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 theforemost of our English men of science; and this book, written when hewas dying, which makes Reason the companion of Faith, shows how he passedthrough the light of earth into the light of heaven. 

His father had a small patrimony at Varfell, in Ludgvan. His mother hadlost in early childhood both her parents within a few hours of eachother, and had been adopted by John Tonkin, an eminent surgeon inPenzance, to whom, therefore, so to speak, Humphry Davy became grandsonby adoption. There were five such grandchildren--Humphry, the elder oftwo boys, the other boy being named John, and three girls. 

At a preparatory school and at the Penzance Grammar School Humphry Davywas a noticeable boy. He read eagerly and showed great quickness ofimagination, delighted in legends, when eight years old told stories tohis companions, and as a boy wrote verse. There was a Quaker saddler whomade for himself an electrical machine and mechanical models, in whichyoung Davy took keen interest, and from that saddler, Robert Dunkin, camethe first impulse towards experiments in science. At fifteen Davy wasplaced for further education at a school in Truro. A year later hisfather died, and John Tonkin apprenticed him, on the 10th of February, 1795, to Dr. Borlase, a surgeon in large practice at Penzance. Medicalpractitioners in those days dispensed their own medicines, and theinquiring mind of this young apprentice being let loose upon a store-roomof chemicals, experimental chemistry became his favourite pursuit. Hisgrandfather, by adoption, allowed him to fit up a garret as a laboratory, notwithstanding the fears of the household that "This boy, Humphry, willblow us all into the air. "

Activity and originality of mind, with a persistent habit of inquiry andexperiment, brought Davy friends who could appreciate and help him. WhenDr. Beddoes, of Bristol, was examining the Cornish coast, in 1798, hecame upon young Humphry Davy, was told of researches made by him, andurged to engage him as laboratory assistant in a Pneumatic Institutionthat he was then establishing in Bristol. Davy went in October, 1798, then in his twentieth year; but his good friend, and grandfather byadoption, had set his heart upon Humphry's becoming an eminent burgeon, and even altered his will when his boy yielded to the temptation of alaboratory for research. Men also know something of the trouble of thehen who has a chance duckling in her brood, and sees that contumaciouschicken run into the water deaf to all the warnings of her love. 

At Bristol Humphry Davy came into companionship with Coleridge andSouthey, who were then also at the outset of their career, and there arepoems of his in the Poetical Anthology then published by Southey. But atthe same time Davy contributed papers on "Heat, Light, and theCombinations 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 ongases and on galvanism, and one day by experiment upon himself, in thebreathing of carburetted hydrogen, he almost put an end to his life. 

In 1799 Count Rumford was founding the Royal Institution, and its home inAlbemarle Street was then bought for it. The first lecturer appointedwas in bad health, and in 1801 he was obliged to resign. Young Davy wasnow known to men of science for the number and freshness of hisexperiments, and for the substantial value of his chemical discoveries. It was resolved by the managers, in July, 1801, that Humphry Davy beappointed Assistant-Lecturer in Chemistry, Director of the ChemicalLaboratory, and assistant-editor of the journals of the RoyalInstitution. His first remuneration was a room in the house, coals andcandles, and 100 pounds a year. Count Rumford held out the prospect of aprofessorship with 300 pounds a year, and the certainty of full supportin the use of the laboratory for his own private research. His age thenwas twenty-three. He at once satisfied men of science and amused peopleof fashion. His energy was unbounded; there was a fascination in hispersonal character and manner. He was a genial and delightful lecturer, and his inventive genius was continually finding something new. A firstsuggestion of the process of photography was dropped incidentally amongthe records of researches that attracted more attention. Davy had beenlittle more than a year at the Royal Institution when he was made itsProfessor of Chemistry. After another year he was made a Fellow. Dr. Paris, his biographer, says that "the enthusiastic admiration which hislectures obtained is at this period scarcely to be imagined. Men of thefirst rank and talent--the literary and the scientific, the practical, the theoretical--blue-stockings and women of fashion, the old and theyoung, all crowded--eagerly crowded--the lecture-room. " At the beginningof the year 1805 his salary was raised to 400 pounds a year. In May ofthat year the Royal Society awarded to him the Copley Medal. Within thenext two years he was elected Secretary of the Royal Society. Since 1800he had been advancing knowledge by experiments with galvanism. The RoyalInstitution raised a special fund to place at his disposal a morepowerful galvanic battery than any that had been constructed. The fameof his discoveries spread over Europe. 

The Institute of France gave Davy the Napoleon Prize of three thousandfrancs for the best experiments in galvanism. Dublin, in 1810, paid Davyfour hundred guineas for some lectures upon his discoveries. The FarmingSociety of Ireland gave him 750 pounds for six lectures on chemistryapplied to agriculture. In the following year he received more than athousand pounds for two courses of lectures at Dublin, and was sent homewith the honorary degree of LL. D. In April, 1812, he was knighted, resigned his professorship at the Royal Institution, and "in order morestrongly to mark the high sense of his merits" he was elected HonoraryProfessor of Chemistry. In the same month Davy married a young and richwidow, who had charmed all Edinburgh by her beauty and her wit. Twomonths 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 wasreceived with honour by the chief men of science in all places that hevisited. When, at Pavia, he first met Volta: he found that Volta had puton full-dress to receive him. 

In August, 1815, Davy's attention was drawn to the loss of life byexplosions of fire-damp, and by the end of the year he had devised hissafety-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 wasmade a baronet. In November, 1820, he was elected President of the RoyalSociety. 

His next researches were chiefly on electro-magnetism and the protectionof the copper sheathing on ships' bottoms. At the end of 1826 his healthfailed seriously. He went to Italy; resigned, in July, 1827, thePresidency of the Royal Society; came back to England, longing for "thefresh air of the mountains;" wrote and published his "Salmonia, or Daysof Fly-fishing. " In the spring of 1828 he left England again. He was atRome in the winter of 1829, still engaged in quiet research, and it wasthen that he wrote his "Consolations in Travel; or, the Last Days of aPhilosopher. " His wife, who shone in London society, did not go with himupon this last journey, but travelled day and night to reach him whenword came to her and to his brother John, who was a physician, that hehad again been struck with palsy and was dying. That stroke of palsyfollowed immediately upon the finishing of the book now in the reader'shand. Davy lived to see again his wife and brother, rallied enough toleave 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 duringa period of bodily indisposition;--it was concluded at the very moment ofthe 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 tothe world a faithful copy, making only a few omissions and a few verbalalterations. The characters of the persons of the dialogue were intendedto be ideal, at least in great part such they should be considered by thereader; and, it is to be hoped, that the incidents introduced, as well asthe persons, will be viewed only as subordinate and subservient to thesentiments and doctrines. The dedication, it may be specially noticed, is the author's own, and in the very words dictated by him, at a timewhen he had lost the power of writing except with extreme difficulty, owing to the paralytic attack, although he retained in a very remarkablemanner all his mental faculties unimpaired and unclouded. 

JOHN DAVY. _London_, _January 6th_, 1830. 

TO THOMAS POOLE, ESQ. OF NETHER STOWEYIN REMEMBRANCE OFTHIRTY YEARS OF CONTINUED AND FAITHFULFRIENDSHIP. 

AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 

Salmonia was written during the time of a partial recovery from a longand dangerous illness. The present work was composed immediately after, under the same unfavourable and painful circumstances, and at a periodwhen the constitution of the Author suffered from new attacks. He hasderived some pleasure and some consolation, when most other sources ofconsolation and pleasure were closed to him, from this exercise of hismind; and he ventures to hope that these hours of sickness may be notaltogether 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-- atRome. The society was, as is usual in that metropolis of the oldChristian world, numerous and diversified. In it there were found manyintellectual foreigners and amongst them some distinguished Britons, whohad a higher object in making this city their residence than mereidleness or vague curiosity. Amongst these my countrymen, there were twogentlemen with whom I formed a particular intimacy and who were myfrequent companions in the visits which I made to the monuments of thegrandeur of the old Romans and to the masterpieces of ancient and modernart. One of them I shall call Ambrosio: he was a man of highlycultivated taste, great classical erudition, and minute historicalknowledge. In religion he was of the Roman Catholic persuasion; but aCatholic of the most liberal school, who in another age might have beensecretary to Ganganelli. His views upon the subjects of politics andreligion were enlarged; but his leaning was rather to the power of asingle magistrate than to the authority of a democracy or even of anoligarchy. The other friend, whom I shall call Onuphrio, was a man of avery different character. Belonging to the English aristocracy, he hadsome of the prejudices usually attached to birth and rank; but hismanners were gentle, his temper good, and his disposition amiable. Havingbeen partly educated at a northern university in Britain, he had adoptedviews in religion which went even beyond toleration and which might beregarded as entering the verge of scepticism. For a patrician he wasvery liberal in his political views. His imagination was poetical anddiscursive, his taste good and his tact extremely fine, so exquisite, indeed, that it sometimes approached to morbid sensibility, and disgustedhim with slight defects and made him keenly sensible of small perfectionsto which common minds would have been indifferent. 

In the beginning of October on a very fine afternoon I drove with thesetwo friends to the Colosaeum, a monument which, for the hundredth timeeven, I had viewed with a new admiration; my friends partook of mysentiments. I shall give the conversation which occurred there in theirown words. Onuphrio said, "How impressive are those ruins!--what acharacter do they give us of the ancient Romans, what magnificence ofdesign, what grandeur of execution! Had we not historical documents toinform us of the period when this structure was raised and of thepurposes for which it was designed, it might be imagined the work of arace of giants, a Council Chamber for those Titans fabled to have warredagainst the gods of the pagan mythology. The size of the masses oftravertine of which it is composed is in harmony with the immensemagnitude of the building. It is hardly to be wondered at that a peoplewhich constructed such works for their daily sports, for their usualamusements, should have possessed strength, enduring energy, andperseverance sufficient to enable them to conquer the world. They appearalways to have formed their plans and made their combinations as if theirpower were beyond the reach of chance, independent of the influence oftime, and founded for unlimited duration--for eternity!"

Ambrosio took up the discourse of Onuphrio, and said, "The aspect of thiswonderful heap of ruins is so picturesque that it is impossible to regretits decay; and at this season of the year the colours of the vegetationare in harmony with those of the falling ruins, and how perfectly thewhole landscape is in tone! The remains of the palace of the Caesars andof the golden halls of Nero appear in the distance, their gray andtottering turrets and their moss-stained arches reposing, as it were, upon the decaying vegetation: and there is nothing that marks theexistence of life except the few pious devotees, who wander from stationto station in the arena below, kneeling before the cross, anddemonstrating the triumph of a religion, which received in this very spotin 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, withoutthe influence of Christianity, these majestic ruins would have beendispersed or levelled to the dust. Plundered of their lead and iron bythe barbarians, Goths, and Vandals, and robbed even of their stones byRoman princes, the Barberini, they owe what remains of their relics tothe sanctifying influence of that faith which has preserved for the worldall that was worth preserving, not merely arts and literature butlikewise that which constitutes the progressive nature of intellect andthe institutions which afford to us happiness in this world and hopes ofa blessed immortality in the next. And, being of the faith of Rome, Imay say, that the preservation of this pile by the sanctifying effect ofa few crosses planted round it, is almost a miraculous event. And what acontrast the present application of this building, connected with holyfeelings and exalted hopes, is to that of the ancient one, when it wasused for exhibiting to the Roman people the destruction of men by wildbeasts, or of men, more savage than wild beasts, by each other, togratify a horrible appetite for cruelty, founded upon a still moredetestable lust, that of universal domination! And who would havesupposed, in the time of Titus, that a faith, despised in itsinsignificant origin, and persecuted from the supposed obscurity of itsfounder and its principles, should have reared a dome to the memory ofone of its humblest teachers, more glorious than was ever framed forJupiter or Apollo in the ancient world, and have preserved even the ruinsof the temples of the pagan deities, and have burst forth in splendourand majesty, consecrating truth amidst the shrines of error, employingthe idols of the Roman superstition for the most holy purposes and risinga bright and constant light amidst the dark and starless night whichfollowed the destruction of the Roman empire!"

Onuphrio now resumed the discourse. He said, "I have not the sameexalted views on the subject which our friend Ambrosio has so eloquentlyexpressed. Some little of the perfect state in which these ruins existmay have been owing to causes which he has described; but these causeshave only lately begun to operate, and the mischief was done beforeChristianity was established at Rome. Feeling differently on thesesubjects, I admire this venerable ruin rather as a record of thedestruction of the power of the greatest people that ever existed, thanas a proof of the triumph of Christianity; and I am carried forward inmelancholy anticipation to the period when even the magnificent dome ofSt. Peter's will be in a similar state to that in which the Colosaeum nowis, and when its ruins may be preserved by the sanctifying influence ofsome new and unknown faith; when, perhaps, the statue of Jupiter, whichat 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 futuresaint or divinity; and when the monuments of the papal magnificence shallbe mixed with the same dust as that which now covers the tombs of theCaesars. Such, I am sorry to say, is the general history of all theworks and institutions belonging to humanity. They rise, flourish, andthen decay and fall; and the period of their decline is generallyproportional to that of their elevation. In ancient Thebes or Memphisthe peculiar genius of the people has left us monuments from which we canjudge of their arts, though we cannot understand the nature of theirsuperstitions. Of Babylon and of Troy the remains are almost extinct;and what we know of these famous cities is almost entirely derived fromliterary records. Ancient Greece and Rome we view in the few remains oftheir monuments; and the time will arrive when modern Rome shall be whatancient Rome now is; and ancient Rome and Athens will be what Tyre orCarthage now are, known only by coloured dust in the desert, or colouredsand, containing the fragments of bricks or glass, washed up by the waveof a stormy sea. I might pursue these thoughts still further, and showthat the wood of the cross, or the bronze of the statue, decay as quicklyas if they had not been sanctified; and I think I could show that theirinfluence is owing to the imagination, which, when infinite time isconsidered, or the course of ages even, is null and its effectimperceptible; and similar results occur, whether the faith be that ofOsiris, of Jupiter, of Jehovah, or of Jesus. "

To this Ambrosio replied, his countenance and the tones of his voiceexpressing some emotion: "I do not think, Onuphrio, that you considerthis question with your usual sagacity or acuteness; indeed, I never hearyou on the subject of religion without pain and without a feeling ofregret that you have not applied your powerful understanding to a moreminute and correct examination of the evidences of revealed religion. Youwould then, I think, have seen, in the origin, progress, elevation, decline and fall of the empires of antiquity, proofs that they wereintended for a definite end in the scheme of human redemption; you wouldhave found prophecies which have been amply verified; and the foundationor the ruin of a kingdom, which appears in civil history so great anevent, in the history of man, in his religious institutions, ascomparatively of small moment; you would have found the establishment ofthe worship of one God amongst a despised and contemned people as themost important circumstance in the history of the early world; you wouldhave found the Christian dispensation naturally arising out of theJewish, and the doctrines of the pagan nations all preparatory to thetriumph and final establishment of a creed fitted for the mostenlightened state of the human mind and equally adapted to every climateand every people. "

To this animated appeal of Ambrosio, Onuphrio replied in the mosttranquil manner and with the air of an unmoved philosopher:--"You mistakeme, Ambrosio, if you consider me as hostile to Christianity. I am not ofthe school of the French Encyclopaedists, or of the English infidels. Iconsider religion as essential to man, and belonging to the human mind inthe same manner as instincts belong to the brute creation, a light, ifyou 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 Iconsider this instinct as equally useful in all its different forms, andstill a divine light through whatever medium or cloud of human passion orprejudice it passes. I reverence it in the followers of Brahmah, in thedisciple of Mahomet, and I wonder at in all the variety of forms itadopts in the Christian world. You must not be angry with me that I donot allow infallibility to your Church, having been myself brought up byProtestant parents, who were rigidly attached to the doctrines ofCalvin. "

I saw Ambrosio's countenance kindle at Onuphrio's explanation of hisopinions, and he appeared to be meditating an angry reply. I endeavouredto change the conversation to the state of the Colosaeum, with which ithad begun. "These ruins, " I said, "as you have both observed, are highlyimpressive; yet when I saw them six years ago they had a stronger effecton my imagination; whether it was the charm of novelty, or that my mindwas fresher, or that the circumstances under which I saw them werepeculiar, I know not, but probably all these causes operated in affectingmy mind. It was a still and beautiful evening in the end of May; thelast sunbeams were dying away in the western sky and the first moonbeamsshining in the eastern; the bright orange tints lighted up the ruins andas it were kindled the snows that still remained on the distantApennines, which were visible from the highest accessible part of theamphitheatre. In this glow of colouring, the green of advanced springsoftened the grey and yellow tints of the decaying stones, and as thelights gradually became fainter, the masses appeared grander and moregigantic; and when the twilight had entirely disappeared, the contrast oflight and shade in the beams of the full moon and beneath a sky of thebrightest sapphire, but so highly illuminated that only Jupiter and a fewstars of the first magnitude were visible, gave a solemnity andmagnificence to the scene which awakened the highest degree of thatemotion which is so properly termed the sublime. The beauty and thepermanency of the heavens and the principle of conservation belonging tothe system of the universe, the works of the Eternal and DivineArchitect, were finely opposed to the perishing and degraded works of manin his most active and powerful state. And at this moment so humbleappeared to me the condition of the most exalted beings belonging to theearth, so feeble their combinations, so minute the point of space, and solimited the period of time in which they act, that I could hardly avoidcomparing the generations of man, and the effects of his genius andpower, to the swarms of luceoli or fire-flies which were dancing aroundme and that appeared flitting and sparkling amidst the gloom and darknessof the ruins, but which were no longer visible when they rose above thehorizon, their feeble light being lost and utterly obscured in thebrightness 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 wellexpressed a solemn though humiliating feeling. In such moments and amongsuch scenes it is impossible not to be struck with the nothingness ofhuman glory and the transiency of human works. This, one of the greatestmonuments on the face of the earth, was raised by a people, then itsmasters, only seventeen centuries ago; in a few ages more it will be butas dust, and of all the testimonials of the vanity or power of man, whether raised to immortalise his name, or to contain his decaying boneswithout a name, no one is known to have a duration beyond what ismeasured by the existence of a hundred generations; and it is only tomultiply centuple for instance the period of time, and the memorials of avillage and the monuments of a country churchyard may be compared withthose of an empire and the remains of the world. "

Ambrosio, to whom the conversation seemed disagreeable, put us in mind ofan engagement we had made to spend the evening at the conversazione of acelebrated lady, and proposed to call the carriage. The reflectionswhich the conversation and the scene had left in my mind little disposedme for general society. I requested them to keep their engagement, andsaid 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 theoccasion of a cold, and wished me the company of some of the spectres ofthe ancient Romans. 

When I was left alone, I seated myself in the moonshine, on one of thesteps leading to the seats supposed to have been occupied by thepatricians in the Colosaeum at the time of the public games. The trainof ideas in which I had indulged before my friends left me continued toflow with a vividness and force increased by the stillness and solitudeof the scene; and the full moon has always a peculiar effect on thesemoods of feeling in my mind, giving to them a wildness and a kind ofindefinite sensation, such as I suppose belong at all times to the truepoetical temperament. It must be so, I thought to myself; no new citywill rise again out of the double ruins of this; no new empire will befounded upon these colossal remains of that of the old Romans. Theworld, like the individual, flourishes in youth, rises to strength inmanhood, falls into decay in age; and the ruins of an empire are like thedecrepit frame of an individual, except that they have some tints ofbeauty which nature bestows upon them. The sun of civilisation arose inthe East, advanced towards the West, and is now at its meridian; in a fewcenturies more it will probably be seen sinking below the horizon even inthe new world, and there will be left darkness only where there is abright light, deserts of sand where there were populous cities, andstagnant morasses where the green meadow or the bright cornfield onceappeared. I called up images of this kind in my imagination. "Time, " Isaid, "which purifies, and as it were sanctifies the mind, destroys andbrings into utter decay the body; and, even in nature, its influenceseems always degrading. She is represented by the poets as eternal inher 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 hadscarcely concluded this ideal sentence when my reverie became deeper, theruins surrounding me appeared to vanish from my sight, the light of themoon became more intense, and the orb itself seemed to expand in a floodof splendour. At the same time that my visual organs appeared sosingularly affected, the most melodious sounds filled my ear, softer yetat the same time deeper and fuller than I had ever heard in the mostharmonious and perfect concert. It appeared to me that I had entered anew state of existence, and I was so perfectly lost in the new kind ofsensation which I experienced that I had no recollections and noperceptions of identity. On a sudden the music ceased, but the brilliantlight still continued to surround me, and I heard a low but extremelydistinct 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 soonbecame articulate, as if a prelude to some piece of sublime poeticalcomposition. "You, like all your brethren, " said the voice, "areentirely ignorant of every thing belonging to yourselves, the world youinhabit, your future destinies, and the scheme of the universe; and yetyou have the folly to believe you are acquainted with the past, thepresent, and the future. I am an intelligence somewhat superior to you, though there are millions of beings as much above me in power and inintellect as man is above the meanest and weakest reptile that crawlsbeneath his feet; yet something I can teach you: yield your mind whollyto the influence which I shall exert upon it, and you shall be undeceivedin your views of the history of the world, and of the system youinhabit. " At this moment the bright light disappeared, the sweet andharmonious voice, which was the only proof of the presence of a superiorintelligence, ceased; I was in utter darkness and silence, and seemed tomyself to be carried rapidly upon a stream of air, without any othersensation than that of moving quickly through space. Whilst I was stillin motion, a dim and hazy light, which seemed like that of twilight in arainy morning, broke upon my sight, and gradually a country displayeditself to my view covered with forests and marshes. I saw wild animalsgrazing in large savannahs, and carnivorous beasts, such as lions andtigers, occasionally disturbing and destroying them; I saw naked savagesfeeding upon wild fruits, or devouring shell-fish, or fighting with clubsfor the remains of a whale which had been thrown upon the shore. Iobserved that they had no habitations, that they concealed themselves incaves, or under the shelter of palm trees, and that the only deliciousfood 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 ofcontention. I saw that some few of these wretched human beings thatinhabited the wide waste before my eyes, had weapons pointed with flintor fish-bone, which they made use of for destroying birds, quadrupeds, orfishes, that they fed upon raw; but their greatest delicacy appeared tobe a maggot or worm, which they sought for with great perseverance in thebuds of the palm. When I had cast my eyes on the varied features of thismelancholy scene, which was now lighted by a rising sun, I heard againthe same voice which had astonished me in the Colosaeum, and whichsaid, --"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 orenvy?" As the last words fell on my ear, I was again, as before, rapidlyput in motion, and I seemed again resistless to be hurried upon a streamof air, and again in perfect darkness. In a moment, an indistinct lightagain appeared before my eyes and a country opened upon my view whichappeared partly wild and partly cultivated; there were fewer woods andmorasses than in the scene which I had just before seen; I beheld men whowere covered with the skins of animals, and who were driving cattle toenclosed pastures; I saw others who were reaping and collecting corn, others who were making it into bread; I saw cottages furnished with manyof the conveniences of life, and a people in that state of agriculturaland pastoral improvement which has been imagined by the poets asbelonging to the golden age. The same voice, which I shall call that ofthe Genius, said, "Look at these groups of men who are escaped from thestate of infancy: they owe their improvement to a few superior mindsstill amongst them. That aged man whom you see with a crowd around himtaught them to build cottages; from that other they learnt to domesticatecattle; from others to collect and sow corn and seeds of fruit. Andthese arts will never be lost; another generation will see them moreperfect; the houses, in a century more, will be larger and moreconvenient; the flocks of cattle more numerous; the corn-fields moreextensive; the morasses will be drained, the number of fruit-treesincreased. You shall be shown other visions of the passages of time, butas you are carried along the stream which flows from the period ofcreation to the present moment, I shall only arrest your transit to makeyou observe some circumstances which will demonstrate the truths I wishyou to know, and which will explain to you the little it is permitted meto understand of the scheme of the universe. " I again found myself indarkness and in motion, and I was again arrested by the opening of a newscene upon my eyes. I shall describe this scene and the others in thesuccession in which they appeared before me, and the observations bywhich they were accompanied in the voice of the wonderful being whoappeared as my intellectual guide. In the scene which followed that ofthe agricultural or pastoral people, I saw a great extent of cultivatedplains, large cities on the sea-shore, palaces--forums and templesornamenting them; men associated in groups, mounted on horses, andperforming military exercises; galleys moved by oars on the ocean; roadsintersecting the country covered with travellers and containing carriagesmoved by men or horses. The Genius now said, "You see the early state ofcivilisation of man; the cottages of the last race you beheld have becomeimproved into stately dwellings, palaces, and temples, in which use iscombined with ornament. The few men to whom, as I said before, thefoundations of these improvements were owing, have had divine honourspaid to their memory. But look at the instruments belonging to thisgeneration, and you will find that they are only of brass. You see menwho are talking to crowds around them, and others who are apparentlyamusing listening groups by a kind of song or recitation; these are theearliest bards and orators; but all their signs of thought are oral, forwritten language does not yet exist. " The next scene which appeared wasone of varied business and imagery. I saw a man, who bore in his handsthe same instruments as our modern smiths, presenting a vase, whichappeared to be made of iron, amidst the acclamations of an assembledmultitude engaged in triumphal procession before the altars dignified bythe name of Apollo at Delphi; and I saw in the same place men who carriedrolls of papyrus in their hands and wrote upon them with reeds containingink made from the soot of wood mixed with a solution of glue. "See, " theGenius said, "an immense change produced in the condition of society bythe two arts of which you here see the origin; the one, that of renderingiron malleable, which is owing to a single individual, an obscure Greek;the other, that of making thought permanent in written characters, an artwhich has gradually arisen from the hieroglyphics which you may observeon yonder pyramids. You will now see human life more replete with powerand activity. " Again, another scene broke upon my vision. I saw thebronze instruments, which had belonged to the former state of society, thrown away; malleable iron converted into hard steel, this steel appliedto a thousand purposes of civilised life; I saw bands of men who made useof it for defensive armour and for offensive weapons; I saw these iron-clad men, in small numbers subduing thousands of savages, andestablishing amongst them their arts and institutions; I saw a few men onthe eastern shores of Europe, resisting, with the same materials, theunited forces of Asia; I saw a chosen band die in defence of theircountry, destroyed by an army a thousand times as numerous; and I sawthis same army, in its turn, caused to disappear, and destroyed or drivenfrom the shores of Europe by the brethren of that band of martyredpatriots; I saw bodies of these men traversing the sea, foundingcolonies, building cities, and wherever they established themselves, carrying with them their peculiar arts. Towns and temples arosecontaining schools, and libraries filled with the rolls of the papyrus. The same steel, such a tremendous instrument of power in the hands of thewarrior, I saw applied, by the genius of the artist, to strike forms evenmore perfect than those of life out of the rude marble; and I saw thewalls of the palaces and temples covered with pictures, in whichhistorical events were portrayed with the truth of nature and the poetryof mind. The voice now awakened my attention by saying, "You have nowbefore you the vision of that state of society which is an object ofadmiration to the youth of modern times, and the recollections of which, and the precepts founded on these recollections, constitute an importantpart of your education. Your maxims of war and policy, your taste inletters and the arts, are derived from models left by that people, or bytheir immediate imitators, whom you shall now see. " I opened my eyes, and recognised the very spot in which I was sitting when the visioncommenced. I was on the top of an arcade under a silken canopy, lookingdown upon the tens of thousands of people who were crowded in the seatsof the Colosaeum, ornamented with all the spoils that the wealth of aworld can give; I saw in the arena below animals of the mostextraordinary kind, and which have rarely been seen living in modernEurope--the giraffe, the zebra, the rhinoceros, and the ostrich from thedeserts of Africa beyond the Niger, the hippopotamus from the Upper Nile, and the royal tiger and the gnu from the banks of the Ganges. Lookingover Rome, which, in its majesty of palaces and temples, and in itscolossal aqueducts bringing water even from the snows of the distantApennines, seemed more like the creation of a supernatural power than thework of human hands; looking over Rome to the distant landscape, I sawthe whole face, as it were, of the ancient world adorned with miniatureimages of this splendid metropolis. Where the Roman conquered, there hecivilised; where he carried his arms, there he fixed likewise hishousehold gods; and from the deserts of Arabia to the mountains ofCaledonia there appeared but one people, having the same arts, language, and letters--all of Grecian origin. I looked again, and saw an entirechange in the brilliant aspect of this Roman world--the people ofconquerors and heroes was no longer visible; the cities were filled withan idle and luxurious population; those farms which had been cultivatedby warriors, who left the plough to take the command of armies, were nowin the hands of slaves; and the militia of freemen were supplanted bybands of mercenaries, who sold the empire to the highest bidder. I sawimmense masses of warriors collecting in the north and east, carryingwith them no other proofs of cultivation but their horses and steel arms;I saw these savages everywhere attacking this mighty empire, plunderingcities, destroying the monuments of arts and literature, and, like wildbeasts devouring a noble animal, tearing into pieces and destroying theRoman power. Ruin, desolation, and darkness were before me, and I closedmy eyes to avoid the melancholy scene. "See, " said the Genius, "themelancholy termination of a power believed by its founders invincible, and intended to be eternal. But you will find, though the glory andgreatness belonging to its military genius have passed away, yet thosebelonging to the arts and institutions, by which it adorned and dignifiedlife, will again arise in another state of society. " I opened my eyesagain, and I saw Italy recovering from her desolation--towns arising withgovernments almost upon the model of ancient Athens and Rome, and thesedifferent small states rivals in arts and arms; I saw the remains oflibraries, which had been preserved in monasteries and churches by a holyinfluence which even the Goth and Vandal respected, again opened to thepeople; I saw Rome rising from her ashes, the fragments of statues foundamidst the ruins of her palaces and imperial villas becoming the modelsfor the regeneration of art; I saw magnificent temples raised in thiscity become the metropolis of a new and Christian world, and ornamentedwith the most brilliant masterpieces of the arts of design; I saw aTuscan city, as it were, contending with Rome for pre-eminence in theproductions of genius, and the spirit awakened in Italy spreading itsinfluence from the South to the North. "Now, " the Genius said, "societyhas taken its modern and permanent aspect. Consider for a moment itsrelations to letters and to arms as contrasted with those of the ancientworld. " I looked, and saw, that in the place of the rolls of papyrus, libraries were now filled with books. "Behold, " the Genius said, "theprinting-press; by the invention of Faust the productions of genius are, as it were, made imperishable, capable of indefinite multiplication, andrendered an unalienable heritage of the human mind. By this art, apparently so humble, the progress of society is secured, and man isspared the humiliation of witnessing again scenes like those whichfollowed the destruction of the Roman Empire. Now look to the warriorsof modern times; you see the spear, the javelin, the shield, and thecuirass are changed for the musket and the light artillery. The Germanmonk who discovered gunpowder did not meanly affect the destinies ofmankind; wars are become less bloody by becoming less personal; merebrutal strength is rendered of comparatively little avail; all theresources of civilisation are required to maintain and move a large army;wealth, ingenuity, and perseverance become the principal elements ofsuccess; civilised man is rendered in consequence infinitely superior tothe savage, and gunpowder gives permanence to his triumph, and securesthe cultivated nations from ever being again overrun by the inroads ofmillions of barbarians. There is so much identity of feature in thecharacter of the two or three centuries that are just passed, that I wishyou only to take a very transient view of the political and militaryevents belonging to them. You will find attempts made by the chiefs ofcertain great nations to acquire predominance and empire; you will seethose attempts, after being partially successful, resisted by othernations, and the balance of power, apparently for a moment broken, againrestored. Amongst the rival nations that may be considered as formingthe republic of modern Europe, you will see one pre-eminent for hermaritime strength and colonial and commercial enterprise, and you willfind she retains her superiority only because it is favourable to theliberty of mankind. But you must not yet suffer the vision of modernEurope to pass from your eyes without viewing some other results of theefforts of men of genius, which, like those of gunpowder and the press, illustrate the times to which they belong, and form brilliant epochs inthe history of the world. If you look back into the schools ofregenerated Italy, you will see in them the works of the Greek masters ofphilosophy; and if you attend to the science taught in them, you willfind it vague, obscure, and full of erroneous notions. You will find inthis early period of improvement branches of philosophy even applied topurposes of delusion; the most sublime of the departments of humanknowledge--astronomy--abused by impostors, who from the aspect of theplanetary world pretended to predict the fortunes and destinies ofindividuals. You will see in the laboratories alchemists searching for auniversal medicine, an elixir of life, and for the philosopher's stone, or a method of converting all metals into gold; but unexpected and usefuldiscoveries you will find, even in this age, arise amidst the clouds ofdeception and the smoke of the furnace. Delusion and error vanish andpass away, and truths seized upon by a few superior men become permanent, and the property of an enlightening world. Amongst the personages whobelong to this early period, there are two whom I must request you tonotice--one an Englishman, who pointed out the paths to the discovery ofscientific truths, and the other a Tuscan, who afforded the happiestexperimental illustrations of the speculative views of his brother inscience. You will see academies formed a century later in Italy, France, and Britain, in which the sciences are enlarged by new and variedexperiments, and the true system of the universe developed by anillustrious Englishman taught and explained. The practical results ofthe progress of physics, chemistry, and mechanics, are of the mostmarvellous kind, and to make them all distinct would require a comparisonof ancient and modern states: ships that were moved by human labour inthe ancient world are transported by the winds; and a piece of steel, touched by the magnet, points to the mariner his unerring course from theold to the new world; and by the exertions of one man of genius, aided bythe resources of chemistry, a power, which by the old philosophers couldhardly have been imagined, has been generated and applied to almost allthe machinery of active life; the steam-engine performs not only thelabour of horses, but of man, by combinations which appear almostpossessed of intelligence; waggons are moved by it, constructions made, vessels caused to perform voyages in opposition to wind and tide, and apower placed in human hands which seems almost unlimited. To these noveland still extending improvements may be added others, whish, though of asecondary kind, yet materially affect the comforts of life, thecollecting from fossil materials the elements of combustion, and applyingthem so as to illuminate, by a single operation, houses, streets, andeven cities. If you look to the results of chemical arts you will findnew substances of the most extraordinary nature applied to various novelpurposes; you will find a few experiments in electricity leading to themarvellous result of disarming the thunder-cloud of its terrors, and youwill see new instruments created by human ingenuity, possessing the samepowers as the electrical organs of living animals. To whatever part ofthe vision of modern times you cast your eyes you will find marks ofsuperiority and improvement, and I wish to impress upon you theconviction that the results of intellectual labour or of scientificgenius are permanent and incapable of being lost. Monarchs change theirplans, governments their objects, a fleet or an army effect their purposeand then pass away; but a piece of steel toached by the magnet preservesits character for ever, and secures to man the dominion of the tracklessocean. A new period of society may send armies from the shores of theBaltic to those of the Euxine, and the empire of the followers of Mahometmay be broken in pieces by a northern people, and the dominion of theBritons 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 becontinued to be used, and will carry the civilisation of an improvedpeople into the deserts of North America and into the wilds of Canada. Inthe common history of the world, as compiled by authors in general, almost all the great changes of nations are confounded with changes intheir dynasties, and events are usually referred either to sovereigns, chiefs, heroes, or their armies, which do, in fact, originate fromentirely different causes, either of an intellectual or moral nature. Governments depend far more than is generally supposed upon the opinionof the people and the spirit of the age and nation. It sometimes happensthat a gigantic mind possesses supreme power and rises superior to theage 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 amongstsovereigns nor the higher classes of society that the great improvers orbenefactors of mankind are to be found. The works of the mostillustrious names were little valued at the times when they wereproduced, and their authors either despised or neglected; and great, indeed, must have been the pure and abstract pleasure resulting from theexertion of intellectual superiority and the discovery of truth and thebestowing benefits and blessings upon society, which induced men tosacrifice all their common enjoyments and all their privileges ascitizens to these exertions. Anaxagoras, Archimedes, Roger Bacon, Galileo Galilei, in their deaths or their imprisonments, offer instancesof this kind, and nothing can be more striking than what appears to havebeen the ingratitude of men towards their greatest benefactors; buthereafter, when you understand more of the scheme of the universe, youwill see the cause and the effect of this, and you will find the wholesystem governed by principles of immutable justice. I have said that inthe progress of society all great and real improvements are perpetuated;the same corn which four thousand years ago was raised from an improvedgrass by an inventor worshipped for two thousand years in the ancientworld under the name of Ceres, still forms the principal food of mankind;and the potato, perhaps the greatest benefit that the Old has derivedfrom the New World, is spreading over Europe, and will continue tonourish an extensive population when the name of the race by whom it wasfirst cultivated in South America is forgotten. 

"I will now call your attention to some remarkable laws belonging to thehistory of society, and from the consideration of which you will be ablegradually to develop the higher and more exalted principles of being. There appears nothing more accidental than the sex of an infant, yet takeany great city or any province and you will find that the relations ofmales and females are unalterable. Again, a part of the pure air of theatmosphere is continually consumed in combustion and respiration; livingvegetables emit this principle during their growth; nothing appears moreaccidental than the proportion of vegetable to animal life on the surfaceof the earth, yet they are perfectly equivalent, and the balance of thesexes, like the constitution of the atmosphere, depends upon theprinciples of an unerring intelligence. You saw in the decline of theRoman empire a people enfeebled by luxury, worn out by excess, overrun byrude warriors; you saw the giants of the North and East mixing with thepigmies of the South and West. An empire was destroyed, but the seeds ofmoral and physical improvement in the new race were sown; the newpopulation resulting from the alliances of the men of the North with thewomen, of the South was more vigorous, more full of physical power, andmore capable of intellectual exertion than their apparently ill-suitedprogenitors; and the moral effects or final causes of the migration ofraces, the plans of conquest and ambition which have led to revolutionsand changes of kingdoms designed by man for such different objects havebeen the same in their ultimate results--that of improving by mixture thedifferent families of men. An Alaric or an Attila, who marches withlegions of barbarians for some gross view of plunder or ambition, is aninstrument of divine power to effect a purpose of which he is whollyunconscious--he is carrying a strong race to improve a weak one, andgiving energy to a debilitated population; and the deserts he makes inhis passage will become in another age cultivated fields, and thesolitude he produces will be succeeded by a powerful and healthypopulation. The results of these events in the moral and political worldmay be compared to those produced in the vegetable kingdom by the stormsand heavy gales so usual at the vernal equinox, the time of the formationof the seed; the pollen or farina of one flower is thrown upon the pistilof another, and the crossing of varieties of plants so essential to theperfection of the vegetable world produced. In man moral causes andphysical ones modify each other; the transmission of hereditary qualitiesto offspring is distinct in the animal world, and in the case ofdisposition to disease it is sufficiently obvious in the human being. Butit is likewise a general principle that powers or habits acquired bycultivation are transmitted to the next generation and exalted orperpetuated; the history of particular races of men affords distinctproofs of this. The Caucasian stock has always preserved itssuperiority, whilst the negro or flat-nosed race has always been markedfor want of intellectual power and capacity for the arts of life. Thislast race, in fact, has never been cultivated, and a hundred generations, successively improved, would be required to bring it to the state inwhich the Caucasian race was at the time of the formation of the Greekrepublics. The principle of the improvement of the character of races bythe transmission of hereditary qualities has not escaped the observationsof the legislators of the ancient people. By the divine law of Moses theIsraelites were enjoined to preserve the purity of their blood, and therewas no higher crime than that of forming alliances with the idolatrousnations surrounding them. The Brahmins of Hindostan have establishedupon the same principle the law of caste, by which certain professionswere made hereditary. In this warm climate, where labour is sooppressive, to secure perfection in any series of operations it seemsessential to strengthen the powers by the forces acquired from thisprinciple of hereditary descent. It will at first perhaps strike yourmind that the mixing or blending of races is in direct opposition to thisprinciple of perfection; but here I must require you to pause andconsider the nature of the qualities belonging to the human being. Excessof 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 tothe uneasiness produced by discords than to the pleasures of harmony. Inthe nations which have been long civilised the defects are generallythose dependent on excess of sensibility--defects which are cured in thenext generation by the strength and power belonging to a ruder tribe. Inlooking back upon the vision of ancient history, you will find that therenever has been an instance of a migration to any extent of any race butthe Caucasian, and they have usually passed from the North to the South. The negro race has always been driven before these conquerors of theworld; and the red men, the aborigines of America, are constantlydiminishing in number, and it is probable that in a few centuries moretheir pure blood will be entirely extinct. In the population of theworld, the great object is evidently to produce organised frames mostcapable of the happy and intellectual enjoyment of life--to raise manabove the mere animal state. To perpetuate the advantages ofcivilisation, the races most capable of these advantages are preservedand extended, and no considerable improvement made by an individual isever lost to society. You see living forms perpetuated in the series ofages, and apparently the quantity of life increased. In comparing thepopulation of the globe as it now is with what it was centuries ago, youwould find it considerably greater; and if the quantity of life isincreased, the quantity of happiness, particularly that resulting fromthe exercise of intellectual power, is increased in a still higher ratio. Now, you will say, 'Is mind generated, is spiritual power created; or arethose results dependent upon the organisation of matter, upon newperfections given to the machinery upon which thought and motion depend?'I proclaim to you, " said the Genius, raising his voice from its low andsweet tone to one of ineffable majesty, "neither of these opinions istrue. Listen, whilst I reveal to you the mysteries of spiritual natures, but I almost fear that with the mortal veil of your senses surroundingyou, these mysteries can never be made perfectly intelligible to yourmind. Spiritual natures are eternal and indivisible, but their modes ofbeing are as infinitely varied as the forms of matter. They have norelation to space, and, in their transitions, no dependence upon time, sothat they can pass from one part of the universe to another by lawsentirely independent of their motion. The quantity, or the number ofspiritual essences, like the quantity or number of the atoms of thematerial world, are always the same; but their arrangements, like thoseof the materials which they are destined to guide or govern, areinfinitely diversified; they are, in fact, parts more or less inferior ofthe infinite mind, and in the planetary systems, to one of which thisglobe you inhabit belongs, are in a state of probation, continuallyaiming at, and generally rising to a higher state of existence. Were itpermitted me to extend your vision to the fates of individual existences, I could show you the same spirit, which in the form of Socrates developedthe foundations of moral and social virtue, in the Czar Peter possessedof supreme power and enjoying exalted felicity in improving a rudepeople. I could show you the monad or spirit, which with the organs ofNewton displayed an intelligence almost above humanity, now in a higherand better state of planetary existence drinking intellectual light froma purer source and approaching nearer to the infinite and divine Mind. But prepare your mind, and you shall at least catch a glimpse of thosestates which the highest intellectual beings that have belonged to theearth enjoy after death in their transition to now and more exaltednatures. " The voice ceased, and I appeared in a dark, deep, and coldcave, of which the walls of the Colosaeum formed the boundary. Fromabove a bright and rosy light broke into this cave, so that whilst belowall was dark, above all was bright and illuminated with glory. I seemedpossessed at this moment of a new sense, and felt that the light broughtwith it a genial warmth; odours like those of the most balmy flowersappeared to fill the air, and the sweetest sounds of music absorbed mysense of hearing; my limbs had a new lightness given to them, so that Iseemed to rise from the earth, and gradually mounted into the brightluminous air, leaving behind me the dark and cold cavern, and the ruinswith which it was strewed. Language is inadequate to describe what Ifelt in rising continually upwards through this bright and luminousatmosphere. I had not, as is generally the case with persons in dreamsof this kind, imagined to myself wings; but I rose gradually and securelyas if I were myself a part of the ascending column of light. By degreesthis 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 bythem as if it were in my power to touch them with my hand. I beheldJupiter and Saturn as they appear through our best telescopes, but stillmore magnified, all the moons and belts of Jupiter being perfectlydistinct, and the double ring of Saturn appearing in that state in whichI have heard Herschel often express a wish he could see it. It seemed asif I was on the verge of the solar system, and my moving sphere of lightnow appeared to pause. I again heard the low and sweet voice of theGenius, which said, "You are now on the verge of your own system: willyou go further, or return to the earth?" I replied, "I have left anabode which is damp, dreary, dark and cold; I am now in a place where allis life, light, and enjoyment; show me, at least before I return, theglimpse which you promised me of those superior intellectual natures andthe modes of their being and their enjoyments. " "There are creatures farsuperior, " said the Genius, "to any idea your imagination can form inthat part of the system now before you, comprehending Saturn, his moonsand rings. I will carry you to the verge of the immense atmosphere ofthis planet. In that space you will see sufficient to wonder at, and farmore than with your present organisation it would be possible for me tomake you understand. " I was again in motion, and again almost assuddenly at rest. I saw below me a surface infinitely diversified, something like that of an immense glacier covered with large columnarmasses, which appeared as if formed of glass, and from which weresuspended rounded forms of various sizes, which, if they had not beentransparent, I might have supposed to be fruit. From what appeared to meto be analogous to masses of bright blue ice, streams of the richest tintof rose-colour or purple burst forth and flowed into basins, forminglakes or seas of the same colour. Looking through the atmosphere towardsthe heavens, I saw brilliant opaque clouds of an azure colour thatreflected the light of the sun, which had to my eyes an entirely newaspect, and appeared smaller, as if seen through a dense blue mist. Isaw moving on the surface below me immense masses, the forms of which Ifind it impossible to describe; they had systems for locomotion similarto those of the morse or sea-horse, but I saw with great surprise thatthey moved from place to place by six extremely thin membranes, whichthey used as wings. Their colours were varied and beautiful, butprincipally azure and rose-colour. I saw numerous convolutions of tubes, more analogous to the trunk of the elephant than to anything else I canimagine, occupying what I supposed to be the upper parts of the body, andmy feeling of astonishment almost became one of disgust, from thepeculiar character of the organs of these singular beings; and it waswith a species of terror that I saw one of them mounting upwards, apparently flying towards those opaque clouds which I have beforementioned. "I know what your feelings are, " said the Genius; "you wantanalogies and all the elements of knowledge to comprehend the scenebefore you. You are in the same state in which a fly would be whosemicroscopic eye was changed for one similar to that of man; and you arewholly unable to associate what you now see with your former knowledge. But those beings who are before you, and who appear to you almost asimperfect in their functions as the zoophytes of the Polar Sea, to whichthey are not unlike in their apparent organisation to your eyes, have asphere of sensibility and intellectual enjoyment far superior to that ofthe inhabitants of your earth. Each of those tubes which appears likethe trunk of an elephant is an organ of peculiar motion or sensation. They have many modes of perception of which you are wholly ignorant, atthe same time that their sphere of vision is infinitely more extendedthan yours, and their organs of touch far more perfect and exquisite. Itwould be useless for me to attempt to explain their organisation, whichyou could never understand; but of their intellectual objects of pursuitI may perhaps give you some notion. They have used, modified, andapplied the material world in a manner analogous to man; but with farsuperior powers they have gained superior results. Their atmospherebeing much denser than yours and the specific gravity of their planetless, they have been enabled to determine the laws belonging to the solarsystem with far more accuracy than you can possibly conceive, and any oneof those beings could show you what is now the situation and appearanceof your moon with a precision that would induce you to believe that hesaw it, though his knowledge is merely the result of calculation. Theirsources of pleasure are of the highest intellectual nature; with themagnificent spectacle of their own rings and moons revolving round them, with the various combinations required to understand and predict therelations of these wonderful phenomena their minds are in unceasingactivity and this activity is a perpetual source of enjoyment. Your viewof the solar system is bounded by Uranus, and the laws of this planetform the ultimatum of your mathematical results; but these beings catch asight of planets belonging to another system and even reason on thephenomena presented by another sun. Those comets, of which yourastronomical history is so imperfect, are to them perfectly familiar, andin their ephemerides their places are shown with as much accurateness asthose of Jupiter or Venus in your almanacks; the parallax of the fixedstars nearest them is as well understood as that of their own sun, andthey possess a magnificent history of the changes taking place in theheavens and which are governed by laws that it would be vain for me toattempt to give you an idea of. They are acquainted with the revolutionsand uses of comets; they understand the system of those meteoricformations of stones which have so much astonished you on earth; and theyhave histories in which the gradual changes of nebulas in their progresstowards systems have been registered, so that they can predict theirfuture changes. And their astronomical records are not like yours whichgo back only twenty centuries to the time of Hipparchus; they embrace aperiod a hundred times as long, and their civil history for the same timeis as correct as their astronomical one. As I cannot describe to you theorgans of these wonderful beings, so neither can I show to you theirmodes of life; but as their highest pleasures depend upon intellectualpursuits, so you may conclude that those modes of life bear the strictestanalogy to that which on the earth you would call exalted virtue. I willtell you however that they have no wars, and that the objects of theirambition are entirely those of intellectual greatness, and that the onlypassion that they feel in which comparisons with each other can beinstituted 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 highlyintellectual beings and of the wonderful manner in which they haveapplied and modified matter. Those columnar masses, which seem to you asif arising out of a mass of ice below, are results of art, and processesare going on in them connected with the formation and perfection of theirfood. The brilliant coloured fluids are the results of such operationsas on the earth would be performed in your laboratories, or more properlyin your refined culinary apparatus, for they are connected with theirsystem of nourishment. Those opaque azure clouds, to which you saw a fewminutes ago one of those beings directing his course, are works of artand places in which they move through different regions of theiratmosphere and command the temperature and the quantity of light mostfitted for their philosophical researches, or most convenient for thepurposes of life. On the verge of the visible horizon which we perceivearound us, you may see in the east a very dark spot or shadow, in whichthe light of the sun seems entirely absorbed; this is the border of animmense mass of liquid analogous to your ocean, but unlike your sea it isinhabited by a race of intellectual beings inferior indeed to thosebelonging to the atmosphere of Saturn, but yet possessed of an extensiverange of sensations and endowed with extraordinary power andintelligence. I could transport you to the different planets and showyou in each peculiar intellectual beings bearing analogies to each other, but yet all different in power and essence. In Jupiter you would seecreatures similar to those in Saturn, but with different powers oflocomotion; in Mars and Venus you would find races of created forms moreanalogous to those belonging to the earth; but in every part of theplanetary system you would find one character peculiar to all intelligentnatures, a sense of receiving impressions from light by various organs ofvision, and towards this result you cannot but perceive that all thearrangements and motions of the planetary bodies, their satellites andatmospheres are subservient. The spiritual natures therefore that passfrom system to system in progression towards power and knowledge preserveat least this one invariable character, and their intellectual life maybe said to depend more or less upon the influence of light. As far as myknowledge extends, even in other parts of the universe the more perfectorganised systems still possess this source of sensation and enjoyment;but with higher natures, finer and more ethereal kinds of matter areemployed in organisation, substances that bear the same analogy to commonmatter that the refined or most subtle gases do to common solids andfluids. The universe is everywhere full of life, but the modes of thislife are infinitely diversified, and yet every form of it must be enjoyedand known by every spiritual nature before the consummation of allthings. You have seen the comet moving with its immense train of lightthrough the sky; this likewise has a system supplied with living beingsand their existence derives its enjoyment from the diversity ofcircumstances to which they are exposed; passing as it were through theinfinity of space they are continually gratified by the sight of newsystems and worlds, and you can imagine the unbounded nature of thecircle of their knowledge. My power extends so far as to afford you aglimpse 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 Isaw Jupiter and his satellites and Saturn and his ring behind me, andbefore me the sun, no longer appearing as through a blue mist but inbright and unsupportable splendour, towards which I seemed moving withthe utmost velocity; in a limited sphere of vision, in a kind of red hazylight similar to that which first broke in upon me in the Colosaeum, Isaw moving round me globes which appeared composed of different kinds offlame and of different colours. In some of these globes I recognisedfigures which put me in mind of the human countenance, but theresemblance was so awful and unnatural that I endeavoured to withdraw myview from them. "You are now, " said the Genius, "in a cometary system;those globes of light surrounding you are material forms, such as in oneof your systems of religious faith have been attributed to seraphs; theylive in that element which to you would be destruction; they communicateby powers which would convert your organised frame into ashes; they arenow in the height of their enjoyment, being about to enter into the blazeof the solar atmosphere. These beings so grand, so glorious, withfunctions to you incomprehensible, once belonged to the earth; theirspiritual natures have risen through different stages of planetary life, leaving their dust behind them, carrying with them only theirintellectual power. You ask me if they have any knowledge orreminiscence of their transitions; tell me of your own recollections inthe womb of your mother and I will answer you. It is the law of divinewisdom that no spirit carries with it into another state and being anyhabit or mental qualities except those which may be connected with itsnew wants or enjoyments; and knowledge relating to the earth would be nomore useful to these glorified beings than their earthly system oforganised dust, which would be instantly resolved into its ultimate atomsat such a temperature; even on the earth the butterfly does not transportwith it into the air the organs or the appetites of the crawling wormfrom which it sprung. There is, however, one sentiment or passion whichthe monad or spiritual essence carries with it into all its stages ofbeing, and which in these happy and elevated creatures is continuallyexalted; the love of knowledge or of intellectual power, which is, infact, in its ultimate and most perfect development the love of infinitewisdom and unbounded power, or the love of God. Even in the imperfectlife that belongs to the earth this passion exists in a considerabledegree, increases even with age, outlives the perfection of the corporealfaculties, and at the moment of death is felt by the conscious being, andits future destinies depend upon the manner in which it has beenexercised and exalted. When it has been misapplied and assumed the formsof vague curiosity, restless ambition, vain glory, pride or oppression, the being is degraded, it sinks in the scale of existence and stillbelongs to the earth or an inferior system, till its errors are correctedby painful discipline. When, on the contrary, the love of intellectualpower has been exercised on its noblest objects, in discovering and incontemplating the properties of created forms and in applying them touseful and benevolent purposes, in developing and admiring the laws ofthe eternal Intelligence, the destinies of the sentient principle are ofa nobler kind, it rises to a higher planetary world. From the height towhich you have been lifted I could carry you downwards and show youintellectual natures even inferior to those belonging to the earth, inyour own moon and in the lower planets, and I could demonstrate to youthe effects of pain or moral evil in assisting in the great plan of theexaltation of spiritual natures; but I will not destroy the brightness ofyour present idea of the scheme of the universe by degrading pictures ofthe effects of bad passions and of the manner in which evil is correctedand destroyed. Your vision must end with the glorious view of theinhabitants of the cometary worlds; I cannot show you the beings of thesystem to which I, myself, belong, that of the sun; your organs wouldperish before our brightness, and I am only permitted to be present toyou as a sound or intellectual voice. _We_ are likewise in progression, but we see and know something of the plans of infinite wisdom; we feelthe personal presence of that supreme Deity which you only imagine; toyou belongs faith, to us knowledge; and our greatest delight results fromthe conviction that we are lights kindled by His light and that we belongto His substance. To obey, to love, to wonder and adore, form ourrelations to the infinite Intelligence. We feel His laws are those ofeternal justice and that they govern all things from the most gloriousintellectual natures belonging to the sun and fixed stars to the meanestspark of life animating an atom crawling in the dust of your earth. Weknow all things begin from and end in His everlasting essence, the causeof causes, the power of powers. "

The low and sweet voice ceased; it appeared as if I had fallen suddenlyupon the earth, but there was a bright light before me and I heard myname loudly called; the voice was not of my intellectual guide--thegenius before me was my servant bearing a flambeau in his hand. He toldme he had been searching me in vain amongst the ruins, that the carriagehad been waiting for me above an hour, and that he had left a large partyof my friends assembled in the Palazzo F---. 

DIALOGUE THE SECOND. DISCUSSIONS CONNECTED WITH THE VISION IN THECOLOSAEUM. 

The same friends, Ambrosio and Onuphrio, who were my companions at Romein the winter, accompanied me in the spring to Naples. Manyconversations occurred in the course of our journey which were often tome peculiarly instructive, and from the difference of their opinionsgenerally animated and often entertaining. I shall detail one of theseconversations, which took place in the evening on the summit of Vesuvius, and the remembrance of which from its connection with my vision in theColosaeum has always a peculiar interest for me. We had reached withsome labour the edge of the crater and were admiring the wonderful scenearound us. I shall give the conversation in the words of the persons ofthe drama. 

_Philalethes_. --It is difficult to say whether there is more of sublimityor beauty in the scene around us. Nature appears at once smiling andfrowning, in activity and repose. How tremendous is the volcano, howmagnificent this great laboratory of Nature in its unceasing fire, itssubterraneous lightnings and thunder, its volumes of smoke, its showersof stones and its rivers of ignited lava! How contrasted the darkness ofthe scoriae, the ruins and the desolation round the crater with the scenebelow! There we see the rich field covered with flax, or maize, ormillet, and intersected by rows of trees which support the green andgraceful festoons of the vine; the orange and lemon tree covered withgolden fruit appear in the sheltered glens; the olive trees cover thelower hills; islands purple in the beams of the setting sun are scatteredover the sea in the west, and the sky is tinted with red softening intothe brightest and purest azure; the distant mountains still retain a partof the snows of winter, but they are rapidly melting and they absolutelyseem to melt reflecting the beams of the setting sun, glowing as if onfire. And man appears emulous of Nature, for the city below is full ofactivity; the nearest part of the bay is covered with boats, busymultitudes crowd the strand, and at the same time may be seen a number ofthe arts belonging to civilised society in operation--house-building, ship-building, rope-making, the manipulations of the smith and of theagriculturist, and not only the useful arts, but even the amusements andluxuries of a great metropolis may be witnessed from the spot in which westand; that motley crowd is collected round a policinello, and thosesmaller groups that surround the stalls are employed in enjoying thefavourite food and drink of the lazzaroni. 

_Ambrosio_. --We see not only the power and activity of man, as existingat present, and of which the highest example may be represented by thesteam-boat which is now departing for Palermo, but we may likewise viewscenes which carry us into the very bosom of antiquity, and, as it were, make us live with the generations of past ages. Those small squarebuildings, scarcely visible in the distance, are the tombs ofdistinguished men amongst the early Greek colonists of the country; andthose rows of houses, without roofs, which appear as if newly erecting, constitute a Roman town restored from its ashes, that remained forcenturies as if it had been swept from the face of the earth. When youstudy it in detail you will hardly avoid the illusion that it is a risingcity; you will almost be tempted to ask where are the workmen, so perfectart the walls of the houses, so bright and uninjured the painting uponthem. Hardly anything is wanting to make this scene a magnificentepitome of all that is most worthy of admiration in Nature and art; hadthere been in addition to the other objects a fine river and a waterfallthe epitome would, I think, have been absolutely perfect. 

_Phil_. --You are most unreasonable in imagining additions to a scenewhich it is impossible to embrace in one view, and which presents so manyobjects to the senses, the memory, and to the imagination; yet there is ariver in the valley between Naples and Castel del Mare; you may see itssilver thread and the white foam of its torrents in the distance, and ifyou were geologists you would find a number of sources of interest, whichhave not been mentioned, in the scenery surrounding us. Somma which isbefore us, for instance, affords a wonderful example of a mountain formedof marine deposits, and which has been raised by subterraneous fire, andthose large and singular veins which you see at the base and risingthrough the substance of the strata are composed of volcanic porphyry, and offer a most striking and beautiful example of the generation andstructure of rocks and mineral formations. 

_Onuphrio_. --As we passed through Portici, on the road to the base ofVesuvius, it appeared to me that I saw a stone which had an ancient Romaninscription upon it, and which occupied the place of a portal in themodern palace of the Barberini. 

_Phil_. --This is not an uncommon circumstance: Most of the stones used inthe palaces of Portici had been employed more than two thousand yearsbefore in structures raised by the ancient Romans or Greek colonists; andit is not a little remarkable that the buildings of Herculaneum, a towncovered with ashes, tufa, and lava, from the first recorded eruption ofVesuvius more than seventeen hundred years ago, should have beenconstructed of volcanic materials produced by some antecedent igneousaction of the mountain in times beyond the reach of history; and it isstill more remarkable that men should have gone on for so many agesmaking 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 whichPhilalethes started in the remarkable dream which he would have usbelieve occurred to him in the Colosaeum, namely--that no important factswhich can be useful to society are ever lost; and that, like thesestones, which though covered with ashes or hidden amongst ruins, they aresure 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 Onuphriorefers; but there are many parts of that vision on which I should wish tohear the explanations of Philalethes. I consider it in fact as a sort ofpoetical epitome of his philosophical opinions, and I regard this visionor dream as a mere web of his imagination in which he intended to catchus, his summer-flies and travelling companions. 

_Phil_. --There, Ambrosio, you do me wrong. I will acknowledge, if youplease, that the vision in the Colosaeum is a fiction; but the mostimportant parts of it really occurred to me in sleep, particularly thatin which I seemed to leave the earth and launch into the infinity ofspace under the guidance of a tutelary genius. And the origin andprogress of civil society form likewise parts of another dream which Ihad many years ago, and it was in the reverie which happened when youquitted me in the Colosaeum that I wove all these thoughts together, andgave them the form in which I narrated them to you. 

_Amb_. --Of course we may consider them as an accurate representation ofyour waking thoughts. 

_Phil_. --I do not say that they strictly are so, for I am not quiteconvinced that dreams are always representations of the state of the mindmodified by organic diseases or by associations. There are certainly noabsolutely new ideas produced in sleep, yet I have had more than oneinstance, in the course of my life, of most extraordinary combinationsoccurring in this state, which have had considerable influence on myfeelings, my imagination, and my health. 

_Onu_. --Why Philalethes, you are becoming a visionary, a dreamer ofdreams. We shall perhaps set you down by the side of Jacob Behmen or ofEmanuel Swedenbourg, and in an earlier age you might have been a prophet, and have ranked perhaps with Mahomet. But pray give us one of theseinstances in which such a marvellous influence was produced on yourimagination and your health by a dream that we may form some judgment ofthe nature of your second sight or inspirations; and whether they haveany 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 inthe statement I am about to make, yet I shall mention nothing but asimple fact. Almost a quarter of a century ago, as you know, Icontracted 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 engagedin putting in execution a plan for ventilating one of the great prisonsof the metropolis. My illness was severe and dangerous. As long as thefever continued, my dreams or delirium were most painful and oppressive;but when the weakness consequent to exhaustion came on, and when theprobability of death seemed to my physicians greater than that of life, there was an entire change in all my ideal combinations. I remained inan apparently senseless or lethargic state, but in fact my mind waspeculiarly active; there was always before me the form of a beautifulwoman, with whom I was engaged in the most interesting and intellectualconversation. 

_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 theobject of my admiration was a lady with black hair, dark eyes, and palecomplexion; this spirit of my vision, on the contrary, had brown hair, blue eyes, and a bright rosy complexion, and was, as far as I canrecollect, unlike any of the amatory forms which in early youth had sooften haunted my imagination. Her figure for many days was so distinctin my mind, as to form almost a visual image. As I gained strength, thevisits of my good angel (for so I called it) became less frequent, andwhen I was restored to health they were altogether discontinued. 

_Onu_. --I see nothing very strange in this--a mere reaction of the mindafter severe pain--and, to a young man of twenty-five, there are few morepleasurable 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 visionarymaiden 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 pointtill you have heard the second part of my tale. Ten years after I hadrecovered from the fever, and when I had almost lost the recollection ofthe vision, it was recalled to my memory by a very blooming and gracefulmaiden, fourteen or fifteen years old, that I accidentally met during mytravels in Illyria; but I cannot say that the impression made upon mymind by this female was very strong. Now comes the extraordinary part ofthe narrative. Ten years after, twenty years after my first illness, ata 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 adesponding state, being in a course of travels ordered by my medicaladvisers, I again met the person who was the representative of myvisionary female, and to her kindness and care I believe I owe whatremains to me of existence. My despondency gradually disappeared, andthough my health still continued weak, life began to possess charms forme which I had thought were for ever gone; and I could not helpidentifying the living angel with the vision which appeared as myguardian genius during the illness of my youth. 

_Onu_. --I really see nothing at all in this fact, whether the first orthe second part of the narrative be considered, beyond the influence ofan imagination excited by disease. From youth, even to age, women areour guardian angels, our comforters; and I dare say any other handsomeyoung female, who had been your nurse in your last illness, would havecoincided with your remembrance of the vision, even though her eyes hadbeen hazel and her hair flaxen. Nothing can be more loose than theimages represented in dreams following a fever, and with the nervoussusceptibility produced by your last illness, almost any agreeable formwould have become the representative of your imaginary guardian genius. Thus it is, that by the power of fancy, material forms are clothed insupernatural attributes; and in the same manner imaginary divinities haveall the forms of mortality bestowed upon them. The gods of the paganmythology were in all their characters and attributes exalted humanbeings; the demon of the coward, and the angelic form that appears in thedream of some maid smitten by devotion, and who, having lost her earthlylover, fixes her thoughts on heaven, are clothed in the character andvestments of humanity changed by the dreaminess of passion. 

_Amb_. --With such a tendency, Philalethes, as you have shown to believein something like a supernatural or divine influence on the human mind, Iam astonished there should be so much scepticism belonging to your visionin the Colosaeum. And your view of the early state of man, after hisfirst creation, is not only incompatible with revelation, but likewisewith reason and everything that we know respecting the history ortraditions of the early nations of antiquity. 

_Phil_. --Be more distinct and detailed in your statements, Ambrosio, thatI may be able to reply to them; and whilst we are waiting for the sunrisewe may discuss the subject, and for this, let us seat ourselves on thesestones, 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 thelittle use that they make of a feeble reason the power of supporting andextending life. Now, I contend, that if man had been so created, he mustinevitably have been destroyed by the elements or devoured by savagebeasts, so infinitely his superiors in physical force. He must, therefore, have been formed with various instinctive faculties andpropensities, with a perfection of form and use of organs fitting him tobecome the master of the earth; and, it appears to me, that the accountgiven in Genesis of the first parents of mankind having been placed in agarden fitted with everything necessary to their existence and enjoyment, and ordered to increase and multiply there, is strictly in harmony withreason, and accordant with all just metaphysical views of the human mind. Man as he now exists can only be raised with great care and difficultyfrom the infant to the mature state; all his motions are at firstautomatic, and become voluntary by association; he has to learneverything by slow and difficult processes, many months elapse before heis able to stand, and many years before he is able to provide for thecommon wants of life. Without the mother or the nurse in his infantstate, he would die in a few hours; and without the laborious disciplineof instruction and example, he would remain idiotic and inferior to mostother animals. His reason is only acquired gradually, and when in itshighest perfection is often uncertain in its results. He must, therefore, have been created with instincts that for a long whilesupplied the want of reason, and which enabled him from the first momentof his existence to provide for his wants, to gratify his desires, andenjoy the power and the activity of life. 

_Phil_. --I acknowledge that your objection has some weight, but not somuch as you would attribute to it. I will suppose that the first createdman or men had certain powers or instincts, such as now belong to therudest savages of the southern hemisphere; I will suppose them createdwith the use of their organs for defence and offence and with passionsand propensities enabling them to supply their own wants. And I opposethe fact of races who are now actually in this state to your vaguehistorical or traditionary records; and their gradual progress orimprovement from this early state of society to that of the highest stateof civilisation or refinement may, I think, be easily deduced from theexertions of reason assisted by the influence of the moral powers and ofphysical circumstances. Accident, I conceive, must have had someinfluence in laying the foundations of certain arts; and a climate inwhich labour was not too oppressive, and in which the exertion ofindustry was required to provide for the wants of life must have fixedthe character of the activity of the early improving people; where natureis too kind a mother, man is generally a spoiled child; where she issevere, and a stepmother, his powers are usually withered and destroyed. The people of the south and the north and those between the tropicsoffer, even at this day, proof of the truth of this principle; and it iseven possible now to find on the surface of the earth, all the differentgradations of the states of society, from that in which man is scarcelyremoved above the brute, to that in which he appears approaching in hisnature to a divine intelligence. Besides, reason being the noblest giftof God to man, I can hardly suppose that an infinitely powerful and all-wise Creator would bestow upon the early inhabitants of the globe agreater proportion of instinct than was at first necessary to preservetheir existence, and that he would not leave the great progress of theirimprovement to the development and exaltation of their reasoning powers. 

_Amb_. --You appear to me in your argument to have forgotten the influencethat any civilised race must possess over savages; and many of thenations which you consider as in their original state, may have descendedfrom nations formerly civilised; and, it is quite as easy to trace theretrograde steps of a people as their advances; the savage hordes who nowinhabit the northern coast of Africa are probably descended from theopulent, commercial, and ingenious Carthaginians who once contended withRome for the empire of the world; and even nearer home, we might find inSouthern Italy and her islands, proofs of a degradation not muchinferior. What I contend for is the civilisation of the firstpatriarchal races who peopled the East, and who passed into Europe fromArmenia, in which paradise is supposed to have been placed. The earlycivilisation of this race could only have been in consequence of theirpowers and instincts having been of a higher character than those ofsavages. They appear to have been small families--a state not at allfitted for the discovery of arts by the exercise of the mind; and theyprofessed the most sublime form of religion, the worship of one SupremeIntelligence--a truth which, after a thousand years of civilisation, waswith difficulty attained by the most powerful efforts of reasoning by theGreek sages. It appears to me, that in the history of the Jews, nothingcan be more in conformity to our ideas of just analogy than this seriesof events. Our first parents were created with everything necessary fortheir wants and their happiness; they had only one duty to perform, bytheir obedience to prove their love and devotion to their Creator. Inthis they failed, and death--or the fear of death--became a curse upontheir race; but the father of mankind repented, and his instinctive orintellectual powers given by revelation were transmitted to his offspringmore or less modified by their reason, which they had gained as the fruitof their disobedience. One branch of his offspring, however, in whomfaith shone forth above reason, retained their peculiar powers andinstitutions and preserved the worship of Jehovah pure, whilst many ofthe races sprung from their brethren became idolatrous, and the clearlight of heaven was lost through the mist of the senses; and that Being, worshipped by the Israelites only as a mysterious word, was forgotten bymany 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 divinelegislators of the Jewish people had to preserve the purity of theirreligion 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 lawand the manner in which it was suspended before the end of the RomanEmpire, the expiatory sacrifice of the Messiah, the fear of deathdestroyed by the blessed hopes of immortality established by theresurrection of Jesus Christ, the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, andthe triumphs of Christianity over paganism in the time of Constantine, can I think, hardly fail to acknowledge the reasonableness of the truthof revealed religion as founded upon the early history of man; andwhoever acknowledges this reasonableness and this truth, must I think bedissatisfied with the view which Philalethes or his genius has given ofthe progress of society, and will find in it one instance, amongst manyothers that might be discovered, of the vague and erring results of hisso much boasted human reason. 

_Onu_. --I fear I shall shock Ambrosio, but I cannot help vindicating alittle the philosophical results of human reason, which it must beallowed are entirely hostile to his ideas. I agree with Philalethes thatit is the noblest gift of God to man; and I cannot think that Ambrosio'sview of the paradisaical condition and the fall of man and the progressof society is at all in conformity with the ideas we ought to form of theinstitutions of an infinitely wise and powerful Being. Besides, Ambrosiospeaks of the reasonableness of his own opinions; of course his notionsof reason must be different from mine, or we have adopted different formsof logic. I do not find in the biblical history any idea of the supremeIntelligence conformable to those of the Greek philosophers; on thecontrary, I find Jehovah everywhere described as a powerful materialbeing, endowed with organs, feelings, and passions similar to those of agreat and exalted human agent. He is described as making man in His ownimage, as walking in the garden in the cool of the evening, as beingpleased with sacrificial offerings, as angry with Adam and Eve, aspersonally cursing Cain for his crime of fratricide, and even asproviding our first parents with garments to hide their nakedness; thenHe 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 godsof the heathens, only as being more powerful; and in the strange scenewhich took place in Pharaoh's court He seemed to have measured Hisabilities with those of certain seers or magicians, and to have provedHis superiority only by producing greater and more tremendous plagues. Inall the early history of the Jewish nation there is no conceptionapproaching to the sublimity of that of Anaxagoras, who called God theIntelligence or [Greek text]. He appears always, on the contrary, likethe genii of Arabian romance, living in clouds, descending on mountains, urging His chosen people to commit the most atrocious crimes, to destroyall the races not professing the same worship, and to exterminate eventhe child and the unborn infant. Then, I find in the Old Testament nopromise of a spiritual Messiah, but only of a temporal king, who, as theJews believe, is yet to come. The serpent in Genesis has no connectionwith the spirit of evil, but is described only as the most subtle beastof the field, and, having injured man, there was to be a perpetual enmitybetween their races--the serpent when able was to bite the heel of theman, and the man when an opportunity occurred was to bruise the head ofthe serpent. I will allow, if you please, that an instinct of religionor superstition belongs to the human mind, and that the different formswhich this instinct assumes depend upon various circumstances andaccidents of history and climate; but I am not sure that the religion ofthe Jews was superior to that of the Sabaeans who worshipped the stars, or the ancient Persians who adored the sun as the visible symbol ofdivine power, or the eastern nations who in the various forms of thevisible universe worshipped the powers and energies of the Divinity. Ifeel like the ancient Romans with respect to toleration; I would give aplace to all the gods in my Pantheon, but I would not allow the followersof Brahmah or of Christ to quarrel about the modes of incarnation or thesuperiority of the attributes of their trien God. 

_Amb_. --You have mistaken me, Onuphrio, if you think I am shocked by youropinions; I have seen too much of the wanderings of human reason ever tobe surprised by them, and the views you have adopted are not uncommonamongst young men of very superior talents, who have only slightlyexamined the evidences of revealed religion. But I am glad to find thatyou have not adopted the code of infidelity of many of the Frenchrevolutionists and of an English school of sceptics, who find in theancient astronomy all the germs of the worship of the Hebrews, whoidentify the labours of Hercules with those of the Jewish heroes, and whofind the life, death and resurrection of the Messiah in the history ofthe solar day. You, at least, allow the existence of a peculiarreligious instinct, or, as you are pleased to call it, superstition, belonging to the human mind, and I have hopes that upon this foundationyou will ultimately build up a system of faith not unworthy a philosopherand a Christian. Man, with whatever religious instincts he was created, was intended to communicate with the visible universe by sensations andact upon it by his organs, and in the earliest state of society he wasmore particularly influenced by his gross senses. Allowing the existenceof a supreme Intelligence and His beneficent intentions towards man, theideas 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, musthave been in harmony with the general train of His sensations--I am notsure that I make myself intelligible. The same infinite power which inan instant could create a universe, could of course so modify the ideasof an intellectual being as to give them that form and character mostfitted for his existence; and I suppose in the early state of created manhe imagined that he enjoyed the actual presence of the Divinity and heardHis voice. I take this to be the first and simplest result of religiousinstinct. In early times amongst the patriarchs I suppose these ideaswere so vivid as to be confounded with impressions; but as religiousinstinct probably became feebler in their posterity, the vividness of theimpressions diminished, and they then became visions or dreams, whichwith the prophets seem to have constituted inspiration. I do not supposethat the Supreme Being ever made Himself known to man by a real change inthe order of Nature, but that the sensations of men were so modified bytheir instincts as to induce the belief in His presence. That there wasa divine intelligence continually acting upon the race of Seth as hischosen people, is, I think, clearly proved by the events of theirhistory, and also that the early opinions of a small tribe in Judaea weredesigned for the foundation of the religion of the most active andcivilised and powerful nations of the world, and that after a lapse ofthree thousand years. The manner in which Christianity spread over theworld with a few obscure mechanics or fishermen for its promulgators; themode in which it triumphed over paganism even when professed andsupported by the power and philosophy of a Julian; the martyrs whosubscribed to the truth of Christianity by shedding their blood for thefaith; the exalted nature of those intellectual men by whom it has beenprofessed who had examined all the depths of nature and exercised theprofoundest faculties of thought, such as Newton, Locke, and Hartley, allappear to me strong arguments in favour of revealed religion. I preferrather founding my creed upon the fitness of its doctrines than uponhistorical evidences or the nature of its miracles. The DivineIntelligence chooses that men should be convinced according to theordinary train of their sensations, and on all occasions it appears to memore natural that a change should take place in the human mind than inthe order of nature. The popular opinion of the people of Judaea wasthat certain diseases were occasioned by devils taking possession of ahuman being; the disease was cured by our Saviour, and this in the Gospelis expressed by his casting out devils. But without entering intoexplanations respecting the historical miracles belonging toChristianity, it is sufficient to say that its truth is attested by aconstantly existing miracle, the present state of the Jews, which waspredicted by Jesus; their temple and city were destroyed, and allattempts made to rebuild it have been vain, and they remain the despisedand outcasts of the world. 

_Onu_. --But you have not answered my objections with respect to thecruelties exercised by the Jews under the command of Jehovah, whichappear to me in opposition to all our views of divine justice. 

_Amb_. --I think even Philalethes will allow that physical and moraldiseases are hereditary, and that to destroy a pernicious unbelief ordemoniacal worship it was necessary to destroy the whole race root andbranch. As an example, I will imagine a certain contagions disease whichis transmitted by parents to children, and which, like the plague, iscommunicated to sound persons by contact; to destroy a family of men whowould spread this disease over the whole earth would unquestionably be amercy. Besides, I believe in the immortality of the sentient principlein man; destruction of life is only a change of existence, and supposingthe new existence a superior one it is a gain. To the SupremeIntelligence the death of a million of human beings is the merecircumstance of so many spiritual essences changing their habitations, and is analogous to the myriad millions of larvae that leave their coatsand shells behind them and rise into the atmosphere, as flies in a summerday. When man measures the works of the Divine Mind by his own feeblecombinations, he must wander in gross error; the infinite can never beunderstood by the finite. 

_Onu_. --As far as I can comprehend your reasoning, the priests ofJuggernaut might make the same defence for their idol, and find in suchviews a fair apology for the destruction of thousands of voluntaryvictims crushed to pieces by the feet of the sacred elephant. 

_Amb_. --Undoubtedly they might, and I should allow the justness of theirdefence if I saw in their religion any germs of a divine institutionfitted to become, like the religion of Jehovah, the faith of the wholecivilised world, embracing the most perfect form of theism and the mostrefined and exalted morality. I consider the early acts of the Jewishnation as the lowest and rudest steps of a temple raised by the SupremeBeing to contain the altar of sacrifice to His glory. In the earlyperiods of society rude and uncultivated men could only be acted upon bygross and temporal rewards and punishments; severe rites and heavydiscipline were required to keep the mind in order, and the punishment ofthe idolatrous nation served as an example for the Jews. WhenChristianity took the place of Judaism the ideas of the Supreme Beingbecame more pure and abstracted, and the visible attributes of Jehovahand 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 materialsenses required some assistance from the eye in fixing or perpetuatingthe character of religious instinct, and the Church to which I belong, and I may say the whole Christian Church in early times, allowed visibleimages, pictures, statues, and relics as the means of awakening thestronger devotional feelings. We have been accused of worshipping merelyinanimate objects, but this is a very false notion of the nature of ourfaith; we regard them merely as vivid characters representing spiritualexistences and we no more worship them than the Protestant does his Biblewhen he kisses it under a solemn religious adjuration. The past, thepresent, and the future being the same to the infinite and divineIntelligence, and man being created in love for the purposes ofhappiness, the moral and religious discipline to which he was submittedwas in strict conformity to his progressive faculties and to the primarylaws of his nature. It is but a rude analogy, yet it is the only one Ican find, that of comparing the Supreme Being to a wise and good fatherwho, to secure the well-being of his offspring, is obliged to adopt asystem of rewards and punishments in which the senses at first andafterwards the imagination and reason are concerned; he terrifies them bythe example of others, awakens their love of glory by pointing out thedistinction and the happiness gained by superior men by adopting aparticular line of conduct; he uses at first the rod, and graduallysubstitutes for it the fear of immediate shame; and having awakened thefear of shame and the love of praise or honour with respect to temporaryand immediate actions he extends them to the conduct of the whole oflife, and makes what was a momentary feeling a permanent and immutableprinciple. And obedience in the child to the will of such a parent maybe compared to faith in and obedience to the will of the Supreme Being;and a wayward and disobedient child who reasons upon and doubts theutility of the discipline of such a father is much in the same state inwhich the adult man is who doubts if there be good in the decrees ofProvidence and who questions the harmony of the plan of the moraluniverse. 

_Onu_. --Allowing the perfection of your moral scheme of religion and itsfitness for the nature of man, I find it impossible to believe theprimary doctrines on which this scheme is founded. You make the DivineMind, the creator of infinite worlds, enter into the form of a man bornof a virgin, you make the eternal and immortal God the victim of shamefulpunishment and suffering death on the cross, recovering His life afterthree days, and carrying His maimed and lacerated body into the heaven ofheavens. 

_Amb_. --You, like all other sceptics, make your own interpretations ofthe Scriptures and set up a standard for divine power in human reason. The infinite and eternal mind, as I said before, fits the doctrines ofreligion to the minds by which they are to be embraced. I see noimprobability in the idea that an integrant part of His essence may haveanimated a human form; there can be no doubt that this belief has existedin the human mind, and the belief constitutes the vital part of thereligion. We know nothing of the generation of the human being in theordinary course of nature; how absurd then to attempt to reason upon theacts of the Divine Mind! nor is there more difficulty in imagining theevent of a divine conception than of a divine creation. To God theinfinite, little and great, as measured by human powers, are equal; acreature of this earth, however humble and insignificant, may have thesame weight with millions of superior beings inhabiting higher systems. But I consider all the miraculous parts of our religion as effected bychanges in the sensations or ideas of the human mind, and not by physicalchanges in the order of nature; a man who has to repair a piece ofmachinery, 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 ofthe human being may be the result of a momentary will, and the mere actof faith may produce the change. How great the powers of imaginationare, even in ordinary life, is shown by many striking facts, and nothingseems impossible to this imagination when acted upon by divine influence. To attempt to answer all the objections which may be derived from thewant of conformity in the doctrines of Christianity to the usual order ofevents would be an interminable labour. My first principle is, thatreligion has nothing to do with the common order of events; it is a pureand divine instinct intended to give results to man which he cannotobtain by the common use of his reason, and which at first view oftenappear contradictory to it, but which when examined by the most refinedtests, and considered in the most extensive and profound relations, are, in fact, in conformity with the most exalted intellectual knowledge, sothat, indeed, the results of pure reason ultimately become the same withthose 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 onan immortal stock, becomes the fruit of the promise of immortality. 

_Onu_. --You derive Christianity from Judaism; I cannot see theirconnection, and it appears to me that the religion of Mahomet is morenaturally a scion from the stock of Moses. Christ was a Jew, and wascircumcised; this rite was continued by Mahomet, and is to this dayadopted by his disciples, though rejected by the Christians; and thedoctrines of Mahomet appear to me to have a higher claim to divine originthan those of Jesus; his morality is as pure, his theism purer, and hissystem of rewards and punishments after death as much in conformity withour ideas of eternal justice. 

_Amb_. --I will willingly make the decision of the general questiondependent upon the decision of this particular one. No attempts havebeen made by the Mahometans to find any predictions respecting theirfounder in the Old Testament, and they have never pretended even that hewas the Messiah; therefore, as far as prophecy is concerned, there is noground for admitting the truth of the religion of Mahomet. It has beenthe fashion with a particular sect of infidels to praise the morality ofthe Mahometans, but I think unjustly; they are said to be honest in theirdealings and charitable to those of their own persuasion; but they allowpolygamy and a plurality of women, and are despisers and persecutors ofthe nations professing a different faith. And what a contrast does thismorality present to that of the Gospel which inculcates charity to allmankind, and orders benevolent actions to be performed even to enemies!and the purity and simplicity of the infant is held up by Christ as themodel of imitation for His followers. Then, in the rewards andpunishments of the future state of the Mahometans, how gross are all theideas, how unlike the promises of a divine and spiritual being; theirparadise is a mere earthly garden of sensual pleasure, and their Hourisrepresent the ladies of their own harems rather than glorified angelicnatures. How different is the Christian heaven, how sublime in its idea, indefinite, yet well suited to a being of intellectual and progressivefaculties; "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered intothe heart of man to conceive the joys that He hath prepared for those wholove 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 ofbearings to be decided by so slight an advantage as that which you havegained by this answer. I will now offer another difficulty to you. Thelaw of the Jews, you will allow, was established by God Himself anddelivered 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 theceremonies of the Hebrews have been abolished by the first Christians. 

_Amb_. --I deny that the divine law of Moses was abolished by Christ, whoHimself says, "I came to confirm the law, not to destroy it. " And theTen Commandments form the vital parts of the foundation of the creed ofthe true Christian. It appears that the religion of Christ was the samepure theism with that of the patriarchs; and the rites and ceremoniesestablished by Moses seem to have been only adjuncts to the spiritualreligion intended to suit a particular climate and a particular state ofthe Jewish nation, rather a dress or clothing of the religion thanforming a constituent part of it, a system of discipline of life andmanners rather than an essential part of doctrine. The rites ofcircumcision and ablution were necessary to the health and perhaps evento the existence of a people living on the hottest part of the shores ofthe Mediterranean. And in the sacrifices made of the first fruits and ofthe chosen of the flock, we may see a design not merely connected withthe religious faith of the people but even with their political economy. To offer their choicest and best property as a proof of their gratitudeto the Supreme Being was a kind of test of devotedness and obedience tothe theocracy; and these sacrifices by obliging them to raise moreproduce and provide more cattle than were essential to their ordinarysupport, preserved them from the danger of famine, as in case of a dearthit was easy for the priests under the divine permission to apply thoseofferings to the necessities of the people. All the pure parts of thefaith which had descended from Abraham to David were preserved by JesusChrist; but the ceremonial religion was fitted only for a particularnation and a particular country; Christianity, on the contrary, was to bethe religion of the world and of a civilised and improving world. And itappears 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 andperfection of the human mind. When given to a particular race fixed in apeculiar climate, its objects were sensible, its discipline was severe, and its rites and ceremonies numerous and imposing, fitted to act uponweak, ignorant, and consequently obstinate men. In its gradualdevelopment it threw off its local character and its particular forms, and adopted ceremonies more fitted for mankind in general; and in itsultimate views, it preserves only pure, spiritual, and I may sayphilosophical doctrines, the unity of the divine nature and a futurestate, embracing a system of rewards and punishments suited to anaccountable and immortal being. 

_Phil_. --I have been attentively listening to your discussion. The viewswhich Ambrosio has taken of Christianity certainly throw a light over itperfectly new to me; and, I must say in candour, that I am disposed toadopt his notion of the early state of society rather than that of myGenius. I have always been accustomed to consider religious feeling asinstinctive; but Ambrosio's arguments have given me something approachingto a definite faith for an obscure and indefinite notion. I am willingto allow that man was created, not a savage, as he is represented in myvision, but perfect in his faculties and with a variety of instinctivepowers and knowledge; that he transmitted these powers and knowledge tohis offspring; but that by an improper use of reason in disobedience tothe divine will, the instinctive faculties of most of his descendantsbecame deteriorated and at last lost, but that these faculties werepreserved in the race of Abraham and David, and the full power againbestowed upon or recovered by Christ. I am ready to allow the importanceof religion in cultivating and improving the world; and Ambrosio's viewappears 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 aconstant principle belonging to the mind of man, and the belief insupernatural forms and agency, the results of prophecies and themiracles, as one only of the necessary consequences of it. Man, as areasoning animal, must always have doubted of his immortality and plan ofconduct; in all the results of faith, there is immediate submission to adivine will, which we are sure is good. We may compare the destiny ofman 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 tothe probability of his finding his way over deserts, across seas, and ofsecuring his food in passing to a warm climate 3, 000 miles off, he wouldundoubtedly starve in Europe; under the direction of his instinct hesecurely arrives there in good condition. I have allowed the force ofyour objections to that part of my vision relating to the origin ofsociety, but I hope you will admit that the conclusion of it is notinconsistent with the ideas derived from revelation respecting the futurestate of the human being. 

_Amb_. --Revelation has not disclosed to us the nature of this state, butonly fixed its certainty. We are sure from geological facts, as well asfrom sacred history, that man is a recent animal on the globe, and thatthis 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 isall we are permitted to know, and as this state is to be entirelydifferent from the present one of misery and probation, any knowledgerespecting it would be useless and indeed almost impossible. 

_Phil_. --My Genius has placed the more exalted spiritual natures incometary worlds, and this last fiery revolution may be produced by theappulse of a comet. 

_Amb_. --Human fancy may imagine a thousand manners in which it may beproduced, but upon such notions it is absurd to dwell. I will not allowyour Genius the slightest approach to inspiration, and I can admit noverisimility in a reverie which is fixed on a foundation you now allow tobe so weak. But see, the twilight is beginning to appear in the orientsky, and there are some dark clouds on the horizon opposite to the craterof Vesuvius, the lower edges of which transmit a bright light, showingthe sun is already risen in the country beneath them. I would say thatthey may serve as an image of the hopes of immortality derived fromrevelation; for we are sure from the light reflected in those clouds thatthe lands below us are in the brightest sunshine, but we are entirelyignorant of the surface and the scenery; so, by revelation, the light ofan imperishable and glorious world is disclosed to us; but it is ineternity, and its objects cannot be seen by mortal eye or imaged bymortal imagination. 

_Phil_. --I am not so well read in the Scriptures as I hope I shall be atno very distant time; but I believe the pleasures of heaven are mentionedmore distinctly than you allow in the sacred writings. I think Iremember 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 sensualpleasure which approaches nearest to an intellectual one, and probablymay represent the delight resulting from the perception of the harmony ofthings and of truth seen in God. The palm as an evergreen tree and theamaranth a perdurable flower are emblems of immortality. If I am allowedto give a metaphorical allusion to the future state of the blest, Ishould image it by the orange grove in that sheltered glen, on which thesun is now beginning to shine, and of which the trees are at the sametime loaded with sweet golden fruit and balmy silver flowers. Suchobjects may well portray a state in which hope and fruition become oneeternal 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 helpfeeling its influence, I cannot help believing with you that the night ofdeath will be succeeded by a bright morning; but, as in the scene belowus, the objects are nearly the same as they were last evening, with moreof brightness and brilliancy, with a fairer prospect in the east and moremist in the west, so I cannot help believing that our new state ofexistence must bear an analogy to the present one, and that the order ofevents will not be entirely different. 

_Amb_. --Your view is not an unnatural one; but I am rejoiced to find somesymptoms of a change in your opinions. 

_Onu_. --I wish with all my heart they were stronger; I begin to feel myreason a weight and my scepticism a very heavy load. Your discussionshave made me a Philo-Christian, but I cannot understand nor embrace allthe views you have developed, though I really wish to do so. 

_Amb_. --Your wish, if sincere, I doubt not will be gratified. Fix yourpowerful mind upon the harmony of the moral world, as you have been longaccustomed to do upon the order of the physical universe, and you willsee the scheme of the eternal intelligence developing itself alike inboth. Think of the goodness and mercy of omnipotence, and aid yourcontemplation by devotional feelings and mental prayer and aspirations tothe source of all knowledge, and wait with humility for the light which Idoubt not will be so produced in your mind. 

_Onu_. --You again perplex me; I cannot believe that the adorations orofferings of so feeble a creature can influence the decrees ofomnipotence. 

_Amb_. --You mistake me: as to their influencing or affecting the suprememind it is out of the question, but they affect your own mind, theyperpetuate a habit of gratitude and of obedience which may gradually endin perfect faith, they discipline the affections and keep the heart in astate of preparation to receive and preserve all good and pious feelings. Whoever passes from utter darkness into bright sunshine finds that hecannot at first distinguish objects better in one than in the other, butin a feeble light he acquires gradually the power of bearing a brighterone, and gains at last the habit not only of supporting it, but ofreceiving delight as well as instruction from it. In the piouscontemplations that I recommend to you there is the twilight or soberdawn of faith which will ultimately enable you to support the brightnessof 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 meto bear the light than to contemplate it through the smoked or colouredglasses of scepticism. 

_Amb_. --Yes, for they not only diminish its brightness but alter itsnature. 

DIALOGUE THE THIRD. THE UNKNOWN. 

The same persons accompanied me in many journeys by land and water todifferent parts of the Phlegraean fields, and we enjoyed in a mostdelightful season, the beginning of May, the beauties of the gloriouscountry which encloses the Bay of Naples, so rich, so ornamented with thegifts of nature, so interesting from the monuments it contains and therecollections it awakens. One excursion, the last we made in southernItaly, the most important both from the extraordinary personage with whomit made me acquainted and his influence upon my future life, merits aparticular detail which I shall now deliver to paper. 

It was on the 16th of May, 18-- that we left Naples at three in themorning 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 whichcontains these stupendous monuments of antiquity. Were my existence tobe prolonged through ten centuries, I think I could never forget thepleasure I received on that delicious spot. We alighted from ourcarriage to take some refreshment, and we reposed upon the herbage underthe shade of a magnificent pine contemplating the view around and belowus. On the right were the green hills covered with trees stretchingtowards Salerno; beyond them were the marble cliffs which form thesouthern extremity of the Bay of Sorento; immediately below our feet wasa rich and cultivated country filled with vineyards and abounding invillas, in the gardens of which were seen the olive and the cypress treeconnected as if to memorialise how near to each other are life and death, joy and sorrow; the distant mountains stretching beyond the plain ofPaestum were in the full luxuriance of vernal vegetation; and in theextreme distance, as if in the midst of a desert, we saw the whitetemples glittering in the sunshine. The blue Tyrrhene sea filled up theoutline of this scene, which, though so beautiful, was not calm; therewas a heavy breeze which blew full from the southwest; it was literally azephyr, and its freshness and strength in the middle of the day werepeculiarly balmy and delightful; it seemed a breath stolen by the springfrom the summer. I never saw a deeper, brighter azure than that of thewaves which rolled towards the shore, and which was rendered morestriking by the pure whiteness of their foam. The agitation of natureseemed to be one of breathing and awakening life; the noise made by thewaving of the branches of the pine above our heads and by the rattling ofits cones was overpowered by the music of a multitude of birds which sungeverywhere in the trees that surrounded us, and the cooing of the turtle-doves was heard even more distinctly than the murmuring of the waves orthe whistling of the winds, so that in the strife of nature the voice oflove was predominant. With our hearts touched by this extraordinaryscene we descended to the ruins, and having taken at a farmhouse a personwho acted as guide or cicerone, we began to examine those wonderfulremains which have outlived even the name of the people by whom they wereraised, and which continue almost perfect whilst a Roman and a Saracencity since raised have been destroyed. We had been walking for half anhour round the temples in the sunshine when our guide represented to usthe danger that there was of suffering from the effects of malaria, forwhich, as is well known, this place is notorious, and advised us toretire into the interior of the temple of Neptune. We followed hisadvice, and my companions began to employ themselves in measuring thecircumference of one of the Doric columns, when they suddenly called myattention to a stranger who was sitting on a camp-stool behind it. Theappearance of any person in this place at this time was sufficientlyremarkable, but the man who was before us from his dress and appearancewould have been remarkable anywhere. He was employed in writing in amemorandum book when we first saw him, but he immediately rose andsaluted us by bending the head slightly though gracefully; and thisenabled me to see distinctly his person and dress. He was rather abovethe middle stature, slender, but with well-turned limbs; his countenancewas remarkably intelligent, his eye hazel but full and strong, his frontwas smooth and unwrinkled, and but for some grey hairs, which appearedsilvering his brown and curly locks, he might have been supposed to havehardly reached the middle age; his nose was aquiline, the expression ofthe lower part of his countenance remarkably sweet, and when he spoke toour guide, which he did with uncommon fluency in the Neapolitan dialect, I thought I had never heard a more agreeable voice, sonorous yet gentleand silver-sounded. His dress was very peculiar, almost like that of anecclesiastic, but coarse and light; and there was a large soiled whitehat on the ground beside him, on which was fastened a pilgrim's cockleshell, and there was suspended round his neck a long antique blueenamelled phial, like those found in the Greek tombs, and it was attachedto a rosary of coarse beads. He took up his hat, and appeared to beretiring to another part of the building, when I apologised for theinterruption we had given to his studies, begged him to resume them, andassured him that our stay in the building would be only momentary, for Isaw that there was a cloud over the sun, the brightness of which was thecause of our retiring. I spoke in Italian; he replied in English, observing that he supposed the fear of contracting the malaria fever hadinduced us to seek the shelter of the shade: but it is too early in theseason to have much reasonable fear of this insidious enemy; yet, headded, this bottle which you may have observed here at my breast, I carryabout with me, as a supposed preventive of the effects of malaria, and asfar as my experience, a very limited one, however, has gone, it iseffectual. I ventured to ask him what the bottle might contain, as sucha benefit ought to be made known to the world. He replied, "It is amixture 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 hasmade a number of experiments with it, by exposing himself to the dangerof fever in the worst seasons and in the worst places, believes that itis a secure preventive. I am not convinced of this; but it can do noharm; and in waiting for more evidence of its utility, I employ itwithout putting the least confidence in its power; nor do I expose myselfto the same danger as my friend has done for the sake of an experiment. "I said, "I believe several scientific persons--Brocchi amongstothers--have doubted the existence of any specific matter in theatmosphere producing intermittent fevers in marshy countries and hotclimates; and have been more disposed to attribute the disease tophysical causes, dependent upon the great differences of temperaturebetween day and night and to the refrigerating effects of the dense fogscommon in such situations in the evening and morning; and, on thishypothesis, they have recommended warm woollen clothing and fires atnight as the best preventives against these destructive diseases, sofatal to the peasants who remain in the summer and autumn in theneighbourhood of the maremme of Rome, Tuscany, or Naples. " The strangersaid, "I am acquainted with the opinions of the gentlemen, and theyundoubtedly have weight; but that a specific matter of contagion has notbeen detected by chemical means in the atmosphere of marshes does notprove its non-existence. We know so little of those agents that affectthe 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 marshesis marked by a dense fog morning and evening, and most of the old Romantowns were placed upon eminences out of the reach of this fog. I havemyself experienced a peculiar effect upon the organs of smell in theneighbourhood of marshes in the evening after a very hot day; and theinstances in which people have been seized with intermittents by a singleexposure in a place infested by malaria in the season of fevers gives, Ithink, a strong support to something like a poisonous material existingin the atmosphere in such spots; but I merely offer doubts. I hope theprogress of physiology and of chemistry will at no very distant timesolve this important problem. " Ambrosio now came forward, and bowing tothe stranger, said he took the liberty, as he saw from his familiaritywith the cicerone that he was well acquainted with Paestum, of asking himwhether the masses of travertine, of which the Cyclopean walls and thetemples were formed, were really produced by aqueous deposition from theRiver Silaro, as he had often heard reported. The stranger replied, "that they were certainly produced by deposition from water; and suchdeposits are made by the Silaro. But I rather believe, " he said, "that alake in the immediate neighbourhood of the city furnished the quarry fromwhich 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 largemasses of the travertine, marmor tiburtinum, or calcareous tufa, havebeen raised. " We thanked him for his attention, accepted his invitation, took the usual walk round the temples, and returned to our newacquaintance, who led the way through the gate of the city to the banksof a pool or lake a short distance off. We walked to the borders on amass of calcareous tufa, and we saw that this substance had evenencrusted the reeds on the shore. There was something peculiarlymelancholy in the character of this water; all the herbs around it weregrey, as if encrusted with marble; a few buffaloes were slaking theirthirst in it, which ran wildly away on our approach, and appeared toretire into a rocky excavation or quarry at the end of the lake; therewere 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 andwere 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 anddurable stones which you see in the plain before you. This water rapidlydeposits calcareous matter, and even if you throw a stick into it, a fewhours is sufficient to give it a coating of this substance. Whicheverway 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 youmay observe that immense masses have been removed, as if by the hand ofart and in remote times. The marble that remains in the quarry is of thesame 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 thoseextraordinary structures derived a part of their materials from thisspot. " Ambrosio gave his assent to this opinion of the stranger; and Itook the liberty of asking him as to the quantity of calcareous mattercontained in solution in the lake, saying that it appeared to me, for sorapid and considerable an effect of deposition, there must be an unusualquantity of solid matter dissolved by the water or some peculiarcircumstance of solution. The stranger replied, "This water is likemany, I may say most of the sources which rise at the foot of theApennines: it holds carbonic acid in solution which has dissolved aportion 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 coherentstones. The lake before us is not particularly rich in the quantity ofcalcareous matter that it contains, for, as I have found by experience, apint of it does not afford more than five or six grains; but the quantityof fluid and the length of time are sufficient to account for the immensequantities of tufa and rock which in the course of ages have accumulatedin this situation. " Onuphrio's curiosity was excited by this statementof the stranger, and he said, "May I take the liberty of asking if youhave any idea as to the cause of the large quantity of carbonic acidwhich you have been so good as to inform us exists in most of the watersin this country?" The stranger replied, "I certainly have formed anopinion on this subject, which I willingly state to you. It can, Ithink, be scarcely doubted that there is a source of volcanic fire at nogreat distance from the surface in the whole of southern Italy; and, thisfire acting upon the calcareous rocks of which the Apennines arecomposed, must constantly detach from them carbonic acid, which rising tothe sources of the springs, deposited from the waters of the atmosphere, must give them their impregnation and enable them to dissolve calcareousmatter. I need not dwell upon Etna, Vesuvius, or the Lipari Islands toprove that volcanic fires are still in existence; and there can be nodoubt that in earlier periods almost the whole of Italy was ravaged bythem; oven Rome itself, the eternal city, rests upon the craters ofextinct volcanoes; and I imagine that the traditional and fabulous recordof the destruction made by the conflagration of Phaeton in the chariot ofthe sun and his falling into the Po had reference to a great andtremendous igneous volcanic eruption, which extended over Italy andceased only near the Po at the foot of the Alps. Be this as it may, thesources of carbonic acid are numerous, not merely in the Neapolitan, butlikewise in the Roman and Tuscan states. The most magnificent waterfallin Europe, that of the Velino, near Terni, is partly fed by a streamcontaining calcareous matter dissolved by carbonic acid, and it depositsmarble, which crystallises even in the midst of its thundering descentand foam in the bed in which it falls. The Anio or Teverone, whichalmost approaches in beauty to the Velino in the number and variety ofits falls and cascatelle, is likewise a calcareous water; and there isstill a more remarkable one which empties itself into this river belowTivoli, and which you have probably seen in your excursions in thecampagna 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 werecarried there to examine some ancient Roman baths, and we were struck bythe blue milkiness of the water, by the magnitude of the source, and bythe disagreeable smell of sulphuretted hydrogen which everywheresurrounded the lake. " The stranger said, "When you return to Latium Iadvise you to pay another visit to a spot which is interesting from anumber of causes, some of which I will take the liberty of mentioning toyou. You have only seen one lake, that where the ancient Romans erectedtheir baths, but there is another a few yards above it, surrounded byvery high rushes, and almost hidden by them from the sight. This lakesends down a considerable stream of tepid water to the larger lake, butthis water is less strongly impregnated with carbonic acid; the largestlake is actually a saturated solution of this gas, which escapes from itin such quantities in some parts of its surface that it has theappearance of being actually in ebullition. I have found by experimentthat the water taken from the most tranquil part of the lake, even afterbeing agitated and exposed to the air, contained in solution more thanits own volume of carbonic acid gas with a very small quantity ofsulphuretted hydrogen, to the presence of which, I conclude, its ancientuse in curing cutaneous disorders may be referred. Its temperature, Iascertained, was in the winter in the warmest parts above 80 degrees ofFahrenheit, and it appears to be pretty constant, for I have found itdiffer a few degrees only, in the ascending source, in January, March, May, and the beginning of June; it is therefore supplied with heat from asubterraneous source, being nearly twenty degrees above the meantemperature of the atmosphere. Kircher has detailed in his "MundusSubterraneus" various wonders respecting this lake, most of which areunfounded, such as that it is unfathomable, that it has at the bottom theheat of boiling water, and that floating islands rise from the gulf whichemits it. It must certainly be very difficult, or even impossible, tofathom a source which rises with so much violence from a subterraneousexcavation, and, at a time when chemistry had made small progress, it waseasy to mistake the disengagement of carbonic acid for an actualebullition. The floating islands are real, but neither the Jesuit norany of the writers who have since described this lake had a correct ideaof their origin, which is exceedingly curious. The high temperature ofthis water, and the quantity of carbonic acid that it contains, render itpeculiarly 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 timethat the process of vegetable life is going on, the crystallisations ofthe calcareous matter, which is everywhere deposited in consequence ofthe escape of carbonic acid, likewise proceed, giving a constantmilkiness to what, from its tint, would otherwise be a blue fluid. Sorapid is the vegetation, owing to the decomposition of the carbonic acid, that, even in winter, masses of confervae and lichens, mixed withdeposited travertine, are constantly detached by the currents of waterfrom the bank and float down the stream, which being a considerable riveris never without many of these small islands on its surface; they aresometimes only a few inches in size, and composed merely of dark-greenconfervae or purple or yellow lichens, but they are sometimes even ofsome feet in diameter, and contain seeds and various species of commonwater-plants, which are usually more or less encrusted with marble. Thereis, I believe, no place in the world where there is a more strikingexample of the opposition or contrast of the laws of animate andinanimate Nature, of the forces of inorganic chemical affinity and thoseof the powers of life. Vegetables in such a temperature, and everywheresurrounded by food, are produced with a wonderful rapidity, but thecrystallisations are formed with equal quickness, and they are no soonerproduced than they are destroyed together. Notwithstanding thesulphureous exhalations from the lake, the quantity of vegetable mattergenerated there and its heat make it the resort of an infinite variety ofinsect tribes, and even in the coldest days in winter numbers of fliesmay be observed on the vegetables surrounding its banks or on itsfloating island's, and a quantity of their larvae may be seen theresometimes encrusted and entirely destroyed by calcareous matter, which islikewise often the fate of the insects themselves, as well as of variousspecies of shell-fish that are found amongst the vegetables, which growand are destroyed in the travertine on its banks. Snipes, ducks, andvarious water-birds, often visit those lakes, probably attracted by thetemperature and the quantity of food in which they abound; but theyusually confine themselves to the banks, as the carbonic acid disengagedfrom the surface would be fatal to them if they ventured to swim upon itwhen tranquil. In May, 18--, I fixed a stick on a mass of travertinecovered by the water, and I examined it in the beginning of the Aprilfollowing for the purpose of determining the nature of the depositions. The water was lower at this time, yet I had some difficulty, by means ofa sharp-pointed hammer, in breaking the mass which adhered to the bottomof the stick; it was several inches in thickness. The upper part was amixture of light tufa and the leaves of confervae; below this was adarker and more solid travertine, containing black and decomposed massesof confervae; in the inferior part the travertine was more solid and of agrey colour, but with cavities which I have no doubt were produced by thedecomposition of vegetable matter. I have passed many hours, I may saymany days, in studying the phenomena of this wonderful lake; it hasbrought many trains of thought into my mind connected with the earlychanges of our globe, and I have sometimes reasoned from the forms ofplants and animals preserved in marble in this warm source to the granderdepositions in the secondary rocks, where the zoophytes or coral insectshave worked upon a grand scale, and where palms, and vegetables nowunknown are preserved with the remains of crocodiles, turtles, andgigantic extinct animals of the _sauri genus_, and which appear to havebelonged to a period when the whole globe possessed a much highertemperature. I have, likewise, often been led, from the remarkablephenomena surrounding me in that spot, to compare the works of man withthose of Nature. The baths, erected there nearly twenty centuries ago, present only heaps of ruins, and even the bricks of which they werebuilt, though hardened by fire, are crumbled into dust, whilst the massesof travertine around it, though formed by a variable source from the mostperishable materials, have hardened by time, and the most perfect remainsof the greatest ruins in the eternal city, such as the triumphal archesand the Colosaeum, owe their duration to this source. Then, from all weknow, this lake, except in some change in its dimensions, continuesnearly in the same state in which it was described 1, 700 years ago byPliny, and I have no doubt contains the same kinds of floating islands, the same plants, and the same insects. During the fifteen years that Ihave known it it has appeared precisely identical in these respects, andyet it has the character of an accidental phenomenon depending uponsubterraneous fire. How marvellous then are those laws by which even thehumblest types of organic existence are preserved though born amidst thesources of their destruction, and by which a species of immortality isgiven to generations floating, as it were, like evanescent bubbles, on astream raised from the deepest caverns of the earth, and instantly losingwhat may be called its spirit in the atmosphere. " These lastobservations of the stranger recalled to my recollection some phenomenawhich I had observed many years ago, and of which I could then give nosatisfactory explanation. I was shooting in the marshes which surroundthe ruins of Gabia, and where there are still remains supposed to be ofthe Alexandrine aqueduct; I observed a small insulated hill, apparentlyentirely composed of travertine, and from its summit there wereformations of tufa which had evidently been produced by running water, but the whole mass was now perfectly dry and encrusted by vegetables. Atfirst I suspected that this little mountain had been formed by a jet ofcalcareous water, a kind of small fountain analogous to the Geiser, whichhad deposited travertine and continued to rise through the basin flowingfrom a higher level; but the irregular form of the eminence did notcorrespond to this idea, and I remained perplexed with the fact andunable to satisfy myself as to its cause. The views of the strangerappeared to me now to make it probable that the calcareous water hadissued from ancient leaks in the aqueduct and formed a hillock that hadencased the bricks of the erection, which in other parts, where notencrusted by travertine, had become entirely decayed, degraded, andremoved from the soil. I mentioned the circumstance and my suspicion ofits 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 probablyhave quoted it as an instance in which the works of art are preserved, asit were, by the accidents of Nature. I was so struck by this appearancelast 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, andthe bricks of the arches as uninjured as if freshly laid. " The strangerhad hardly concluded this sentence when he was interrupted by Onuphrio, who said, "I have always supposed that in every geological system wateris considered as the cause of the destruction or degradation of thesurface, but in all the instances that you have mentioned it appearsrather as a conservative power, not destroying but rather producing. " "Itis 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, tomany of which they must be contradictory. The human intellectual powersare so feeble that they can with difficulty embrace a single series ofphenomena, and they consequently must fail when extended to the whole ofNature. Water by its common operation, as poured down from theatmosphere 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, exaltsthe surface, and creates islands even in the midst of the sea. But theselaws are not invariable, as the instances to which we have just referredprove, and parts of the surface of the globe are sometimes destroyed evenby fire, of which examples may be seen in the Phlegraean fields, andislands raised by one volcanic eruption have been immerged in the sea byanother. There are, in fact, no accidents in Nature; what we callaccidents are the results of general laws in particular operation, but wecannot deduce these laws from the particular operation or the generalorder from the partial result. " Ambrosio said to the stranger: "Youappear, sir, to have paid so much attention to physical phenomena thatfew things would give us more pleasure than to know your opinionrespecting the early changes and physical history of the globe, for Iperceive you do not belong to the modern geological schools. " Thestranger said, "I have certainly formed opinions or rather speculationson these subjects, but I fear they are hardly worth communicating; theyhave sometimes amused me in hours of idleness, but I doubt if they willamuse others. " I said, "The observations which you have already been sokind as to communicate to us, on the formation of the travertine, lead usnot only to expect amusement but likewise instruction. "

_The Stranger_. --On these matters I had facts to communicate; on thegeological scheme of the early history of the globe there are onlyanalogies to guide us, which different minds may apply and interpret indifferent ways; but I will not trifle with a long preliminary discourse. Astronomical deductions and actual measures by triangulation prove thatthe globe is an oblate spheroid flattened at the poles, and this form weknow, by strict mathematical demonstrations, is precisely the one which afluid body revolving round its axis, and become solid at its surface bythe slow dissipation of its heat or other causes, would assume. Isuppose, therefore, that the globe, in the first state in which theimagination can venture to consider it, was a fluid mass with an immenseatmosphere revolving in space round the sun, and that by its cooling aportion of its atmosphere was condensed in water which occupied a part ofthe surface. In this state no forms of life such as now belong to oursystem could have inhabited it; and, I suppose, the crystalline rocks(or, as they are called by geologists, the primary rocks), which containno vestiges of a former order of things, were the results of the firstconsolidation on its surface. Upon the further cooling the water whichmore or less had covered it contracted, depositions took place, shell-fish and coral insects of the first creation began their labours, andislands appeared in the midst of the ocean raised from the deep by theproductive energies of millions of zoophytes. Those islands becamecovered with vegetables fitted to bear a high temperature, such as palmsand various species of plants similar to those which now exist in thehottest parts of the world; and the submarine rocks or shores of thesenew formations of land became covered with aquatic vegetables, on whichvarious species of shell-fish and common fishes found their nourishment. The fluids of the globe in cooling deposited a large quantity of thematerials they held in solution, and these deposits agglutinatingtogether the sand, the immense masses of coral rocks, and some of theremains of the shells and fishes found round the shores of the primitivelands, produced the first order of secondary rocks. As the temperatureof the globe became lower, species of the oviparous reptiles were createdto inhabit it; and the turtle, crocodile, and various gigantic animals ofthe sauri kind, seem to have haunted the bays and waters of the primitivelands. But in this state of things there was no order of events similarto the present; the crust of the globe was exceedingly slender, and thesource of fire a small distance from the surface. In consequence ofcontraction in one part of the mass, cavities were opened, which causedthe 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 earlyepochas of nature, and the only living forms of which the remains arefound in the strata that are the monuments of these changes, are those ofplants, fishes, birds, and oviparous reptiles, which seem most fitted toexist in such a war of the elements. When these revolutions became lessfrequent, and the globe became still more cooled, and the inequalities ofits temperature preserved by the mountain chains, more perfect animalsbecame its inhabitants, many of which, such as the mammoth, megalonix, megatherium, and gigantic hyena, are now extinct. At this period thetemperature of the ocean seems to have been not much higher than it is atpresent, and the changes produced by occasional eruptions of it have leftno consolidated rocks. Yet one of these eruptions appears to have beenof great extent and some duration, and seems to have been the cause ofthose immense quantities of water-worn stones, gravel and sand, which areusually called diluvian remains; and it is probable that this effect wasconnected with the elevation of a new continent in the southernhemisphere by volcanic fire. When the system of things became sopermanent that the tremendous revolutions depending upon the destructionof the equilibrium between the heating and cooling agencies were nolonger to be dreaded, the creation of man took place; and since thatperiod there has been little alteration in the physical circumstances ofour globe. Volcanoes sometimes occasion the rise of new islands, portions of the old continent are constantly washed by rivers into thesea; but these changes are too insignificant to affect the destinies ofman, or the nature of the physical circumstances of things. On thehypothesis that I have adopted, however, it must be remembered that thepresent surface of the globe is merely a thin crust surrounding a nucleusof fluid ignited matter, and consequently we can hardly be considered asactually safe from the danger of a catastrophe by fire. 

Onuphrio said: "From the view you have taken, I conclude that youconsider volcanic eruptions as owing to the central fire; indeed, theirexistence offers, I think, an argument for believing that the interior ofthe globe is fluid. " The stranger answered: "I beg you to consider theviews I have been developing as merely hypothetical, one of the manyresting places that may be taken by the imagination in considering thissubject. There are, however, distinct facts in favour of the idea thatthe interior of the globe has a higher temperature than the surface; theheat increasing in mines the deeper we penetrate, and the number of warmsources which rise from great depths in almost all countries, arecertainly favourable to the idea. The opinion that volcanoes are owingto this general and simple cause is, I think, likewise more agreeable tothe analogies of things than to suppose them dependent upon partialchemical changes, such as the action of air and water upon thecombustible bases of the earths and alkalies, though it is extremelyprobable that these substances may exist beneath the surface, and mayoccasion some results of volcanic fire; and on this subject my notionmay, perhaps, be more trusted, as for a long while I thought volcaniceruptions were owing to chemical agencies of the newly discovered metalsof 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 geologicalillustrations; but they remind me a little of some of the ideas of ourfriend Philalethes in his remarkable vision, and with which we may atsome time amuse you in return for your geology should we be honoured withmore of your company. You are obliged to have recourse to creations forall the living beings in your philosophical romance. I do not see whyyou should not suppose creations or arrangements of dead matter by thesame laws of infinite wisdom, and why our globe should not rise at once adivine work fitted for all the objects of living and intelligent natures. 

The stranger replied: "I have merely attempted a philosophical historyfounded upon the facts known respecting rocks and strata and the remainsthey contain. I begin with what may be considered a creation, a fluidglobe supplied with an immense atmosphere, and the series of phenomenawhich I imagine consequent to the creation, I supposed produced by powersimpressed upon matter by Omnipotence. "

Ambrosio said: "There is this verisimility in your history, that it isnot contradictory to the little we are informed by Revelation as to theorigin of the globe, the order produced in the chaotic state, and thesuccession of living forms generated in the days of creation, which maybe what philosophers call the 'epochas of nature, ' for a day withOmnipotence is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. "

"I must object, " Onuphrio said, "to your interpretation of the scientificview of our new acquaintance, and to your disposition to blend them withthe cosmogony of Moses. Allowing the divine origin of the Book ofGenesis, you must admit that it was not intended to teach the Jewssystems of philosophy, but the laws of life and morals; and a great manand an exalted Christian raised his voice two centuries ago against thismode of applying and of often wresting the sense of the Scriptures tomake them conformable to human fancies; 'from which, ' says Lord Bacon, 'arise not only false and fantastical philosophies, but likewiseheretical religions. ' If the Scriptures are to be literally interpretedand systems of science found in them, Gallileo Gallilei merited hispersecution, and we ought still to believe that the sun turns round theearth. "

_Amb_. --You mistake my view, Onuphrio, if you imagine I am desirous ofraising a system of geology on the Book of Genesis. It cannot be doubtedthat the first man was created with a great variety of instinctive orinspired knowledge, which must have been likewise enjoyed by hisdescendants; and some of this knowledge could hardly fail to have relatedto the globe which he inhabited, and to the objects which surrounded him. It would have been impossible for the human mind to have embraced themysteries of creation, or to have followed the history of the movingatoms from their chaotic disorder into their arrangement in the visibleuniverse, to have seen dead matter assuming the forms of life andanimation, and light and power arising out of death and sleep. The ideastherefore transmitted to or presented by Moses respecting the origin ofthe world and of man were of the most simple kind, and such as suited theearly state of society; but, though general and simple truths, they weredivine truths, yet clothed in a language and suited to the ideas of arude and uninstructed people. And, when I state my satisfaction infinding that they are not contradicted by the refined researches ofmodern 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 Ido not mean to say that the words, "Let there be light, and there waslight, " were orally spoken by the Deity, nor do I mean to imply that themodern discoveries respecting light are at all connected with thissublime and magnificent passage. 

_Onu_. --Having resided for a long time in Edinburgh, and having heard anumber of discussions on the theory of Dr. Hutton, or the plutonic theoryof geology, and having been exceedingly struck both by its simplicity andbeauty, its harmony with existing facts, and the proofs afforded to it bysome beautiful chemical experiments, I do not feel disposed immediatelyto renounce it for the views which I have just heard explained; for theprincipal facts which our new acquaintance has stated are, I think, notinconsistent with the refined philosophical systems of Professor Playfairand Sir James Hall. 

_The Unknown_. --I have no objection to the refined plutonic view, ascapable of explaining many existing phenomena; indeed, you must be awarethat I have myself had recourse to it. What I contend against is, itsapplication to explain the formations of the secondary rocks, which Ithink clearly belong to an order of facts not at all embraced by it. Inthe plutonic system there is one simple and constant order assumed, whichmay be supposed eternal. The surface is constantly imagined to bedisintegrated, destroyed, degraded, and washed into the bosom of theocean by water, and as constantly consolidated, elevated, and regeneratedby 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 andliving matter; that the remains of rocks, of vegetables, and animals ofone age are found embedded in rocks raised from the bottom of the oceanin another. Now, to support this view, not only the remains of livingbeings which at present people the globe might be expected to be found inthe oldest secondary strata, but even those of the arts of man, the mostpowerful and populous of its inhabitants, which is well known not to bethe case. On the contrary, each stratum of the secondary rocks containsremains of peculiar and mostly now unknown species of vegetables andanimals. In those strata which are deepest, and which must consequentlybe supposed to be the earliest deposited, forms even of vegetable lifeare rare; shells and vegetable remains are found in the next order; thebones of fishes and oviparous reptiles exist in the following class; theremains of birds, with those of the same genera mentioned before, in thenext order; those of quadrupeds of extinct species, in a still morerecent class; and it is only in the loose and slightly consolidatedstrata of gravel and sand, and which are usually called diluvianformations, that the remains of animals such as now people the globe arefound, with others belonging to extinct species. But in none of theseformations, whether called secondary, tertiary, or diluvial, have theremains of man or any of his works been discovered. It is, I think, impossible to consider the organic remains found in any of the earliersecondary strata, the lias-limestone and its congenerous formations forinstance, without being convinced that the beings, whose organs theyformed, belonged to an order of things entirely different from thepresent. Gigantic vegetables, more nearly allied to the palms of theequatorial countries than to any other plants, can only be imagined tohave lived in a very high temperature; and the immense reptiles, themegalosauri with paddles instead of legs and clothed in mail, in sizeequal or even superior to the whale; and the great amphibia, plethiosauri, with bodies like turtles, but furnished with necks longerthan their bodies, probably to enable them to feed on vegetables growingin the shallows of the primitive ocean, seem to show a state in which lowlands or extensive shores rose above an immense calm sea, and when therewere no great mountain, chains to produce inequalities of temperature, tempests, or storms. Were the surface of the earth now to be carrieddown into the depths of the ocean, or were some great revolution of thewaters to cover the existing land, and it was again to be elevated byfire, covered with consolidated depositions of sand or mud, how entirelydifferent 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 remainswould be more common than those of animals on the greatest part of thesurface; the columns of Paestum or of Agrigentum, or the immense iron andgranite bridges of the Thames, would offer a striking contrast to thebones of the crocodiles or sauri in the older rocks, or even to those ofthe mammoth or elephas primogenius in the diluvial strata. And whoeverdwells upon this subject must be convinced that the present order ofthings, and the comparatively recent existence of man as the master ofthe globe, is as certain as the destruction of a former and a differentorder and the extinction of a number of living forms which have now notypes in being, and which have left their remains wonderful monuments ofthe revolutions of Nature. 

_Onu_. --I am not quite convinced by your arguments. Supposing the landsof New Holland were to be washed into the depths of the ocean, and to beraised according to the Huttonian view, as a secondary stratum, bysubterraneous fire, they would contain the remains of both vegetables andanimals entirely different from any found in the strata of the oldcontinents; and may not those peculiar formations to which you havereferred be, as it were, accidents of Nature belonging to peculiar partsof the globe? And you speak of a diluvian formation, which I concludeyou would identify with that belonging to the catastrophe described inthe sacred writings, in which no human remains are found. Now, yousurely will not deny that man existed at the time of this catastrophe, and he consequently may have existed at the period of the otherrevolutions, which are supposed to be produced in the Huttonian views bysubterraneous fire. 

_The Unknown_. --I have made use of the term "diluvian, " because it hasbeen adopted by geologists, but without meaning to identify the cause ofthe formations with the deluge described in the sacred writings. I applythe term merely to signify loose and water-worn strata not at allconsolidated, and deposited by an inundation of water, and in thesecountries which they have covered man certainly did not exist. Withrespect to your argument derived from New Holland, it appears to me to bewithout weight. In a variety of climates, and in very distant parts ofthe globe, secondary strata of the same order are found, and they containalways the same kind of organic remains, which are entirely differentfrom any of those now afforded by beings belonging to the existing orderof things. The catastrophes which produced the secondary strata anddiluvian depositions could not have been local and partial phenomena, butmust have extended over the whole, or a great part of the surface, of theglobe. The remains of similar shell-fishes are found in the limestonesof the old and new continents; the teeth of the mammoth are not uncommonin 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 theseenormous extinct animals has been discovered in Siberia preserved in amass of ice. In the oldest secondary strata there are no remains of suchanimals as now belong to the surface; and in the rocks which may beregarded as more recently deposited, these remains occur but rarely, andwith abundance of extinct species. There seems, as it were, a gradualapproach to the present system of things, and a succession ofdestructions and creations preparatory to the existence of man. It willbe useless to push these arguments farther. You must allow that it isimpossible to defend the proposition, that the present order of things isthe 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 thoseof extinct nations; and it would be more reasonable to suppose that thepillars and temples of Palmyra were raised by the wandering Arabs of thedesert, than to imagine that the vestiges of peculiar animated forms inthe strata beneath the surface belonged to the early and infant familiesof the beings that at present inhabit it. 

_Onu_. --I am convinced. I shall push my arguments no further, for I willnot support the sophisms of that school which supposes that living naturehas undergone gradual changes by the effects of its irritabilities andappetencies; that the fish has in millions of generations ripened intothe quadruped, and the quadruped into the man; and that the system oflife by its own inherent powers has fitted itself to the physical changesin the system of the universe. To this absurd, vague, atheisticaldoctrine, I prefer even the dream of plastic powers, or that other moremodern dream, that the secondary strata were created, filled withremains, as it were, of animal life, to confound the speculations of ourgeological reasoners. 

_The Unknown_. --I am glad you have not retreated into the desert anddefenceless wilderness of scepticism, or of false and feeble philosophy. I should not have thought it worth my while to have followed you there; Ishould as soon think of arguing with the peasant who informs me that thebasaltic columns of Antrim or of Staffa were the works of human art andraised by the giant Finmacoul. 

At this moment, one of our servants came to inform me that a dinner whichhad been preparing for us at the farmhouse was ready; we asked thestranger to do us the honour to partake of our repast; he assented, andthe following conversation took place at table. 

_Phil_. --In reflecting upon our discussions this morning, I cannot helpbeing a little surprised at their nature; we have been talking only ofgeological systems, when a more natural subject for our conversationwould have been these magnificent temples, and an inquiry into the raceby whom they were raised and the gods to whom they wore dedicated. Weare now treading on a spot which contains the bones of a highly civilisedand 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 citywere Grecians and a maritime and commercial people; they have beensupposed to belong to the Sybarite race, and the roses producing flowerstwice a year in the spring and autumn in ancient times here, mightsanction the idea that this balmy spot was chosen by a colony who carriedluxury and refinement to the highest pitch. 

_Onu_. --To attempt to form any opinion with respect to the people thatanciently inhabited these now deserted plains is useless and a vainlabour. In the geological conversation which took place before dinner, some series of interesting facts were presented to us; and the monumentsof Nature, though they do not speak a distinct language, yet speak anintelligible one; but with respect to Paestum, there is neither historynor tradition to guide us; and we shall do wisely to resume ourphilosophical inquiries, if we have not already exhausted the patience ofour new guest by doubts or objections to his views. 

_The Stranger_. --One of you referred in our conversation this morning toa vision, which had some relation to the subject of our discussion, and Iwas promised some information on this matter. 

I immediately gave a sketch of my vision, and of the opinions which hadbeen expressed by Ambrosio on the early history of man, and thetermination of our discussions on religion. 

_The Stranger_. --I agree with Ambrosio in opinion on the subjects youhave just mentioned. In my youth, I was a sceptic; and this I believe isusually the case with young persons given to general and discursivereading, and accustomed to adopt something like a mathematical form intheir reasonings; and it was in considering the nature of theintellectual faculties of brutes, as compared with those of man, and inexamining 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 aninstinct, my faith constantly became stronger; and it was exalted by manycircumstances I had occasion to witness in a journey that I made throughEgypt and a part of Asia Minor, and by no one more than by a veryremarkable dream which occurred to me in Palestine, and which, as we arenow almost at the hour of the siesta, I will relate to you, thoughperhaps you will be asleep before I have finished it. I was walkingalong that deserted shore which contains the ruins of Ptolemais, one ofthe most ancient ports of Judaea. It was evening; the sun was sinking inthe sea; I seated myself on a rock, lost in melancholy contemplations onthe destinies of a spot once so famous in the history of man. The calmMediterranean, bright in the glowing light of the west, was the onlyobject before me. "These waves, " I said to myself, "once bore the shipsof the monarch of Jerusalem which were freighted with the riches of theEast to adorn and honour the sanctuary of Jehovah; here are now noremains of greatness or of commerce; a few red stones and broken bricksonly mark what might have been once a flourishing port, and the citadelabove, raised by the Saracens, is filled with Turkish soldiers. " Thejanissary, who was my guide, and my servant, were preparing some food forme in a tent which had been raised for the purpose, and whilst waitingfor their summons to my repast, I continued my reveries, which mustgradually 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 avery different figure. He was a very old man with a beard as white assnow; his countenance was dark but paler than that of an Arab, and hisfeatures stern, wild, and with a peculiar savage expression; his form wasgigantic, but his arms were withered and there was a large scar on theleft side of his face which seemed to have deprived him of an eye. Hewore a black turban and black flowing robes, and there was a large chainround his waist which clanked as he moved. It occurred to me that he wasone of the santons or sacred madmen so common in the East, and I retiredas he approached towards me. He called out: "Fly not, stranger; fear menot, I will not harm you. You shall hear my story, it may be useful toyou. " He spoke in Arabic but in a peculiar dialect and to me new, yet Iunderstood every word. "You see before you, " he said, "a man who waseducated a Christian, but who renounced the worship of the one supremeGod for the superstitions of the pagans. I became an apostate in thereign of the Emperor Julian, and I was employed by that Sovereign tosuperintend the re-erection of the temple of Jerusalem, by which it wasintended to belie the prophecies and give the deathblow to the holyreligion. History has informed you of the result: my assistants weremost of them destroyed in a tremendous storm, I was blasted by lightningfrom heaven (he raised his withered hand to his face and eye), butsuffered to live and expiate my crime in the flesh. My life has beenspent in constant and severe penance, and in that suffering of the spiritproduced by guilt, and is to be continued as long as any part of thetemple of Jupiter, in which I renounced my faith, remains in this place. I have lived through fifteen tedious centuries, but I trust in themercies of Omnipotence, and I hope my atonement is completed. I nowstand in the dust of the pagan temple. You have just thrown the lastfragment of it over the rock. My time is arrived, I come!" As he spakethe last words, he rushed towards the sea, threw himself from the rockand disappeared. I heard no struggling, and saw nothing but a gleam oflight from the wave that closed above him. I was now roused by the criesof my servant and of the janissary, who were shaking my arm, and whoinformed 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 seethe very spot in the wave where the old man had sunk. I was so struck bythe vision, that I asked if they had not seen something dash into thewave, and if they had not heard somebody speaking to me as they arrived. Of course their answers were negative. In passing through Jerusalem andin coasting the Dead Sea I had been exceedingly struck by the presentstate of Judaea and the conformity of the fate of the Jewish nation tothe predictions of our Saviour; I had likewise been reading Gibbon'seulogy of Julian, and his account of the attempts made by that Emperor torebuild the temple: so that the dream at such a time and in such a placewas not an unnatural occurrence. Yet it was so vivid, and the image ofthe subject of it so peculiar, that it long affected my imagination, andwhenever I recurred to it, strengthened my faith. 

_Onu_. --I believe all the narratives of apparitions and ghost stories arefounded upon dreams of the same kind as that which occurred to you: anideal representation of events in the local situation, in which theperson is at the moment, and when the imaginary picture of the place insleep exactly coincides with its reality in waking. 

_The Stranger_. --I agree with you in your opinion. If my servant had notbeen with me, and my dream had been a little less improbable, it wouldhave been difficult to have persuaded me that I had not been visited byan apparition. 

I mentioned the dream of Brutus, and said, "His supposed evil geniusappeared in his tent; had the philosophical hero dreamt that his geniushad appeared to him in Rome, there could have been no delusion. " I citedthe similar vision, recorded of Dion before his death, by Plutarch, of agigantic female, one of the fates or furies, who was supposed to havebeen seen by him when reposing in the portico of his palace. I referredlikewise to my own vision of the beautiful female, the guardian angel ofmy recovery, who always seemed to me to be present at my bedside. 

_Amb_. --In confirmation of this opinion of Onuphrio, I can mention manyinstances. I once dreamt that my door had been forced, that there wererobbers in my room, and that one of them was actually putting his handbefore my mouth to ascertain if I was sleeping naturally. I awoke atthis moment, and was some minutes before I could be sure whether it was adream 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 closedand to breathe slowly, till, hearing nothing and finding no motion, Iventured to open my eyes; but even then, when I saw nothing, I was notsure that my impression was a dream till I had risen from my bed andascertained that the door was still locked. 

_Onu_. --I am the only one of the party unable to record any dreams of thevivid and peculiar nature you mention from my own experience; I concludeit is owing to the dulness of my imagination. I suppose the more intensepower of reverie is a symptom of the poetical temperament; and perhaps, if I possessed more enthusiasm, I should always have possessed more ofthe religious instinct. To adopt the idea of Philalethes of hereditarycharacter, I fear my forefathers have not been correct in their faith. 

_Amb_. --Your glory will be greater in establishing a new character, and Itrust even the conversation of this day has given you an additionalreason to adopt _our_ faith. 

Ambrosio spoke these words with an earnestness unusual in him, and withsomething of a tone which marked a zeal for proselytism, and at the sametime he cast his eyes on the rosary which was suspended round the neck ofthe 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; Ibelong to the Church of Christ; the rosary which you see suspended roundmy neck is a memorial of sympathy and respect for an illustrious man. Iwill, if you will allow me, give you the history of it, which, I thinkfrom the circumstances with which it is connected, you will not finddevoid of interest. I was passing through France in the reign ofNapoleon, by the peculiar privilege granted to a scavan, on my road intoItaly. I had just returned from the Holy Land, and had in my possessiontwo or three of the rosaries which are sold to pilgrims at Jerusalem ashaving been suspended in the Holy Sepulchre. Pius VII. Was then inimprisonment at Fontainebleau. By a special favour, on the plea of myreturn from the Holy Land, I obtained permission to see this venerableand illustrious Pontiff. I carried with me one of my rosaries. Hereceived me with great kindness. I tendered my services to execute anycommissions, not political ones, he might think fit to entrust me with inItaly, informing him that I was an Englishman. He expressed his thanks, but declined troubling me. I told him I was just returned from the HolyLand, and bowing with great humility, offered to him my rosary from theHoly 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 hisHoliness, but the blessing he had bestowed upon it and the touch of hislips, made it a precious relic to me and I restored it to my neck, roundwhich it has ever since been suspended. He asked me some unimportantquestions respecting the state of the Christians at Jerusalem; and on asudden, turned the subject, much to my surprise, to the destruction ofthe French in Russia, and in an exceedingly low tone of voice, as ifafraid of being overheard, he said, "The _nefas_ has long been triumphantover the _fas_, but I do not doubt that the balance of things is even nowrestoring; that God will vindicate his Church, clear his polluted altars, and establish society upon its permanent basis of justice and faith. Weshall meet again. Adieu!" and he gave me his paternal blessing. It waseighteen months after this interview, that I went out with almost thewhole population of Rome, to receive and welcome the triumphal entry ofthis illustrious father of the Church into his capital. He was borne onthe shoulders of the most distinguished artists, headed by Canova; andnever shall I forget the enthusiasm with which he was received--it isimpossible to describe the shouts of triumph and of rapture sent up toheaven by every voice. And when he gave his benediction to the people, there was an universal prostration, a sobbing and marks of emotions ofjoy almost like the bursting of the heart. I heard, everywhere aroundme, cries of "The holy Father! The most holy Father! His restoration isthe work of God!" I saw tears streaming from the eyes of almost all thewomen about me, many of them were sobbing hysterically, and old men wereweeping as if they had been children. I pressed my rosary to my breaston this occasion, and repeatedly touched with my lips that part of itwhich had received the kiss of the most venerable Pontiff. I preserve itwith a kind of hallowed feeling, as the memorial of a man whose sanctity, firmness, meekness and benevolence are an honour to his Church and tohuman nature; and it has not only been useful to me, by its influenceupon my own mind, but it has enabled me to give pleasure to others, andhas, I believe, been sometimes beneficial in insuring my personal safety. I have often gratified the peasants of Apulia and Calabria by presentingthem to kiss a rosary from the Holy Sepulchre which had been hallowed bythe touch of the lips and benediction of the Pope; and it has been evenrespected by and procured me a safe passage through a party of brigandswho once stopped me in the passes of the Apennines. 

_Onu_. --The use you have made of this relic puts me in mind of a deviceof a very ingenious geological philosopher now living. He was on Etnaand busily employed in making a collection of the lavas formed from theigneous currents of that mountain; the peasants were often troublesome tohim, suspecting that he was searching for treasures. It occurred to himto make the following speech to them: "I have been a great sinner in myyouth and, as a penance, I have made a vow to carry away with me piecesof every kind of stone found upon the mountain; permit me quietly toperform my pious duty, that I may receive absolution for my sins. " Thespeech produced the desired effect; the peasants shouted, "The holy man!The saint!" and gave him every assistance in their power to enable him tocarry off his burthen, and he made his ample collections with the utmostsecurity and in the most agreeable manner. 

_The Stranger_. --I do not approve of pious frauds even for philosophicalpurposes; my rosary excited in others the same kind of feeling which itexcited 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; haveyou 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 dialectof the natives. I have always carried with me a peasant as a guide, whohas been intrusted with the small sums of money I wanted for my immediatepurposes, and my baggage has been little more than a Cynic philosopherwould have carried with him; and when I have been unable to walk, I havetrusted 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 itslast purple rays. We were informed that our horses were waiting, andthat it was time for us to depart to our lodgings at Eboli. I asked thestranger to be our companion and to do us the honour to accept of a seatin our carriage. He declined the invitation, and said: "My bed isprepared in the casina here for this night, and to-morrow I proceed on ajourney connected with scientific objects in the parts of Calabria thescene of the terrible earthquakes of 1783. " I held out my hand to him inparting; he gave it a strong and warm pressure, and said, "Adieu! weshall meet again. "

DIALOGUE THE FOURTH. THE PROTEUS, OR IMMORTALITY. 

The impression made upon my mind by the stranger with whom we becameacquainted at Paestum was of the strongest and most extraordinary kind. The memory of his person, his dress, his manners, the accents of hisvoice, and the tone of his philosophy, for a long while haunted myimagination in a most unaccountable manner, and even formed a part of mydreams. It often occurred to me that this was not the first time that Ihad seen him; and I endeavoured, but in vain, to find some type or imageof him in former scenes of my life. I continually made inquiriesrespecting him amongst my acquaintance, but I could never be sure thatany of them knew him, or even had seen him. So great were hispeculiarities, that he must have escaped observation altogether; for, hadhe entered the world at all, he must have made some noise in it. Iexpressed so much interest on this subject, that at last it became asource of ridicule amongst my acquaintance, who often asked me if I hadnot yet obtained news of my spirit-friend or ghost-seer. 

After my return from Naples to Rome, I was almost immediately recalled toEngland by a melancholy event--the death of a very near and dearrelation--and I left my two friends, Ambrosio and Onuphrio, to pursuetheir travels, which were intended to be of some extent and duration. 

In my youth, and through the prime of manhood, I never entered Londonwithout feelings of pleasure and hope. It was to me as the grand theatreof intellectual activity, the field of every species of enterprise andexertion, the metropolis of the world of business, thought, and action. There I was sure to find the friends and companions of my youth, to hearthe voice of encouragement and praise. There, society of the mostrefined kind offered daily its banquets to the mind with such varietythat satiety had no place in them, and new objects of interest andambition were constantly exciting attention either in politics, literature, or science. 

I now entered this great city in a very different tone of mind--one ofsettled melancholy; not merely produced by the mournful event whichrecalled me to my country, but owing, likewise, to an entire change inthe condition of my physical, moral, and intellectual being. My healthwas gone, my ambition was satisfied, I was no longer excited by thedesire of distinction; what I regarded most tenderly was in the grave, and, to take a metaphor derived from the change produced by time in thejuice of the grape, my cup of life was no longer sparkling, sweet, andeffervescent;--it had lost its sweetness without losing its power, and ithad become bitter. 

After passing a few months in England and enjoying (as much as I couldenjoy anything) the society of the few friends who still remained alive, the desire of travel again seized me. I had preserved amidst the wreckof time one feeling strong and unbroken: the love of natural scenery; andthis, in advanced life, formed a principal motive for my plans of conductand action. Of all the climates of Europe, England seems to me mostfitted for the activity of the mind, and the least suited to repose. Thealterations of a climate so various and rapid continually awake newsensations; and the changes in the sky from dryness to moisture, from theblue ethereal to cloudiness and fogs, seem to keep the nervous system ina constant state of disturbance. In the mild climate of Nice, Naples, orSicily, where even in winter it is possible to enjoy the warmth of thesunshine in the open air, beneath palm trees or amidst evergreen grovesof orange trees covered with odorous fruit and sweet-scented leaves, mereexistence is a pleasure, and even the pains of disease are sometimesforgotten amidst the balmy influence of nature, and a series of agreeableand uninterrupted sensations invite to repose and oblivion. But in thechangeful and tumultuous atmosphere of England, to be tranquil is alabour, and employment is necessary to ward off the attacks of ennui. TheEnglish as a nation is pre-eminently active, and the natives of no othercountry follow their objects with so much force, fire, and constancy. And, as human powers are limited, there are few examples of verydistinguished men living in this country to old age: they usually fail, droop, and die before they have attained the period naturally marked forthe 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 ispassed, grey hairs usually cover those brows which are adorned with thecivic oak or the laurel; and in the luxurious and exciting life of theman of pleasure, their tints are not even preserved by the myrtle wreathor the garland of roses from the premature winter of time. 

In selecting the scenes for my new journey I was guided by my formerexperience. I know no country more beautiful than that which may becalled the Alpine country of Austria, including the Alps of the southernTyrol, those of Illyria, the Noric and the Julian Alps, and the Alps ofStyria and Salzburg. The variety of the scenery, the verdure of themeadows and trees, the depths of the valleys, the altitude of themountains, the clearness and grandeur of the rivers and lakes give it, Ithink, a decided superiority over Switzerland; and the people are farmore agreeable. Various in their costumes and manners, Illyrians, Italians, or Germans, they have all the same simplicity of character, andare all distinguished by their love of their country, their devotion totheir sovereign, the warmth and purity of their faith, their honesty, and(with very few exceptions) I may say their great civility and courtesy tostrangers. 

In the prime of life I had visited this region in a society whichafforded me the pleasures of intellectual friendship and the delights ofrefined affection; later I had left the burning summer of Italy and theviolence of an unhealthy passion, and had found coolness, shade, repose, and tranquillity there; in a still more advanced period I had sought forand found consolation, and partly recovered my health after a dangerousillness, the consequence of labour and mental agitation; there I hadfound the spirit of my early vision. I was desirous, therefore, of againpassing some time in these scenes in the hope of re-establishing a brokenconstitution; and though this hope was a feeble one, yet at least Iexpected to spend a few of the last days of life more tranquilly and moreagreeably than in the metropolis of my own country. Nature neverdeceives us. The rocks, the mountains, the streams always speak the samelanguage. A shower of snow may hide the verdant woods in spring, athunderstorm may render the blue limpid streams foul and turbulent; butthese effects are rare and transient: in a few hours or at least days allthe sources of beauty are renovated. And Nature affords no continuedtrains of misfortunes and miseries, such as depend upon the constitutionof humanity; no hopes for ever blighted in the bud; no beings full oflife, beauty, and promise taken from us in the prime of youth. Herfruits are all balmy, bright, and sweet; she affords none of thoseblighted ones so common in the life of man and so like the fabled applesof the Dead Sea--fresh and beautiful to the sight, but when tasted fullof bitterness and ashes. I have already mentioned the strong effectproduced on my mind by the stranger whom I had met so accidentally atPaestum; the hope of seeing him again was another of my motives forwishing to leave England, and (why, I know not) I had a decidedpresentiment that I was more likely to meet him in the Austrian statesthan in England, his own country. 

For this journey I had one companion, an early friend and medicaladviser. He had lived much in the world, had acquired a considerablefortune, had given up his profession, was now retired, and sought, likemyself, in this journey repose of mind and the pleasures derived fromnatural scenery. He was a man of a very powerful and acuteunderstanding, but had less of the poetical temperament than any personwhom I had ever known with similar vivacity of mind. He was a severethinker, with great variety of information, an excellent physiologist, and an accomplished naturalist. In his reasonings he adopted theprecision of a geometer, and was always upon his guard against theinfluence of imagination. He had passed the meridian of life, and hishealth was weak, like my own, so that we were well suited as travellingcompanions, moving always slowly from place to place without hurry orfatigue. I shall call this friend Eubathes. I will say nothing of theprogress of our journey through France and Germany; I shall dwell onlyupon that part of it which has still a strong interest for me, and whereevents occurred that I shall never forget. We passed into the Alpinecountry of Austria by Lintz, on the Danube, and followed the course ofthe Traun to Gmunden, on the Traun See or lake of the Traun, where wehalted for some days. If I were disposed to indulge in minutepicturesque descriptions I might occupy hours with details of the variouscharacters of the enchanting scenery in this neighbourhood. The valeshave that pastoral beauty and constant verdure which is so familiar to usin England, with similar enclosures and hedge-rows and fruit and foresttrees. Above are noble hills planted with beeches and oaks. Mountainsbound the view, here covered with pines and larches, there raising theirmarble crests capped with eternal snows above the clouds. The lower partof the Traun See is always, even in the most rainy season, perfectlypellucid; and the Traun pours out of it over ledges of rocks a large andmagnificent river, beautifully clear and of the purest tint of the beryl. The fall of the Traun, about ten miles below Gmunden, was one of ourfavourite haunts. It is a cataract which, when the river is full, may bealmost compared to that of Schaffhausen for magnitude, and possesses thesame peculiar characters of grandeur in the precipitous rush of its awfuland overpowering waters, and of beauty in the tints of its streams andfoam, and in the forms of the rocks over which it falls, and the cliffsand woods by which it is overhung. In this spot an accident, which hadnearly been fatal to me, occasioned the renewal of my acquaintance in anextraordinary manner with the mysterious unknown stranger. Eubathes, whowas very fond of fly-fishing, was amusing himself by catching graylingsfor our dinner in the stream above the fall. I took one of the boatswhich are used for descending the canal or lock artificially cut in therock by the side of the fall, on which salt and wood are usuallytransported from Upper Austria to the Danube; and I desired two of thepeasants to assist my servant in permitting the boat to descend by a ropeto the level of the river below. My intention was to amuse myself bythis rapid species of locomotion along the descending sluice. For somemoments the boat glided gently along the smooth current, and I enjoyedthe beauty of the moving scene around me, and had my eye fixed upon thebright rainbow seen upon the spray of the cataract above my head; when Iwas suddenly roused by a shout of alarm from my servant, and, lookinground, I saw that the piece of wood to which the rope had been attachedhad given way, and the boat was floating down the river at the mercy ofthe stream. I was not at first alarmed, for I saw that my assistantswere procuring long poles with which it appeared easy to arrest the boatbefore it entered the rapidly descending water of the sluice, and Icalled out to them to use their united force to reach the longest poleacross 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 suddenlycame down the valley and blew from the nearest bank, the boat was turnedby it out of the side current and thrown nearer to the middle of theriver, and I soon saw that I was likely to be precipitated over thecataract. My servant and the boatmen rushed into the water, but it wastoo deep to enable them to reach the boat; I was soon in the white waterof the descending stream, and my danger was inevitable. I had presenceof mind enough to consider whether my chance of safety would be greaterby throwing myself out of the boat or by remaining in it, and I preferredthe latter expedient. I looked from the rainbow upon the bright sunabove my head, as if taking leave for ever of that glorious luminary; Iraised one pious aspiration to the divine source of light and life; I wasimmediately stunned by the thunder of the fall, and my eyes were closedin darkness. How long I remained insensible I know not. My firstrecollections after this accident were of a bright light shining aboveme, of warmth and pressure in different parts of my body, and of thenoise of the rushing cataract sounding in my ears. I seemed awakened bythe light from a sound sleep, and endeavoured to recall my scatteredthoughts, but in vain; I soon fell again into slumber. From this secondsleep I was awakened by a voice which seemed not altogether unknown tome, and looking upwards I saw the bright eye and noble countenance of theUnknown Stranger whom I had met at Paestum. I faintly articulated: "I amin another world. " "No, " said the stranger, "you are safe in this; youare a little bruised by your fall, but you will soon be well; be tranquiland compose yourself. Your friend is here, and you will want no otherassistance 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 fromhis parting salute at Paestum. Eubathes, whom I now saw with anexpression of joy and of warmth unusual to him, gave a hearty shake tothe 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 somerefreshment, and found little inconvenience from the accident except somebruises 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 theUnknown the history of my escape, which seemed almost miraculous to me. He said that he was often in the habit of combining pursuits of naturalhistory with the amusements derived from rural sports and was fishing theday that my accident happened below the fall of the Traun for thatpeculiar species of the large _salmo_ of the Danube which, fortunatelyfor me, is only to be caught by very strong tackle. He saw, to his verygreat astonishment and alarm, the boat and my body precipitated by thefall, and was so fortunate as to entangle his hooks in a part of my dresswhen I had been scarcely more than a minute under water, and by theassistance of his servant, who was armed with the gaff or curved hook forlanding large fish, I was safely conveyed to the shore, undressed, putinto a warm bed, and by the modes of restoring suspended animation, whichwere familiar to him, I soon recovered my sensibility and consciousness. I was desirous of reasoning with him and Eubathes upon the state ofannihilation of power and transient death which I had suffered when inthe water; but they both requested me to defer those inquiries, whichrequired too profound an exertion of thought, till the effects of theshock on my weak constitution were over and my strength was somewhat re-established: and I was the more contented to comply with their request asthe Unknown said it was his intention to be our companion for at leastsome days longer, and that his objects of pursuit lay in the very countryin which we were making our summer tour. It was some weeks before I wassufficiently strong to proceed on our journey, for my frame was littlefitted 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, Icould hardly avoid regarding my recovery as providential, and thepresence and assistance of the Stranger as in some way connected with thefuture destiny and utility of my life. In the middle of August wepursued our plans of travel. We first visited those romantic lakes, Hallsstadt, Aussee, and Toplitz See, which collect the melted snows ofthe higher mountains of Styria to supply the unfailing sources of theTraun. We visited that elevated region of the Tyrol which forms thecrest of the Pusterthal, and where the same chains of glaciers send downstreams 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 affordthe sources of the Save, where that glorious and abundant river rises, asit were, in the very bosom of beauty, leaping from its subterraneousreservoirs in the snowy mountains of Terglou and Manhardt in thunderingcataracts amongst cliffs and woods into the pure and deep cerulean lakesof Wochain and Wurzen, and pursuing its course amidst pastoral meadows soornamented with plants and trees as to look the garden of Nature. Thesubsoil or strata of this part of Illyria are entirely calcareous andfull of subterranean caverns, so that in every declivity large funnel-shaped cavities, like the craters of volcanoes, may be seen, in which thewaters that fall from the atmosphere are lost: and almost every lake orrives has a subterraneous source, and often a subterraneous exit. TheLaibach river rises twice from the limestone rock, and is twice againswallowed up by the earth before it makes its final appearance and islost in the Save. The Zirknitz See or Lake is a mass of water entirelyfilled 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 attentionthan the Zirknitz See. I shall give the conversation that took place inthat extraordinary cavern entire, as well as I can remember it, in thewords used by my companions. 

_Eub_. --We must be many hundred feet below the surface, yet thetemperature 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 theinfluence of the solar light and heat; and, in so hot a day in August asthis, I know no more agreeable or salutary manner of taking a cold baththan in descending to a part of the atmosphere out of the influence ofthose 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 ofan annual visit. Independently of the natural beauties found in Illyria, and the various sources of amusement which a traveller fond of naturalhistory may find in this region, it has had a peculiar object of interestfor me in the extraordinary animals which are found in the bottom of itssubterraneous cavities: I allude to the Proteus anguinus, a far greaterwonder of nature than any of those which the Baron Valvasa detailed tothe Royal Society a century and half ago as belonging to Carniola, withfar too romantic an air for a philosopher. 

_Phil_. --I have seen these animals in passing through this countrybefore; but I should be very glad to be better acquainted with theirnatural history. 

_The Unknown_. --We shall soon be in that part of the grotto where theyare found, and I shall willingly communicate the little that I have beenable to learn respecting their natural characters and habits. 

_Eub_. --The grotto now becomes really magnificent; I have seen nosubterraneous cavity with so many traits of beauty and of grandeur. Theirregularity of its surface, the magnitude of the masses broken in pieceswhich compose its sides, and which seem torn from the bosom of themountain by some great convulsion of nature, their dark colours and deepshades form a singular contrast with the beauty, uniformity, I may say, order and grace of the white stalactical concretions which hang from thecanopy above, and where the light of our torches reflected from thebrilliant or transparent calcareous gems create a scene which almostlooks like one produced by enchantment. 

_Phil_. --If the awful chasms of dark masses of rock surrounding us appearlike the work of demons who might be imagined to have risen from thecentre of the earth, the beautiful works of Nature above our heads may becompared to a scenic representation of a temple or banquet hall forfairies or genii, such as those fabled in the Arabian romances. 

_The Unknown_. --A poet might certainly place here the palace of the Kingof the Gnomes, and might find marks of his creative power in the smalllake close by on which the flame of the torch is now falling, for thereit is that I expect to find the extraordinary animals which have been solong the objects of my attention. 

_Eub_. --I see three or four creatures, like slender fish, moving on themud below the water. 

_The Unknown_. --I see them; they are the Protei. Now I have them in myfishing-net, and now they are safe in the pitcher of water. At firstview you might suppose this animal to be a lizard, but it has the motionsof a fish. Its head and the lower part of its body and its tail bear astrong resemblance to those of the eel; but it has no fins, and itscurious bronchial organs are not like the gills of fishes: they form asingular vascular structure, as you see, almost like a crest, round thethroat, which may be removed without occasioning the death of the animal, which is likewise furnished with lungs. With this double apparatus forsupplying air to the blood, it can live either below or above the surfaceof the water. Its fore-feet resemble hands, but they have only threeclaws or fingers, and are too feeble to be of use in grasping orsupporting the weight of the animal; the hinder feet have only two clawsor toes, and in the larger specimens are found so imperfect as to bealmost obliterated. It has small points in place of eyes, as if topreserve the analogy of Nature. It is of a fleshy whiteness andtransparency in its natural state; but when exposed to light, its skingradually becomes darker, and at last gains an olive tint. Its nasalorgans appear large, and it is abundantly furnished with teeth: fromwhich it may be concluded that it is an animal of prey; yet in itsconfined state it has never been known to eat, and it has been kept alivefor 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 thirtymiles distant, thrown up by water from a subterraneous cavity; and I havelately heard it reported that some individuals of the same species havebeen recognised in the calcareous strata in Sicily. 

_Eub_. --This lake in which we have seen these animals is a very smallone. Do you suppose they are bred here?

_The Unknown_. --Certainly not. In dry seasons they are seldom foundhere, but after great rains they are often abundant. I think it cannotbe doubted that their natural residence is in an extensile deepsubterranean lake, from which in great floods they sometimes are forcedthrough 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 thecountry in which we are is considered, that the same great cavity mayfurnish the individuals which have been found at Adelsberg and atSittich. 

_Eub_. --This is a very extraordinary view of the subject. Is it notpossible that it may be the larva of some large unknown animal inhabitingthese limestone cavities? Its feet are not in harmony with the rest ofits organisation; and were they removed, it would have all the charactersof a fish. 

_The Unknown_. --I cannot suppose that they are larvae. There is, Ibelieve, in Nature no instance of a transition by this species ofmetamorphosis from a more perfect to a less perfect animal. The tadpolehas a resemblance to a fish before it becomes a frog; the caterpillar andthe maggot gain not only more perfect powers of motion on the earth intheir 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 inits native place; but its comparative anatomy is exceedingly hostile tothe idea that it is an animal in a state of transition. It has beenfound of various sizes, from that of the thickness of a quill to that ofthe thumb, but its form of organs has been always the same. It is surelya perfect animal of a peculiar species. And it adds one instance more tothe number already known of the wonderful manner in which life isproduced and perpetuated in every part of our globe, even in places whichseem the least suited to organised existences. And the same infinitepower and wisdom which has fitted the camel and the ostrich for thedeserts of Africa, the swallow that secretes its own nest for the cavesof Java, the whale for the Polar seas, and the morse and white bear forthe Arctic ice, has given the proteus to the deep and dark subterraneouslakes of Illyria--an animal to whom the presence of light is notessential, and who can live indifferently in air and in water, on thesurface of the rock, or in the depths of the mud. 

_Phil_. --It is now ten years since I first visited this spot. I wasexceedingly anxious to see the proteus, and came here with the guide inthe evening of the day I arrived at Adelsberg; but though we examined thebottom of the cave with the greatest care, we could find no specimens. Wereturned the next morning and were more fortunate, for we discovered fiveclose to the bank on the mud covering the bottom of the lake; the mud wassmooth and perfectly undisturbed, and the water quite clear. This factof their appearance during the night seemed to me so extraordinary, thatI could hardly avoid the fancy that they were new creations. I saw nocavities through which they could have entered, and the undisturbed stateof the lake seemed to give weight to my notion. My reveries becamediscursive; I was carried in imagination back to the primitive state ofthe globe, when the great animals of the sauri kind were created underthe pressure of a heavy atmosphere; and my notion on this subject was notdestroyed when I heard from a celebrated anatomist, to whom I sent thespecimens I had collected, that the organisation of the spine of theproteus was analogous to that of one of the sauri, the remains of whichare found in the older secondary strata. It was said at this time thatno organs of reproduction had been discovered in any of the specimensexamined by physiologists, and this lent a weight to my opinion of thepossibility of their being actually new creations, which I suppose youwill condemn as wholly visionary and unphilosophical. 

_Eub_. --From the tone in which you make your statements, I think youyourself consider them as unworthy of discussion. On such ground eelsmight be considered new creations, for their mature ovaria have not yetbeen discovered, and they come from the sea into rivers undercircumstances when it is difficult to trace their course. 

_The Unknown_. --The problem of the reproduction of the proteus, like thatof the common eel, is not yet solved; but ovaria have been discovered inanimals of both species, and in this instance, as in all others belongingto 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 ofattention to you; have you studied it as a comparative anatomist, insearch of the solution of the problem of its reproduction?

_The Unknown_. --No; this inquiry has been pursued by much ablerinvestigators: by Schreiber and Configliachi; my researches were madeupon 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 oxygendissolved in water, but likewise a part of the azote, was absorbed in therespiration of this animal. 

_Eub_. --So that your researches confirm those of the French savants andAlexander von Humboldt, that in the respiration of animals which separateair from water, both principles of the atmosphere are absorbed. 

_Phil_. --I have heard so many and such various opinions on the nature ofthe function of respiration during my education and since, that I shouldlike to know what is the modern doctrine on this subject. I can hardlyrefer to better authority than yourself, and I have an additional reasonfor wishing for some accurate knowledge on this matter, having, as youwell know, been the subject of an experiment in relation to it which, butfor 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 manyfacts and a few principles or laws; but whenever the functions of lifeare considered, though the facts are numerous, yet there is, as yet, scarcely any approach to general laws, and we must usually end where webegin 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 theblood and its aeration in the lungs--these, if not laws, are at leastfundamental principles. 

_The Unknown_. --I speak only of the functions in their connection withlife. We are still ignorant of the source of animal heat, though half acentury ago the chemists thought they had proved it was owing to a sortof combustion of the carbon of the blood. 

_Phil_. --As we return to our inn I hope you will both be so good as giveme your views of the nature of this function, so important to all livingthings; 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 continuedstate of change. The waste of the body produced in muscular action, perspiration, and various secretions, is made up for by the constantsupply of nutritive matter to the blood by the absorbents, and by theaction of the heart the blood is preserved in perpetual motion throughevery part of the body. In the lungs, or bronchia, the venous blood isexposed to the influence of air and undergoes a remarkable change, beingconverted into arterial blood. The obvious chemical alteration of theair is sufficiently simple in this process: a certain quantity of carbononly is added to it, and it receives an addition of heat or vapour; thevolumes of elastic fluid inspired and expired (making allowance forchange of temperature) are the same, and if ponderable agents only wereto be regarded it would appear as if the only use of respiration were tofree the blood from a certain quantity of carbonaceous matter. But it isprobable that this is only a secondary object, and that the changeproduced by respiration upon the blood is of a much more important kind. Oxygen, in its elastic state, has properties which are verycharacteristic: it gives out light by compression, which is not certainlyknown to be the case with any other elastic fluid except those with whichoxygen has entered without undergoing combustion; and from the fire itproduces in certain processes, and from the manner in which it isseparated by positive electricity in the gaseous state from itscombinations, it is not easy to avoid the supposition that it contains, besides its ponderable elements, some very subtle matter which is capableof assuming the form of heat and light. My idea is that the common airinspired enters into the venous blood entire, in a state of dissolution, carrying with it its subtle or ethereal part, which in ordinary cases ofchemical change is given off; that it expels from the blood carbonic acidgas and azote; and that in the course of the circulation its etherealpart and its ponderable part undergo changes which belong to laws thatcannot be considered as chemical--the ethereal part probably producinganimal heat and other effects, and the ponderable part contributing toform carbonic acid and other products. The arterial blood is necessaryto all the functions of life, and it is no less connected with theirritability of the muscles and the sensibility of the nerves than withthe performance of all the secretions. 

_Eub_. --No one can be more convinced than I am of the very limited extentof our knowledge in chemical physiology, and when I say that, having beena disciple and friend of Dr. Black, I am still disposed to prefer hisancient view to your new one, I wish merely to induce you to pause and tohear my reasons; they may appear insufficient to you, but I am anxious toexplain them. First, then, in all known chemical changes in which oxygengas is absorbed and carbonic acid gas formed, heat is produced. I couldmention a thousand instances, from the combustion of wood or spirits ofwine 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 theview of Dr. Black. Another circumstance in favour of it is, that thoseanimals which possess the highest temperature consume the greatestquantity of air, and, under different circumstances of action and repose, the heat is in great measure proportional to the quantity of oxygenconsumed. Then those animals which absorb the smallest quantity of airare cold-blooded. Another argument in favour of Dr. Black's opinion isthe change of colour of blood from black to red, which seems to show thatit loses carbon. 

_The Unknown_. --With the highest respect for the memory of Dr. Black, andfor the opinion of his disciple, I shall answer the arguments I have justheard. I will not allow any facts or laws from the action of dead matterto apply to living structures; the blood is a living fluid, and of thiswe are sure that it does not burn in respiration. The terms warmth andcold, as applied to the blood of animals, are improper in the sense inwhich they have been just used; all animals are, in fact, warm-blooded, and the degrees of their temperature are fitted to the circumstancesunder which they live, and those animals, the life of which is mostactive, possess most heat, which may be the result of general actions, and not a particular effect of respiration. Besides, a distinguishedphysiologist has rendered it probable that the animal heat depends moreupon the functions of the nerves than upon any result of respiration. Theargument derived from change of colour is perfectly delusive; it wouldnot follow if carbon were liberated from the blood that it mustnecessarily become brighter; sulphur combining with charcoal becomes aclear fluid, and a black oxide of copper becomes red in uniting with asubstance which abounds in carbon. No change in sensible qualities canever indicate with precision the nature of chemical change. I shallresume my view, which I cannot be said to have fully developed. When Istated that carbonic acid was formed in the venous blood in the processesof life, I meant merely to say that this blood, in consequence of certainchanges, became capable of giving off carbon and oxygen in union witheach other, for the moment inorganic matter enters into the compositionof living organs it obeys new laws. The action of the gastric juice ischemical, and it will only dissolve dead matters, and it dissolves themwhen they are in tubes of metal as well as in the stomach, but it has noaction upon living matter. Respiration is no more a chemical processthan the absorption of chyle; and the changes that take place in thelungs, though they appear so simple, may be very complicated; it is aslittle philosophical to consider them as a mere combustion of carbon asto consider the formation of muscle from the arterial blood ascrystallisation. There can be no doubt that all the powers and agenciesof matter are employed in the purposes of organisation, but the phenomenaof organisation can no more be referred to chemistry than those ofchemistry to mechanics. As oxygen stands in that electrical relation tothe other elements of animal matter which has been calledelectropositive, it may be supposed that some electrical function isexercised by oxygen in the blood; but this is a mere hypothesis. Anattempt has been made founded on experiments on the decomposition ofbodies by electricity to explain secretion by weak electrical powers, andto suppose the glands electrical organs, and even to imagine the actionof the nerves dependent upon electricity; these, like all other notionsof the same kind, appear to me very little refined. If electricaleffects be the exhibition of certain powers belonging to matter, which isa fair supposition, then no change can take place without their beingmore or less concerned; but to imagine the presence of electricity tosolve phenomena the cause of which is unknown is merely to substitute oneundefined word for another. In some animals electrical organs are found, but then they furnish the artillery of the animal and means of seizingits prey and of its defence. And speculations of this kind must beranked with those belonging to some of the more superficial followers ofthe Newtonian philosophy, who explained the properties of animated natureby mechanical powers, and muscular action by the expansion andcontraction of elastic bladders; man, in this state of vaguephilosophical inquiry, was supposed a species of hydraulic machine. Andwhen the pneumatic chemistry was invented, organic structures were soonimagined to be laboratories in which combinations and decompositionsproduced all the effects of living actions; then muscular contractionswere supposed to depend upon explosions like those of the detonatingcompounds, and the formation of blood from chyle was considered as a purechemical solution. And, now that the progress of science has opened newand extraordinary views in electricity, these views are not unnaturallyapplied by speculative reasoners to solve some of the mysterious andrecondite phenomena of organised beings. But the analogy is too remoteand incorrect; the sources of life cannot be grasped by such machinery;to look for them in the powers of electro-chemistry is seeking the livingamong the dead: that which touches will not be felt, that which sees willnot be visible, that which commands sensations will not be their subject. 

_Phil_. --I conclude, from what you last said, that though you areinclined to believe that some unknown subtle matter is added to theorganised system by respiration, yet you would not have us believe thatthis is electricity, or that there is any reason to suppose thatelectricity has a peculiar and special share in producing the functionsof life. 

_The Unknown_. --I wish to guard you against the adoption of anyhypothesis on this recondite and abstruse subject. But however difficultit may be to define the exact nature of respiration, yet the effect of itand its connexions with the functions of the body are sufficientlystriking. By the action of air on the blood it is fitted for thepurposes of life, and from the moment that animation is marked bysensation or volition, this function is performed, the punctum saliens inthe ovum seems to receive as it were the breath of life in the influenceof air. In the economy of the reproduction of the species of animals, one of the most important circumstances is the aeration of the ovum, andwhen this is not performed, from the blood of the mother as in themammalia by the placenta, there is a system for aerating as in theoviparous reptiles or fishes, which enables the air freely to passthrough the receptacles in which the eggs are deposited, or the eggitself is aerated out of the body through its coats or shell, and whenair is excluded, incubation or artificial heat has no effect. Fisheswhich deposit their eggs in water that contains only a limited portion ofair, make combinations which would seem almost the result of scientificknowledge or reason, though depending upon a more unerring principle, their instinct for preserving their offspring. Those fishes that spawnin spring or the beginning of summer and winch inhabit deep and stillwaters, as the carp, bream, pike, tench, &c. , deposit their eggs uponaquatic vegetables, which by the influence of the solar light constantlypreserve the water in a state of aeration. The trout, salmon, hucho, andothers 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 fromthe mountains, deposit their eggs in shallows on heaps of gravel, as nearas possible to the source of the stream where the water is fully combinedwith air; and to accomplish this purpose they travel for hundreds ofmiles against the current, and leap over cataracts and dams: thus theSalmo salar ascends by the Rhone and the Aar to the glaciers ofSwitzerland, the hucho by the Danube, the Isar, and the Save, passingthrough the lakes of the Tyrol and Styria to the highest torrents of theNoric and Julian Alps. 

_Phil_. --My own experience proves in the strongest manner the immediateconnection of sensibility with respiration; all that I can remember in myaccident was a certain violent and painful sensation of oppression in thechest, which must have been immediately succeeded by loss of sense. 

_Eub_. --I have no doubt that all your suffering was over at the momentyou describe; as far as sensibility is concerned, you were inanimate whenyour friend raised you from the bottom. This distinct connection ofsensibility with the absorption of air by the blood is, I think, infavour of the idea advanced by our friend, that some subtle and etherealmatter is supplied to the system in the elastic air which may be thecause of vitality. 

_The Unknown_. --Softly, if you please; I must not allow you to mistake myview. I think it probable that some subtle matter is derived from theatmosphere connected with the functions of life; but nothing can be moreremote from my opinion than to suppose it the cause of vitality. 

_Phil_. --This might have been fully inferred from the whole tenor of yourconversation, and particularly from that expression, "that which commandssensation will not be their subject. " I think I shall not mistake yourviews when I say that you do not consider vitality dependent upon anymaterial 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 havebeen distinguished physiologists who have imagined that by organisationpowers not naturally possessed by matter were developed, and thatsensibility was a property belonging to some unknown combination ofunknown ethereal elements. But such notions appear to meunphilosophical, and the mere substitution of unknown words for unknownthings. I can never believe that any division, or refinement, orsubtilisation, or juxtaposition, or arrangement of the particles ofmatter, can give to them sensibility; or that intelligence can resultfrom combinations of insensate and brute atoms. I can as easily imaginethat the planets are moving by their will or design round the sun, orthat a cannon ball is reasoning in making its parabolic curve. Thematerialists have quoted a passage of Locke in favour of their doctrine, who seemed to doubt "whether it might not have pleased God to bestow apower of thinking on matter. " But with the highest veneration for thisgreat reasoner, the founder of modern philosophical logic, I think thereis little of his usual strength of mind in this doubt. It appears to methat he might as well have asked whether it might not have pleased God tomake a house its own tenant. 

_Eub_. --I am not a professed materialist; but I think you treat rathertoo lightly the modest doubts of Locke on this subject. And withoutconsidering me as a partisan, you will, I hope, allow me to state some ofthe reasons which I have heard good physiologists advance in favour ofthat opinion to which you are so hostile. In the first accretion of theparts of animated beings they appear almost like the crystallised matter, with the simplest kind of life, scarcely sensitive. The gradualoperations by which they acquire new organs and new powers, correspondingto these organs, till they arrive at full maturity, forcibly strikes themind with the idea that the powers of life reside in the arrangement bywhich the organs are produced. Then, as there is a gradual increase ofpower corresponding to the increase of perfection of the organisation, sothere 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 itsstrength; and the feebleness and dotage of old age are in the directratio of the decline of the perfection of the organisation, and themental powers in extreme old age seem destroyed at the same time with thecorporeal ones, till the ultimate dissolution of the frame, when theelements are again restored to that dead nature from which they wereoriginally derived. Then, there was a period when the greatestphilosopher, statesman, or hero, that ever existed was a mere livingatom, an organised form with the sole power of perception; and thecombinations that a Newton formed before birth or immediately aftercannot be imagined to have possessed the slightest intellectualcharacter. If a peculiar principle be supposed necessary tointelligence, it must exist throughout animated nature. The elephantapproaches nearer to man in intellectual power than the oyster does tothe elephant; and a link of sensitive nature may be traced from thepolypus to the philosopher. Now, in the polypus the sentient principleis divisible, and from one polypus or one earthworm may be formed two orthree, all of which become perfect animals, and have perception andvolition; therefore, at least, the sentient principle has this propertyin common with matter, that it is divisible. Then to these difficultiesadd the dependence of all the higher faculties of the mind upon the stateof the brain; remember that not only all the intellectual powers, buteven sensibility is destroyed by the pressure of a little blood upon thecerebellum, and the difficulties increase. Call to mind likewise thesuspension of animation in cases similar to that of our friend, whenthere are no signs of life and when animation returns only with thereturn of organic action. Surely in all these instances everything whichyou consider as belonging to spirit appears in intimate dependence uponthe arrangements and properties of matter. 

_The Unknown_. --The arguments you have used are those which are generallyemployed by physiologists. They have weight in appearance, but not inreality. They prove that a certain perfection of the machinery of thebody is essential to the exercise of the powers of the mind, but they donot prove that the machine is the mind. Without the eye there can be nosensations of vision, and without the brain there could be no recollectedvisible ideas; but neither the optic nerve nor the brain can beconsidered as the percipient principle--they are but the instruments of apower which has nothing in common with them. What may be said of thenervous system may be applied to a different part of the frame; stop themotion of the heart, and sensibility and life cease, yet the livingprinciple is not in the heart, nor in the arterial blood which it sendsto every part of the system. A savage who saw the operation of a numberof power-looms weaving stockings cease at once on the stopping of themotion of a wheel, might well imagine that the motive force was in thewheel; he could not divine that it more immediately depended upon thesteam, and ultimately upon a fire below a concealed boiler. Thephilosopher sees the fire which is the cause of the motion of thiscomplicated machinery, so unintelligible to the savage; but both areequally ignorant of the divine fire which is the cause of the mechanismof organised structures. Profoundly ignorant on this subject, all thatwe can do is to give a history of our own minds. The external world ormatter 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 wecall our own body or organs. These organs are connected with othersensations, and move, as it were, with them in circles of existence, quitting for a time some trains of sensation to return to others; but themonad is always present. We can fix no beginning to its operations; wecan place no limit to them. We sometimes, in sleep, lose the beginningand end of a dream, and recollect the middle of it, and one dream has noconnection with another; and yet we are conscious of an infinite varietyof dreams, and there is a strong analogy for believing in an infinity ofpast existences, which must have had connection; and human life may beregarded as a type of infinite and immortal life, and its succession ofsleep and dreams as a type of the changes of death and birth to whichfrom its nature it is liable. That the ideas belonging to the mind wereoriginally gained from those classes of sensations called organs it isimpossible to deny, as it is impossible to deny that mathematical truthsdepend upon the signs which express them; but these signs are notthemselves the truths, nor are the organs the mind. The whole history ofintellect is a history of change according to a certain law; and weretain the memory only of those changes which may be useful to us--thechild forgets what happened to it in the womb; the recollections of theinfant likewise before two years are soon lost, yet many of the habitsacquired in that age are retained through life. The sentient principlegains thoughts by material instruments, and its sensations change asthose instruments change; and, in old age, the mind, as it were, fallsasleep to awake to a new existence. With its present organisation, theintellect of man is naturally limited and imperfect, but this dependsupon its material machinery; and in a higher organised form, it may beimagined to possess infinitely higher powers. Were man to be immortalwith his present corporeal frame, this immortality would only belong tothe machinery; and with respect to acquisitions of mind, he wouldvirtually die every two or three hundred years--that is to say, a certainquantity of ideas only could be remembered, and the supposed immortalbeing 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 ofhis life. To attempt to reason upon the manner in which the organs areconnected with sensation would be useless; the nerves and brain have someimmediate relation to these vital functions, but how they act it isimpossible to say. From the rapidity and infinite variety of thephenomena of perception, it seems extremely probable that there must bein the brain and nerves matter of a nature far more subtle and refinedthan anything discovered in them by observation and experiment, and thatthe immediate connection between the sentient principle and the body maybe established by kinds of ethereal matter, which can never be evident tothe senses, and which may bear the same relations to heat, light, andelectricity that these refined forms or modes of existence of matter bearto the gases. Motion is most easily produced by the lighter species ofmatter; and yet imponderable agents, such as electricity, possess forcesufficient to overturn the weightiest structures. Nothing can be fartherfrom my meaning than to attempt any definition on this subject, nor wouldI ever embrace or give authority to that idea of Newton, who supposesthat the immediate cause of sensation may be in undulations of anethereal medium. It does not, however, appear improbable to me that someof the more refined machinery of thought may adhere, even in anotherstate, to the sentient principle; for, though the organs of grosssensation--the nerves and brain--are destroyed by death, yet something ofthe more ethereal nature, which I have supposed, may be lessdestructible. And I sometimes imagine that many of those powers, whichhave been called instinctive, belong to the more refined clothing of thespirit; conscience, indeed, seems to have some undefined source, and maybear relation to a former state of being. 

_Eub_. --All your notions are merely ingenious speculations. Revelationgives no authority to your ideas of spiritual nature; the Christianimmortality is founded upon the resurrection of the body. 

_The Unknown_. --This I will not allow. Even in the Mosaic history of thecreation of man his frame is made in the image of God--that is, capableof intelligence; and the Creator breathes into it the breath of life, Hisown essence. Then our Saviour has said, "of the God of Abraham, ofIsaac, and of Jacob. " "He is not the God of the dead, but of theliving. " St. Paul has described the clothing of the spirit in a new andglorious body, taking the analogy from the living germ in the seed of theplant, which is not quickened till after apparent death; and thecatastrophe of our planet, which, it is revealed, is to be destroyed andpurified by fire before it is fitted for the habitation of the blest, isin perfect harmony with the view I have ventured to suggest. 

_Eub_. --I cannot make your notions coincide with what I have beenaccustomed to consider the meaning of Holy Writ. You allow everythingbelonging to the material life to be dependent upon the organisation ofthe body, and yet you imagine the spirit after death clothed with a newbody; and, in the system of rewards and punishments, this body isrendered happy or miserable for actions committed by another and extinctframe. A particular organisation may impel to improper and immoralgratification; it does not appear to me, according to the principles ofeternal justice, that the body of the resurrection should be punished forcrimes dependent upon a conformation now dissolved and destroyed. 

_The Unknown_. --Nothing is more absurd, I may say more impious, than forman, with a ken surrounded by the dense mists of sense, to reasonrespecting the decrees of eternal justice. You adopt here the samelimited view that you embraced in reasoning against the indestructibilityof the sentient principle in man from the apparent division of the livingprinciple in the polypus, not recollecting that to prove a quality can beincreased or exalted does not prove that it can be annihilated. If therebe, which I think cannot be doubted, a consciousness of good and evilconstantly belonging to the sentient principle in man, then rewards andpunishments naturally belong to acts of this consciousness, to obedience, or disobedience; and the indestructibility of the sentient being isnecessary to the decrees of eternal justice. On your view, even in thislife, just punishments for crimes would be almost impossible; for thematerials of which human beings are composed change rapidly, and in a fewyears probably not an atom of the primitive structure remains yet eventhe materialist is obliged in old age to do penance for the sins of hisyouth, and does not complain of the injustice of his decrepit body, entirely changed and made stiff by time, suffering for the intemperanceof his youthful flexible frame. On my idea, conscience is the frame ofthe mind, fitted for its probation in mortality. And this is in exactaccordance with the foundations of our religion, the Divine origin ofwhich is marked no less by its history than its harmony with theprinciples of our nature. Obedience to its precepts not only preparesfor a better state of existence in another world, but is likewisecalculated to make us happy here. We are constantly taught to renouncesensual pleasure and selfish gratifications, to forget our body andsensible organs, to associate our pleasures with mind, to fix ouraffections upon the great ideal generalisation of intelligence in the oneSupreme Being. And that we are capable of forming to ourselves animperfect idea even of the infinite mind is, I think, a strongpresumption of our own immortality, and of the distinct relation whichour finite knowledge bears to eternal wisdom. 

_Phil_. --I am pleased with your views; they coincide with those I hadformed at the time my imagination was employed upon the vision of theColosaeum, which I repeated to you, and are not in opposition with theopinions that the cool judgment and sound and humble faith of Ambrosiohave led me since to embrace. The doctrine of the materialists wasalways, even in my youth, a cold, heavy, dull, and insupportable doctrineto me, and necessarily tending to Atheism. When I had heard, withdisgust, in the dissecting-rooms the plan of the physiologist of thegradual accretion of matter, and its becoming endowed with irritability, ripening into sensibility and acquiring such organs as were necessary, byits own inherent forces, and at last rising into intellectual existence, a walk into the green fields or woods by the banks of rivers brought backmy feelings from nature to God; I saw in all the powers of matter theinstruments of the Deity; the sunbeams, the breath of the zephyr, awakened animation in forms prepared by Divine intelligence to receiveit; 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 asthe creative principle in the material world, and this love only as aDivine attribute. Then, my own mind, I felt connected with newsensations and indefinite hopes, a thirst for immortality; the greatnames of other ages and of distant nations appeared to me to be stillliving around me; and, even in the funeral monuments of the heroic andthe great, I saw, as it were, the decree of the indestructibility ofmind. These feelings, though generally considered as poetical, yet, Ithink, offer a sound philosophical argument in favour of the immortalityof the soul. In all the habits and instincts of young animals theirfeelings or movements may be traced in intimate relation to theirimproved perfect state; their sports have always affinities to theirmodes of hunting or catching their food, and young birds, even in thenest, show marks of fondness which, when their frames are developed, become signs of actions necessary to the reproduction and preservation ofthe species. The desire of glory, of honour, of immortal fame, and ofconstant knowledge, so usual in young persons of well-constituted minds, cannot, I think, be other than symptoms of the infinite and progressivenature 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 thesame beneficial influence on the mind. In youth, in health, andprosperity, it awakens feelings of gratitude and sublime love, andpurifies at the same time that it exalts; but it is in misfortune, insickness, in age, that its effects are most truly and beneficially felt;when submission in faith and humble trust in the Divine will, from dutiesbecome pleasures, undecaying sources of consolation; then it createspowers which were believed to be extinct, and gives a freshness to themind which was supposed to have passed away for ever, but which is nowrenovated as an immortal hope; then it is the Pharos, guiding the wave-tost mariner to his home, as the calm and beautiful still basins orfiords, surrounded by tranquil groves and pastoral meadows, to theNorwegian pilot escaping from a heavy storm in the north sea, or as thegreen and dewy spot gushing with fountains to the exhausted and thirstytraveller in the midst of the desert. Its influence outlives all earthlyenjoyments, and becomes stronger as the organs decay and the framedissolves; it appears as that evening star of light in the horizon oflife, 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; myfaith was strengthened and exalted by the opinions of the Unknown, forwhom I had not merely that veneration awakened by exalted talents, but astrong affection founded upon the essential benefit of the preservationof my life owing to him. I ventured, the evening after our visit to thecave of Adelsberg, to ask him some questions relating to his history andadventures. He said, "To attempt to give you any idea of the formationof my character would lead me into the history of my youth, which almostapproaches to a tale of romance. The source of the little informationand intelligence I possess I must refer to a restless activity of spirit, a love of glory which ever belonged to my infancy, and a sensibilityeasily excited and not easily conquered. My parentage was humble, yet Ican believe a traditional history of my paternal grandmother, that theorigin of our family was from an old Norman stock; I found this beliefupon certain feelings which I can only refer to an hereditary source, apride of decorum, a tact and refinement even in boyhood, and which arecontradictory to the idea of an origin from a race of peasants. Accidentopened to me in early youth a philosophical career, which I pursued withsuccess. In manhood fortune smiled upon me and made me independent; Ithen really became a philosopher, and pursued my travels with the objectof instructing myself and of benefiting mankind. I have seen most partsof Europe, and conversed, I believe, with all the illustrious men ofscience belonging to them. My life has not been unlike that of theancient Greek sages. I have added some little to the quantity of humanknowledge, and I have endeavoured to add something to the quantity ofhuman happiness. In my early life I was a sceptic; I have informed youhow I became a believer, and I constantly bless the Supreme Intelligencefor the favour of some gleams of Divine light which have been vouchsafedto me in this our state of darkness and doubt. "

_Phil_. --I am surprised that with your powers you did not enter into aprofessional career either of law or politics; you would have gained thehighest honours and distinctions. 

_The Unknown_. --To me there never has been a higher source of honour ordistinction than that connected with advances in science. I have notpossessed enough of the eagle in my character to make a direct flight tothe loftiest altitudes in the social world, and I certainly neverendeavoured to reach those heights by using the creeping powers of thereptile who, in ascending, generally chooses the dirtiest path, becauseit is the easiest. 

_Eub_. --I have often wondered that men of fortune and of rank do notapply themselves more to philosophical pursuits; they offer a delightfuland enviable road to distinction, one founded upon the blessings andbenefits conferred on our fellow-creatures; they do not supply the samesources of temporary popularity as successes in the senate or at the bar, but the glory resulting from them is permanent and independent of vulgartaste or caprice. In looking back to the history of the last five reignsin England, we find Boyles, Cavendishes, and Howards, who rendered thosegreat names more illustrious by their scientific honours; but we may invain search the aristocracy now for philosophers, and there are very fewpersons who pursue science with true dignity; it is followed more asconnected with objects of profit than those of fame, and there are fiftypersons who take out patents for supposed inventions for one who makes areal discovery. 

_Phil_. --The information we have already received from you proves to methat chemistry has been your favourite pursuit. I am surprised at this. The higher-mathematics and pure physics appear to me to offer much morenoble objects of contemplation and fields of discovery, and, practicallyconsidered, the results of the chemist are much more humble, belongingprincipally to the apothecary's shop and the kitchen. 

_Eub_. --I feel disposed to join you in attacking this favourite study ofour friend, but merely to provoke him to defend it. I wish our attackwould induce him to vindicate his science, and that we might enjoy alittle of the sport of literary gladiators, at least, in order to callforth 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 coveredwith velvet. In your attack upon chemistry, Philalethes, you limited theuse of it to the apothecary's shop and the kitchen. The first is anequivocal use; by introducing it into the kitchen you make it an artfundamental to all others. But if what you had stated had really meantto be serious, it would not have deserved a reply; as it is in mereplayfulness, it shall not be thrown away. I want eloquence, however, toadorn my subject, yet it is sufficiently exciting even to awaken feeling. Persons in general look at the magnificent fabric of civilized society asthe result of the accumulated labour, ingenuity, and enterprise of manthrough a long course of ages, without attempting to define what has beenowing to the different branches of human industry and science; andusually attribute to politicians, statesmen, and warriors a much greatershare than really belongs to them in the work: what they have done is inreality little. The beginning of civilization is the discovery of someuseful arts by which men acquire property, comforts, or luxuries. Thenecessity or desire of preserving them leads to laws and socialinstitutions. The discovery of peculiar arts gives superiority toparticular nations; and the love of power induces them to employ thissuperiority to subjugate other nations, who learn their arts, andultimately adopt their manners; so that in reality the origin, as well asthe progress and improvement, of civil society is founded in mechanicaland chemical inventions. No people have ever arrived at any degree ofperfection in their institutions who have not possessed in a high degreethe useful and refined arts. The comparison of savage and civilized man, in fact, demonstrates the triumph of chemical and mechanical philosophyas the causes not only of the physical, but ultimately even of moralimprovement. Look at the condition of man in the lowest state in whichwe are acquainted with him. Take the native of New Holland, advancedonly a few steps above the animal creation, and that principally by theuse of fire; naked, defending himself against wild beasts or killing themfor food only by weapons made of wood hardened in the fire, or pointedwith stones or fish bones; living only in holes dug out of the earth, orin huts rudely constructed of a few branches of trees covered with grass;having no approach to the enjoyment of luxuries or even comforts; unableto provide for his most pressing wants; having a language scarcelyarticulate, relating only to the great objects of nature, or to his mostpressing necessities or desires, and living solitary or in singlefamilies, unacquainted with religion, government, or laws, submitted tothe mercy of nature or the elements. How different is man in his higheststate of cultivation; every part of his body covered with the products ofdifferent chemical and mechanical arts made not only useful in protectinghim from the inclemency of the seasons but combined in forms of beautyand variety; creating out of the dust of the earth from the clay underhis feet instruments of use and ornament; extracting metals from the rudeore and giving to them a hundred different shapes for a thousanddifferent purposes; selecting and improving the vegetable productionswith which he covers the earth; not only subduing but taming anddomesticating the wildest, the fleetest, and the strongest inhabitants ofthe wood, the mountain, and the air; making the winds carry him on everypart of the immense ocean; and compelling the elements of air, water, andeven fire as it were to labour for him; concentrating in small spacematerials which act as the thunderbolt, and directing their energies soas to destroy at immense distances; blasting the rock, removing themountain, carrying water from the valley to the hill; perpetuatingthought in imperishable words, rendering immortal the exertion of genius, and presenting them as common property to all awakening minds, becomingas it were the true image of divine intelligence receiving and bestowingthe breath of life in the influence of civilization. 

_Eub_. --Really you are in the poetical, not the chemical chair, or ratheron the tripod. We claim from you some accuracy of detail, some minuteinformation, some proofs of what you assert. What you attribute to thechemical and mechanical arts, we might with the same propriety attributeto the fine arts, to letters, to political improvement, and to thoseinventions of which Minerva and Apollo and not Vulcan are the patrons. 

_The Unknown_. --I will be more minute. You will allow that the renderingskins insoluble in water by combining with them the astringent principleof certain vegetables is a chemical invention, and that without leather, our shoes, our carriages, our equipages would be very ill made; you willpermit me to say, that the bleaching and dying of wool and silk, cotton, and flax, are chemical processes, and that the conversion of them intodifferent clothes is a mechanical invention; that the working of iron, copper, tin, and lead, and the other metals, and the combining them indifferent alloys by which almost all the instruments necessary for theturner, the joiner, the stone-mason, the ship-builder, and the smith aremade, are chemical inventions; even the press, to the influence of whichI am disposed to attribute as much as you can do, could not have existedin any state of perfection without a metallic alloy; the combining ofalkali and sand, and certain clays and flints together to form glass andporcelain is a chemical process; the colours which the artist employs toframe resemblances of natural objects, or to create combinations morebeautiful than ever existed in Nature, are derived from chemistry; inshort, in every branch of the common and fine arts, in every departmentof human industry, the influence of this science is felt, and we may findin the fable of Prometheus taking the flame from heaven to animate hisman of clay an emblem of the effects of fire in its application tochemical purposes in creating the activity and almost the life of civilsociety. 

_Phil_. --It appears to me that you attribute to science what in manycases has been the result of accident. The processes of most of theuseful arts, which you call chemical, have been invented and improvedwithout any refined views, without any general system of knowledge. Lucretius attributes to accident the discovery of the fusion of themetals; a person in touching a shell-fish observes that it emits a purpleliquid as a dye, hence the Tyrian purple; clay is observed to harden inthe fire, and hence the invention of bricks, which could hardly failultimately to lead to the discovery of porcelain; oven glass, the mostperfect and beautiful of those manufactures you call chemical, is said tohave been discovered by accident; Theophrastus states that some merchantswho were cooking on lumps of soda or natron, near the mouth of the riverBelus, observed that a hard and vitreous substance was formed where thefused natron ran into the sand. 

_The Unknown_. --I will readily allow that accident has had much to dowith the origin of the arts as with the progress of the sciences. But ithas been by scientific processes and experiments that these accidentalresults have been rendered really applicable to the purposes of commonlife. Besides, it requires a certain degree of knowledge and scientificcombination to understand and seize upon the facts which have originatedin accident. It is certain that in all fires alkaline substances andsand are fused together, and clay hardened; yet for ages after thisdiscovery of fire, glass and porcelain were unknown till some men ofgenius profited by scientific combination often observed but neverapplied. It suits the indolence of those minds which never attemptanything, and which probably if they did attempt anything would notsucceed, to refer to accident that which belongs to genius. It issometimes said by such persons, that the discovery of the law ofgravitation was owing to accident: and a ridiculous story is told of thefalling of an apple as the cause of this discovery. As well might theinvention 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 ApolloBelvidere, be supposed to be owing to accidental combinations. In theprogress of an art, from its rudest to its more perfect state, the wholeprocess depends upon experiments. Science is in fact nothing more thanthe refinement of common sense making use of facts already known toacquire new facts. Clays which are yellow are known to burn red;calcareous earth renders flint fusible--the persons who have improvedearthenware made their selections accordingly. Iron was discovered atleast one thousand years before it was rendered malleable; and from whatHerodotus says of this discovery, there can be little doubt that it wasdeveloped by a scientific worker in metals. Vitruvius tells us that theceruleum, a colour made of copper, which exists in perfection in all theold paintings of the Greeks and Romans and on the mummies of theEgyptians, was discovered by an Egyptian king; there is therefore everyreason to believe that it was not the result of accidental combination, but of experiments made for producing or improving colours. Amongst theancient philosophers, many discoveries are attributed to Democritus andAnaxagoras; and, connected with chemical arts, the narrative of theinventions of Archimedes alone, by Plutarch, would seem to show how greatis the effect of science in creating power. In modern times, therefining of sugar, the preparation of nitre, the manufacturing of acids, salts, &c. , are all results of pure chemistry. Take gunpowder as aspecimen; no person but a man infinitely diversifying his processes andguided by analogy could have made such a discovery. Look into the booksof the alchemists, and some idea may be formed of the effects ofexperiments. It is true, these persons were guided by false views, yetthey made most useful researches; and Lord Bacon has justly compared themto the husbandman who, searching for an imaginary treasure, fertilisedthe soil. They might likewise be compared to persons who, looking forgold, discover the fragments of beautiful statues, which separately areof no value, and which appear of little value to the persons who foundthem; but which, when selected and put together by artists and theirdefective parts supplied, are found to be wonderfully perfect and worthyof conservation. Look to the progress of the arts since they have beenenlightened by a system of science, and observe with what rapidity theyhave advanced. Again, the steam-engine in its rudest form was the resultof a chemical experiment; in its refined state it required thecombinations of all the most recondite principles of chemistry andmechanics, and that excellent philosopher who has given this wonderfulinstrument of power to civil society was led to the great improvements hemade by the discoveries of a kindred genius on the heat absorbed whenwater becomes steam, and of the heat evolved when steam becomes water. Even the most superficial observer must allow in this case a triumph ofscience, for what a wonderful impulse has this invention given to theprogress of the arts and manufactories in our country, how much has itdiminished labour, how much has it increased the real strength of thecountry! Acting as it were with a thousand hands, it has multiplied ouractive population; and receiving its elements of activity from the bowelsof the earth, it performs operations which formerly were painful, oppressive, and unhealthy to the labourers, with regularity andconstancy, and gives security and precision to the efforts of themanufacturer. And the inventions connected with the steam-engine, at thesame time that they have greatly diminished labour of body, have tendedto increase power of mind and intellectual resources. Adam Smith wellobserves that manufacturers are always more ingenious than husbandmen;and manufacturers who use machinery will probably always be found moreingenious than handicraft manufacturers. You spoke of porcelain as aresult of accident; the improvements invented in this country, as well asthose made in Germany and France, have been entirely the result ofchemical experiments; the Dresden and the Sevres manufactories have beenthe work of men of science, and it was by multiplying his chemicalresearches that Wedgewood was enabled to produce at so cheap a rate thosebeautiful imitations which while they surpass the ancient vases insolidity and perfection of material, equal them in elegance, variety, andtasteful arrangement of their forms. In another department, the use ofthe electrical conductor was a pure scientific combination, and thesublimity of the discovery of the American philosopher was only equalledby the happy application he immediately made of it. In our own times itwould be easy to point out numerous instances in which great improvementsand beneficial results connected with the comforts, the happiness, andeven life of our fellow creatures have been the results of scientificcombinations; but I cannot do this without constituting myself a judge ofthe works of philosophers who are still alive, whose researches areknown, whose labours are respected, and who will receive from posteritypraises that their contemporaries hardly dare to bestow upon them. 

_Eub_. --We will allow that you have shown in many cases the utility ofscientific investigation as connected with the progress of the usefularts. But, in general, both the principles of chemistry are followed, and series of experiments performed without any view to utility; and agreat noise is made if a new metal or a new substance is discovered, orif some abstracted law is made known relating to the phenomena of nature;yet, amongst the variety of new substances, few have been applied to anytrifling use even, and the greater number have had no application at all. And with respect to the general views of the science, it would bedifficult to show that any real good had resulted from the discovery orextension of them. It does not add much to the dignity of a pursuit thatthose persons who have followed it for profit have really been mostuseful, and that the mere artisan or chemical manufacturer has done morefor society than the chemical philosopher. Besides, it has alwaysappeared to me that it is in the nature of this science to encouragemediocrity and to attach importance to insignificant things; very slightchemical labours seem to give persons a claim to the title ofphilosopher--to have dissolved a few grains of chalk in an acid, to haveshown that a very useless stone contains certain known ingredients, orthat the colouring matter of a flower is soluble in acid and not inalkali, is thought by some a foundation for chemical celebrity. I oncebegan to attend a course of chemical lectures and to read the journalscontaining the ephemeral productions of this science; I was dissatisfiedwith the nature of the evidence which the professor adopted in hisdemonstrations, and disgusted with the series of observations andexperiments which were brought forward one month to be overturned thenext. In November there was a Zingeberic acid, which in January wasshown to have no existence; one year there was a vegetable acid, whichthe 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 newalkali, and they flourished like the scenes in a new pantomime only todisappear. Then, the great object of the hundred triflers in the scienceappeared to be to destroy the reputation of the three or four great menwhose labours were really useful, and had in them something of dignity. And, there not being enough of trifling results or false experiments tofill up the pages of the monthly journals, the deficiency was supplied bysome 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, amongstthe new substances discovered, many have had immediate and very importantapplications. The chlorine, or oxymuriatic gas of Scheele, was scarcelyknown before it was applied by Berthollet to bleaching; scarcely wasmuriatic acid gas discovered by Priestley, when Guyton de Morveau used itfor destroying contagion. Consider the varied and diversifiedapplications of platinum, which has owed its existence as a useful metalentirely to the labours of an illustrious chemical philosopher; look atthe beautiful yellow afforded by one of the new metals, chrome; considerthe medical effects of iodine in some of the most painful and disgustingmaladies belonging to human nature, and remember how short a timeinvestigations 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 merelyworked upon the materials furnished to him. We have no history of themanner in which iron was rendered malleable; but we know that platinumcould only have been worked by a person of the most refined chemicalresources, who made multiplied experiments upon it after the mostingenious and profound views. But, waiving all common utility, allvulgar applications, there is something in knowing and understanding theoperation of Nature, some pleasure in contemplating the order and harmonyof the arrangements belonging to the terrestrial system of things. Thereis no absolute utility in poetry, but it gives pleasure, refines andexalts the mind. Philosophic pursuits have likewise a noble andindependent use of this kind, and there is a double reason offered forpursuing them, for whilst in their sublime speculations they reach to theheavens, in their application they belong to the earth; whilst they exaltthe intellect, they provide food for our common wants, and likewiseminister to the noblest appetites and most exalted views belonging to ournature. The results of this science are not like the temples of theancients, in which statues of the gods were placed, where incense wasoffered and sacrifices were performed, and which were presented to theadoration of the multitude founded upon superstitious feelings; but theyare rather like the palaces of the moderns, to be admired and used, andwhere the statues, which in the ancients raised feelings of adoration andawe, 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 earthis clothed with verdure and life, how the clouds, mists, and rain areformed, what causes all the changes of this terrestrial system of things, and by what divine laws order is preserved amidst apparent confusion. Itis a sublime occupation to investigate the cause of the tempest and thevolcano, and to point out their use in the economy of things, to bringthe lightning from the clouds and make it subservient to our experiments, to produce, as it were, a microcosm in the laboratory of art, and tomeasure and weigh those invisible atoms which, by their motions andchanges according to laws impressed upon them by the Divine Intelligence, constitute the universe of things. The true chemical philosopher seesgood in all the diversified forms of the external world. Whilst heinvestigates the operations of infinite power guided by infinite wisdom, all low prejudices, all mean superstitions, disappear from his mind. Hesees man an atom amidst atoms fixed upon a point in space, and yetmodifying the laws that are around him by understanding them, andgaining, as it were, a kind of dominion over time and an empire inmaterial space, and exerting on a scale infinitely small a power seeminga sort of shadow or reflection of a creative energy, and which entitleshim to the distinction of being made in the image of God and animated bya spark of the Divine Mind. Whilst chemical pursuits exalt theunderstanding, they do not depress the imagination or weaken genuinefeeling; whilst they give the mind habits of accuracy by obliging it toattend to facts, they likewise extend its analogies, and thoughconversant with the minute forms of things, they have for their ultimateend the great and magnificent objects of Nature. They regard theformation of a crystal, the structure of a pebble, the nature of a clayor earth; and they apply to the causes of the diversity of our mountainchains, the appearances of the winds, thunderstorms, meteors, theearthquake, the volcano, and all those phenomena which offer the moststriking images to the poet and the painter. They keep alive thatinextinguishable thirst after knowledge which is one of the greatestcharacteristics of our nature, for every discovery opens a new field forinvestigation of facts, shows us the imperfection of our theories. Ithas justly been said that the greater the circle of light, the greaterthe boundary of darkness by which it is surrounded. This strictlyapplies to chemical inquiries, and hence they are wonderfully suited tothe progressive nature of the human intellect, which by its increasingefforts to acquire a higher kind of wisdom, and a state in which truth isfully and brightly revealed, seems, as it were, to demonstrate itsbirthright to immortality. 

_Eub_. --I am glad that our opposition has led you to so complete avindication of your favourite science. I want no further proof of itsutility. I regret that I have not before made it a particular object ofstudy. 

_Phil_. --As our friend has so fully convinced us of the importance ofchemistry, I hope he will descend to some particulars as to its realnature, its objects, its instruments. I would willingly have adefinition of chemistry and some idea of the qualifications necessary tobecome a chemist, and of the apparatus essential for understanding whathas 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 viewof an infinite variety of facts. Dr. Black has defined chemistry to bethat science which treats of the changes produced in bodies by motions oftheir ultimate particles or atoms, but this definition is hypothetical, for the ultimate particles or atoms are mere creations of theimagination. I will give you a definition, which will have the merit ofnovelty and which is probably general in its application. Chemistryrelates to those operations by which the intimate nature of bodies ischanged, or by which they acquire new properties. This definition willnot only apply to the effects of mixture, but to the phenomena ofelectricity, and, in short, to all the changes which do not merely dependupon the motion or division of masses of matter. However difficult itmay have been to have given you a definition of chemistry, it is stillmore difficult to give you a detail of all the qualities necessary for achemical philosopher. I will not name as many as Athenaeus has named fora cook, who, he says, ought to be a mathematician, a theoreticalmusician, a natural philosopher, a natural historian, &c. , though you hada disposition just now to make chemistry merely subservient to the usesof the kitchen. But I will seriously mention some of the studiesfundamental to the higher departments of this science; a man may be agood practical chemist perhaps without possessing them, but he never canbecome a great chemical philosopher. The person who wishes to understandthe higher departments of chemistry, or to pursue them in their mostinteresting relations to the economy of Nature, ought to be well-groundedin elementary mathematics; he will oftener have to refer to arithmeticthan algebra, and to algebra than to geometry. But all these scienceslend their aid to chemistry; arithmetic, in determining the proportionsof analytical results and the relative weights of the elements of bodies;algebra, in ascertaining the laws of the pressure of elastic fluids, theforce of vapour as dependent upon temperature, and the effects of massesand surfaces on the communication and radiation of heat; the applicationsof geometry are principally limited to the determination of thecrystalline forms of bodies, which constitute the most important type oftheir nature, and often offer useful hints for analytical researchesrespecting their composition. The first principles of natural philosophyor general physics ought not to be entirely unknown to the chemist. Asthe most active agents are fluids, elastic fluids, heat, light, andelectricity, he ought to have a general knowledge of mechanics, hydrodynamics, pneumatics, optics, and electricity. Latin and Greekamong the dead and French among the modern languages are necessary, and, as the most important after French, German and Italian. In naturalhistory and in literature what belongs to a liberal education, such asthat of our universities, is all that is required; indeed, a young manwho has performed the ordinary course of college studies which aresupposed fitted for common life and for refined society, has all thepreliminary knowledge necessary to commence the study of chemistry. Theapparatus essential to the modern chemical philosopher is much less bulkyand expensive than that used by the ancients. An air pump, an electricalmachine, a voltaic battery (all of which may be upon a small scale), ablow-pipe apparatus, a bellows and forge, a mercurial and water-gasapparatus, cups and basins of platinum and glass, and the common reagentsof chemistry, are what are required. All the implements absolutelynecessary may be carried in a small trunk, and some of the best and mostrefined researches of modern chemists have been made by means of anapparatus which might with ease be contained in a small travellingcarriage, and the expense of which is only a few pounds. The facilitywith which chemical inquiries are carried on, and the simplicity of theapparatus, offer additional reasons, to those I have already given, forthe pursuit of this science. It is not injurious to the health; themodern chemist is not like the ancient one, who passed the greater partof his time exposed to the heat and smoke of a furnace and theunwholesome vapours of acids and alkalies and other menstrua, of which, for a single experiment, he consumed several pounds. His processes maybe carried on in the drawing-room, and some of them are no less beautifulin appearance than satisfactory in their results. It was said, by anauthor belonging to the last century, of alchemy, "that its beginning wasdeceit, its progress labour, and its end beggary. " It may be said ofmodern chemistry, that its beginning is pleasure, its progress knowledge, and its objects truth and utility. I have spoken of the scientificattainments necessary for the chemical philosopher; I will say a fewwords of the intellectual qualities necessary for discovery or for theadvancement of the science. Amongst them patience, industry, andneatness in manipulation, and accuracy and minuteness in observing andregistering the phenomena which occur, are essential. A steady hand anda quick eye are most useful auxiliaries; but there have been very fewgreat chemists who have preserved these advantages through life; for thebusiness of the laboratory is often a service of danger, and theelements, like the refractory spirits of romance, though the obedientslave of the magician, yet sometimes escape the influence of his talismanand endanger his person. Both the hands and eyes of others, however, maybe sometimes advantageously made use of. By often repeating a process oran observation, the errors connected with hasty operations or imperfectviews are annihilated; and, provided the assistant has no preconceivednotions of his own, and is ignorant of the object of his employer inmaking the experiment, his simple and bare detail of facts will often bethe best foundation for an opinion. With respect to the higher qualitiesof intellect necessary for understanding and developing the general lawsof the science, the same talents I believe are required as for makingadvancement in every other department of human knowledge; I need not bevery minute. The imagination must be active and brilliant in seekinganalogies; yet entirely under the influence of the judgment in applyingthem. The memory must be extensive and profound; rather, however, calling up general views of things than minute trains of thought. Themind must not be, like an encyclopedia, a burthen of knowledge, butrather a critical dictionary which abounds in generalities, and pointsout where more minute information may be obtained. In detailing theresults of experiments and in giving them to the world, the chemicalphilosopher should adopt the simplest style and manner; he will avoid allornaments as something injurious to his subject, and should bear in mindthe saying of the first king of Great Britain respecting a sermon whichwas excellent in doctrine but overcharged with poetical allusions andfigurative language, "that the tropes and metaphors of the speaker werelike the brilliant wild flowers in a field of corn--very pretty, butwhich did very much hurt the corn. " In announcing even the greatest andmost important discoveries, the true philosopher will communicate hisdetails with modesty and reserve; he will rather be a useful servant ofthe public, bringing forth a light from under his cloak when it is neededin darkness, than a charlatan exhibiting fireworks and having a trumpeterto announce their magnificence. I see you are smiling, and think what Iam saying in bad taste; yet, notwithstanding, I will provoke your smilesstill further by saying a word or two on his other moral qualities. Thathe should be humble-minded, you will readily allow, and a diligentsearcher after truth, and neither diverted from this great object by thelove of transient glory or temporary popularity, looking rather to theopinion of ages than to that of a day, and seeking to be remembered andnamed rather in the epochas of historians than in the columns ofnewspaper writers or journalists. He should resemble the moderngeometricians in the greatness of his views and the profoundness of hisresearches, and the ancient alchemists in industry and piety. I do notmean that he should affix written prayers and inscriptions ofrecommendations of his processes to Providence, as was the custom ofPeter Wolfe, and who was alive in my early days, but his mind shouldalways be awake to devotional feeling, and in contemplating the varietyand the beauty of the external world, and developing its scientificwonders, he will always refer to that infinite wisdom through whosebeneficence he is permitted to enjoy knowledge; and, in becoming wiser, he will become better, he will rise at once in the scale of intellectualand moral existence, his increased sagacity will be subservient to a moreexalted faith, and in proportion as the veil becomes thinner throughwhich he sees the causes of things he will admire more the brightness ofthe 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 theUnknown, my preserver, now become my friend, and Eubathes, to Pola, inIstria. We entered the harbour of Pola in a felucca when the sun wassetting; and I know no scene more splendid than the amphitheatre seenfrom the sea in this light. It appears not as a building in ruins, butlike a newly erected work, and the reflection of the colours of itsbrilliant marble and beautiful forms seen upon the calm surface of thewaters gave to it a double effect--that of a glorious production of artand of a magnificent picture. We examined with pleasure the remains ofthe arch of Augustus and the temple, very perfect monuments of imperialgrandeur. But the splendid exterior of the amphitheatre was not inharmony with the bare and naked walls of the interior; there were none ofthose durable and grand seats of marble, such as adorn the amphitheatreof Verona, from which it is probable that the whole of the arena andconveniences for the spectators had been constructed of wood. Theirtotal disappearance led us to reflect upon the causes of the destructionof so many of the works of the older nations. I said, in ourmetaphysical abstractions, we refer the changes, the destruction ofmaterial forms, to time, but there must be physical laws in Nature bywhich they are produced; and I begged our new friend to give us someideas on this subject in his character of chemical philosopher. If humanscience, I said, has discovered the principle of the decay of things, itis possible that human art may supply means of conservation, and bestowimmortality on some of the works which appear destined by theirperfection for future ages. 

_The Unknown_. --I shall willingly communicate to you my views of theoperation of time, philosophically considered. A great philosopher hassaid, 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 tothe earth, whether in its primitive state, or modified by human hands, issubmitted to certain and immutable laws of destruction, as permanent anduniversal as those which produce the planetary motions. The propertywhich, as far as our experience extends, universally belongs to matter, gravitation, is the first and most general cause of change in ourterrestrial system; and, whilst it preserves the great mass of the globein a uniform state, its influence is continually producing alterationsupon the surface. The water, raised in vapour by the solar heat, isprecipitated by the cool air in the atmosphere; it is carried down bygravitation to the surface, and gains its mechanical force from this law. Whatever is elevated above the superfices by the powers of vegetation oranimal life, or by the efforts of man, by gravitation constantly tends tothe common centre of attraction; and the great reason of the duration ofthe pyramid above all other forms is, that it is most fitted to resistthe force of gravitation. The arch, the pillar, and all perpendicularconstructions, are liable to fall when a degradation from chemical ormechanical causes takes place in their inferior parts. The forms uponthe surface of the globe are preserved from the influence of gravitationby the attraction of cohesion, or by chemical attraction; but if theirparts had freedom of motion, they would all be levelled by this power, gravitation, and the globe would appear as a plane and smooth oblatespheroid, flattened at the poles. The attraction of cohesion or chemicalattraction, in its most energetic state, is not liable to be destroyed bygravitation; this power only assists the agencies of other causes ofdegradation. Attraction, of whatever kind, tends, as it were, to producerest--a sort of eternal sleep in Nature. The great antagonist power isheat. By the influence of the sun the globe is exposed to greatvarieties of temperature; an addition of heat expands bodies, and anabstraction of heat causes them to contract; by variation of heat, certain kinds of matter are rendered fluid, or elastic, and changes fromfluids into solids, or from solids or fluids into elastic substances, and_vice versa_, are produced; and all these phenomena are connected withalterations tending to the decay or destruction of bodies. It is notprobable that the mere contraction or expansion of a solid, from thesubtraction or addition of heat, tends to loosen its parts; but if waterexists in these parts, then its expansion, either in becoming vapour orice, tends not only to diminish their cohesion, but to break them intofragments. There is, you know, a very remarkable property of water--itsexpansion by cooling, and at the time of becoming ice--and this is agreat cause of destruction in the northern climates; for where ice formsin the crevices or cavities of stones, or when water which has penetratedinto cement freezes, its expansion acts with the force of the lever orthe screw in destroying or separating the parts of bodies. Themechanical powers of water, as rain, hail, or snow, in descending fromthe atmosphere, are not entirely without effect; for in acting upon theprojections of solids, drops of water or particles of snow, and stillmore of hail, have a power of abrasion, and a very soft substance, fromits mass assisting gravitation, may break a much harder one. Theglacier, by its motion, grinds into powder the surface of the graniterock; and the Alpine torrents, that have their origin under glaciers, arealways turbid, from the destruction of the rocks on which the glacier isformed. The effect of a torrent in deepening its bed will explain themechanical agency of fluid-water, though this effect is infinitelyincreased, and sometimes almost entirely dependent, upon the solidmatters which are carried down by it. An angular fragment of stone inthe course of ages moved in the cavity of a rock makes a deep roundexcavation, and is worn itself into a spherical form. A torrent of rainflowing 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 ascale infinitely more minute, but according to the same law. Thebuildings of ancient Rome have not only been liable to the constantoperation of the rain-courses, or minute torrents produced by rains, buteven the Tiber, swollen with floods of the Sabine mountains and theApennines, has often entered into the city, and a winter seldom passesaway 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. Themonuments of Egypt are perhaps the most ancient and permanent of thosebelonging to the earth, and in that country rain is almost unknown. Andall the causes of degradation connected with the agency of water act morein the temperate climates than in the hot ones, and most of all in thosecountries where the inequalities of temperature are greatest. Themechanical effects of air are principally in the action of winds inassisting the operation of gravitation, and in abrading by dust, sand, stones, and atmospheric water. These effects, unless it be in the caseof a building blown down by a tempest, are imperceptible in days, or evenyears; yet a gentle current of air carrying the silicious sand of thedesert, or the dust of a road for ages against the face of a structure, must ultimately tend to injure it, for with infinite or unlimitedduration, an extremely small cause will produce a very great effect. Themechanical agency of electricity is very limited; the effects oflightning have, however, been witnessed, even in some of the greatmonuments of antiquity, the Colosaeum at Rome, for instance; and onlylast year, in a violent thunderstorm, some of the marble, I have beeninformed, was struck from the top of one of the arches in this building, and a perpendicular rent made, of some feet in diameter. But thechemical effects of electricity, though excessively slow and gradual, yetare much more efficient in the great work of destruction. It is to thegeneral chemical doctrines of the changes produced by this powerful agentthat I must now direct your especial attention. 

_Eub_. --Would not the consideration of the subject have been moredistinct, and your explanations of the phenomena more simple, had youcommenced by dividing the causes of change into mechanical and chemical;if you had first considered them separately, and then their jointeffects?

_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. Inconsequence of your hint, I shall alter my plan a little, and considerfirst the chemical agency of water, then that of air, and lastly that ofelectricity. In every species of chemical change, temperature isconcerned. But unless the results of volcanoes and earthquakes bedirectly referred to this power, it has no chemical effect in relation tothe changes ascribed to time simply considered as heat, but itsoperations, which are the most important belonging to the terrestrialcycle of changes, are blended with, or bring into activity, those ofother agents. One of the most distinct and destructive agencies of waterdepends upon its solvent powers, which are usually greatest when itstemperature is highest. Water is capable of dissolving, in larger orsmaller proportions, most compound bodies, and the calcareous andalkaline elements of stones are particularly liable to this kind ofoperation. When water holds in solution carbonic acid, which is alwaysthe case when it is precipitated from the atmosphere, its power ofdissolving carbonate of lime is very much increased, and in theneighbourhood of great cities, where the atmosphere contains a largeproportion of this principle, the solvent powers of rain upon the marbleexposed to it must be greatest. Whoever examines the marble statues inthe British Museum, which have been removed from the exterior of theParthenon, will be convinced that they have suffered from this agency;and an effect distinct in the pure atmosphere and temperate climate ofAthens, must be upon a higher scale in the vicinity of other greatEuropean cities, where the consumption of fuel produces carbonic acid inlarge quantities. Metallic substances, such as iron, copper, bronze, brass, tin, and lead, whether they exist in stones, or are used forsupport or connection in buildings, are liable to be corroded by waterholding in solution the principles of the atmosphere; and the rust andcorrosion, which are made, poetically, qualities of time, depend upon theoxidating powers of water, which by supplying oxygen in a dissolved orcondensed state enables the metals to form new combinations. All thevegetable substances, exposed to water and air, are liable to decay, andeven the vapour in the air, attracted by wood, gradually reacts upon itsfibres and assists decomposition, or enables its elements to take newarrangements. Hence it is that none of the roofs of ancient buildingsmore than a thousand years old remain, unless it be such as areconstructed of stone, as those of the Pantheon of Rome and the tomb ofTheodoric at Ravenna, the cupola of which is composed of a single blockof marble. The pictures of the Greek masters, which were painted on thewood of the abies, or pine of the Mediterranean, likewise, as we areinformed by Pliny, owed their destruction not to a change in the colours, not to the alteration of the calcareous ground on which they werepainted, but to the decay of the tablets of wood on which the intonaco orstucco was laid. Amongst the substances employed in building, wood, iron, tin, and lead, are most liable to decay from the operation ofwater, then marble, when exposed to its influence in the fluid form;brass, copper, granite, sienite, and porphyry are more durable. But instones, much depends upon the peculiar nature of their constituent parts;when the feldspar of the granite rocks contains little alkali orcalcareous 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 ofwater containing oxygen and carbonic acid on the ferruginous elementstends to produce the disintegration of the stone. The red granite, blacksienite, 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 undergoalteration: the feldspar contains much alkaline matter; and the mica andschorl, much protoxide of iron. A remarkable instance of the decay ofgranite may be seen in the Hanging Tower of Pisa; whilst the marblepillars in the basement remain scarcely altered, the granite ones havelost a considerable portion of their surface, which falls off continuallyin scales, and exhibits everywhere stains from the formation of peroxideof iron. The kaolin, or clay, used in most countries for the manufactureof fine porcelain or china, is generally produced from the feldspar ofdecomposing granite, in which the cause of decay is the dissolution andseparation of the alkaline ingredients. 

_Eub_. --I have seen serpentines, basalts, and lavas which internally weredark, and which from their weight, I should suppose, must contain oxideof iron, superficially brown or red, and decomposing. Undoubtedly thiswas from the action of water impregnated with air upon their ferruginouselements. 

_The Unknown_. --You are perfectly right. There are few compound stones, possessing a considerable specific gravity, which are not liable tochange from this cause; and oxide of iron amongst the metallic substancesanciently known, is the most generally diffused in nature, and mostconcerned in the changes which take place on the surface of the globe. The chemical action of carbonic acid is so much connected with that ofwater, that it is scarcely possible to speak of them separately, as mustbe evident from what I have before said; but the same action which isexerted by the acid dissolved in water is likewise exerted by it in itselastic state, and in this case the facility with which the quantity ischanged makes up for the difference of the degree of condensation. Thereis no reason to believe that the azote of the atmosphere has anyconsiderable action in producing changes of the nature we are studying onthe 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, tendsto disintegrate the parts of stones, the oxygen acts upon vegetablematter. And this great chemical agent is at once necessary, in all theprocesses of life and in all those of decay, in which Nature, as it were, takes again to herself those instruments, organs, and powers, which hadfor a while been borrowed and employed for the purpose or the wants ofthe living principle. Almost everything effected by rapid combinationsin combustion may also be effected gradually by the slow absorption ofoxygen; and though the productions of the animal and vegetable kingdomare much more submitted to the power of atmospheric agents than those ofthe mineral kingdom, yet, as in the instances which have just beenmentioned, oxygen gradually destroys the equilibrium of the elements ofstones, and tends to reduce into powder, to render fit for soils, eventhe hardest aggregates belonging to our globe. Electricity, as achemical agent, may be considered not only as directly producing aninfinite variety of changes, but likewise as influencing almost all whichtake place. There are not two substances on the surface of the globethat are not in different electrical relations to each other; andchemical attraction itself seems to be a peculiar form of the exhibitionof electrical attraction; and wherever the atmosphere, or water, or anypart of the surface of the earth gains accumulated electricity of adifferent kind from the contiguous surfaces, the tendency of thiselectricity is to produce new arrangements of the parts of thesesurfaces; thus a positively electrified cloud, acting even at a greatdistance on a moistened stone, tends to attract its oxygenous, oracidiform or acid, ingredients, and a negatively electrified cloud hasthe same effect upon its earthy, alkaline, or metallic matter. And thesilent and slow operation of electricity is much more important in theeconomy of Nature than its grand and impressive operation in lightningand thunder. The chemical agencies of water and air are assisted bythose of electricity; and their joint effects combined with those ofgravitation and the mechanical ones I first described are sufficient toaccount for the results of time. But the physical powers of Nature inproducing decay are assisted likewise by certain agencies or energies oforganised beings. A polished surface of a building or a statue is nosooner made rough from the causes that have been mentioned than the seedsof 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 atlength a soil is formed, in which grass can fix its roots. In thecrevices of walls, where this soil is washed down, even the seeds oftrees grow, and, gradually as a building becomes more ruined, ivy andother parasitical plants cover it. Even the animal creation lends itsaid in the process of destruction when man no longer labours for theconservation of his works. The fox burrows amongst ruins, bats and birdsnestle in the cavities in walls, the snake and the lizard likewise makethem their habitation. Insects act upon a smaller scale, but by theirunited energies sometimes produce great effect; the ant, by establishingher colony and forming her magazines, often saps the foundations of thestrongest buildings, and the most insignificant creatures triumph, as itwere, over the grandest works of man. Add to these sure and slowoperations the devastations of war, the effects of the destructive zealof bigotry, the predatory fury of barbarians seeking for concealed wealthunder the foundations of buildings, and tearing from them every metallicsubstance, and it is rather to be wondered that any of the works of thegreat nations of antiquity are still in existence. 

_Phil_. --Your view of the causes of devastation really is a melancholyone. Nor do I see any remedy; the most important causes will alwaysoperate. Yet, supposing the constant existence of a highly civilisedpeople, the ravages of time might be repaired, and by defending thefinest works of art from the external atmosphere, their changes would bescarcely perceptible. 

_Eub_. --I doubt much whether it is for the interests of a people that itspublic works should be of a durable kind. One of the great causes of thedecline of the Roman Empire was that the people of the Republic and ofthe first empire left nothing for their posterity to do; aqueducts, temples, forums, everything was supplied, and there were no objects toawaken activity, no necessity to stimulate their inventive faculties, andhardly any wants to call forth their industry. 

_The Unknown_. --At least, you must allow the importance of preservingobjects of the fine arts. Almost everything we have worthy of admirationis owing to what has been preserved from the Greek school, and thenations who have not possessed these works or models have made little orno progress towards perfection. Nor does it seem that a mere imitationof Nature is sufficient to produce the beautiful or perfect; but theclimate, the manners, customs, and dress of the people, its genius andtaste, all co-operate. Such principles of conservation as Philaletheshas referred to are obvious. No works of excellence ought to be exposedto the atmosphere, and it is a great object to preserve them inapartments of equable temperature and extremely dry. The roofs ofmagnificent buildings should be of materials not likely to be dissolvedby water or changed by air. Many electrical conductors should be placedso as to prevent the slow or the rapid effects of atmosphericelectricity. In painting, lapis lazuli or coloured hard glasses, inwhich the oxides are not liable to change, should be used, and should belaid on marble or stucco encased in stone, and no animal or vegetablesubstances, except pure carbonaceous matter, should be used in thepigments, and none should be mixed with the varnishes. 

_Eub_. --Yet, when all is done that can be done in the work ofconservation, it is only producing a difference in the degree ofduration. And from the statements that our friend has made it is evidentthat none of the works of a mortal being can be eternal, as none of thecombinations of a limited intellect can be infinite. The operations ofNature, when slow, are no less sure; however man may for a time usurpdominion over her, she is certain of recovering her empire. He convertsher rocks, her stones, her trees, into forms of palaces, houses, andships; he employs the metals found in the bosom of the earth asinstruments of power, and the sands and clays which constitute itssurface as ornaments and resources of luxury; he imprisons air by water, and tortures water by fire to change or modify or destroy the naturalforms of things. But, in some lustrums his works begin to change, and ina few centuries they decay and are in ruins; and his mighty temples, framed as it were for immortal and divine purposes, and his bridgesformed of granite and ribbed with iron, and his walls for defence, andthe splendid monuments by which he has endeavoured to give eternity evento his perishable remains, are gradually destroyed; and these structures, which have resisted the waves of the ocean, the tempests of the sky, andthe stroke of the lightning, shall yield to the operation of the dews ofheaven, of frost, rain, vapour, and imperceptible atmospheric influences;and, as the worm devours the lineaments of his mortal beauty, so thelichens and the moss and the most insignificant plants shall feed uponhis columns and his pyramids, and the most humble and insignificantinsects shall undermine and sap the foundations of his colossal works, and make their habitations amongst the ruins of his palaces and thefalling seats of his earthly glory. 

_Phil_. --Your history of the laws of the inevitable destruction ofmaterial forms recalls to my memory our discussion at Adelsberg. Thechanges of the material universe are in harmony with those which belongto the human body, and which you suppose to be the frame or machinery ofthe sentient principle. May we not venture to imagine that the visibleand tangible world, with which we are acquainted by our sensations, bearsthe same relation to the Divine and Infinite Intelligence that our organsbear to our mind, with this only difference, that in the changes of thedivine system there is no decay, there being in the order of things aperfect unity, and all the powers springing from one will and being aconsequence of that will, are perfectly and unalterably balanced. Newtonseemed to apprehend, that in the laws of the planetary motions there wasa principle which would ultimately be the cause of the destruction of thesystem. Laplace, by pursuing and refining the principles of our greatphilosopher, has proved that what appeared sources of disorder are, infact, the perfecting machinery of the system, and that the principle ofconservation is as eternal as that of motion. 

_The Unknown_. --I dare not offer any speculations on this grand and awfulsubject. We can hardly comprehend the cause of a simple atmosphericphenomenon, such as the fall of a heavy body from a meteor; we cannoteven embrace in one view the millionth part of the objects surroundingus, and yet we have the presumption to reason upon the infinite universeand the eternal mind by which it was created and is governed. On thesesubjects I have no confidence in reason, I trust only to faith; and, asfar as we ought to inquire, we have no other guide but revelation. 

_Phil_. --I agree with you that whenever we attempt metaphysicalspeculations, we must begin with a foundation of faith. And being surefrom revelation that God is omnipotent and omnipresent, it appears to meno improper use of our faculties to trace even in the natural universethe acts of His power and the results of His wisdom, and to drawparallels from the infinite to the finite mind. Remember, we are taughtthat man was created in the image of God, and, I think, it cannot bedoubted that in the progress of society man has been made a greatinstrument by his energies and labours for improving the moral universe. Compare the Greeks and Romans with the Assyrians and Babylonians, and theancient Greeks and Romans with the nations of modern Christendom, and itcannot, I think, be questioned that there has been a great superiority inthe latter nations, and that their improvements have been subservient toa more exalted state of intellectual and religious existence. If thislittle 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 fromthe sacred writings that there are intelligences of a higher nature thanman, 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 tothose which I have imagined in the higher planetary systems. There ismuch reason to infer from astronomical observations that great changestake place in the system of the fixed stars: Sir William Herschel, indeed, seems to have believed that he saw nebulous or luminous matter inthe process of forming suns, and there are some astronomers who believethat stars have been extinct; but it is more probable that they havedisappeared from peculiar motions. It is, perhaps, rather a poeticalthan a philosophical idea, yet I cannot help forming the opinion thatgenii or seraphic intelligences may inhabit these systems and may be theministers of the eternal mind in producing changes in them similar tothose which have taken place on the earth. Time is almost a human wordand change entirely a human idea; in the system of Nature we shouldrather say progress than change. The sun appears to sink in the ocean indarkness, 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, Natureasserts her empire over them, and the vegetable world rises in constantyouth, and--in a period of annual successions, by the labours of manproviding food--vitality, and beauty upon the wrecks of monuments, whichwere once raised for purposes of glory, but which are now applied toobjects of utility.