomena more simple, had you
+commenced by dividing the causes of change into mechanical and chemical;
+if you had first considered them separately, and then their joint
+effects?
+
+_The Unknown_.--The order I have adopted is not very remote from this.
+But I was perhaps wrong in treating first of the agency of gravitation,
+which owes almost all its powers to the operation of other causes.  In
+consequence of your hint, I shall alter my plan a little, and consider
+first the chemical agency of water, then that of air, and lastly that of
+electricity.  In every species of chemical change, temperature is
+concerned.  But unless the results of volcanoes and earthquakes be
+directly referred to this power, it has no chemical effect in relation to
+the changes ascribed to time simply considered as heat, but its
+operations, which are the most important belonging to the terrestrial
+cycle of changes, are blended with, or bring into activity, those of
+other agents.  One of the most distinct and destructive agencies of water
+depends upon its solvent powers, which are usually greatest when its
+temperature is highest.  Water is capable of dissolving, in larger or
+smaller proportions, most compound bodies, and the calcareous and
+alkaline elements of stones are particularly liable to this kind of
+operation.  When water holds in solution carbonic acid, which is always
+the case when it is precipitated from the atmosphere, its power of
+dissolving carbonate of lime is very much increased, and in the
+neighbourhood of great cities, where the atmosphere contains a large
+proportion of this principle, the solvent powers of rain upon the marble
+exposed to it must be greatest.  Whoever examines the marble statues in
+the British Museum, which have been removed from the exterior of the
+Parthenon, will be convinced that they have suffered from this agency;
+and an effect distinct in the pure atmosphere and temperate climate of
+Athens, must be upon a higher scale in the vicinity of other great
+European cities, where the consumption of fuel produces carbonic acid in
+large quantities.  Metallic substances, such as iron, copper, bronze,
+brass, tin, and lead, whether they exist in stones, or are used for
+support or connection in buildings, are liable to be corroded by water
+holding in solution the principles of the atmosphere; and the rust and
+corrosion, which are made, poetically, qualities of time, depend upon the
+oxidating powers of water, which by supplying oxygen in a dissolved or
+condensed state enables the metals to form new combinations.  All the
+vegetable substances, exposed to water and air, are liable to decay, and
+even the vapour in the air, attracted by wood, gradually reacts upon its
+fibres and assists decomposition, or enables its elements to take new
+arrangements.  Hence it is that none of the roofs of ancient buildings
+more than a thousand years old remain, unless it be such as are
+constructed of stone, as those of the Pantheon of Rome and the tomb of
+Theodoric at Ravenna, the cupola of which is composed of a single block
+of marble.  The pictures of the Greek masters, which were painted on the
+wood of the abies, or pine of the Mediterranean, likewise, as we are
+informed by Pliny, owed their destruction not to a change in the colours,
+not to the alteration of the calcareous ground on which they were
+painted, but to the decay of the tablets of wood on which the intonaco or
+stucco was laid.  Amongst the substances employed in building, wood,
+iron, tin, and lead, are most liable to decay from the operation of
+water, then marble, when exposed to its influence in the fluid form;
+brass, copper, granite, sienite, and porphyry are more durable.  But in
+stones, much depends upon the peculiar nature of their constituent parts;
+when the feldspar of the granite rocks contains little alkali or
+calcareous earth, it is a very permanent stone; but, when in granite,
+porphyry, or sienite, either the feldspar contains much alkaline matter,
+or the mica, schorl, or hornblende much protoxide of iron, the action of
+water containing oxygen and carbonic acid on the ferruginous elements
+tends to produce the disintegration of the stone.  The red granite, black
+sienite, and red porphyry of Egypt, which are seen at Rome in obelisks,
+columns, and sarcophagi, are amongst the most durable compound stones;
+but the grey granites of Corsica and Elba are extremely liable to undergo
+alteration: the feldspar contains much alkaline matter; and the mica and
+schorl, much protoxide of iron.  A remarkable instance of the decay of
+granite may be seen in the Hanging Tower of Pisa; whilst the marble
+pillars in the basement remain scarcely altered, the granite ones have
+lost a considerable portion of their surface, which falls off continually
+in scales, and exhibits everywhere stains from the formation of peroxide
+of iron.  The kaolin, or clay, used in most countries for the manufacture
+of fine porcelain or china, is generally produced from the feldspar of
+decomposing granite, in which the cause of decay is the dissolution and
+separation of the alkaline ingredients.
+
+_Eub_.--I have seen serpentines, basalts, and lavas which internally were
+dark, and which from their weight, I should suppose, must contain oxide
+of iron, superficially brown or red, and decomposing.  Undoubtedly this
+was from the action of water impregnated with air upon their ferruginous
+elements.
+
+_The Unknown_.--You are perfectly right.  There are few compound stones,
+possessing a considerable specific gravity, which are not liable to
+change from this cause; and oxide of iron amongst the metallic substances
+anciently known, is the most generally diffused in nature, and most
+concerned in the changes which take place on the surface of the globe.
+The chemical action of carbonic acid is so much connected with that of
+water, that it is scarcely possible to speak of them separately, as must
+be evident from what I have before said; but the same action which is
+exerted by the acid dissolved in water is likewise exerted by it in its
+elastic state, and in this case the facility with which the quantity is
+changed makes up for the difference of the degree of condensation.  There
+is no reason to believe that the azote of the atmosphere has any
+considerable action in producing changes of the nature we are studying on
+the surface; the aqueous vapour, the oxygen and the carbonic acid gas,
+are, however, constantly in combined activity, and above all the oxygen.
+And, whilst water, uniting its effects with those of carbonic acid, tends
+to disintegrate the parts of stones, the oxygen acts upon vegetable
+matter.  And this great chemical agent is at once necessary, in all the
+processes of life and in all those of decay, in which Nature, as it were,
+takes again to herself those instruments, organs, and powers, which had
+for a while been borrowed and employed for the purpose or the wants of
+the living principle.  Almost everything effected by rapid combinations
+in combustion may also be effected gradually by the slow absorption of
+oxygen; and though the productions of the animal and vegetable kingdom
+are much more submitted to the power of atmospheric agents than those of
+the mineral kingdom, yet, as in the instances which have just been
+mentioned, oxygen gradually destroys the equilibrium of the elements of
+stones, and tends to reduce into powder, to render fit for soils, even
+the hardest aggregates belonging to our globe.  Electricity, as a
+chemical agent, may be considered not only as directly producing an
+infinite variety of changes, but likewise as influencing almost all which
+take place.  There are not two substances on the surface of the globe
+that are not in different electrical relations to each other; and
+chemical attraction itself seems to be a peculiar form of the exhibition
+of electrical attraction; and wherever the atmosphere, or water, or any
+part of the surface of the earth gains accumulated electricity of a
+different kind from the contiguous surfaces, the tendency of this
+electricity is to produce new arrangements of the parts of these
+surfaces; thus a positively electrified cloud, acting even at a great
+distance on a moistened stone, tends to attract its oxygenous, or
+acidiform or acid, ingredients, and a negatively electrified cloud has
+the same effect upon its earthy, alkaline, or metallic matter.  And the
+silent and slow operation of electricity is much more important in the
+economy of Nature than its grand and impressive operation in lightning
+and thunder.  The chemical agencies of water and air are assisted by
+those of electricity; and their joint effects combined with those of
+gravitation and the mechanical ones I first described are sufficient to
+account for the results of time.  But the physical powers of Nature in
+producing decay are assisted likewise by certain agencies or energies of
+organised beings.  A polished surface of a building or a statue is no
+sooner made rough from the causes that have been mentioned than the seeds
+of lichens and mosses, which are constantly floating in our atmosphere,
+make it a place of repose, grow, and increase, and from their death,
+their decay, and decomposition carbonaceous matter is produced, and at
+length a soil is formed, in which grass can fix its roots.  In the
+crevices of walls, where this soil is washed down, even the seeds of
+trees grow, and, gradually as a building becomes more ruined, ivy and
+other parasitical plants cover it.  Even the animal creation lends its
+aid in the process of destruction when man no longer labours for the
+conservation of his works.  The fox burrows amongst ruins, bats and birds
+nestle in the cavities in walls, the snake and the lizard likewise make
+them their habitation.  Insects act upon a smaller scale, but by their
+united energies sometimes produce great effect; the ant, by establishing
+her colony and forming her magazines, often saps the foundations of the
+strongest buildings, and the most insignificant creatures triumph, as it
+were, over the grandest works of man.  Add to these sure and slow
+operations the devastations of war, the effects of the destructive zeal
+of bigotry, the predatory fury of barbarians seeking for concealed wealth
+under the foundations of buildings, and tearing from them every metallic
+substance, and it is rather to be wondered that any of the works of the
+great nations of antiquity are still in existence.
+
+_Phil_.--Your view of the causes of devastation really is a melancholy
+one.  Nor do I see any remedy; the most important causes will always
+operate.  Yet, supposing the constant existence of a highly civilised
+people, the ravages of time might be repaired, and by defending the
+finest works of art from the external atmosphere, their changes would be
+scarcely perceptible.
+
+_Eub_.--I doubt much whether it is for the interests of a people that its
+public works should be of a durable kind.  One of the great causes of the
+decline of the Roman Empire was that the people of the Republic and of
+the first empire left nothing for their posterity to do; aqueducts,
+temples, forums, everything was supplied, and there were no objects to
+awaken activity, no necessity to stimulate their inventive faculties, and
+hardly any wants to call forth their industry.
+
+_The Unknown_.--At least, you must allow the importance of preserving
+objects of the fine arts.  Almost everything we have worthy of admiration
+is owing to what has been preserved from the Greek school, and the
+nations who have not possessed these works or models have made little or
+no progress towards perfection.  Nor does it seem that a mere imitation
+of Nature is sufficient to produce the beautiful or perfect; but the
+climate, the manners, customs, and dress of the people, its genius and
+taste, all co-operate.  Such principles of conservation as Philalethes
+has referred to are obvious.  No works of excellence ought to be exposed
+to the atmosphere, and it is a great object to preserve them in
+apartments of equable temperature and extremely dry.  The roofs of
+magnificent buildings should be of materials not likely to be dissolved
+by water or changed by air.  Many electrical conductors should be placed
+so as to prevent the slow or the rapid effects of atmospheric
+electricity.  In painting, lapis lazuli or coloured hard glasses, in
+which the oxides are not liable to change, should be used, and should be
+laid on marble or stucco encased in stone, and no animal or vegetable
+substances, except pure carbonaceous matter, should be used in the
+pigments, and none should be mixed with the varnishes.
+
+_Eub_.--Yet, when all is done that can be done in the work of
+conservation, it is only producing a difference in the degree of
+duration.  And from the statements that our friend has made it is evident
+that none of the works of a mortal being can be eternal, as none of the
+combinations of a limited intellect can be infinite.  The operations of
+Nature, when slow, are no less sure; however man may for a time usurp
+dominion over her, she is certain of recovering her empire.  He converts
+her rocks, her stones, her trees, into forms of palaces, houses, and
+ships; he employs the metals found in the bosom of the earth as
+instruments of power, and the sands and clays which constitute its
+surface as ornaments and resources of luxury; he imprisons air by water,
+and tortures water by fire to change or modify or destroy the natural
+forms of things.  But, in some lustrums his works begin to change, and in
+a few centuries they decay and are in ruins; and his mighty temples,
+framed as it were for immortal and divine purposes, and his bridges
+formed of granite and ribbed with iron, and his walls for defence, and
+the splendid monuments by which he has endeavoured to give eternity even
+to his perishable remains, are gradually destroyed; and these structures,
+which have resisted the waves of the ocean, the tempests of the sky, and
+the stroke of the lightning, shall yield to the operation of the dews of
+heaven, of frost, rain, vapour, and imperceptible atmospheric influences;
+and, as the worm devours the lineaments of his mortal beauty, so the
+lichens and the moss and the most insignificant plants shall feed upon
+his columns and his pyramids, and the most humble and insignificant
+insects shall undermine and sap the foundations of his colossal works,
+and make their habitations amongst the ruins of his palaces and the
+falling seats of his earthly glory.
+
+_Phil_.--Your history of the laws of the inevitable destruction of
+material forms recalls to my memory our discussion at Adelsberg.  The
+changes of the material universe are in harmony with those which belong
+to the human body, and which you suppose to be the frame or machinery of
+the sentient principle.  May we not venture to imagine that the visible
+and tangible world, with which we are acquainted by our sensations, bears
+the same relation to the Divine and Infinite Intelligence that our organs
+bear to our mind, with this only difference, that in the changes of the
+divine system there is no decay, there being in the order of things a
+perfect unity, and all the powers springing from one will and being a
+consequence of that will, are perfectly and unalterably balanced.  Newton
+seemed to apprehend, that in the laws of the planetary motions there was
+a principle which would ultimately be the cause of the destruction of the
+system.  Laplace, by pursuing and refining the principles of our great
+philosopher, has proved that what appeared sources of disorder are, in
+fact, the perfecting machinery of the system, and that the principle of
+conservation is as eternal as that of motion.
+
+_The Unknown_.--I dare not offer any speculations on this grand and awful
+subject.  We can hardly comprehend the cause of a simple atmospheric
+phenomenon, such as the fall of a heavy body from a meteor; we cannot
+even embrace in one view the millionth part of the objects surrounding
+us, and yet we have the presumption to reason upon the infinite universe
+and the eternal mind by which it was created and is governed.  On these
+subjects I have no confidence in reason, I trust only to faith; and, as
+far as we ought to inquire, we have no other guide but revelation.
+
+_Phil_.--I agree with you that whenever we attempt metaphysical
+speculations, we must begin with a foundation of faith.  And being sure
+from revelation that God is omnipotent and omnipresent, it appears to me
+no improper use of our faculties to trace even in the natural universe
+the acts of His power and the results of His wisdom, and to draw
+parallels from the infinite to the finite mind.  Remember, we are taught
+that man was created in the image of God, and, I think, it cannot be
+doubted that in the progress of society man has been made a great
+instrument by his energies and labours for improving the moral universe.
+Compare the Greeks and Romans with the Assyrians and Babylonians, and the
+ancient Greeks and Romans with the nations of modern Christendom, and it
+cannot, I think, be questioned that there has been a great superiority in
+the latter nations, and that their improvements have been subservient to
+a more exalted state of intellectual and religious existence.  If this
+little globe has been so modified by its powerful and active inhabitants,
+I cannot help thinking that in other systems beings of a superior nature,
+under the influence of a divine will, may act nobler parts.  We know from
+the sacred writings that there are intelligences of a higher nature than
+man, and I cannot help sometimes referring to my vision in the Colosaeum,
+and in supposing some acts of power of those genii or seraphs similar to
+those which I have imagined in the higher planetary systems.  There is
+much reason to infer from astronomical observations that great changes
+take place in the system of the fixed stars: Sir William Herschel,
+indeed, seems to have believed that he saw nebulous or luminous matter in
+the process of forming suns, and there are some astronomers who believe
+that stars have been extinct; but it is more probable that they have
+disappeared from peculiar motions.  It is, perhaps, rather a poetical
+than a philosophical idea, yet I cannot help forming the opinion that
+genii or seraphic intelligences may inhabit these systems and may be the
+ministers of the eternal mind in producing changes in them similar to
+those which have taken place on the earth.  Time is almost a human word
+and change entirely a human idea; in the system of Nature we should
+rather say progress than change.  The sun appears to sink in the ocean in
+darkness, but it rises in another hemisphere; the ruins of a city fall,
+but they are often used to form more magnificent structures as at Rome;
+but, even when they are destroyed, so as to produce only dust, Nature
+asserts her empire over them, and the vegetable world rises in constant
+youth, and--in a period of annual successions, by the labours of man
+providing food--vitality, and beauty upon the wrecks of monuments, which
+were once raised for purposes of glory, but which are now applied to
+objects of utility.
+
+
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