IN LHluERZITEl

4 938

THE LAST DAYS

OF

A PHILOSOPHER

Lately published,

By the Author  of Consolations in  T ravel,

SALMONIA; or, DAYS of FLV-FISHING. A
Series of Conversations on the Art of Fly-Fishing for the
Species and Varieties of the Salmo, and on the habit of these
Fishes. A New Edit ion,  corrected and enlarged, and illustrated
with numerous new Engravings and VVood Cuts. Small
8vo. 12s.

“ Our modem Piscator is one familiar equally with the world of
books and those high circles in society, vvhioh in our age, aristocra-
tically shut against the pretensions of mere vvealth, open so readily
to distinguished talents and acquirements. His range, therefore,
both of enjoyment and instruction, is far wider than that of Izaak
Walton.

“ The instructions and information imparted to Anglers are, as
we may believe, equally clear, authentic, and entertaining.

“ A very great number of curious facts concerning the natural
history of fishes are here recorded, and the high scientific character of
the Author is an ample pledge fortheir accuracy.”— Quarterly Review.

CONSOLATIONS IN TRAVEL;

OR

THE LAST DAYS

OF

A PHILOSOPHER.

f

BY

SIR HUMPHRV DAVY, BART.

LATE PRESIDENT O F THE ROVAL SOCIETY.

LONDON:

JOHN MURRAV, ALBEMARLE-STREET.

MDCCCXXXI.

LONDON:

PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES
Stamford Street.

«»

As is stated in the Preface which follows, this
work was composed during a period of bodily
indisposition ;—it was concluded at the very
moment of the invasion of the Author’s last
illness. Had his life been prolonged, it is
probable that some additions and some
changes would have been made. The editor
does not consider himself warranted to do
more than give to the world a faithful copy,
making only a few omissions and a few verbal
alterations. The characters of the persons of
the dialogue were intended to be ideal, at least
in great part;—such they should be considered
by the reader; and it is to be hoped, that the
incidents introduced, as well as the persons, will
be viewed only as subordinate and subservient

b

vi

to the sentiments and doctrines. The dedica-
tion, it may be specially noticed, is the author’s
owd,  and in the very words dictated by him,
at a time when he had lost the power of
writing, except tvith extreme difficulty, owing
to the paralytic attack, although he retained
in a very remarkable manner ali his mental
faculties unimpaired and unclouded.

John Davy.

London,

January Gth,  1830.

TO

THOMAS POOLE, Esa.

OF NETHER STOWEY,

IN REMEMBRANCE OF

THIRTF TEARS OF CONTINUED AND FAITIIFUL

FRIENDSHIP.

b 2

P R E F A C E.

Salmonia  was written during the time of a
partial recovery from a long and dangerous
illness. The present work was composed im-
mediately after, under the same unfavourable
and painful circumstances, and at a period
when the constitution of the author suffered
from new attacks. He has derived some
pleasure and some consolation, when most
other sources of consolation and pleasure were
closed to him, from this exercise of his mind;
and he ventures to hope that these hours of
sickness may be not altogether unprofitable to
persons in perfect health.

Rome,

February  21, 1829.

CONTENTS

DIALOGUE I. Page

The Vision ..... 1

DIALOGUE II.

Discussions connected with the Vision in the Colo-
saeum . .... 57

DIALOGUE III.

The Unknown ..... 101

DIALOGUE IV.

The Proteus, or Immortality . . . 157

DIALOGUE V.

The Chemical Philosopher . . . . 209

DIALOGUE VI.

Pola, or Time

241

CONSOLATIONS IN TRAVEL,

OR THE

LAST DAYS OF A PHILOSOPHER.

DIALOGUE THE FIRST.

THE VISION.

I passed  tlie autumn and the early winter of
the years 18— and 18— at Rome. The society
was, as is usual in that metropolis of the old
Christian world, numerous and diversified. In
it there were found many intellectual foreigners,
and amongst thcm some distinguished Britons,
who had a higher object in making this city their
residence than mere idleness or vague curiosity.
Amongst these my countrymen there were tvvo
gentlemen 'vvith whom I formed a particular inti-
macy, and who were my frequent companions in
the visits which I made to the monuments of the
grandeur of the old Romans, and to the master-

2 DIALOGUE I.

pieces of ancient and modern art. One of them
I shall call Ambrosio : he was a man of highly
cultivated taste, great classical erudition, and
minute historical knowledge. In religion he was
of the Roman Catholic persuasion ; but a catho-
lic of the most liberal school, who in another
age might have been secretary to Ganganelli.
His views upon the subjects of politics and reli¬
gion were enlarged; but his leaning was rather
to the power of a single magistrate than to the
authority of a democracy or even of an oli-
garchy. The other friend, whom I shall call
Onuphrio, was a man of a very different cha-
racter. Belonging to the English aristocracy,
he had some of the prejudices usually attached
to birth and rank ; but his manners were gentle,
his temper good, his disposition amiable. Hav-
ing been partly educated at a northern univer-
sity in Britain, he had adopted views in religion
which went even beyond toleration, and which
might be regarded as entering the verge of
scepticism. For a patrician he was very libe¬
ral in his political views. His imagination
was poetical and discursive, his taste good, and
his tact extremely fine—so exquisite, indeed,
that it sometimes approached to morbid sensi-

THE VISION.

3

bility and disgusted hirn with slight defects, and
made him keenly sensible of small perfections,
to which common minds would have been indif-
ferent.

In the beginning of October, on a very fine
afternoon, I drove with these two friends to the
Colosa?um, a monument which, for the hun-
dredth time even, I had vietved with a new
admiration: my friends partook of my senti-
ments. I shall give the conversation which
occurred there in their own words. Onuphrio
said, ‘ How impressive are those ruins !—what a
character do they give us of the ancient Ilomans,
what magnificence of design, what grandeur
of execution ! Had we not historical docu-
ments to inform us of the period when this
structure was raised, and of the purposes for
which it was designed, it might be imagined the
work of a race of giants, a council-chamber for
those Titans fabled to have warred against the
gods of the pagan mythology. The size of the
masses of travertine of which it is coniposed, is
in harmony with the immense magnitude of the
building. It is hardly to be wondered at that
a people vvhich constructed such works for their
daily sports, for their usual amusements, should

B 2

4

DIALOGUE I.

have possessed strength, enduring energy, and
perseverance sufficient to enable them to conguer
the world. They appear always to have formed
their plans and made their combinations as if
their povver were beyond the reach of chance,
independent of the influence of time, and founded
for unlimited duration—for eternity !’

Ambrosio took up the discourse of Onuphrio,
and said, ‘ The aspect of this wonderful heap of
ruins is so picturesgue, that it is impossible to
regret its decay; and at this season of the year
the colours of the vegetation are in harmony
with those of the falling ruins; and how per-
fectly the whole landscape is in tone ! The re-
mains of the palače of the Caesars and of the
golden halls of Nero appear in the distance, their
grey and tottering turrets, and their moss-stained
arches, reposing, as it were, upon the decaying
vegetation; and there is nothing that marks
the existence of life, except the few pious de-
votees who vvander from station to station in
the arena below, kneeling before the cross, and
demonstrating the triumph of a religion which
received in this very spot, in the early period of
its existence, one of its most severe persecutions,
and which, nevertheless, has preserved what re-

THE VISION.

5

mains of that building, ivhere attempts were
made to stifle it almost at its birth ; for, without
the influence of Christianity, these majestic ruins
vvould h a ve been dispersed or levelled to the
dust. Plundered of their lead and iron by the
barbarians, Goths and Vandals, and robbed
even of their stones by Roman princes, the Bar-
berini, they owe what remains of their relics
to the sanctifying influence of that faith ivhich
has preserved for the wor]d ali that was worth
preserving—not merely arts and literature, but
likewise that which constitutes the progressive
nature of intellect, and the institutions which
afford to us happiness in this world and hopes
of a blessed immortality in the next. And,
being of the faith of Rome, I may say, that the
preservation of this pile, by the sanctifying
effect of a few crosses planted round it, is almost
a miraculous event. And what a contrast the
present application of this building, connected
with holy feelings and exalted hopes, is to that
of the ancient one, when it was used for exhi-
biting to the Roman people the destruction of
men by wild beasts, br of men, more savage
than wild beasts, by each other, to gratify a
horrible appetite for cruelty, founded upon a

6

DIALOGUE I.

stili more detestable lust, that of universal domi-
nation ! And who would have supposed, in the
timeof Titus, that a faith, despised inits insig-
nificant origin, and persecuted, from the sup¬
posed obscurity of its founder and its principles,
should have reared a dome to the memory of one
of its humblest teachers, more glorious than was
ever framed for Jupiter or Apollo in the ancient
world, and have preserved even the ruins of the
temples of the pagan deities, and have burst forth
in splendour and majesty, consecrating truth
amidst the shrines of error, employing the idols
of the Roman superstition for the most holy
purposes, and rising a bright and constant light
amidst the dark and starless night which fol-
lowed the destruction of the Roman empire !’

Onuphrio now resumed the discourse : he said,
‘ I have not the same esalted views on the sub-
ject which our friend Ambrosio has so eloquently
expressed. Some Jittle of the perfect State in
which these ruins exist may have been owing
to causes which he has described; but these
causes have only lately begun to operate, and
the mischief was done before Christianity was
established at Rome. Feeling differently on
these subjects, I admire this venerable ruin

THE VISION.

/

rather as the record of the destruction of the
power of the greatest people that ever ex-
isted, than as a proof of the triumph of Chris-
tianity; and I am carried fonvard, in melan-
choly anticipation, to the period when even the
magnificent dome of St. Peter’s will be in a
similar State to that in vvhieh the Colosmum eow
is, and when its ruins may be preserved by
the sanctifying influence of some new and un-
known faith; when, perhaps, the statue of Ju¬
piter, which at present receives the kiss of the
devotee, as the image of St. Peter, may be em-
ployed for another holy use, as the personifica-
tion of a future saint or divinity ; aijd when the
monuments of the papal magnificence shall be
mixed with the same dust as that vvhich nov
covers the tombs of the Ca?sars. Such, I am
sorry to say, is the general history of ali the
vvorks and institutions belonging to humanity.
They rise, flourish, and then decay and fall ;
and the period of their decline is generally pro-
portional to that of their elevation. In ancient
Thebes or Memphis the peculiar genius of the
people has left us monuments from which we
can judgeof their arts, though we cannot under-
stand the nature of their superstitions. Of Ba-

8

DIALOGUE I.

bylon and of Troy the remains are almost ex-
tinct; and what we know of these famous cities
is almost entirely derived from literary records.
Ancient Greece and Rome we view in the few
remains of their monuments; and the time will
arrive when modern Rome shall be what ancient
Rome now is ; and ancient Rome and Athens
vili be what Tyre or Carthage novv are, known
only by coloured dust in the desert, or coloured
sand, containing the fragments of bricks or glass,
washed up by the wave of a stormy sea. I
might pursue these thoughts stili further, and
show that the wood of the cross, or the bronze
of the statue, decay as quick]y as if they had
not been sanctified; and I think I conld show
that their influence is owing to the imagination,
which, when infinite time is considered, or the
course of ages even, is nuli, and its effect im-
perceptible ; and similar results occur, whether
the faith be that of Osiris, of Jupiter, of Jeho¬
vah, or of Jesus?

To this Ambrosio replied, his countenance
and the toneš of his voice expressing some emo-
tion : ‘ I do not think, Onuphrio, that you con-
sider this question with your usual sagacity or
acuteness; indeed, I never hear you on the suh-

' THE VISION.

9

ject of religion vvithout pain, and without a feel-
ing of regret that you have not applied your
powerful understanding to a more minute and
correct examination of the evidences of revealed
religion. You would then, I think, have seen, in
the origin, progress, elevation, decline, and fall of
the empires of antiquity, proofs that they were
intended for a definite end in the scheme of
human redemption ; you would have found pro-
phecies which have been amply verified; and
the foundation or the ruin of a kingdom, which
appears in civil history so great an event, in the
history of man, in his religious institutions, as
comparatively of small moment; you would have
found the establishment of the worship of one
God amongst a despised and contemned people
as the most important circumstance in the history
of the early world; you ivould have found the
Christian dispensation naturally arising out of
the Jewish, and the doctrines of the pagan
nations ali preparatory to the triumph and final
establishment of a creed fitted for the most en-
lightened State of the human mind, and equally
adapted to every climate and every people.’

To this animated appeal of Ambrosio, Onu-
phrio replied in the most tranquil manner, and

10

DIALOGUE I.

with the air of an unmoved philosopher : ‘ You
mistake me, Ambrosio, if you consider me as
hostile to Christianity. I am not of the school
of the French Encyclopedists, or of the English
infidels. I consider religion as essential to man,
and belonging to the human mind in the same
manner as instincts belong to the brute crea-
tion—a light, if you please, of revelation to gnide
him through the darkness of this life, and to
keep alive his undying hope of immortality;
but pardon me if I consider this instinct as
equally useful in ali its different forms, and stili
a divine light through whatever medium or
cloud of human passion or prejudice it passes.
I reverence it in the followers of Brahmah, in
the disciple of Mahomet, and I wonder at it in
ali the variety of forms it adopts in the Chris¬
tian world. You must not be angry with me
that I do not allow infallibility to your church,
having been myself brought up by Protestant
parents, who were rigidly attached to the doc-
trines of Calvin.

I saw Ambrosio’s countenance kindle at
Onuphrio’s explanation of his opinions, and he
appeared to be meditating an angry reply. I
endeavoured to change the conversation to the

THE VISION.

11

State of the Colosieum, vitli vhich it had begun.
‘ These ruins,’ I said, ‘ as you liave both ob-
served, are highlv impressive; yet vhen I sav
them six years ago they had a stronger effect on
my imagination: vhether it vas the charm of
novelty, or that my mind vas fresher, or that
the circumstances under vhich I saw them were
peculiar, I know not, but probably ali these
causes operated in affecting mymind. It was a
stili and beautiful evening in the end of May;
the last sunbeams were dying away in the vest¬
ern sky and the first moonbeams shining in the
eastern ; the bright orange tints lighted up the
ruins, and, as it vere, kindled the snows that
stili remained on the distant Apennines, which
were visible from the highest accessible part of
the amphitheatre. In this glow of colouring,
the green of advanced spring softened the grey
and yellow tints of the decaying stones, and as
the lights gradually became fainter, the masses
appeared grander and more gigantic ; and when
the tvilight had entirely disappeared, the con-
trast of light and shade in the beams of the full
moon, and beneath a sky of the brightest sap-
phire, but so highly illuminated, that only Jupi¬
ter and a fev stars of the first magnitude vere

12

DIALOGUE I.

visible, gave a solemnity and magnificence to
the scene which awakened the highest degree of
that emotion vhich is so properly termed the
sublime. The beauty and the permanency of
the heavens, and the principle of conservation
belonging to the system of the universe, the
vorks of the Eternal and Divine Architect,
vere finely opposed to the perishing and degraded
vorks of man in his most active and povverful
State. And at this moment so humble appeared
to me the condition of the most exalted beings
belonging to the earth, so feeble their combina-
tions, so minute the point of space, and so
limited the period of time in vhich they act,
that I could hardly avoid comparing the gene-
rations of man, and the effects of his genius and
power, to the swarms of luceoli or fire-flies
vhich were dancing around me, and that ap¬
peared flitting and sparkling amidst the gloom
and darkness of the ruins, but which were no
longer visible vhen tbey rose above the horizon,
their feeble light being lost and utterly obscured
in the brightness of the moonbeams in the
heavens.’

Onuphrio said: ‘ I am not sorry that you
have changed the conversation. You have given

THE VISION,

13

us the history of a most interesting recollection,
and well expressed a solemn though humiliating
feeling. In such moments and among such
scenes it is impossible not to be štručk with the
nothingness of human glory and the transiency
of human works. This, one of the greatest
monuments on the face of the earth, was raised
by a people, then its masters, only seventeen
centuries ago : in a few ages more it will be but
as dust, and of ali the testimonials of the vanity
or power of man, whether raised to immortalize
his name, or to contain his decaying bones with-
out a name, no one is known to have a duration
beyond what is measured by the existence of a
hundred generations ; and it is only to multiply
centuple, for instance, the period of time, and
the memorials of a village, and the monuments
of a country churcbyard, may be compared
vvith those of an empire and the remains of the
ivorld.’

Ambrosio, to whom the conversation seemed
disagreeable, put us in mind of an engagement
we had made to spend the evening at the con-
versazione of a celebrated lady, and proposed
to call the carriage. The reflections which the
conversation and the scene had left in my min

14

DIALOGUE I.

little disposed me for general society. I re-
quested them to keep their engagement, and said
I was resolved to spend an hour amidst the
solitude of the ruins, and desired them to send
back the carriage for me. They left me, ex-
pressing a hope that my poetical or melancholy
fancy might not be the occasion of a cold, and
Avished me the company of some of the spectres
of the ancient Romans.

When I was left alone, I seated myself in the
moonshine, on one of the steps leading to the
seats supposed to have been occupied by the
patricians in the Colosmum at the time of the
puhlic games. The train of ideas in vvhich I
had indulged before my friends left me, conti-
nued to flo\v ivith a vividness and force increased
by the stillness and solitude of the scene ; and the
full moon bas always a peculiar effect on these
moods of feeling in my mind, giving to them
a wildness and a kind of indefinite sensation,
such as I suppose belong at ali times to the true
poetical temperament. It must be so, I thought
to myself;—no new city will rise again out of
the double ruins of this;—no new empire will
be founded upon these colossal remains of that
of theold Romans. The world, like the indivi-

THE VISION.

15

dual, flourishes in youth, rises to strengtli in
manhood, falls into decay in age ; and the ruins
of an empire are like the decrepit frame of an
individual, except that they have some tints of
beauty which nature bestows upon them. The
sun of civilization arose in the East, advanced
towards the West, and is nowat its meridian ;—
in a few centuries more it will probably be seen
sinking below tlie horizon even in the new world,
and there will be left darkness only where there
is a bright light, deserts of sand where there
were populous cities, and stagnant morasses where
the green meadovv or the bright corn-field once
appeared. I called up images of this kind in my
imagination. ‘ Time,’ I said, ‘ which purifies, and
as it were sanctifies the mind, destroys and brings
into utter decay the body; and even in nature, its
influence seems always degrading. She is repre-
sented by the poets as eternal in her youth, but
amongst these ruins she appears to me eternal
in her age, and bere no traces of renovation
appear in the ancient of days.’ I had scarcely
concluded this ideal sentence, when my reverie
became deeper, the ruins surrounding me ap¬
peared to vanish from my sight, the light of the
moon became more intense, and the orb itself

16

DIALOGUE I.

seemed to expand in a flood of splendour. At
the same time that my visual organs appeared
so singularly affected, the most melodious sounds
filled my ear, softer, yet at the same time deeper
and fuller, than I had ever heard in the most
harmonious and perfect concert. It appeared to
me that I had entered a new State of existence ;
and I was so perfectly lost in the new kind of
sensation which I experienced, that I had no re-
collections and no perceptions of identity. On a
sudden the mušic ceased, but the brilliant light
stili continued to surround me, and I heard a
low but extremely distinct and sweet voice, which
appeared to issue from the centre of it. The
sounds were at first musical, like those of a harp,
but they soon became articulate, as if a prelude
to some piece of sublime poetical composition.
‘ You, like ali your brethren,’ said the voice,
‘ are entirely ignorant of everything belonging
to yourselves, the world you inhabit, your fu-
ture destinies, and the scheme of the universe;
and yet you have the folly to believe you are
acquainted with the past, the present, and the
future. I am an intelligence somevvhat superior
to you, though there are millions of beings as
much above me in power and in intellect as man

THE VISION.

17

is above the meanest and weakest reptile tbat
crawls beneath his feet;—yet something I can.
teach you : yield your mind wholly to the in¬
fluence which I shall exert upon it, and you
shall be undeceived in your views of the his-
tory of the world, and of the system you in-
habit.’ At this moment the bright light dis-
appeared, the sweetand harmonious voice, which
vvas the only proof of the presence of a superior
intelligence, ceased ; I was in utter darkness and
silence, and seemed to myself to be carried ra-
pidly upon a stream of air, ivithout any other
sensation than that of moving quickly through
space. Whilst I was stili in motion, a dim and
hazy light, which seemed like that of tivilight
in a rainy morning, broke upon my sight, and
gradually a country displayed itself to my view
covered with forests and marshes. I saw wild
animals grazing in large savannabs, and carnivo-
rous beasts, such as lions and tigers, occasion-
ally disturbing and destroying them; I saw
naked savages feeding upon wild fruits, or de-
vouring shell-fish, or fighting with clubs for the
remains of a whale which had been thrown upon
the shore. I observed that they had no habita-

18

DIALOGUE I.

tions, that they concealed themselves in caves,
or under the shelter of palm-trees; and that the
oni v delicious food which nature seemed to have
o-iven to them was the date and the cocoa-nut,
D

and these were in very small quantities, and the
object of contention. I saw that some few of
these wretched human beings that inhabited the
v.ide waste before my eyes, had weapons pointed
ivith flint or fish bone, which they made use of
for destroying birds, quadrupeds, or fishes, that
they fed upon raw; but their greatest delicacy
appeared to be a maggot or worm, which they
sought for with great perseverance in the buds
of the palm. When I had čast my eyes on the
varied features of this melancholy scene, which
was now lighted by a rising sun, I heard again
the same voice which had astonished me in the
Colosmum, and tvhich said,—‘ See the birth of
time ! Look at mah in his newly created state,
full of youth and vigour. Do you see aught in
this state to admire or envy ? ’ As the last vrords
fell on my ear, I was again, as before, rapidly
put in motion, and I seemed again resistlessly to
be hurried upon a stream of air, and again in
perfect darkness. In a moment, an indistinct
light again appeared before my eyes, and a

THE VISION.

19

countrv opened upon my view vvhich appeared
partly vvild and partly cultivated ; there vvere
fevver vvoods and morasses than in the scene
vvhich I had j ust before seen. 1 beheld men
vvho vvere covered vvith tbe skins of animals,
and vvho vvere driving cattle to inclosed pas-
tures ; I savv others vvho vvere reaping and col-
lecting corn, others vvho vvere making it into
bread ; I savv cottages furnished vvith many of
the conveniences of Ufe, and a people in tbat
State of agricultural and pastoral improvement
vvhich has been hnagined by the poets as be-
longing to the golden age. The same voice,
vvhich I shall call tbat of the Genius, said,—
‘ Look at these groups of men vvho are escaped
from the State of infancy: they ovve their im¬
provement to a fevv superior minds stili amongst
them. That aged man, vvhom you see vvith a
crovvd around him, taught them to build cot¬
tages ; from that other they learnt to domesti-
cate cattle; from others to collect and sovv corn
and seeds of fruit. And these arts vvill never
be lost; another generation vvill see them more
perfect; the houses, in a century more, vvill be
larger and more convenient; the flocks of cattle
more numerous ; the corn-fielcts more extensive;

C 2

20

DIA1OGUE I.

the morasses will be drained, the number of
fruit-trees increased. You sball be shown other
visions of the passages of time: but as you are
carried along the stream which flows from the
period of creation to the present moment, I sball
only arrest your transit to make you observe
some circumstances which will demonstrate the
truths I wish you to know, and vvhich will ex-
plain to you the little it is permitted me to
understand of the scheme of the universe.’ I
again found myself in darkness and in motion,
and I was again arrested by the opening of a
nevv scene upon my eyes. I sball describe this
scene and the otbers in the succession in which
they appeared before me, and the observations
by which they were accompanied in the voice of
the wonderful being who appeared as my intel-
lectual gnide. In the scene which followed that
of the agricultural or pastoral people, I saw a
great extent of cultivated plains, large cities on
the sea shore, palaces, forums, and temples or-
namenting them; men associated in groups,
mounted on horses, and performing military ex-
ercises; galleys moved by oars on the ocean;
roads intersecting the country, covered with
travellers, and containing carriages moved by

THE VISION.

21

men or horses. The Genius now said, £ You
see the early State of civilization of man; the
cottages of the last race you beheld have be-
come improved into stately dvvellings, palaces,
and temples, in which use is combined with or¬
nament. The few men to whom, as I said
before, the foundations of these improvements
were owing, have had divine honours paid to
their memory. But look at the Instruments
belonging to this generation, and you ivill find
that they are only of brass. You see men who
are talking to crowds around them, and others
who are apparently amusing listening groups by
a kind of song or recitation; these are the earliest
bards and orators; but ali their signs of thought
are oral, for vvritten language does not yet exist.’
The next scene which appeared was one of va-
ried business and imagery. I saw a man, who
bore in his hands the same Instruments as our
modern smiths, presenting a vase, which ap¬
peared to be made of iron, amidst the acclama-
tions of an assembled multitude engaged in tri-
umphal procession before the altars dignified by
the name of Apollo at Delphi; and I saw in the
same plače men who carried rolls of papyrus in
their hands, and wrote upon them with reeds con-

22

DIALOGUE I.

taining ink made froni the soot of wood mixed
■with a solution of glue. ‘ See,’ tbe Genius said,
‘an immense changeproduced in the condition of
society by the two arts of vvhich you here see
the origin ; the one, that of rendering iron mal-
leable, which is owing to a single individual, an
obscure Greek; the other, that of making
thought permanent in written characters—an
art which has gradually arisen from the hiero-
glypbics which you may observe on yonder
pyramids. You will now see human life more
replete with power and activity.’ Again, an-
other scene broke upon my vision. I saw the
bronze Instruments, which had belonged to the
former state of society, thrown away ; malleable
iron converted into hard Steel, this Steel applied
to a thousand purposes of civilized life: I saw
bands of men who made use of it for defensive
armour and for offensive weapons; I saw these
iron-clad men, in small numbers, subduing
thousands of savages, and establishing amongst
them their arts and institutions; I saw a few
men, on the eastern shores of Europe, resisting,
with the same materials, the United forces of
Asia; I saw a chosen band die in defence of
their country, destroyed by an army a thousand

THE VISION.

23

times as numerous ; and I saw this same army,
in its turo, caused to disappear, and destroyed.
or driven from the sliores of Europe by the bre-
thren of that band of martyred patriots ; I saw
bodies of these men traversing the sea, founding
colonies, building cities, and wherever tliey esta-
blished themselves, carrying with them their pe-
culiar arts. Towns and temples arose containing
schools, and libraries filled with the rolls of the
papyrus. The same Steel, such a tremendous in¬
strument of power in the hands of the warrior, I
saw applied, by the genius of the artist, to strike
forms even more perfect than those of life out of
the rude marble; and I saw the walls of the pa-
laces and temples covered with pictures, in which
historical events were pourtrayed with the trutli
of nature and the poetry of mind. Tb s  v o i C e
now awakened my attention, by saying, ‘ You
have now before you the vision of that State of
society which is an object of admiration to the
youth of modem times, and the recollections
of which, and the precepts founded on these
recollections, constitute an important part of
your education. Your maxims of war and
policy, your taste in letters and the arts, are
derived from models left by that people, or by

24

DIALOGUE I.

their immediate imitators, whom you shall now
see.’ I opened my eyes, and recognized the
very spot in which I was sitting when the vision
commenced. I was on the top of an arcade,
under a silken canopy, looking down upon the
tens of thousands of people who were crovvded
in the seats of the Colosaeum, ornamented with
ali the spoils that the wealth of a world can
give; I saw in the arena below animals of the
most extraordinary kind, and which have rarely
been seen living in modern Europe-—the giraffe,
the zebra, the rhinoceros, and the ostrich, from
the deserts of Africa beyond the Niger, the hip-
popotamus from the upper Nile, and the royal
tiger and the gnu from the banks of the Ganges.
Looking over Rome, which, in its majesty of
palaces and temples, and in its colossal aque-
ducts bringing water even from the snows of the
distant Apennines, seemed more like the cre-
ation of a supernatural power than the work of
human hands: looking over Rome to the distant
landscape, I saw the vvhole face as it were of
the ancient world adorned with miniature images
of this splendid metropolis. Where the Roman
conquered, there he civilized ; where he carried
his arms, there he fixed likewise his household

THE VISION.

25

gods; and from tbe deserts of Arabia to the
mountains of Caledonia there appeared but one
people, baving the same arts, language, and
letters, ali of Grecian origin. I looked again,
and saw an entire change in the brilliant aspect
of tbis Roman world; the people of conquerors
and heroes was no longer visible; the cities
were filled with an idle and luxurious popula-
tion ; those farms which had been cultivated by
warriors, who left the plough to take the com-
mand of armies, were now in the hands of
slaves; and the militia of free men were sup-
planted by bands of mercenaries, who sold the
empire to the highest bidder. I saw immense
masses of warriors collecting in the north and
east, carrying with them no other proofs of cul-
tivation but their horses and Steel arms ; I  saw
these savages everywhere attacking this mighty
empire, plundering cities, destroying the mo-
numents of arts and literature, and, like wild
beasts, devouring a noble animal, tearing into
pieces and destroying the Roman power. Ruin,
desolation, and darkness were before me, and I
closed my eyes to avoid the melancholy scene.
‘ See,’ said the Genius, ‘ the melancholy termi-
nation of a power believed by its founders in-

26

DIALOG UE 1.

vincible, and intended to be eternal. But you
will find, though the glory and greatness be-
longing to its military genius have passed away,
yet those belonging to the arts and institutions
by which it adorned and dignified life will
again arise in another State of society.’ I opened
my eyes again, and I saw Italy recovering from
her desolation ; towns arising with governments
almost upon the model of ancient Athens and
Rome, and these different small States rivals in
arts and arms; I saw the remains of libraries,
which had been preserved in monasteries and
ehurches, by a holy influence which even the
Goth and Vandal respected, again opened to the
people; I saw Rome rising from her ashes, the
fragments of statues found amidst the ruins of
her palaces and imperial villas becoming the
models for the regeneration of art; I saw mag-
nificent temples raised in this city, become the
metropolis of a new and Christian world, and
ornamented with the most brilliant master-pieces
of the arts of design; I saw a Tuscan city, as
it were, contending with Rome for pre-eminence
in the productions of genius; and the špirit
awakened in Italy spreading its influence from
the south to the nortb. ‘Now,’the Genius said,

THE VISION.

27

‘ society bas taken its modem and permanent
aspect. Consider for a moment its relations to
ietters and to arms as contrasted with those of tbe
ancient world.’ I looked, and saw that, in the
plače of the rolls of papyrus, libraries were now
filled with books. ‘ Behold,’ the Genius said,
‘ the printing press; by the invention of Faust
the productions of genius are, as it were, made
imperishable, capable of indefinite multiplica-
tion, and rendered an unalienable heritage of
the human mind. By this art, apparent]y so
humble, the progress of society is secured, and
man is spared the humiliation of ivitnessing
again scenes like those which followed the de-
structkm of the Roman empire. Now look to
the warriors of modern times ; you see the spear,
the javelin, the shield, and the cuirass, are
changed for the mušket and the light artillery.
The German monk ivho discovered gunpowder
did not meanly affect the destinies of mankind;
wars are become less bloody by becoming less
personal; mere brutal strength is rendered of
comparatively little avail; ali the resources of
civilization are required to maintain and move a
large army; wealth, ingenuity, and perseve-
rance become the principal elements of success;

28

DIALOGUE I.

civilized man is rendered in consequence infi-
nitely superior to the savage, and gunpovvder
gives permanence to his triumph, and secures
the cultivated nations from ever being again
overrun by the inroads of millions of barbarians.
There is so much identity of feature in the cha-
racter of the two or three centuries that are
j ust passed, that I wish you only to take a very
transient view of the political and military events
belonging to them. You will find attempts
made by the chiefs of certain great nations to
acquire predominance and empire; you will see
those attempts, after being partially successful,
resisted by other nations, and the balance of
power, apparently for a moment broken, again
restored. Amongst the rival nations that may
be considered as forming the republic of modern
Europe, you will see one pre-eminent for her
maritime strength, and colonial and commercial
enterprize, and you will find she retains her
superiority only because it is favourable to the
liberty of mankind. But you must not yet
suffer the vision of modern Europe to pass from
your eyes without vievving some other results
of the efForts of men of genius, which, like those
of gunpowder and the press, illustrate the times

THE VISION.

29

to which they belong, and form brilliant epochs
in the history of the world. If you look back
into the schools of regenerated Italy, you will
see in them the works of the Greek masters of
philosopby; and if you attend to the Science
taught in them, you will find it vague, obscure,
and full of erroneous notions;—you will find, in
this early period of improvement, branches of
philosophy even applied to purposes of delusion ;
the most sublime of the departments of human
knowledge, astronomy, abused by impostors,
ivho, from the aspect of the planetary world,
pretended to predict the fortunes and destinies
of individuals; you will see in the laboratories
alchemists searching for a universal medicine,
an elixir of life, and for the philosopber’s Stone,
or a  method of converting ali metals into gold ;
but unexpected and nseful discoveries you will
find, even in this age, arise amidst the clouds of
deception and the smoke of the furnace; delu¬
sion and error vanish and pass away, and truths
seized upon by a few superior men become per-
manent, and the property of an enlightening
world. Amongst the personages who belong to
this early period, there are two whom I must
request you to notice: one an Englishman, who

30

DIALOGUE I.

pointed out the paths to the discovery of scien-
tific truths; and the other a Tuscan, who af-
forded the happiest experimental illustrations of
the speculative views of his brother in Science.
You will see academies formed a century lat er
in ltaly, France, and Britain, in which the
Sciences are enlarged by new and varied expe-
riments, and the trne system of the universe,
developed by an illustrious Englishman, tanght
and explained. The practical results of the
progress of physics, chemistry, and mechanics,
are of the most marvellous kind, and to make
them ali distinct would require a comparison of
ancient and modem States: ships that were
moved by human labour in the ancient vvorld,
are transported by the winds; and a piece of
Steel, touched by the magnet, points to the
mariner his unerring course from the Old to
the New world ; and by the exertions of one
man of genius, aided by the resources of che-
mistry, (a power vvhich, by the old philosophers,
could hardly have been imagined,) has been ge-
nerated and applied to almost ali the machinery
of active life ; the steam-engine performs not only
the labour of horses, but of man, by combina-
tions tvhich appear almost possessed of intelli-

THE VISION.

31

sence : vvaggons are moved bv it, constructions
made, vessels caused to perform voyages in
opposition to wind and tide, and a power placed
in human bands which seems almost unlimited.
To these novel and stili extending improve-
ments may be added others, which, though of a
secondary kind, yet materially affect the com-
forts of life, the collecting from fossil materials
the elements of combustion, and applying them
so as to illuminate, by a single operation,
houses, streets, and even cities. If you look to
the results of chemical arts, you will find new
substances of the most extraordinary nature
applied to various novel purposes; you will
find a few experiments in electricity leading to
the marvellous result of disarming the thunder-
cloud of its terors, and you will see new instru¬
menta created. by human ingenuity, possessing
the same powers as the electrical organs of living
animals. To ivliatever part of the vision of
modern times you čast your eyes, you will find
marks of superiority and improvement, and I
vvish to impress upon you the conviction, that
the results of intellectual labour, or of scientific
genius, are permanent and incapable of being
lost. Monarchs change their plans, :  govern-

32

DIALOGUE I.

ments their objects, a fleet or an army effect
their purpose, and then pass away; but a piece
of steel, touched by the magnet, preserves its
character for ever, and secures to man the
dominion of the trackless ocean. A new period
of society may send armies from the shores of
the Baltic to those of the Euxine, and the
empire of the followers of Mahomet may be
broken in pieces by a Northern people, and the
dominion of the Britons in Asia may share the
fate of that of Tamerlane or Zengiskhan; but
the steam-boat which ascends the Delaware or
the St. Lawrence will be continued to be used,
and will carry the civilization of an improved
people into the deserts of North America and
into the wilds of Canada. In the common his-
tory of the world, as compiled by authors in
general, almost ali the great changes of nations
are confounded with changes in their dynasties,
and events are usually referred either to sove-
reigns, chiefs, heroes, or their armies, which
do, in fact, originate from entirely different
causes, either of an intellectual or moral nature.
Governments depend far more than is gener-
ally supposed upon the opinion of the people
and the špirit of the age and nation. It some-

THE VISION.

33

times happens that a gigantic mind possesses
supreme power and rises superior to the age
in vvhich he is born, such was Alfred in Eng-
land and Peter in Russia; but such instances
are very rare; and, in general, it is neither
amongst sovereigns nor the higher classes of
society, that the great improvers or benefactors
of mankind are to be found. The works of
the most illustrious names were little valued at
the times when they were produced, and their
authors either despised or neglected ; and great,
indeed, must have been the pure and abstract
pleasure resulting from the exertion of intel-
lectual superiority, and the discovery of truth,
and the bestowing benefits and blessings upon
societv, which induced men to sacrifice ali their
common enjoyments and ali their privileges as
citizens, to these exertions. Anaxagoras, Archi-
medes, Roger Bacon, Gallileo Gallilei, in their
deaths or their imprisonments, offer instances of
this kind, and nothing can be more striking
than what appears to have been the ingratitude
of men towards their greatest benefactors; but
hereafter, when you understand more of the
scheme of the universe, you will see the cause
and the effect of this, and you will find the
D

34

DIALOGUE I.

whole system governed by principles of immut-
ablejustice. I have said that, in the progress
of society, ali great and real improvements are
perpetuated; the same corn which, four thou-
sand years ago, was raised from an improved
grass by an inventor worshipped for two thou-
sand years in the ancient world under the name
of Ceres, stili forms the principal food of man-
kind ; and the potato, perhaps the greatest
benefit that the old has derived from the new
world, is spreading over Europe, and will con-
tinue to nourish an extensive population when
the name of the race by whom it was first culti-
vated in South America is forgotten.

‘ I will nov call your attention to some re-
markable laws belonging to the history of so-
ciety, and from the consideration of whieh you
vili be able gradually to develop the higher
and more exalted principles of being. There
appears nothing more accidental than the sex
of an infant, yet take any great city or any
province, and you will find that the relations of
males and females are unalterable. Again, a
part of the pure air of the atmosphere is conti-
nually consumed in combustion and respiration;
living vegetables emit this principle during their

THE VISION.

35

grovvth; nothing appears more accidental than
the proportion of vegetable to animal life on
the surface of the earth, yet they are perfectly
equivalent, and the balance of the sexes, like
the constitution of the atmosphere, depends upon
the principles of an unerring Intelligence. You
saw, in the decline of the Roman empire, a
people enfeebled by luxury, worn out by ex-
cess, overrun by rude warriors; you saw the
giants of the North and East mixing with the
pigmies of the South and West. An empire
was destroyed, but the seeds of moral and phy-
sical improvement in the new race were sown ;
the new population resulting from the alliances
of the men of the North with the vremen of
the South was more vigorous, more full of phy-
sical power and more capable of intellectual
exertion than their apparently ill suited proge-
nitors; and the moral effects or final causes of
the migration of races, the plans of conquest
and ambition which have led to revolutions
and changes of kingdoms designed by man for
such difterent objects, have been the same in
their ultimate results,—that of improving by
mixture the different families of men. An
Alaric or an Attila, who marches with legions

D 2

36

DIALOGUE I.

of barbarians for some gross vievv of plunder or
ambition, is an instrument of divine power to
effect a purpose of which he is wholly uncon-
scious :—he is carrying a strong race to im-
prove a weak one, and giving energy to a debi-
litated population ; and the deserts he makes in
his passage will become in another age culti-
vated fields, and the solitude he produces vili
be succeeded by a poverful and healthy po¬
pulation. The results of these events in the
moral and political world may be compared to
those produced in the vegetable kingdom by the
storms and heavy gales so usual at the vernal equi-
nox, the time of the formation of the seed ; the
pollen or farina of one flower is thrown upon the
pistil of another, and the Crossing of varie-
ties of plants so essential to the perfection of
the vegetable vorld produced. In man, moral
causes and physical ones modify each other;
the transmission of hereditary qualities to off-
spring is distinct in the animal vorld, and in
the čase of disposition to disease it is suffi-
ciently obvious in the human being. But it
is likevise a general principle, that povers or
habits acquired by cultivation are transmitted to
the next generation and exalted or perpetuated;

THE VISION.

37

the history of particular races of men affords
distinct proofs of this. The Caucasian stock
has always preserved its superiority, ivhilst the
negro or flat-nosed race has always been marked
for want of intellectual power and capacity for
the arts of life. This last race, in fact, has
never been cultivated, and a hundred genera-
tions, successively improved, would be required
to bring it to the State in which the Caucasian
race was at the time of the formation of the
Greek republics. The principle of the improve-
ment of the character of races by the transmis-
sion of hereditary qualities has not escaped the
observations of the legislators of the ancient
people. By the divine law of Moses, the Israel-
ites were enjoined to preserve the purity of
their blood, and there was no higher crime than
that of forming alliances with the idolatrous
nations surrounding them. The Bramins of
Hindostan have established, upon the same prin¬
ciple, the law of caste, by which certain pro-
fessions were made hereditary. In this warm
climate, where labour is so oppressive, to se-
cure perfection in any series of operations, it
seems essential to strengthen the powers
by the forces acquired from this principle of

38

DIALOGUE I.

hereditary descent. It will at first, perhaps,
strike your mind, that the mixing or blending
of races is in direct opposition to this principle
of perfection; but bere I must require you to
pause and consider the nature of the qualities
belonging to the human being. Excess of a
particular power, which in itself is a perfection,
becomes a defect; the organs of touch may be
so refined as to shew a diseased sensibility ; the
ear may become so exquisitely sensitive as to be
more susceptible to the uneasiness produced by
discords than to the pleasures of harmony. In
the nations which have been long civilized, the
defects are generally those dependent on excess
of sensibility,'—defects which are cured in the
next generation by the strength and power be¬
longing to a ruder tribe. In looking back upon
the vision of ancient history, you will find that
there never has been an instance of a migration
to any extent of any race but the Caucasian, and
they have usually passed from the North to the
South. The negro race has always been driven
before these conquerors of the world ; and the
red men, the aborigines of America, are con-
stantly diminishing in number, and it is probable
that in a few centuries more their pure blood

THE VISION.

39

will be entirely extinct. In tbe population of
the world, tbe great object is evident]y to pro-
duce organized frames most capable of the
happy and intellectual enjoyment of life,—to
raise man above the mere animal State. To per-
petuate the advantages of civilization, the races
most capable of these advantages are preserved
and extended, and no considerable improvement
made by an individual is ever lost to society.
You see living forms perpetuated'in the series
of ages, and apparently the quantity of life in-
creased. In comparing the population of the
globe as it now is with what it vvas centuries
ago, you would find it considerably greater;
and if the quantity of life is increased, the quan-
tity of happiness, particularly that resulting
from the exercise of intellectual potver, is in¬
creased in a stili higher ratio. Now, you will
say, is mind generated, is spiritual poiver
created;  or, are those results dependent upon
the organization of raatter. upon new perfections
given to the machinery upon vvhich thought
and motion depend ? I proclaim to you,’ said
the Genius, raising liis voice from its low and
sweet tone to one of ineffable majesty, ‘ neither
of these opinions is true. Listen whilst I reveal

40

DIALOGUE I.

to you the mysteries of spiritual natures; but
I almost fear that, with the mortal veil of your
senses surrounding you, these mysteries can
never be made perfectly intelligible to your
mind. Spiritual natures are eternal and indivi-
sible, but their modes of being are as infinitely
varied as the forms of matter. They have no
relation to space, and, in their transitions, no
dependence upon time, so that they can pass
from one part of the universe to another, by
laws entirely independent of their motion. The
quantity, or the number of spiritual essences,
like the quantity or number of the atoms of the
material world, are always the same; but their
arrangements, like those of the materials which
they are destined to guide or govern, are infi-
nitely diversified : they are, in fact, parts more
or less inferior of the infinite mind, and in the
planetary systems, to one of which this globe
you inhabit belongs, are in a State of probation,
continually aiming at, and generally rising to a
higher State of existence. Were it permitted me
to extend your vision to the fates of individual
existences, I could shew you the same špirit,
which in the form of Socrates developed the
foundations of moral and social virtue, in the

THE VISION.

41

Czar Peter possessed of supreme power and en-
joying exalted felicity in improving a rude
people. I could show you the monad or špirit
which, with the organs of Newton, displayed an
intelligence almost above humanity, now in a
higher and better State of planetary existence,
drinking intellectual light from a purer source,
and approaching nearer to the infinite and divine
Mind. But prepare youj mind, and you shall
at least catch a glimpse of those States, which
the highest intellectual beings that have be-
longed to the earth enjoy after death, in their
transition to new and more exalted natures.’
The voice ceased, and I appeared in a dark,
deep, and cold cave, of which the walls of the
Colosaeum formed the boundary. From above,
a bright and rosy light broke into this cave, so
that whilst below ali was dark, above ali was
bright and illuminated with glory. I seemed
possessed at this moment of a new sense, and felt
that the light brougbt with it a genial warmth;
odours like those of the most balmy floivers
appeared to fill the air, and the sweetest sounds
of mušic absorbed my sense of hearing; my
limbs had a new lightness given to them, so that
I seemed to rise from the earth, and gradually

42

DIALOGUE I.

mounted into the bright luminous air, leaving
behind me the dark and cold cavern and the
ruins with which it was strewed. Language
is inadequate to describe what I felt in rising
continually upvvards through this bright and
luminous atmosphere; I had not, as is generally
the čase with persons in dreams of this kind,
imagined to myself wings, but I rose gradually
and securely as if I were myself a part of the
ascending column of light. .By degrees this
luminous atmosphere, which was diffused over
the whole of space, became more circumscribed,
and extended only to a limited spot around me.
I saw through it the bright blue sky, the moon,
and stars, and I passed by them, as if it were
in my power to touch them with my band ; I
beheld Jupiter and Saturn as they appear
through our best telescopes, but stili more mag-
nified, ali the moons and belts of Jupiter being
perfectly distinct, and the double ring of Saturn
appearing in that state in which I bave heard
Herschel often express a wish he could see it.
It seemed as if I was on the verge of the šolar
system, and my moving sphere of light now
appeared to pause. I again heard the low and
sweet voice of the Genius, which said, ‘ You

THE VISION.

43

are nov on the verge of your own system; vili
you go further, or return to tlie earth ? ’ I re-
plied, ‘ I have left an abode vhich is damp,
dreary, dark, and cold ; I am nov in a plače
vhere ali is life, light, and enjoyment; sliow me
at least, before I return, the glimpse vhich you
promised me of those superior intellectual na-
tures, and the modes of their being and their
enjoyments.’ ‘ There are creatures far superior,’
said the Genius, ‘ to any idea your imagination
can form, in that part of the system now before
you, comprehending Saturn, his moons and
rings ; I vili carry you to the verge of the im-
mense atmosphere of this planet. In that space
you vili see sufficient to vonder at, and far
more than, vitli your present organization, it
vould be possible for me to make you under-
stand.’ I vas again inmotion, and again almost
as suddenly at rest. I sav belov me a surface
infinitely diversified, something like that of an
immense glacier covered vith large columnar
inasses, vhich appeared as if formed of glass,
and from vhich vere suspended rounded forms
of various sizes, vhich, if they had not been
transparent, I might have supposed to be fruit.
From vhat appeared to me to be analogous to

44

DIALOGUE I.

masses of bright blue ice, streams of the richest
tint of rose-colour or purple burst forth and
flowed into basins, forming lakes or seas of the
same colour. Looking through the atmosphere
towards the heavens, I saw brilliant opaque
clouds of an azure colour that reflected the light
of the sun, which had to my eyes an entirely
new aspect, and appeared smaller, as if seen
through a dense blue mist. I saw moving on
the surface below me immense masses, the forms
of which I find it impossible to describe; they
had systems for locomotion similar to those of
the morse or sea-horse, but I saw with great
surprise that they moved from plače to plače by
six extremely thin membranes, which they used
as wings. Their colours were varied and beau-
tiful, but principally azure and rose-colour. I
saw numerous convolutions of tubes, more ana-
logous to the trunk of the elephant than to
anything else I can imagine, occupying what
I supposed to be the upper parts of the body,
and my feeling of astonishment almost became
one of disgust, from the peculiar character of
the organs of these singular beings; and it was
with a species of terror that I saw one of them
mounting upwards, apparently flying towards

THE VISION.

45

those opaque clouds which I have before men-
tioned. ‘ I knovv what your feelings are,’ said
the Genius: ‘ you want analogies and ali the
elements of knowledge, to comprehend the scene
before you. You are in the same State in which
a fly would be whose microscopic eye was
changed for one similar to that of man; and
you are wholly unable to associate what you
now see with your former knovvledge. But
those beings vvho are before you, and who appear
to you almost as imperfect in their functions as
the zoophytes of the polar sea, to which they are
not unlike in their apparent organization to your
eyes, have a sphere of sensibility and intellectual
enjoyment far superior to that of the inhabitants
of your earth ; each of those tubes which appears
like the trunk of an elephant, is an organ of pecu-
liar motion or sensation. They have many modes
of perception of which you are wholly ignorant,
at the same time that their sphere of vision is
infinitely more extended than yours, and their
organs of touch far more perfect and exquisite.
It vvould be useless for me to attempt to ex-
plain their organization, which you could never
understand; but of their intellectual objects of
pursuit I may perhaps give you some notion.

46

DIALOGUE I.

They have used, modified, and applied the
material world in a manner analogous to man;
but with far superior powers they have gained
superior results. Their atmosphere being much
denser than yours, and the specific gravity of
their planet less, they have been enabled to
determine the laws belonging to the šolar sys-
tem with far more accuracy than you can pos-
sibly conceive; and any one of those beings
could show you what is now the situation and
appearance of your moon, with a precision that
would induce you to believe that he saw it,
though his knowledge is merely the result of
calculation. Their sources of pleasure are of
the highest intellectual nature ; with the mag-
nificent spectacle of their own rings and moons
revolving round them—with the various com-
binations required to understand and predict
the relations of these vvonderful phenomena,
their minds are in unceasing activity, and this
activity is a perpetual source of enjoyment.
Your view of the šolar system is bounded by
Uranus, and the laws of this planet form the
ultimatum of your mathematical results; but
these beings catch a sight of planets belonging
to another system, and even reason on the phe-

THE VISION.

47

nomena presented by another sun. Those
comets, of which your astronomical history is so
imperfect, are to tliem perfectly familiar; and
in their ephemerides their places are shown with
as mucli accurateness as those of Jupiter or
Venus in your almanacs; the parallax of the
fixed stars nearest them is as ivell understood as
that of their own sun, and they possess a mag-
nificent history of the changes taking plače in
the heavens, and which are governed hy laws
that it would be vain for me to attempt to give
you an idea of. They are acquainted with the
revolutions and uses of comets ; they understand
the system of those meteoric formations of stones
ivhich have so mucli astonished you on earth;
and they have histories in which the gradual
changes of nebulae in their progress tovvards
systems have been registered, so that they can
predict their future changes. And their astro-
mical records are not like yours, ivhich go back
only twenty centuries, to the time of Hippar-
chus; they embrace a period a hundred times
as long, and their civil history for the same time
is as correct as their astronomical one. As I
cannot describe to you the organs of these won-
derful beings, so neither can I show to you their

48

DIALOGUE I.

modes of life: but as their highest pleasures
depend upon intellectual pursuits, so you may
conclude, that those modes of life bear the
strictest analogy to that which on the earth you
vvould call exalted virtue. I will teli you, how-
cver, that they have no wars, and that the ob-
jects of their ambition are entirely those of
intellectual greatness, and that the only passion
that they feel, in which comparisons with each
other can be instit uteci, are those dependent
upon a love of glory of the purest kind. If I
vere to show you the different parts of the sur-
face of this planet, you would see marvellous
results of the powers possessed by these highly
intellectual beings, and of the wonderful manner
in which they have applied and modified matter.
Those columnar masses, tvhich seem to you as if
arising out of a mass of ice below, are results
of art, and processes are going on in them con-
nected with the formation and perfection of their
food. The brilliant, coloured fluids are the
results of such operations as on the earth would
be performed in your laboratories, or more pro-
perly in your refined culinary apparatus, for
they are connected with their system of nou-
rishment. Those opaque, azure clouds, to which

THE VISION.

49

you saw a few minutes ago one of those beings
directing his course, are works of art, and places
in ivliich they move through different regions of
their atmosphere and command the temperature
and the quantity of light most fitted for their
philosophical researches, or most convenient for
the purposes of life. On the verge of the visible
horizon which we perceive around us, you may
see in the east a very dark spot or shadow, in
tvhich the light of the sun seems entirely ab-
sorbed: this is the border of an immense mass
of liquid analogous to your ocean, but, unlike
your sea, it is inhabited by a race of intellectual
beings inferior indeed to those belonging to the
atmosphere of Saturn, but yet possessed of an
extensive range of sensations, and endotved with
extraordinary power and intelligence. I could
transport you to the different planets, and show
you in each peculiar intellectual beings bearing
analogies to each other, but yet ali different in
power and essence. In Jupiter you would see
creatures similar to those in Saturn, but with
different powers of locomotion ; in Mars and
Venus you would find races of created forms
more analogous to those belonging to the earth ;
but in every part of the planetary system you

E

50

DIALOGUE I.

vould find one character peculiar to ali intelli-
gent natures, a sense of receiving impressions
from light by various organs of vision, and
towards this result you cannot but perceive
that ali the arrangements and motions of the
planetary bodies, their satellites, and atmo-
spheres, are subservient. The spiritual natures,
therefore, that pass from system to system in
progression towards power and knowledge, pre-
serve at least this one invariable character, and
their intellectual life may be said to depend
more or less upon the influence of light. As
far as my knowledge extends, even in other
parts of the universe the more perfect organized
systems stili possess this source of sensation and
enjoyment; but with higher natures,] finer and
more etherial kinds of matter are employed in
organization, substances that bear the same ana-
logy to common matter that the refined or most
subtile gases do to common solids and fluids.
The universe is every where full of life, but the
modes of this life are infinitely diversified, andyet
every form of it must be enjoyed and known
by every spiritual nature before the consumma-
tion of ali things. You have seen the comet
moving vvith its immense train of light through

THE VISION.

51

the sky: this likewise bas a system supplied with
livino- beines, and their existence derives its en-
joyment from tbe diversity of circumstances to
■vvhicb they are exposed; passing as it were
through the infinity of space, they are continu-
ally gratified by the sight of new systems and
worlds, and you can imagine tbe unbounded
nature of the circle of their knowledge. My
power extends so far as to afford you a glimpse
of the nature of a cometary world.’ I was again
in rapid motion, again passing with the utmost
velocity through the bright blue sky, and I saw
Jupiter and his satellites, and Saturn and his ring
behind me, and before me the sun, no lono-er
appearing as through a blue mist, but in bright
and unsupportable splendour, towards which I
seemed moving with the utmost velocity. In a
limited sphere of vision, in a kind of red hazy
light, similar to that which first broke in upon
me in the Colosaeum, I saw moving round me
globes which appeared composed of different
kinds of flame and of different colours. In some
of these globes I recognized tigures vvhich put
me in mind of the human countenance, but the
resemblance was so awful and unnatural, that I
endeavoured to withdraw my view from tbem.

E 2

52

DIALOGUE I.

‘ You are now,’ said the Genius, ‘in a co-
metary system ; those globes of light surround-
ing you are material forms, such as in one of
your systems of religious faith have been attri-
buted to serapbs;' they live in that element
vvhich to you would be destruction ; they com-
municate by povvers which would convert your
organized frame into ashes; they are now in tbe
height of their enjoyment, being about to enter
into tbe blaze of the šolar atmosphere. Tbese
beings, so grand, so glorious, with functions to
you incomprehensible, once belonged to the
earth ; their spiritual natures have risen through
different stages of planetary life, leaving their
dust behind them, carrying with them only their
intellectual power. You ask me if they have
any knowledge or reminiscence of their transi-
tions; teli me of your own recollections in the
womb of your mother, and I will answer you.
It is the law of divine wisdom, that no špirit
carries with it into another state and being, any
habit or mental qualities except those which
may be connected with its new wants or enjoy-
ments ; and knowledge relating to the earth
would be no more useful to these glorified beings
than their earthly system of organized dust,

THE VISION.

53

vvhich would be instantly resolved into its ulti¬
mate atoms at such a temperature ; even on the
earth the butterfly does not transport with it into
the air the organs or the appetites of the crawl-
ing worm from vvhich it sprung. There is, how-
ever, one sentiment or passion which the monad
or spiritual essence carries vvith it into ali its
stages of being, and which, in these happy and
elevated creatures, is continually exalted; the
love of knowledge or of intellectual power, which
is, in fact, in its ultimate and most perfect deve-
lopraent, the love of infinite wisdom and un-
bounded povver, or the love of God. Even in
the imperfect life that belongs to the earth,
this passion exists in a considerable degree, in-
creases even vvith age, outlives the perfection of
the corporeal faculties, and at the moment of
death is felt by the conscious being ; and its
future destinies depend upon the manner in
vvhich it has been exercised and exalted.
When it has been misapplied, and assumed the
forms of vague curiosity, restless ambition,
vain-glory, pride, or oppression, the being is
degraded, it sinks in the scale of existence,
and stili belongs to the earth or an inferior
system, till its errors are corrected by painful

54

DIALOGUE I.

discipline. When, on the contrary, tlie love
of intellectual power has been exercised on its
noblest objects, in discovering and in contem-
plating the properties of created forms, and in
applying them to useful and benevolent pur-
poses, in developing and adiniring the laws of
the eternal Intelligence, the destinies of the
sentient principle are of a nobler kind, it rises
to a higher planetary world. From the height
to which you have been lifted, I could carry
you downwards, and shovv you intellectual na-
tures even inferior to those belonging to the
earth, in your own moon, and in the lower
planets, and I could demonstrate to you the
effects of pain or moral evil in assisting in the
great plan of the exaltation of spiritual natures ;
but I -svili not destroy the brightness of your
present idea of the scheme of the universe by
degrading pictures of the effects of bad pas-
sions, and of the manner in svhich evil is cor-
rected and destroyed. Your vision must end
with the glorious view of the inhabitants of
the cometary vvorlds; I cannot shosv you the
beings of the system to vvhich I myself belong,
that of the sun ; your organs would perish before
oui -  brightness, and I am only permitted to be

THE VISION.

55

present to you as a sound or intellectual voice.
We  are likewise in progression, but vre see and
know something of the plans of Infinite Wisdom;
vve feel the personal presence of tbat supreme
Deity vvhich you only imagine; to you belongs
faitb, to us knowledge; and our greatest de-
light results from the conviction tbat vve are
lights kindled by his light, and that vve belong
to his substance. To obey, to love, to vvonder,
and adore, form our relations to the infinite
Intelligence. We feel his lavvs are those of
eternal justice, and that they govern ali things,
from the most glorious intellectual natures be-
longing to the sun and fixed stars, to the mean-
est spark of life animating an atom crawling
in the dust of your earth. We knovv ali things
begin from, and end in, his everlasting essence,
the cause of causes, the povver of povvers.’

The low and svreet voice ceased ; it appeared
as if I had fallen suddenly upon the earth,
but there vvas a bright light before me, and
I heard my name loudly called; the voice vvas
not of my intellectual guide—the genius before
me vvas my servant bearing a flambeau in
his hand. He told me he had been searching

56

DIALOGUE I.

me in vain amongst the ruins, that the carriage
had been waiting for me above an bour, and
that be bad left a large party of my friends
assembled in the Palazzo F-.

DIALOGU E THE SECOND.

;discussions  CONNECTED WITH THE VISION
IN THE COLOS/EUM.

The  same friends, Ambrosio and Onuphrio,
■vvho were my companions at Rome in the win-
ter, accompanied me in the spring to Naples.
Many conversations occurred in the course of
our journey, which were often to me peculiarly
instructive, and from the difference of their
opinions generally animated and often enter-
taining. I shall detail one of these conversa¬
tions, vhich took plače in the evening on the
summit of Vesuvius, and the remembrance of
vhich, from its connexion with my vision in
the Colosreum, bas always a peculiar interest
for me. We had reached with some labour
the edge of the crater, and were admiring the
vonderful scene around us:—I shall give the
conversation in the words of the persons of the
drama.

58

DIALOGUE II.

Piiilaletiies. —It is difficult to say whe-
ther there is more of sublimity or beauty in
the scene around us. Nature appears at once
smiling and frowning, in activity and repose.
How tremendous is the volcano, how magni-
ficent this great ]aboratory of nature in its un-
ceasing fire, its subterraneous lightnings and
thunder, its volumes of smoke, its shoivers of
stones, and its rivers of ignited lava! How
contrasted the darkness of the scoriae, the ruins
and the desolation round the crater, with the
scene below ! There we see the rich field co-
vered with flax, or maize, or millet, and inter-
sected by rows of trees ivhich support the green
and graceful festoons of the vine; the orange
and lemon tree covered with golden fruit appear
in the sheltered glens; the olive-trees cover
the lovrer hills; islands purple in the beams of
the setting sun are scattered over the sea in
the west, and the sky is tinted with red soften-
ing into the brightest and purest azure; the
distant mountains stili retain a part of the
snows of winter, but they are rapidly melting,
and they absolutely seem to melt, reflect-
ing the beams of the setting sun, glowing
as if on fire. And man appears emulous of

DISCUSSIONS ON THE VISION.

59

nature, for tlie city below is full of activitv;
the nearest part of the bay is covered with
boats, busy multitudes crowd the strand, and
at tbe same time may be seen a number of the
arts belonging to civilized society in operation,
house-building, ship-building, rope-making, the
manipulations of the smith and of the agri-
culturist: and not only the useful arts, but
even the amusements and luxuries of a great
metropolis may be witnessed from the spot in
ivhich we stand ; that motley crowd is collected
round a policinello, and those smaller groups
that surround the stalls are employed in en-
joying tbe favourite food and drink of the
lazzaroni.

Ambrosio. —We see not only the power
and activity of man as existing at present, and
of which the highest example may be repre-
sented by the steam-boat which is now depart-
ing for Palermo, but we may likewise view
scenes which carry us into the very bosom of
antiquity, and, as it were, make us live with
the generations of past ages. Those small
square buildings, scarcely visible in the dis¬
tance, are the tombs of distinguished men
amongst the early Greek colonists of the coun-

60

DIALOGUE II.

try; and those rows of houses without roofs,
tvliich appear as if newly erecting, constitute a
Roman town restored from its ashes, that re-
mained for centuries as if it had been swept
from the face of the earth. When you study
it in detail, you will hardly avoid the illusion
that it is a rising city; you will almost be
tempted to ask where are the workmen, so
perfect are the walls of the houses, so bright
and uninjured the painting upon them. Hardly
anything is wanting to make this scene a mag-
nificent epitome of ali that is most worthy of
admiration in nature and art; had there been
in addition to the other objects a fine river
and a waterfall, the epitome would I think
have been absolutely perfect.

Phil.— You are most unreasonable in ima-
gining additions to a scene which it is impos-
sible to embrace in one view, and ivhich pre-
sents so many objects to the senses, the memory,
and to the imagination: yet there is a river
in the valley between Naples and Castel del
Mare; you may see its silver thread and the
white foam of its torrents in the distance; and
if you were geologists, you would find a number
of sources of interest, which have not been men-

DISCUSSIONS ON THE VISION.

61

tioned, in the scenery surrounding us. Somma,
vvhich is before us, for instance, affords a won-
derful example of a mountain formed of marine
deposits, and which lias been raised by subter-
raneous fire, and those large and singular veins
vvhich you see at the base and rising through
the substance of the strata, are composed of
volcanic porphyry, and offer a most striking and
beautiful example of the generation and struc-
ture of rocks and mineral formations.

Onuphrio. —As we passed through Portici,
on the road to the base of Vesuvius, it appeared
to me that I saw a Stone which bad an ancient
Roman inscription upon it, and which occupied
the plače of a portal in the modern palače of the
Barberini.

Phil.' —This is not an uncommon circum-
stance; most of the stones used in the palaces
of Portici had been employed, more than 2000
years before, in structures raised by the ancient
Romans or Greek colonists; and it is not a
little remarkable that the buildings of Hercu-
laneutn, a town covered with ashes, tufa, and
lava, from the first recorded eruption of Vesu¬
vius, more than 1700 years ago, should have
been constructed of volcanic materials produced

62

DIALOGUE II.

by some antecedent igneous action of the moun-
tain in times beyond the reach of history; and it
is stili more remarkable tbat men should have
gone on for so many ages making erections in
spots where their works have been so often de-
stroyed, inattentive to the voice of time or the
ivarnings of nature.

Onu. —This last fact recalls to my recollection
an idea which Philalethes started in the remark¬
able dream which he would have us believe
occurred to hitn in the Colosaeum ; namely, that
no important facts which can be useful to society
are ever lost, and that like these stones, though
covered with ashes or hidden amongst ruins,
they are sure to be brought forvvard again, and
made use of in some new form.

Amb. —I do not see the justness of the ana-
logy to which Onuphrio refers; but there are
many parts of that vision on which I should
ivish to hear the explanations of Philalethes. I
consider it in fact as a sort of poetical epitome
of his philosophical opinions, and I regard this
vision or dream as a mere web of his imagina-
tion, in which he intended to catch us his sum-
mer-flies and travelling companions.

Phil. —There, Ambrosio, you do me wrong.

DISCUSSIONS ON THE VISION.

63

I will acknowledge, if you please, that the vision
in the Colosseum is a fiction ; but the most im-
portant parts of it really occurred to me in
sleep, particularly that in which I seemed to
leave the earth, and launch into the infinity of
space, under the guidance of a tutelary genius :
and the origin and progress of civil society
form likewise parts of another dream which I
had many years ago; and it was in the reverie
ivhich happened when you guitted me in the
Colosffium that I wove ali these thoughts to-
gether, and gave them the form in which I nar-
rated them to you.

Amb. —Of course we may consider them as an
accurate representation of your waking thoughts.

Phil. —I do not say that they strictly are
so; for I am not quite convinced that dreams
are always representations of the State of the
mind modified by organic diseases or by asso-
ciations. There are certainly no absolutely new
ideas produced in sleep, yet I have had more
than one instance, in the course of my life, of
most extraordinary combinations occurring in
this State, which have had considerable influ¬
ence on my feelings, my imagination, and my
health.

64

DIALOGUE II.

Onu. —Why, Philalethes, you are becoming
a visionary, a dreamer of dreams : we shall per-
haps set you down by the side of Jacob Beh-
men or of Emanuel Swedenborg; and, in an
earlier age, you might have been a prophet,
and have ranked perhaps with Mahomet. But
pray give us one of these instances, in which
such a marvellous influence was produced on
your imagination and your health by a dream,
that we may form some judgment of the nature
of your second sight or inspirations, and whe-
ther they have any foundation, or whether they
are not, as I believe, really unfounded, inven-
tions of the fancy, dreams respecting dreams.

Phil. —I anticipate unbelief, and I expose
myself to your ridicule in the statement I am
about to make, yet I shall mention nothing but
a simple fact. Almost a quarter of a century
ago, as you know, I contracted that terrible
form of typhus fever known by the name of
jail fever—I may say, not from any imprudence
of my oivn, but whilst engaged in putting in
execution a plan for ventilating one of the great
prisons of the metropolis. My illness was severe
and dangerous : as long as the fever continued,
my dreams or deliriums were most painful and

DISCUSSIONS ON THE VISION.

65

oppressive; but when the weakness consequent
to exhaustion canie on, and when the probability
of death seemed to my physicians greater than
that of life, there was an entire change in ali my
ideal combinations. I remained in an apparently
senseless or lethargic State, but in fact my mind
was peculiarly active: there was ahvays before
rae the form of a beautiful woman, with whom
I was engaged in the most interesting and intel-
lectual conversation.

Amb. —The figure of a lady with whom you
were in love.

Phil.- —-No such thing; I was passionately
in love at the time ; but the object of my admi-
ration was a lady with black hair, dark eyes,
and pale complexion : this špirit of iny vision,
on the contrary, had brown hair, blue eyes, and
a bright, rosy comp]exion, and was, as far as I
can recollect, unlike any of the amatory forms
■vvhich, in early youth, had so often haunted my
imagination. Her figure, for many days, was
so distinct in my mind as to form almost a
visual image : as I gained strength, the visits of
my good angel (for so I called it) became less
frequent, and when I was restored to health they
were altogether discontinued.

O

F

66

DIALOGUE II.

Onu. —I see nothing very strange in this—
a mere reaction of tlie mind after severe pain ;
and, to a young man of twenty-five, there are
few more pleasurable images than that of a
beautiful maiden, with blue eyes, blooming
cheeks, and long nut-brown hair.

Phil. —But ali my feelings and ali my con-
versations with this visionary maiden vere of
an intellectual and refined nature.

Onu. —Yes, I suppose, as long as you were
ill.

Phil. —I will not allow you to treat me with
ridicule on this point till you have heard the
second part of my tale. Ten years after I had
recovered from the fever, and when I had
almost lost the recollection of the vision, it was
recalled to my memory by a very blooming and
graceful maiden, fourteen or fifteen years old,
that I accidentally met during my travels in
Illyria; but I cannot say that the impression
made upon my mind by this female was very
strong. Nov comes the extraordinary part of
the narrative : ten years after, tventy years after
my first illness, at a time when I vas exceed-
ingly weak from a severe and dangerous malady,
vhich for many veeks threatened my life, and

DISCUSSIONS ON THE VISION.

67

when my mind was almost in a desponding
State, being in a course of travels ordered by my
inedical advisers, I again met the person who
vas the representative of my visionary female;
and to her kindness and čare I believe I owe
vhat remains to me of existence. My despon-
dency gradually disappeared, and, though my
health stili continued veak, life began to pos-
sess charms for me vhich I had thought vere
for ever gone ; and I could not help identifying
the living angel with the vision vhich appeared
as my guardian genius during the illness of my
youth.

Onu. —I really see nothing at ali in this fact,
vhether the first or the second part of the nar-
rative be considered, beyond the influence of an
imagination excited by disease. From youth,
even to age, women are our guardian angels,
our comforters; and I dare say any other
handsome young female, vho had been your
nurse in your last illness, vould have coincided
vitli your remembrance of the vision, even
though her eyes had been hazel and her hair
flaxen. Nothing can be more loose than the
images represented in dreams following a fever ;
and vith the nervous susceptibility produced by

F2

68

DIALOGUE II.

your last Illness, almost any agreeable form
vvould have become the representative of your
imaginary guardian genius. Thus it is that,
by the power of fancy, material forms are
clothed in supernatural attributes, and in the
same manner imaginary divinities have ali the
forms of mortality bestowed upon them. The
gods of the pagan mythology were, in ali tbeir
characters and attributes, exalted human beings:
the demon of the covvard, and the angelic form
that appears in the dreams of some maid smitten
by devotion, and who, having lost her earthly
lover, fixes her thoughts on heaven, are clothed
in the character and vestments of humanity,
changed by the dreaminess of passion.

Amb. —With such a tendency, Philalethes,
as you have shown to believe in something like
a supernatural or divine influence on the human
mind, I am astonished there should be so much
scepticism belonging to your vision in the Colo-
saeum. And your view of the early state of
man, after his first creation, is not only incom-
patible vvith revelation, but likewise with reason,
and everything that we know respecting the
history or traditions of the early nations of anti-
quity.

DISCUSSIONS ON THE VISION.

69

Phil. —Be more distinct and detailed in your
statements, Ambrosio, that I may be able to
reply to them ; and whilst we are waiting for
the sunrise, we may discuss the subject, and for
this, let us seat ourselves on these stones, where
we shall be warmed by the vicinity of the cur-
rent 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, acquir-
ing, by the little use that they make of a feeble
reason, the power of supporting and extending
life. Now, I contend, that if man had been
so created, he must inevitably have been de-
stroyed by the elements or devoured by savane
beasts, so infinitely his superiors in physical
force: he must, therefore, have been formed
with various instinctive faculties and propen-
sities, with a perfection of form and use of
organs, fitting him to become the master of
the earth; and it appears to me that the
account given in Genesis of the first parents of
mankind having been placed in a garden fitted
with everything necessary to their existence and
enjoyment, and ordered to increase and multiply
there, is strictly in harmony vvith reason, and

70

DIALOGUE II.

accordant witli ali just metaphysical views of
the human mind. Man, as he now exists, can
only be raised with great čare and difficulty
from the infant to the mature State; ali his
motions are at first automatic, and become
voluntary by association ; he has to learn every-
thing by slow and difficult processes; many
months elapse before he is able to stand, and
many years before he is able to provide for the
common wants of life. Without the mother or
the nurse in his infant State, he would die in a
few hours; and ivithout the laborious discipline
of  instruction and example, he would remain
idiotic and inferior to most other animals. His
reason is only acquired gradiially, and when in
its highest perfection is often uncertain in its
results ; he must, therefore, have been created
with instincts that for a long while supplied the
want of reason, and which enabled him from the
first moment of his existence to provide for his
wants, to gratify his desires, and enjoy the power
and the activity of life.

Phil. —I acknowledge that your objection
has some weight, but not so much as you would
attribute to it. I will stippose that the first
created man or men had certain powers or

DISCUSSIONS ON THE VISION.

71

instincts, such as now belong to the rudest
savages of the Southern hemisphere ; I will sup-
pose them created with the use of their organs
for defence and offence, and with passions and
propensities enabling them to supply their own
ivants. And I oppose the fact of races who
are nov actually in this State, to your vague
historical or traditionary records ; and their
gradual progress or improvement from this early
State of society, to that of the highest State of
civilization or refinement, may, I think, be easily
deduced from the exertions of reason, assisted
by the influence of the moral powers and of
physical circumstances. Accident, I conceive,
must have had some influence in laying the
foundations of certain arts; and a climate in
which labour was not too oppressive, and in
ivliich the exertion of industry was required to
provide for the wants of life, must have fixed
the character of the activity of the early im-
proving people; where Nature is too kind a
mother, man is generally a spoiled child ; where
she is severe and a stepmotber, his powers are
usually withered and destroyed. The people
of the south and the nortb, and those between
the tropics, offer, even at this day, proof of the

72

DIALOGUE II.

truth of tliis principle; and it is even possible
now to find on the surface of the earth ali the
different gradations of the States of society, from
that in which man is scarcely removed above the
brute, to that in which he appears approaching
in his nature to a divine intelligence. Besides,
reason being the noblest gift of God to man, I
can hardly suppose that an infinitely powerful
and all-ivise Creator would bestow upon the
early inhabitants of the globe a greater propor-
tion of instinct than was at first necessary to
preserve their existence, and that he would not
leave the great progress of their improvement to
the development and exaltation of their reason-
ing powers.

Amb. —You appear to me, in your argument,
to have forgotten the influence that any civilized
race must possess over savages; and many of
the nations which you consider as in their origi¬
nal state, may have descended from nations for-
merly civilized ; and it is quite as easy to trače
the retrograde steps of a people as their ad-
vances. The savage hordes who now inhabit
the northern coast of Africa, are probably de¬
scended from the opulent, commercial, and in-
genious Carthaginians, who once contended with

DISCUSSIONS GN THE VISION.

73

Rome for the empire of the ivorld; and, even
nearer hotne, we might find in Southern Italy,
and her islands, proofs of a degradation not
much inferior. What I contend for is, the civi¬
lization of the first patriarchal races who peopled
the East, and who passed into Europe from
Armenia, in which Paradise is supposed to have
been placed. The early civilization of this race
could only have been in consequence of their
powers and instincts having been of a higher
character than those of savages. They appear
to have been stnall families,—a State not at
ali fitted for the discoverv of arts by the exer-
cise of the mind; and they professed the most
sublime form of religion,—the worship of one
supreme Intelligence, a truth which, after a
thousand years of civilization, was with difficulty
attained by the most povrerful efforts of reason-
ing by the Greek sages. It appears to me,
that in the history of the Jews, nothing can be
more in conformity to our ideas of j ust analogy
than this series of events. Our first parents
were created ivith everything necessary for
their wants and their happiness; they had only
one duty to perform, by their obedience to
prove their love and devotion to their Creator.

74 DIALOGUE II.

In this they failed, and death or the fear of
death became a curse upon their race; but the
Father of mankind repented, and his instinctive
or intellectual powers given by revelation were
transmitted to his ofFspring more or less modified
by their reason, which they had gained as the
fruit of their disobedience. One branch of his
offspring, however, in whom faith shone forth
above reason, retained their peculiar povvers
and institutions, and preserved the vvorship of
Jehovah pure, vhilst many of the races sprung
from their brethren became idolatrous, and the
clear light of heaven was lost through the mist
of the senses; and that Being, worshipped by
the Israelites only as a mysterious word, was
forgotten by many of the nations who lived in
the neighbouring countries, and men, beasts,
the parts of the visible universe, and even stocks
and stones, were set up as objects of adoration.
The difficulty which the divine legisiators of
the Jewish people had to preserve the purity of
their religion amongst the idolatrous nations by
whom they were surrounded, proves the natural
evil tendency of the human mind after the fall
of man. And whoever will consider the nature
of the Mosaical or ceremonial law, and the

DISCUSSIONS ON THE VISION. 75

manner in which it was suspended before tlie
end of the Roman empire, the expiatory sacri-
fice of the Messiah, the fear of death destroyed
by the blessed hopes of immortality established
by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the destruc-
tion of Jerusalem by Titus, and the triumphs of
Christianity over Paganism in the time of Con-
stantine, can I think hardly fail to acknowledge
the reasonableness of the truth of revealed re-
ligion as founded upon the early history of man ;
and whoever acknowledges this reasonableness
and this truth, must I think be dissatisfied with
the view which Philalethes or his Genius has
given of the progress of society, and will find in
it one instance, amongst many others that might
be discovered, of the vague and erring results of
his so much boasted human reason.

Onu.' —I fear I shall shock Ambrosio, but I
cannot help vindicating a little the philosophi-
cal results of human reason, which it must be
allowed are entirely hostile to his ideas. I
agree vvith Philalethes, that it is the noblest
gift of God to man ; and I cannot think that
Ambrosio’s view of the paradisiacal condition,
and the fall of man, and the progress of society,
is at ali in conformity with the ideas we ought

76

DIALOGUE II.

to form of the institutions of ati infinitely wise
and powerful being. Besides, Ambrosio speaks
of the reasonableness of his own opinions; of
course his notions of reason must be different
from mine, or we have adopted different forms
of logic. I do not find in the biblical history
any idea of the supreme Intelligence conform-
able to those of the Greek philosophers ; on the
contrary, I find Jehovah everywhere described
as a powerful material being, endovved with
organs, feelings, and passions similar to those
of a great and exalted human agent. He is
described as making man in his own image, as
ivalking in the garden in the cool of the even-
ing, as being pleased with sacrificial offerings,
as angry with Adam and Eve, as personally
cursing Cain for his crime of fratricide, and
even as providing our first parents with gar-
ments to hide their nakedness : then, he appears
a material form in the midst of flames, thunder
and lightning, and was regarded by the Levites
as having a fixed residence in the ark: he is
contrasted, throughout the whole of the Old
Testament, ivith the gods of the heathens only
as being more powerful; and in the strange
scene which took plače in Pharaoh’s court he

DISCUSSIONS ON THE VISION.

77

seemed to have measured his abilities with those
of certain seers or magicians, and to have proved
his superiority only by producing greater and
more tremendous plagues. In ali the early
history of the Jewish nation, there is no con-
ception approaching to the sublimity of that of
Anaxagoras, who called God the Intelligence,
or vovs;  he appears always, on the contrary,
like the genii of Arabian romance, living in
clouds, descending on mountains, urging his
chosen people to commit the most, atrocious
crimes, to destroy ali the races not professing
the same worship, and to exterminate even the
child and the unborn infant. Then, I find in
the Old Testament no promise of a spiritual
Messiah, but only of a temporal king, who, as
the Jews believe, is yet to come. The serpent
in Genesis has no connexion with the špirit of
evil, but is described only as the most subtle
beast of the field, and having injured man, there
was to be a perpetual enmity between their
races; the serpent when able was to bite the
heel of the man, and the man when an oppor-
tunity occurred was to bruise the head of the
serpent. I will allow, if you please, that an
instinct of religion or superstition belongs to the

78

DIAL0GUE II.

human mind, and that the different forms
which this instinct assumes depend upon various
circumstances and accidents of history and cli-
mate; but I am not sure that the religion of
the Jews was superior to that of the Sabaeans,
who ivorshipped the stars, or the ancient Per-
sians, who adored the sun as the visible symbol
of divine power, or the eastern nations who in
the various forms of the visible universe wor-
shipped the powers and energies of the Divinity.
I feel like the ancient Romans with respect to
toleration ; I would give a plače to ali the gods
in my Pantheon, but I vvould not allow the
followers of Bramah or of Christ to quarrel
about the modes of incarnation or the superi-
ority of the attributes of their trien God.

A mb. —You have mistaken me, Onuphrio, if
you think I am shocked by your opinions; I
have seen too much of the wanderings of human
reason ever to be surprised by them, and the
views you have adopted are not uncommon
amongst young men of very superior talents,
who have only slightly examined the evidences
of revealed religion. But I am glad to find
that you have not adopted the code of infidelity
of many of the French revolutionists and of an

DISCUSSIONS ON THE VISION. 79

English school of sceptics, who find in the
ancient astronomy ali the germs of the worship
of the Hebrews, who identify the labours of
Hercules with those of the Jewish heroes, and
who find the life, death, and resurrection of the
Messiah in the history of the šolar day. You
at least allow the existence of a peculiar re-
ligious instinct, or, as you are pleased to call it,
superstition, belonging to the human mind, and
I have hopes that upon this foundation you
will ultimately build up a system of faith not
unworthy a philosopher and a Christian. Man,
with whatever religious instincts he was created,
was intended to communicate with the visible
universe by sensations and act upon it by his
organs, and in the earliest State of society he
was more particularly influenced by his grosser
senses. Allowing the existence of a supreme
Intelligence and his beneficent intentions to-
wards [man, the ideas of his presence which he
might think fit to impress upon the mind, either
for the purpose of veneration, or of love, of
hope or fear, must have been in harmony with
the general train of his sensations. I am not
sure that I make myself intelligible. The same
infinite power which in an instant could create

80

DIALOGUE II.

an universe, could of course so modify the ideas
of an intellectual being as to give them that
form and character most fitted for his existence;
and I suppose in the early State of created man,
he imagined that he enjoyed the actual presence
of the Divinity and heard his voice; I take this
to be the first and simplest result of religious
instinct. In early times, amongst the patri-
archs, I suppose these ideas vere so vi vid as
to be confounded with impressions; but as re¬
ligious instinct probably became feebler in their
posterity, the vividness of the impressions
diminished, and they tben became visions or
dreams, which with the prophets seem to have
constituted inspiration. I do not suppose that
the Supreme Being ever made himself known
to man by a real change in the order of nature,
but that the sensations of men were so modified
by their instincts as to induce the belief in his
presence. That there was a divine intelligence
continually acting upon the race of Seth as his
chosen people, is I think clearly proved by the
events of their historv, and also that the early
opinions of a small tribe in Judaea vere designed
for the foundation of the religion of the most
active, and civilized, and powerful nations of

DISCUSSIONS ON THE VISION. 81

the world, and that after a lapse of three tbou-
sand years. The manner in vvhich Christianity
spread over the world with a few obscure me-
chanics or fishermen for its promulgators, the
mode in ivhich it triumphed over paganism,
even when professed and supported by the
power and philosophy of a Julian, the martyrs
ivho subscribed to the truth of Christianity by
shedding tbeir blood for the faith, the exalted
nature of those intellectual men by wbom it
has been professed, who had examined ali
the depths of nature and exercised the pro-
foundest faculties of thought, such as Newton,
Locke, and Hartley, ali appear to me strong
arguments in favour of revealed religion. I
prefer rather founding my creed upon the fitness
of its doctrines tban upon bistorical evidences
or the nature of its miracles. The Divine In¬
teligence cbooses that men should be convinced
according to the ordinary train of their sensa-
tions, and on ali occasions it appears to me
more natural, that a change should take plače
in the human mind, than in the order of nature.
The popular opinion of the people of Judsea
was, that certain diseases were occasioned by
devils taking possession of a human being; the

82

DIALOGUE II.

disease was cured by our Saviour, and this in
tlie Gospel is expressed by his casting out
devils. But ivithout entering into explanations
respecting the historical miracles belonging to
Christianity, it is sufficient to say, that its truth
is attested by a constantly existing iniracle, the
present State of the Jews, which was predicted
by Jesus, their temple and city were destroyed,
and ali attempts made to rebuild it have been
vain, and they remain the despised and outcasts
of the world.

Onu. —But you have not answered my ob-
jections with respect to the cruelties exercised
by the Jews under the command of Jehovah,
vhicli appear to me in opposition to ali our
views of divine justice.

Amb. —I think even Philalethes will allow
that physical and moral diseases are hereditary,
and that to destroy a pernicious unbelief or
demoniacal worship, it was necessary to destroy
the whole race, root and branch. As an ex-
ample, I will imagine a certain contagious dis¬
ease ivhich is transmitted by parents to  children,
and which like the plague is communicated to
sound persons by contact; to destroy a family
of men who would spread this disease over the

DISCUSSIONS ON THE VISION.

83

whole earth would unquestionably be a mercy.
Besides, I believe in the immortality of the sen-
tient principle in man ; destruction of life is
only a change of existence, and supposing the
new existence a superior one, it is a gain. To
the supreme Intelligence, the death of a million
of human beings is the mere circumstance of so
many spiritual essences changing their habita-
tions, and is analogous to the myriad millions of
larvee tbat leave their coats and shells behind
them, and rise into the atmosphere, as flies in a
summer day: when man measures the works of
the divine mind by his own feeble combinations,
he must wander in gross error; the infinite can
never be understood by the finite.

Onu. —As far as I can comprehend your rea-
soning, the priests of Juggernaut might make
the same defence for their idol, and find in such
views a fair apology for the destruction of thou-
sands of voluntary victims crushed to pieces by
the feet of the sacred elephant.

Amb. —Undoubtedly they might, and I should
allow the justness of their defence if I saw in
their religion any germs of a divine institution
fitted to become like the religion of Jehovah
the faith of the whole civilized world, embracing

G 2

84

DIALOGUE II.

the most perfect form of theism and the most
refined and exalted morality. I consider the
ear]y acts of the Jewish nation as the lowest
and rudest steps of a temple raised by the Su-
preme Being to contain the altar of sacrifice to
his glory. In the early periods of society, rude
and uncultivated men could only be acted upon
by gross and temporal rewards and punish-
ments; severe rites and heavy discipline were
required to keep the mind in order, and the
punishment of the idolatrous nations served as
an example for the Jevvs. When Christianity
took the plače of Judaism, the ideas of the Su-
preme Being became more pure and abstracted,
and the visible attributes of Jehovah and his
angels appear to have been less frequently pre-
sented to the mind: yet even for many ages, it
seemed as if the grossness of our material senses
required some assistance from the eye, in fixing
or perpetuating the character of religious in-
stinct; and the church to which I belong, and I
may say the ivhole Christian church in early
times, allovved visible images, pictures, statues,
and relics, as the means of awakening the
stronger devotional feelings. We have been
accused of worshipping merely inanimate ob-

DISCUSSIONS ON THE VISION.

85

jects; but this is a very false notion of the
nature of our faith ; we regard them merely as
vivid characters representing spiritual esistences,
and we no more worship them than the Pro¬
testant does his bible when he kisses it under
a solemn religious adjuration. The past, the
present, and the future, being the same to the
infinite and divine Intelligence, and man being
created in love for the purposes of happiness,
the moral and religious discipline to which he
was submitted was in strict conformity to his
Progressive faculties and to the primary laws of
his nature. It is but a rude analogy, yet it is
the only one I can find, that of comparing
the Supreme Being to a wise and good father,
who to secure the well-being of his offspring is
obliged to adopt a system of rewards and pu-
nishments, in which the senses at first, and
afterwards the imagination and reason are con-
eerned; he terrifies them by the example of
others, awakens their love of glory by pointing
out the distinction and the happiness gained by
superior men by adopting a particular line of
conduct; he uses at first the rod, and gradually
substitutes for it the fear of immediate shame;
and having awakened the fear of shame, and the

86 DIALOGUE II.

love of praise or honour with respect to tem-
porary and immediate actions, he extends them
to the conduct of the whole of life, and makes
what was a momentary feeling a permanent and
immutable principle. And obedience in the
child to the will of such a parent, may be com-
pared to faith in and obedience to the will of
the Supreme Being: and a wayward and dis-
obedient child who reasons upon and doubts the
utility of the discipline of such a father, is much
in the same state in which the adult man is,
ivho doubts if there be good in the decrees of
Providence, and who questions the harrnony of
the plan of the moral universe.

Onu. —Allowing the perfection of your mo¬
ral scheme of religion, and its fitness for the
nature of man, I find it impossible .to believe
the primary doctrines on which this scheme
is founded. You make the divine mind, the
creator of infinite worlds, enter into the form
of a man born of a virgin, you make the eternal
and immortal God the victim of shameful punish-
ment and suffering death on the cross, recovering
his life after three days and carrying his maimed
and lacerated body into the heaven of heavens.

Amb. —You, like ali other sceptics, make

DISCUSSIONS ON THE VISION.

87

your own interpretations of tlie Scriptures, and
set up a standard for divine power in human
reason. The infinite and eternal mind, as I
said before, fits the doctrines of religion to the
minds by which they are to be embraced. I
see no improbability in the idea that an inte-
grant part of his essence may have animated a
human form; there can be no doubt that this
belief has existed in the human mind, and the
belief constitutes the vital part of the religion.
We know nothing of the generation of the hu¬
man being in the ordinary course of nature;
how absurd then to attempt to reason upon the
acts of the divine mind! Nor is there more dif-
ficulty in imagining the event of a divine con-
ception, than of a divine creation. To God,
the infinite, little and great, as measured by
human powers, are equal; a creature of this
earth, however humble and insignificant, may
have the same weight with millions of superior
beings inhabiting higher systems. But I con-
sider ali the miraculous parts of our religion as
affected by changes in the sensations or ideas of
the human mind, and not by physical changes
in the order of nature: a man who has to repair
a piece of machinery, as a clock, must take it

88

DIALOGUE II.

to pieces and in fact remake it; but to infinite
ivisdom and power a change in the intellectual
State of the human being may be the result of
a momentary will, and the mere act of faith may
produce the change. How great the powers
of imagination are, even in ordinary life, is
shown by many striking facts, and nothing
seems impossible to this imagination when acted
upon by divine influence. To attempt to an-
swer ali the objections which may be derived front
the want of conformity in the doctrines of Chris-
tianity to the usual order of events would be
an interminable labour. My first principle is,
that religion has nothing to do with the com-
mon order of events; it is a pure and divine
instinct intended to give results to man which
be cannot obtain by the common use of his
reason, and which at first vievv often appear
contradictory to it, but which when examined
by the most refined tests, and considered in the
most extensive and profound relations, are in
fact in conformity with the most exalted intel¬
lectual knowledge, so that indeed the results of
pure reason ultimately become the same with
those of faith,—the tree of knowledge is grafted
upon the tree of life, and that fruit which

DISCUSSIONS ON THE VISION.

89

brought the fear of death into the world, bud-
ding on an immortal stock, becomes the fruit of
the promise of immortality.

Onu. —You derive Christianity from Ju-
daism ; I cannot see their connexion, and it ap-
pears to me that the religion of Mahomet is
more naturally a scion from the stock of Moses.
Christ was a Jew and was circumcised : this rite
was continued by Mahomet, and is to this day
adopted by his disciples though rejected by the
Christians; and the doctrines of Mahomet ap-
pear to me to have a higher claim to divine ori-
gin than those of Jesus : his morality is as pure,
his theism purer, and his system of rewards and
punishments after death as much in conformity
with our ideas of eternal justice.

Amb. —I will willingly make the decision of
the general question dependant upon the deci¬
sion of this particular one. No attempts have
been made by the Mahometans to find any pre-
dictions respecting their founder in the Old
Testament, and they have never pretended even
that he was the Messiah; therefore, as far as
prophecy is concerned, there is no ground for
admitting the truth of the religion of Mahomet.
It has been the fashion with a particular sect of

90

DIALOGUE II.

infidels to praise the morality of the Mahome-
tans, but I think unjustly; they are said to be
honest in their dealings and charitable to those
of their own persuasion; but they allow poly-
gamy and a plurality of women, and are de-
spisers and persecutors of the nations professing
a different faith: and what a contrast does this
morality present to that of the Gospel, which
inculcates charity to ali mankind, and orders
benevolent actions to be performed even to ene-
mies ; and the purity and simplicity of the infant
is held up by Christ as the model of imitation
for his follovrers. Then, in the rewards and
punishments of the future State of the Maho-
metans, how gross are ali the ideas, how unlike
the promises of a divine and spiritual being;
their paradise is a mere earthly garden of sen-
sual pleasure, and their Houris represent the
ladies of their own harems rather than glorified
angelic natures. How different is the Christian
heaven, how sublime in its idea, indefinite, yet
well suited to a being of intellectual and Progres¬
sive faculties: ‘ Eye hath not seen, nor ear
heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man
to conceive the joys that He hath prepared for
those who love him.’

DISCUSSIONS ON THE VISION.

91

Onu. —I confess your answer to my last argu¬
ment is a triumphant one; but I cannot allov
a question of such extent and of such a variety
of bearings to be decided by so slight an advan-
tage as that vhich you have gained by this
answer. I vili nov offer another difficulty to
you. The law of the Jews, you will allov,
vas established by God himself, and delivered
to Moses from the seat of his glory, amongst
storms, thunder, and lightnings, on Mount
Sinai: why should this law, if pure and divine,
have been overturned by the same being who
established it, and ali the ceremonies of the He-
brews have been abolished by the first Chris-
tians ?

Amb. —I deny that the divine lav of Moses
vas abolished by Christ, who himself says, ‘ I
came to confirm the law, not to destroy it.’
And the Ten Commandments form the vital
parts of the foundation of the creed of the true
Christian. It appears that the religionof Christ
was the same pure theism with that of the pa-
triarchs; and the rites and ceremonies established
by Moses seem to have been only adjuncts to
the spiritual religion intended to suit a parti-
cular climate, and a particular State of the Jewish

92

DIALOGUE II.

nation—rather a dress or clothing of the reli-
gion than forming a  constituent part of it—a
system of discipline of life and manners, rather
than ati essential part of doctrine. The rites of
circumcision and ablution vvere necessary to the
health, and, perhaps, even to the existence, of a
people living on the hottest part of the shores of
the Mediterranean; and in the sacrifices made
of the first fruits and of the chosen of the flock,
vve may see a design, not merely connected vvith
the religious faith of the people, but even vvith
their political economy. To offer their choicest
and best property as a proof of their gratitude
to the Supreme Being, vvas a kind of test of de-
votedness and obedience to the theocracy ; and
these sacrifices, by obliging them to raise more
produce and provide more cattle than vvere essen¬
tial to their ordinary support, preserved them
from the dan ser of famine, as in čase of a dearth
it vvas easy for the priest, under the divine per-
mission, to apply these offerings to the necessities
of the people. AH the pure parts of the faith
vvhich had descended from Abraham to David
vvere preserved by Jesus Christ, but the cere¬
monial religion vvas fitted only for a particular
nation and a particular country; Christianity,

DISCUSSIONS ON THE VISION.

93

on the contrary, was to be the religion of the
ivorld, and of a civilized and improving world.
And it appears to me to be an additional proof
of its divine nature and origin, that it is exactly
in conformity to the principles of the improve-
ment and perfection of the human mind. When
given to a particular race, fixed in a peculiar
climate, its objects were sensible, its discipline
vas severe, and its rites and ceremonies nume-
rous and itnposing, fitted to act upon weak, igno¬
rant, and, consequently, obstinate men. In its
gradual development it threw off its local cha-
racter and its particular forms, and adopted
ceremonies more fitted for mankind in general;
and in its ultimate views, it preserves only pure,
spiritual, and, I may say, philosophical doc-
trines, the unity of the divine nature, and a
future State, embracing a system of revvards and
punishments suited to an accountable and im-
mortal being.

Phil. —I have been attentively listening to
your discussion. The views ivhich Ambrosio
has taken of Christianity certainly throw a light
over it perfectly new to me ; and I must say in
candour, that I am disposed to adopt his notion
of the early state of society rather tban that of

94

DIALOGUE II.

my Genius. I have always been accustomed to
consider religious feeling as instinctive; but
Ambrosio’s arguments have given me something
approaching to a definite faith for an obscure
and indefinite notion. I am willing to allow that
man was created, not a savage, as he is repre-
sented in my vision, but perfect in his faculties,
and with a variety of instinctive powers and
knowledge; that he transmitted these powers
and knowledge to his offspring; but that, by
an improper use of reason in disobedience to the
divine will, the instinctive faculties of most of
his descendants became deteriorated, and at last
lost; but that these faculties were preserved in
the race of Abraham and David, and the full
power again bestowed upon or recovered by
Christ. I am ready to allow the importance of
religion in cultivating and improving the world,
and Ambrosio’s view appears to me capable of
being referred to a general law of our nature;
and revelation may be regarded not as a partial
interference, but as a constant principle belong-
ing to the mind of man, and the belief in super-
natural forms and agency, the results of prophe-
cies and the miracles, as one only of the necessary
consequences of it. Man, as a reasoning animal,

DISCUSSIONS ON THE VISION.

95

must always have doubted of his immortality and
plan of conduct; in ali the results of faith there
is immediate submission to a divine will, which
we are sure is good. We may compare the
destiny of man in this respect to that of a mi-
gratory bird : if a slow-flying bird, as a landrail,
in the Orkneys, in autumnhad reason, and could
use it as to the probability of his finding his way
over deserts, across seas, and of securing his food
in passing to a warm climate three thousand
miles ofF, he would undoubtedly starve in Eu-
rope; under the direction of his instinct he
securely arrives there in good condition. I have
allowed the force of your objections to that part
of my vision relating to the origin of society, but
I hope you will admit that the conclusion of it
is not inconsistent with the ideas derived from
revelation respecting the future State of the hu¬
man being.

Aio.—Revelation has not disclosed to us the
nature of this State, but only fixed its certainty.
We are sure, from geological facts, as veli as
from sacred history, that man is a recent animal
on the globe, and that this globe has undergone
one considerable revolution since the Creation,
by water; and we are taught that it is to un-

96

DIAL0GUE II.

dergo another, by fire, preparatory to a new and
glorified State of existence of man ; but this is
ali we are permitted to know ; and as this State
is to be entirely different from the present one of
misery and probation, any knoivledge respecting
it would be useless, and, indeed, almost impos-
sible.

Phil. —My Genius has placed the more ex-
alted spiritual natures in cometary worlds, and
this last fiery revolution may be produced by the
appulse of a comet.

Amb. —Human fancy may imagine a thousand
manners in which it may be produced, but upon
such notions itis absurd to dwell. I will not allow
your Genius the slightest approach to inspiration,
and I can admit no verisimility in a reverie
ivhich is fixed on a foundation you now allow to
be so weak. But see, the twilight is beginning
to appear in the orient sky, and there are some
dark clouds on the horizon opposite to the crater
of Vesuvius, the lower edges of which transmit a
bright light, showing the sun is already risen
in the country beneath them. I would say, that
they may serve as an image of the hopes of im-
mortality derived from revelation; for we are
sure, from the light reflected in those clouds,

DISCUSSIONS ON THE VISION.

97

that the lands below us are in the brightest sun-
shine, but we are entirely ignorant of the sur-
face and the scenery ; so, by revelation, the light
of an imperishable and glorious world is disclosed
to us; but it is in eternity, and its objects can-
not be seen by mortal eye, or imaged by mortal
imagination.

Phil. —-I am not so well read in the Scriptures
as I hope I shall be at no very distant time;
but I beiieve the pleasures of heaven are men-
tioned more distinctly than you allovv in the
sacred writings. I think I remember that the
saints are said to be crowned with pahns and
amaranths, and that they are described as per-
petually hymning and praising God.

Amb. —This is evidently only metaphorical;
mušic is the sensual pleasure which approaches
nearest to an intellectual one, and probably may
represent the delight resulting from the percep-
tion of the harmony of things and of truth seen
in God. The palm, as an evergreen tree, and
the amaranth, a perdurable flovver, are emblems
of immortality. If I am allowed to give a me¬
taphorical allusion to the future State of the
blessed, I should image it by the orange-grove in
that sheltered glen, on which the sun is nov

H

98 DIALOGUE II.

beo-innins to shine, and of which the trees are
at the same time loaded with sweet golden fruit
and balmy silver flowers. Such objects may
ivell pourtray a State in which hope and fruition
become one eternal feeling.

Onu. —This glorious sunrise seems to have
made you both poetical. Though with the
darkest and most. gloomy mind of the party, I
cannot help feeling its influence, I cannot help
believing with you, that the night of death will
be succeeded by a bright morning; but as, in
the scene below us, the objects are nearly the
same as they were last evening, with more of
brightness and brilliancy, with a fairer prospect
in the east and more mist in the west, so I
cannot help believing that our new state of
existence must bear an analogy to the present
one, and that the order of events will not be
entirely different.

Amb. —Your view is not an unnatural one;
but I am rejoiced to find some symptoms of a
change in your opinions.

Onu. —I wish with ali my heart they were
stronger; I begin to feel my reason a weight,
and my scepticism a very heavy load. Your
discussions have made me a philo-Christian, but

DISCUSSIONS ON THE VISION.

99

I cannot understand nor embrace ali the views
you have developed, though I really wish to
do so.

Amb. —Your wish, if sincere, I doubt not
will be gratified. Fix your powerful mind
upon the harmony of the moral world, as you
have been long accustomed to do upon the
order of the physical universe, and you will see
the scheme of the eternal Intelligence develop-
ing itself alike in both. Think of the goodness
and mercy of Omnipotence, and aid your con-
templation by devotional feelings and mental
prayer and aspirations to the source of ali
knowledge, and wait with humility for the
light which I doubt not will be so produced in
your mind.

Onu. —You again perplex me; I cannot
believe that the adorations or offerings of so
feeble a creature can influence the decrees of
Omnipotence.

Amb. —You mistake me: as to their influ-
encing or affecting the Supreme Mind, it is out
of the question ; but they affect your own mind,
they perpetuate a habit of gratitude and of
obedience which may gradually end in perfect
faith; they discipline the affections, and keep

H 2

100

DIALOGUE II.

the heart in a State of preparation to receive
and preserve ali good and pious feelings.
Whoever passes from utter darkness into bright
sunshine, finds that he cannot at first distinguish
objects better in one than in the other; but in
a feeble light, he acquires gradually the power
of bearing a brighter one, and gains at last the
habit not only of supporting it, but of receiving
delight as well as instruction from it. In the
pious contemplations that I recommend to you,
there is the twilight or sober dawn of faith,
which will ultimately enable you to support the
brightness of its meridian sun.

Oku. —I understand you, but your metaphor
is more poetical than j ust; your  discipline,
however, I have no doubt is better fitted to
enable me to bear the light, than to contemplate
it through the smoked or coloured glasses of
scepticism.

Amb. —Yes, for they not only diminish its
brightness, but alter its nature.

DIALOGUE THE THIRD.

THE UNKNOWN.

The  same persons accompanied me in many
journeys by ]and and water to different parts of
the Phlegrasan Fields, and we enjoyed in a most
delightful season (the beginning of May) the
beauties of the glorious country which encloses
the Bay of Naples, so rich, so ornamented with
the gifts of nature, so interesting from the
monuments it contains and the recollections it
awakens. One excursion, the last we made in
Southern Italy, the most important both from
the extraordinary personage with whom it made
me acquainted, and his influence upon my
future life, merits a particular detail, which I
shall now deliver to paper.

It was on the 16th of May, 18—, that we
left Naples, at three in the morning, for the
purpose of visiting the remains of the temples
of Prestum, and having provided relays of

102

DIALOGUE III.

horses, we found ourselves at about half-past
one oklock descending the hill of Eboli, towards
the plain ivhich contains tbese stupendous
monuments of antiquity. Were my. existence
to be prolonged tbrough ten ccnturies, I think
I could never forget the pleasure I received on
that delicious spot. We alighted from our
carriage to take some refreshment, and we re-
posed upon the herbage under the shade of a
magnificent pine, contemplating the view around
and below us. On the right were the green
hills, covered vith trees, stretching towards
Salerno; beyond them were the marble cliffs
which form the Southern extremity of the Bay of
Sorento; immediately below our feet was a rich
and cultivated country, filled with vineyards
and abounding in villas, in the gardens of which
vere seen the olive and the cypress tree connected,
as if to memorialize how near to each other are
life and death, joy and sorrow; the distant
mountains stretching beyond the plain of Pass-
tum vere in the full luxuriance of vernal vege-
tation ; and in the ex treme distance, as if in the
midst of a desert, we saw the white temples
glittering in the sunshine. The blue Tyrrhene
Sea filled up the outline of this scene, which,

THE UNKNOWN.

103

though so beautiful, was not calm; there was a
healthy breeze which blew full from the south-
west,-—it was literally a zcphyr, and its fresh-
ness and strength in the middle of the day were
peculiarly balmy and delightful: it seemed a
breath stolen by the spring from the summer.
I never saw a deeper, brighter azure than that
of the waves which rolled towards the shore,
and which was rendered more striking by the
pure whiteness of their foam. The agitation of
nature seemed to be one of breathing and
awakening life ; the noise made by the waving
of the branches of the pine above our heads,
and by the rattling of its cones, was over-
powered by the mušic of a mukitude of birds
Avhich sung everywhere in the trees that sur-
rounded us, and the cooing of the turtle-doves
vas heard even more distinctly than the mur-
muring of the waves or the vhistling of the
winds, so that in the strife of nature the voice
of love was predominant. With our hearts
touched by this extraordinary scene we de-
scended to the ruins, and having taken at a
farm-house a person who acted as guide or
cicerone, we began to examine those wonderful
remains wbich have outlived even the name of

104

DIALOGUE III.

the people by ivhom they were raised, and ivhich
continue almost perfect, whilst a Roman and a
Saracen city since raised have been destroyed.
We had been walking for balf an hour round
the temples in the sunshine, when our gnide
represented to us the danger tli at there was of
suffering from the effects of malaria, for which,
as is well known, this plače is notorious, and ad-
vised us to retire into the interior of the Temple
of Neptune. We followed his advice, and my
companions began to employ themselves in mea-
surinff the circumference of one of the Doric

O

columns, when they suddenly called my attention
to a stranger who was sitting on a camp-stool
behind it. The appearance of any person in
this plače at this time was sufficiently remark-
able, but the man who was before us, from his
dress and appearance, would have been remark-
able any where. He was employed in writing
in a memorandum-book when we first saw him,
but he immediately arose and saluted us by
bending the head slightly though gracefully;
and this enabled me to see distinctly his person
and dress. He was rather above the middle
stature, slender, but with well-turned limbs;
his countenance was remarkably intelligent; his

THE UNKNOWN.

105

eye hazel, but fLili and strong; his front was
smooth and unwrinkled, and, but for some grey
hairs, ivhich appeared silvering his brown and
curly locks, he might have been supposed to
have hardly reached the middle age; his noše
was aquiline, the expression of tbe lower part of
his countenance remarkably sweet, and when he
spoke to our gnide, which he did with uncom-
mon fluency in the Neapolitan dialect, I thought
I had never heard a more agreeable voice—
sonorous, yet gentle and silver-sounded. His
dress was very peculiar, almost like that of an
ecclesiastic, but coarse and ligh t; a large, soiled
white hat, on which was fastened a pilgrim’s
cockle-shell, lay beside him on the ground ; and
attached to a rosary of coarse beads, suspended
from his neck, was a long, antique, blue-ena-
melled phial, like those found in the Greek
tombs. He took up his hat, and appeared to
be retiring to another part of the building, when
I apologized for the interruption we had given
to his studies, begged him to resume them,
and assured him that our stay in the building
would be only momentary, for I saw that there
was a cloud over the sun, the brightness of
which was the cause of our retiring. I spoke

106

DIALOGUE III.

in Italian; he replied in Englisb, observing
tliat be supposed tbe fear of contracting the
malaria fever had induced us to seek tbe shelter
of the shade—but it is too early in the season
to have mudi reasonable fear of this insidious
enemy ; yet, he added, this bottle, which yoti
may have observed here at my breast, I carry
about with me, as a supposed preventive of
the effects of malaria, and, as far as my experi-
ence, a very limited one however, has gone, it
is effectual. I ventured to ask him what the
bottle might contain, as such a benefit ought to
be made known to the world. He replied, ‘ It
is a mixture which slowly produces the sub¬
stance called by chemists chlorine, which is well
known to be generally destructive to contagious
matters ; and a friend of mine, who has lived for
many years in Italy, and who has made a num-
ber of experiments with it, by exposing himself
to the danger of fever in the worst seasons and
in the worst places, believes that it is a secure
preventive. I am not convinced of this, but
it can do no harm; and in waiting for more
evidence of its utilitv, I employ it ivithout put-
ting the least confidence in its power; nor do
I expose myself to the same danger as my

THE UNKNOWN.

107

friend bas done, for tbe sake of an experi-
ment.’ I said, c  I believe several scientific per-
sons, Brocchi amongst others, bave doubted the
existence of any specific matter in tbe atmo-
spbere, producing intermittent fevers in marsby
countries and bot climates; and have been more
disposed to attribute the disease to pbysical
causes, dependent upon the great differences of
temperature bctween day and night, and to the
refrigerating effects of the dense fogs, common
in such situations, in the evening and morning;
and, on this hypothesis, they have recommended
warm woollen clothing, and fires at night, as
the best preventives against these destructive
diseases, so fatal to the peasants who remain in
the summer and autumn in the neighbourhood
of the maremme of Rome, Tuscany, or Naples.’
The stranger said, ‘ I am acquainted with the
opinions of the gentlemen, and they undoubtedly
have veight; but, that a specific matter of con-
tagion has not been detected by Chemical means,
in the atraosphere of marshes, does not prove
its non-existence. We know so little of those
agents that affect the human constitution, that
it is of no use to reason on this subject. There
can be no doubt that the line of malaria above

108 DIALOGUE III.

the Pontine Marshes is marked by a dense fog
morning and evening, and most of the old
Roman towns were placed upon eminences out
of the reach of this fog. I have myself expe-
rienced a peculiar effect upon the organs of
smeli, in the neighbourhood of marshes, in the
evening after a very hot day ; and the instances
in which people have been seized with inter-
mittents, by a single exposure, in a plače in-
fested by malaria in the season of fevers, gives,
I think, a strong support to something like a
poisonous material existing in the atmosphere
in such spots; but I merely offer doubts. I
hope the progress of physiology and of chemistry
vvill at no very distant time solve this important
problem.’

Ambrosio now came forward, and bowing to
the stranger, said he took the liberty, as he saw,
from his familiarity with the cicerone, that he
was well acquainted with Pmstum, of asking
him whether the masses of travertine, of which
the Cyclopian walls and the temples were formed,
were really produced by aqueous deposition from
the river Silaro, as he had often heard reported.
The stranger replied, ‘ that they were certainly
produced by deposition from vrater; and such

THE UNKNOWN.

109

deposits are made by tbe Silaro. But I ratber
believe/ he said, ‘ tbat a lake in tbe immediate
neighbourhood of tbe city furnished tbe quarry
from which these stones were excavated ; and,
in half an hour, if you like, after you have
finished your examination of tbe temples with
your guide, I will accompany you to the spot
from which it is evident tbat large masses of
tbe travertine, marmor tiburtinum or calcareous
tufa, have been raised.’ We thanked him for
his attention, accepted his invitation, took the
usual walk round the temples, and returned to
our new acquaintance, who led the vvay through
tbe gate of the city to the banks of a pool or
lake a short distance off. We walked to the
borders on a mass of calcareous tufa, and we
saw tbat this substance had even incrusted the
reeds on the sbore. There was something
peculiarly melancholy in the cbaracter of this
water; ali the herbs around it were grey, as if
incrusted with marble; a few buffaloes were
slaking their thirst in it, which ran wildly away
on our approach, and appeared to retire into a
rocky excavation or quarry at the end of the
lake: there were a number of birds vvhich, on
examination, I found were sea-swallows flitting

110

DIALOGUE III.

on the surface, and busily employed, wit’n the
libella or dragon-fly, in destroying the myriads
of gnats which rose from the bottom, and were
beginning to be very troublesome by their bites
to us. ‘ There,’ said the stranger, ‘ is what
I believe to be the source of those large and
durable stones which you see in the plain before
you. This ivater rapidly deposits calcareous
matter; and even if you throiv a stick into it,
a few hours is sufficient to give it a coating of
this substance. Whichever way you turn your
eyes you see masses of this recently-produced
marble, the consequence of the overflowing of
the lake during the winter floods; and in that
large excavation, where you saw the buffaloes
disappear, you may observe that immense masses
have been removed, as if by the band of art and
in remote times ; the marble that remains in the
quarry is of the same texture and character as
that which you see in the rtiins of Paestum, and
I think it is scarcely possible to doubt, that the
builders of those extraordinary structures de-
rived a part of their materials from this spot.’
Ambrosio gave his assent to this opinion of the
stranger; and I took the liberty of asking him
as to the quantity of calcareous matter contained

THE UNKNOVVN.

111

in solution in the lake, saying, that it appeared
to me, for so rapid and considerable an effect of
deposition, there must be an unusual quantity
of solid matter dissolved by the water, or some
peculiar circumstance of solution. The stranger
replied, ‘ This water is like many, I may say
most, of the sources vvhich rise at the foot of the
Apennines; it holds carbonic acid in solution,
which has dissolved a portion of the calcareous
matter of the rock through which it has passed ;
—this carbonic acid is dissipated in.the atmo-
sphere, and the marble, slowly thrown down,
assumes a crystalline form, and produces co-
herent stones. The lake before us is not par-
ticularly rich in the quantity of calcareous matter
that it contains, for, as I have found by expe-
rience, a pint of it does not afford more than
five or six grains; but the quantity of fluid and
the lensth of time are sufficient to account for
the immense quantities of tufa and rock vvhich
in the course of ages have accumulated in this
situation.’ Onuphrio’s curiosity vvas excited by
this statement of the stranger, and he said,
‘ May I take the liberty of asking, if you have
any idea as to the cause of the large quantity
of carbonic acid, vvhich you have been so good

112

D1AL0GUE III.

as to inform us exists in most of the waters in
this country ? ’ The stranger replied, ‘ I cer-
tainly have formed an opinion on this sub-
ject, ivhich I willingly State to you. It can, I
think, be scarcely doubted ihat there is a
source of volcanic tire at no great distance from
the surface, in the whole of Southern Italy;
and this tire, acting upon the calcareous rocks
of which the Apennines are composed, must
constantlv detach from them carbonic acid,
vrhich, rising to the sources of the springs, de-
posited from the waters of the atmosphere, must
give them their impregnation and enable them
to dissolve calcareous matter. I need not dwell
upon Etna, Vesuvius, or the Lipari Islands, to
prove that volcanic fires are stili in existence ;
and there can be no doubt that, in earlier pe-
riods, almost the whole of Italy was ravaged by
them. Even Rome itself, the eternal city, rests
upon the craters of extinct volcanoes; and I
imagine that the traditional and fabulous record
of the destruction made by the conflagration of
Phaeton, in the chariot of the sun, and his fall-
ing into the Po, had reference to a great and
tremendous igneous volcanic eruption, ivhich
extended over Italy, and ceased only near the

THE UNKNOWN.

113

Po at the foot of the Alps. Be this as it may,
the sources of carbonic acid are numerous, not
merely in the Neapolitan, but likewise in the
Roman and Tuscan States. The most mao-ni-
O
ficent waterfall in Europe, that of the Veiino
near Terni, is partly fed by a stream contain-
ing calcareous matter dissolved by carbonic
acid, and it deposits marble, which crystallizes,
even in the midst of its thundering descent and
foam, in the bed in which it falls. The Anio
or Teverone, which almost approaches in beauty
to the Veiino in the number and variety of
its falls and cascatelle, is likewise a calcareous
water ; and there is stili a more remarkable one,
which empties itself into this river below Tivoli,
and which you have probably seen in your ex-
cursions in the campagna of Rome, called the
Lacus Albula, or the Lake of the Solfatara.’
Ambrosio said, ‘ We remember it well, we saw
it this very spring; we were carried there, to
examine some ancient Roman baths, and we
vere štručk by the blue milkiness of the vater,
by the magnitude of the source, and by the dis-
agreeable smeli of sulphuretted hydrogen which
every where surrounded the lake.’ The stranger
said, ‘ When you return to Latium, I advise

I

114

DIALOGUE III.

you to pay another visit to a spot vvhich is in-
teresting from a number of causes, some of
which I will take the liberty of mentioning to
you. You have only seen one lake—that where
the ancient Romans erected their baths; but
there is another a few yards above it, surrounded
by very high rushes and ahnost hidden by them
from the sight. This lake sends down a con-
siderable stream of tepid water to the larger
lake, but this water is less stronglv impregnated
with carbonic acid; the largest lake is actually a
saturated solution of this gas, which escapes
from it in such quantities in some parts of its
surface, that it has the appearance of being
actually in ebullition. I have found by experi-
ment that the water taken from the most tran-
quil part of the lake, even after being agitated
and exposed to the air, contained in solution
more than its own volume of carbonic acid gas,
with a very small quantity of sulphuretted hy-
drogen, to the presence of which, I conclude,
•its ancient use in curing cutaneous disorders
may be referred. Its temperature, I ascer-
tained, was in the vvinter in the warmest parts
above 80° of Fahrenheit, and it appears to be
pretty constant; for I have found it differ a

THE UNKNOWN.

115

few degrees only, in the ascending source, in
Januarv, March, May, and the beginning of
June; it is therefore supplied with heat from a
subterraneous source, being nearly 20° above
the mean temperature of the atmosphere. Kir-
cher has detailed, in his Mundus Subterraneus,
various wonders respecting this lake, most of
which are unfounded; such as that it is unfa-
thomable, that it has at the bottora the heat of
boiling water, and that floating islands rise from
the gulph which emits it. It must certainly be
very difficult, or even impossible, to fathom a
source which rises with so much violence from a
subterraneous excavation; and at a time when
chemistry had made small progress, it was easy
to mistake the disengagement of carbonic acid
for an actual ebullition. The floating islands
are real, but neither the Jesuit nor any of the
writers who have since described this lake had
a correct idea of tbeir origin, which is exceed-
ingly curious. The high temperature of this
water, and the quantity of carbonic acid that
it contains, render it peculiarly fitted to afford
a pabulum or nourishment to vegetable life;
the banks of travertine are everywhere covered
with reeds, lichens, confervte, and various kinds

12

116 DIAL0GUE III.

of aquatic vegetables; and at the same time
that the process of vegetable life is going on,
tbe crystallizations of the calcareous matter,
which is every where deposited in consequence
of the escape of carbonic acid, likevvise proceed,
giving a constant milkiness to what from its
tint would otherivise be a blue fluid. So rapid
is the vegetation, otving to the decomposition
of the carbonic acid, that, even in winter, masses
of confervas and lichens, mixed with deposited
travertine, are constantly detached by the cur-
rents of water from the bank, and float down
the stream, vvhich bein<j a considerable river
is never without many of these small islands
on its surface ; they are sometimes only a few
inches in size, and composed merely of dark-
green confervse or purple or yellow lichens, but
they are sometimes even of some feet in dia-
meter, and contain seeds and various species of
common water-plants, which are usually more
or less incrusted with marble. There is, I be-
lieve, no plače in the world where there is a
more striking example of the opposition or con-
trast of the laws of animate and inanimate na¬
ture, of tbe forces of inorganic chemical affinity
and those of the powers of life. Vegetables,

THE UNKNOWN.

117

in such a temperature and everywhere sur-
rounded by food, are produced with a wonder-
ful rapidity ; but the crystallizations are formed
with equal quickness, and they are no sooner
produced than they are destroyed together.
Notwithstanding the sulphureous exhalations
from the lake, the quantity of vegetable mat-
ter generated there and its heat make it the
resort of an infinite variety of insect tribes;
and, even in the coldest days in winter, num-
bers of flies may be observed on the vegetables
surrounding its banks or on its floating islands,
and a quantity of their larvae may be seen there,
sometimes incrusted and entirely destroyed by
calcareous matter, which is likewise often the
fate of the insects themselves, as well as of
various species of shell-fish that are found
amongst the vegetables, which grow  and are
destroyed in the travertine on its banks. Snipes,
ducks, and various water-birds often visit these
lakes, probably attracted by the temperature
and the quantity of food in which they abound;
but they usually confine themselves to the banks,
as the carbonic acid disengaged from the sur-
face would be fatal to them, if they ventured
to swim upon it when tranquil. In May, 18—>

118

DIALOGUE III.

I fixed a stick on a mass of travertine covered
by the water, and I examined it in the begin-
ning of the April following, for the purpose of
determining the nature of the depositions. The
water was lower at this time, yet I had some
difficulty, by means of a sharp-pointed ham-
mer, in breaking the mass which adhered to
the bottom of the stick ; it was several inches
in thickness. The upper part was a mixture
of light tufa and the leaves of confervae; below
this, was a darker and more solid travertine, con-
taining black and decomposed masses of con¬
fervae; in the inferior part, the travertine vas
more solid and of a grey colour, but with
cavities which I have no doubt were produced
by the decomposition of vegetable matter. I
have passed inany hours, I may say many days,
in studying the phenomena of this tvonderful
lake; it has brought many trains of thought
into my mind connected with the early changes
of our globe, and I have sometimes reasoned
from the forma of plants and animals preserved
in marble in this tvarin source, to the grander
depositions in the secondary rocks, where the
zoophytes or coral insects have tvorked upon a
grand scale, and where pahns and vegetables

THE UNKNOWN.

119

now unknown are preserved with the remains
of crocodiles, turtles, and gigantic extinct ani-
mals of the sauri genus, and which appear to
have belonged to a period when the whole
globe possessed a much higher temperature. I
have likewi.se often been led, from the remark-
able phenomena surrounding me in that spot,
to compare the works of man with those of
nature. The baths, erected there nearly twenty
centuries ago, present only heaps of ruins, and
even the bricks of which they were built, though
hardened by tire, are crumbled into dust; whilst
the masses of travertine around it, though
formed by a variable source from the most
perishable materials, have hardened by time,
and the most perfect remains of the greatest
ruins in the Eternal City, such as the triumphal
arches and the Colosaeum, owe tlieir duration to
this source. Then, from ali we know, this lake,
except in some change in its dimensions, con-
tinues nearly in the same State in which it was
described 1700 years ago by Pliny, and I have
no doubt contains the same kinds of floating
islands, the same plants and the same insects.
During the fifteen years that I have knovvn it,
it bas appeared precisely identical in these re-

120

DIALOGUE III.

spects ;—and yet it bas the character of an
accidental phenomenon depending upon sub-
terraneous fire. How marvehous then are those
laws by which even tbe humblest types of orga-
nic existence are preserved tliougb born amidst
the sources of their destruction, and by which
a species of immortality is given to generations
floating, as it were, like evanescent bubbles, on.
a stream raised from the deepest caverns of the
earth, and instantly losing what may be called
its špirit in the atmosphere!’—These last ob-
servations of  the stranger recalled to my recol-
lection some phenomena which I had observed
many years ago, and of ivhich I could then
give no satisfactory explanation. I was sboot-
ing in the marshes which surround the ruins
of Gabia, and where there are stili remains
supposed to be of the Alexandrine aqueduct;
I observed a small insulated hill apparently
entirely composed of travertine, and from its
summit there ivere formations of tufa which
had evidently been produced by running water ;
but tbe whole mass was now perfectly dry and
incrusted by vegetables. At first I suspected
that this little mountain bad been formed by a
jet of calcareous ivater,—a kind of small foun-

THE UNKNOWN.

121

tain analogous to the Geiser, which had depo-
sited travertine, and continued to rise through
the basin flowing from a higher level; but the
irregular form of the eminence did not corre-
spond to this idea, and I remained perplexed
vith the fact and unable to satisfy myself as to
its cause. The views of the stranger appeared
to me now to make it probable that the calca-
reous water had issued from ancient leaks in the
aqueduct, and formed a hillock that had en-
cased the bricks of tbe erection, which in other
parts, where not encrusted by travertine, had
becorne entirely decayed, degraded, and re-
moved from the soil. I mentioned the circum-
stance and my snspicion of its nature. The
stranger said, e  You are perfectly correct in
your idea. I know the spot well, and if you
had not mentioned it, I sbould probably have
quoted it as an instance in vvhich the vvorks of
art are preserved, as it were, by the accidents
of nature. I was so štručk by this appearance
last year, that I had the travertine partially
removed by some workmen, and I found be-
neath it the canal of the aqueduct in a perfect
State, and the bricks of the arches as uninjured
as if freshly laid.’ The stranger had hardly

122

DIALOGUE III.

concluded this sentence when he was interrupted
by Onuphrio; who said, ‘ I have always sup-
posed that, in every geological system, water is
considered as tbe cause of the destruction or
degradation of the surface; but, in ali the in-
stances that you have mentioned, it appears
rather as a conservative power, not destroying
but rather producing.’ ‘ It is the general vice
of philosophical systems/ replied the stranger,
‘ that they are usually founded upon a few
facts, which they will explain, and are extended
by the human fancy to ali the phenomena of
nature, to many of which they must be contra-
dictory. The human intellectual powers are
so feeble that they can with difficulty embrace
a single series of phenomena, and they conse-
quently must fail when extended to the whole
of nature. Water by its common operation,
as poured down from the atmosphere in rain
and torrents, tends to level and degrade the
surface, and carries the material of the land
into the bosom of the ocean. Tire, on the con-
trary, in volcanic eruptions usually raises moun-
tains, exalts the surface, and creates islands,
even in the midst of the sea. But these laws
are not invariable, as the instances to which we

THE UNKNOVVN.

123

have j ust referred prove; and parts of the sur-
face of the globe are sometimes destroyed even
by fire, of which examples may be seen in the
Phlegraean fields; and islands raised by one
volcanic eruption have been emerged in the sea
by another. There are, in fact, no accidents
in nature ; what we call accidents are the results
of general laws in particular operation, but we
cannot deduce these laws from the particular
operation, or the general order from the partial
result.’ Ambrosio said to the stranger, ‘ You
appear, Sir, to have paid so much attention to
physical phenomena, that few things would give
us more pleasure than to know your opinion
respecting the early changes and physical his-
tory of the globe, for I perceive you do not
belong to the modern geological schools.’ The
stranger said, ‘ I have certainly formed opi-
nions, or rather speculations on these subjects,
but I fear they are hardlv worth communicat-
ing; they have sometimes amused me in hours
of idleness, but I doubt if they will amuse
others.’ I said, ‘ The observations which you
have already been so kind as to communicate to
us, on the formation of the travertine, lead us

124

DIALOGUE III.

not only to expect amusement, but likewise in-
struction.’

Stranger. —On these matters I had facts
to communicate; on the geological scheme of
the early history of the globe there are only
analogies to gnide us, which different minds may
apply and interpret in different ways; but I
vili not trifle with a long preliminary discourse.
Astronomical deductions and actual measures by
triangulation prove, that the globe is an oblate
spheroid flattened at the poles; and this form
we know, by strict mathematical demonstrations,
is precisely the one which a fluid body revolv-
ing round its axis, and become solid at its sur-
face by the slov dissipation of its heat or other
causes, would assume. I suppose, therefore,
that the globe, in the first State in vhich the
imagination can venture to consider it, vas a
fluid mass vitli an immense atmosphere revolv-
ing in space round the sun, and that by its
cooling, a portion of its atmosphere vas con-
densed in vater vhich occupied a part of the
surface. In this State, no forms of life, such as
now belong to our system, could have inha-
bited it; and I suppose the crystalline rocks,

THE UXKNOWN.

125

or, as they are called by geologists, the primary
rock s, which contain no vestiges of a former
order of things, were the results of the first
consolidation on its surface. Upon the further
cooling, the water which more or less had
covered it, contracted; depositions took plače,
shell fish and coral insects of the first creation
began their labours ; and islands appeared in
the midst of the ocean raised from the deep by
the productive energies of millions of zoophytes.
These islands became covered with vegetables
fitted to bear a high temperature, such as palms
and various species of plants similar to those
which now exist in the hottest parts of the
world. And the submarine rocks or shores of
these new formations of land became covered
with aquatic vegetables, on which various spe¬
cies of shell fish and common fishes found their
nourishment. The fluids of the globe in cool¬
ing deposited a large quantity of the materials
they held in solution, and these deposits agglu-
tinatinji toffether the sand, the immense masses
of coral rocks and some of the remains of the
shells and fishes found round the shores of the
primitive lands, produced the first order of
secondary rocks. As the temperature of the

126

DIALOGUE III.

globe became lower, species of the oviparous
reptiles were created to inhabit it;—and the
turtle, crocodile, and various gigantic animals
of the sauri kind seem to have haunted the
bays and waters of the primitive lands. But in
this State of things there was no order of events
similar to the present;—the crust of the globe
vvas exceedingly slender, and the source of tire
a small distance from the surface. In conse-
quence of contraction in one part of the mass,
cavities were opened, vvhich caused the entrance
of water, and immense volcanic explosions took
plače, raising one part of the surface, depress-
ing another, producing mountains and causing
new and extensive depositions from the primi¬
tive ocean. Changes of this kind must have
been extreme]y frequent in the early epochas
of nature; and the only living forms of which
the remains are found in the strata that are
the monuments of these changes, are those of
plants, fishes, birds, and oviparous reptiles,
vvhich seem most fitted to exist in such a war
of the elements. When these revolutions be¬
came less frequent, and the globe became stili
more cooled, and the inequalities of its tempe¬
rature preserved by the mountain chains, more

THE UNKNOWN.

127

perfect animals became its inhabitants, many
of vvhich, sucli as tbe mammoth, tnegalonix,
megatherium, and gigantic hyena, are now ex-
tinct. At this period, tbe temperature of the
ocean seems to have been not much higher than
it is at present, and the changes produced by
occasional eruptions of it bave left no Consoli¬
dated rocks. Vet, one of these eruptions ap-
pears to have been of great exent and some dura-
tion, and seems to have been the cause of those
immense quantities of water-worn stones, gravel
and sand, which are usually called diluvian
remains;—and it is probable that this effect
was connected with the elevation of a new con-
tinent in the Southern hemisphere by volcanic
fire. When the. system of things became so
permanent, that the tremendous revolutions de-
pending upon the destruction of the equili-
brium between the heating and cooling agencies
were no longer to be dreaded, the creation of
man took plače ; and since that period there
has been little alteration in the physical circum-
stances of our globe. Volcanoes sometimes oc-
casion the rise of new islands, portions of the
old continents are constantly vvashed by rivers
into the sea, but these changes are too insigni-

128

DIALOGUE III.

ficant to affect the destinies of man, or the na¬
ture of the physical circumstances of things.
On the hypothesis that I have adopted, how-
ever, it must be remembered, that the present
surface of the globe is merely a thin crust sur-
rounding a nucleus of fluid ignited matter;
and consequently, we can hardly be considered
as actually safe from the danger of a catas-
trophe by tire.

Onuphrio said, ‘ From the vievv you have
taken, I conclude that you consider volcanic
eruptions as owing to the central tire, indeed
their existence offers I think an argument for
believing that the interior of the globe is fluid.’
The stranger ansivered, ‘ I beg you to con¬
sider the views I have been developing as
merely hypothetical, one of the many resting
places that may be taken by the imagination in
considering this subject. There are, however,
distinct facts in favour of the idea, that the
interior of the globe has a higher temperature
than the surface; the heat increasing in mineš
the deeper we penetrate, and the number of
warm sources which rise from great depths, in
almost ali countries, are certainly favourable to
the idea. The opinion, that volcanoes are

THE UNKNOWN.

129

*

owing to this general and simple cause, is I
think likewise more agreeable to the analogies of
things, tban to suppose them dependant upon
partial chemical changes, such as the action of
air and water upon the combustible bases of
the earths and alkalies, though it is extremely
probable that these substances may exist be-
neath the surface, and may occasion some re-
sults of volcanic tire;—and, on this subject, my
notion may perhaps be more trusted, as for a
long while I thought volcanic eruptions were
owing to chemical agencies of the newly dis—
covered metals of the earths and alkalies, and I
made many and some dangerous experiments in
the hope of confirming this notion, but in vain.’

Amb. —We are very much obliged to you
for your geological illustrations; but they re-
mind me a little of some of the ideas of our
friend Philalethes in his remarkable vision, and
with ivhich we may at some time amuse you in
return for your geology, should we be honoured
with more of your company. You are obliged
to have recourse to creations for ali the living
beings in your pbilosophical romance ; I do not
see why you should not suppose creations or
arrangements of dead matter by the same laws

130

DIALOGUE III.

of Infinite Wisdom, and why our globe should
not rise at once a divine work fitted for ali the
objects of living and intelligent natures.

The stranger replied, ‘ I have merely at-
tempted a philosophical history founded upon
the facts known respecting rocks and strata and
the remains they contain. 1 begin with what
may be considered a creation, a fluid globe sup-
plied with an immense atmosphere, and the
series of phenomena which I imagine conse-
quent to the creation, I suppose produced by
powers impressed upon matter by Omnipotence.’

Ambrosio said, ‘ There is this verisimility in
your history, that it is not contradictory to the
little we are informed bv revelation as to the
J

origin of the globe, the order produced in the
chaotic State, and the succession of living forms
generated in the days of creation, which may be
ivhat philosophers call “ the epochas of Nature,”
for a day with Omnipotence is as a tbousand
years, and a thousand years as one day. 1

4  I must object,’ Onuphrio said, ‘ to your
interpretation of the scientific view of our new
acquaintance, and to your disposition to blend
them with the cosmogony of Moses. Allowing
the Divine origin of the book of Genesis, vou

THE UNKNOWN.

131

must admit that it was not intended to teach
the Jews systems of philosophy, but the laws of
life and morals; and a great man and an ex-
alted Christian raised his voice two centuries
ago against this mode of applying and of often
vresting the sense of the scriptures to make
them conformable to human fancies; “ from
which,” says Lord Bacon, “ arise not only false
and fantastical philosophies, but likevvise here-
tical religions.” If the scriptures are to be
literally interpreted and systems of Science found
in them, Gallileo Gallilei merited his persecu-
tion, and we ought stili to believe that the sun
turns round the earth.’

Amb.— You mistake my view, Onuphrio, if
you iraagine I am desirous of raising a system
of geology on the book of Genesis. It cannot
be doubted that the first man was created with
a great variety of instinctive or inspired know-
ledge, which must have been likeivise enjoyed
by his descendants ; and some of this knowledge
could hardly fail to have related to the globe
which he inhabited, and to the objects whicli
surrounded him. It would have been impos-
sible for the human mind to have embraced the
mysteries of creation ; or to have followed the

K2

132 DIALOGUE III.

history of the moving atoms from their chaotic
disorder into their arrangement in the visible
universe, to have seen dead matter assuming the
form s of life and animation, and light and power
arising out of death and sleep. The ideas,
therefore, transmitted to or presented by Moses
respecting the origin of the world and of man,
were of the most simple kind, and such as
suited the early State of society ; but, though ge¬
neral and simple truths, they were divine truths,
yet clothed in a language and suited to the
ideas of a rude and uninstructed people. And
when I State my satisfaction in finding that they
are not contradicted by the refined researches
of modern geologists, I do not mean to deduce
from them a system of Science. I believe that
light was the creation of an act of the divine
vvill, but I do not mean to say that the words,
‘ Let there be light, and there was light,’ were
orally spoken by the Deity; nor do I mean to
imply, that the modern discoveries respecting
light are at ali connected with this sublime and
magnificent passage.

Onu. —Having resided for a long time at
Edinburgh, and having heard a number of dis-
cussions on the theory of Dr. Hutton, or the

THE UNKNOVVN.

133

plutonic theory of geology, and having been
exceedingly štručk both by its simplicity and
beauty, its harmony with existing facts, and the
proofs afforded to it by some beautiful Chemical
experiments, I do not feel disposed immediately
to renounce it for the vievvs which I have j ust
heard explained; for the principal facts which
our new acquaintance has stated are, I think,
not inconsistent with the refined philosophical
systems of Professor Playfair and Sir James
Hall.

The Unknown. —I have no objection to the
refined plutonic view,  as capable of explaining
many existing phenomena; indeed you must
be aware that I have myself had recourse to it.
What I contend against is, its application to
explain the formations of the secondary rocks,
vvhich I think clearly belong to an order of
facts not at ali embraced by it. In the plutonic
system, there is one simple and constant order
assumed, which may be supposed eternal. The
surface is constantly imagined to be disinte-
grated, destroyed, degraded and washed into
the bosom of the ocean by vvater, and as con-
stantly Consolidated, elevated, and regenerated
by lire ; and the ruins of the old, form the foun-

134

DIALOGUE III.

dations of the new world. It is supposed that
there are always the same types both of dead
and living matter, that the remains of rocks, of
vegetables, and animals, of one age, are found
imbedded in rocks raised from the bottom of
the ocean in another. Now, to support this
view, not only the remains of living beings,
vvhich at present people the globe, might be ex-
pected to be found in the oldest secondary
strata; but even those of the arts of man, the
most povrerful and populous of its inhabitants,
ivhich is well known not to be the čase. On the
contrary, each stratum of the secondary rocks
contains remains of peculiar, and mostly now
unknown species of vegetables and animals. In
those strata which are deepest, and which must,
consequently, be supposed to be the earliest de-
posited, form s even of vegetable life are rare;
shells and vegetable remains are found in the
next order; the bones of fishes and oviparous
reptiles exist in the following class ; the remains
of birds, with those of the same genera men-
tioned before, in the next order; those of quad-
rupeds of extinct species in a stili more recent
class; and it is only in the loose and slightly
Consolidated strata of gravel and sand, and

THE UNKNOWN.

135

whieh are usually called dilnvian formations,
that the remains of animals, such as now people
the globe, are fbund with others belonging to
extinct species. But, in none of these forma¬
tions, whether called secondary, tertiary, or di-
luvial, have the remains of man or any of his
works been discovered. It is, I think, impos-
sible to consider the organic remains found in
any of the earlier secondary strata, the lias-lime-
stone, and its congenerous formations, for in¬
stance, without being convinced, that the beings
whose organs they formed, belonged to an
order of things entirely different from the pre-
sent. Gigantic vegetables, more nearly allied
to the palms of the equatorial countries than to
any other plants, can only be imagined to have
lived in a very high temperature ; and the im-
mense reptiles—the megalosauri, with paddles
instead of legs, and clothed in inail, in size
equal or even superior to the whale; and the
great amphibia, plethiosauri, with bodies like
turtles, but furnished with necks longer than
their bodies, probably to enable them to feed
on vegetables growing in the shallovvs of the
primitive ocean, seem to show a state in which
low lands or extensive shores rose above an im-

136

DIALOGUE III.

mense calm sea, and when there were no great
mountain-chains to produce inequalities of tem¬
perature, tempests or storms. Were the sur-
face of the earth now to be carried down in to
the depths of the ocean, or were some great
revolution of the waters to cover the existing
land, and it was again to be elevated by fire,
covered with Consolidated depositions of sand or
mud, how entirely different would it be in its
characters from any of the secondary strata ; its
great features would undoubtedly be the works
of man, hewn stones, and statues of bronze and
marble, and tools of iron, and human remains
would be more common than those of animals,
on the greatest part of the surface ; the columns
of Paestum, or of Agrigentum, or the immense
iron and granite bridges of the Thames, would
offer a striking contrast to the bones of the cro-
codiles or sauri in the older rocks, or even to
those of the mammoth or elephas primogenius in
the diluvial strata. And whoever dwells upon
this subject must be convinced, that the pre-
sent order of things and the comparatively re-
cent existence of man, as the master of the globe,
is as certain, as the destruction of a former and
a different order, and the extinction of a number

THE UNKNOWN.

137

of living forms which have now no types in
being, and vvhich have left their remains, won-
derful monuments of the revolutions of nature.

Onu. —I am not quite convinced by your
arguments. Supposing the lands of New Hol-
land were to be washed into the depths of the
ocean, and to be raised according to the Hut-
tonian view, as a secondary stratum, by subter-
raneous tire, they would contain the remains of
both vegetables and animals entirely different
from any found in the strata of the old conti-
nents; and may not those peculiar formations
to which you have referred, be, as it were,
accidents of nature belonging to peculiar parts
of the globe ? And you speak of a diluvian
formation, which I conclude you would identify
with that belonging to the catastrophe described
in the sacred writings, in which no human
remains are found ; now, you surely will not
deny, that man existed at the time of this
catastrophe, and he consequently may have ex-
isted at the period of the other revolutions,
which are supposed to be produced in the Hut-
tonian views by subterraneous fire.

The Unknown. —I have made use of the
term diluvian, because it has been adopted by

]3S DIALOGUE III.

geologists, but without meaning to identify the
cause of the formation with the deluges described
in the sacred writings ; I apply the term merely
to signify loose and water-worn strata not at ali
Consolidated, and deposited by an inundation
of water ; and in these countries which they
have covered, man certainly did not exist.
With respect to your argument derived from
New Holland, it appears to me to be without
weight. In a variety of climates, and in very
distant parts of the globe, secondary strata of
the same order are found, and they contain
always the same kind of organic remains, which
are entirely different from any of those now
afforded by beings belonging to the existing
order of things. The catastrophes which pro-
duced the secondary strata and diluvian depo-
sitions could not have been local and partial
phenomena, but must have extended over the
whole, or a great part of the surface of the
globe; the remains of similar shell fishes are
found in the lime-stones of the old and new
continents; the teeth of the mammoth are not
uncommon in various parts of Europe; entire
skeletons have been found in America, and even
the skin covered with hair and the entire body

THE UNKNOffN.

139

of one of these enormous extinct animals bas
been discovered in Siberia, preserved in a mass
of ice. In the oldest secondary strata, there
are no remains of such animals as now belong
to the surface, and in the rocks which may
be regarded as more recently deposited, these
remains occur but rarely, and with abundance
of extinct species;—there seems, as it were, a
gradual approach to the present system of
things, and a succession of destrnctions and
creations preparatory to the existence of man.
It will be useless to push these arguments
farther. You must allow that it is impossible
to defend the proposition that the present order
of things is the ancient and constant order
of nature only modified by existing laws, and,
consequently, the view which you have sup-
ported must be abandoned. The monuments
of extinct generations of animals are as perfect
as those of estinct nations ; and it would be
more reasonable to suppose that the pillars and
temples of Palmyra were raised by the wander-
ing Arabs of the desert, tban to imagine that
the vestiges of peculiar animated forms in the
strata beneath the surface belonged to the early
and infant families of the beings that at present
inhabit it.

140

DIALOGUE III.

Onu. —I am convinced :—I shall push my
arguments no further, for I will not support
the sophisms of that school which supposes that
iiving nature has undergone gradual changes
by the effects of its irritabilities and appeten-
cies; that the fish has, in millions of genera-
tions, ripened into the quadruped, and the
quadruped into the man; and that the system
of life, by its own inherent powers, has fitted
itself to the physical changes in the system of
the universe. To this absurd, vague, athe-
istical doctrine, I prefer even the dream of
plastic powers, or that other more modern
dream, that the secondary strata were created,
filled vvith remains, as it were, of animal life,
to confound the speculations of our geological
reasoners.

The Unknown. —I am glad you have not
retreated into the desert and defenceless wil-
derness of scepticism, or of false and feeble
philosophy. I should not have thought it
■worth my while to have followed you there;
I should as soon think of arguing with the
peasant who informs me that the basaltic
columns of Antrim, or of Staffa, were the
works of human art, and raised by the giant
Finmacoul.

THE UNKNO1VN.

141

At this moment one of our servants came to
inform me, that a dinner which had been pre-
paring fbr us at the farm-house was ready;—
we asked the stranger to do us the honour to
partake of our repast; he assented, and the fol-
lovving conversation took plače at table.

Phil. —In reflecting upon our discussions this
morning, I cannot help being a little surprised
at their nature : we have been talking only of
geological systems, when a more natural sub-
ject for our conversation would have been these
magnificent temples, and an enquiry into the
race by whom they were raised, and the gods
to whom thev were dedicated. We are now
treading on a spot which contains the bones of
a highly civilised and powerful people; yet we
are almost ignorant of the names they bore, and
the period of their greatness is lost in the obscu-
rity of time.

Amb. —There can be no doubt that the early
inhabitants of this city were Grecians, and a
maritime and commercial people ; — they have
been supposed to belong to the Sybarite race;
and the roses producing flowers t\vice a year, in
the spring and autumn in ancient times here,
might sanction the idea that this balmy spot

142 DIALOGUE III.

was chosen by a colony who carried luxury and
refinement to the highest pitch.

Onu. —To attempt to form any opinion with
respect to the people that anciently inhabited
these now deserted plains is useless, and a vain la-
bour. In the geological conversation which took
plače before dinner, some series of interesting
facts were presented to us; and the monuments
of nature, though they do not speak a distinct
language, yet speak an intelligible one:—but
with respect to Passtum, there is neither history
nor tradition to guide us; and we shall do
wisely to resume our philosophical inquiries, if
we have not already exhausted the patience of
our new guest by doubts or objections to his
views.

The Stranger. —One of you referred, in our
conversation this morning, to a vision,  which
had some relation to the subject of our discus-
sion, and I was promised some Information on
this matter.

I immediately gave a sketch of my vision,
and of the opinions ivhich had been expressed
by Ambrosio on the early history of man, and
the termination of our discussions on religion.

The Stranger. —I agree with Ambrosio in

THE UNKNOVN.

143

opinion on the subjects you have just mentioned.
In my youth, I vas a sceptic; and this, I be-
lieve, is usually the čase vith young persons
given to general and discursive reading, and
accustomed to adopt something like a mathe-
matical form in their reasonings ; and it was in
considering the nature of the intellectual facul-
ties of brutes, as compared with those of man,
and in examining the nature of instinctive
povers, that I became a believer. After I had
formed the idea that revelation vas to man in
the plače of an instinct, my faith constantly
became stronger; and it was exalted by many
circumstances I had occasion to vitness in a
journey that I made through Egypt and a part
of Asia Minor, and by no one more than by a
very remarkable dream vhich occurred to me
in Palestine, and vhich, as ve are now almost
at the hour of the siesta, I vili relate to you,
though, perhaps, you vili be asleep before I
have finished it. I was valking along that
deserted shore vhich contains the ruins of
Ptolemais, one of the most ancient ports of
Judsea. It vas evening; the sun was sinking
in the sea; I seated myself on a rock, lost in
melancholy contemplations on the destinies of a

144

DIALOGUE III.

spot once so famous in the history of man.
The calm Mediterranean, bright in the glowing
light of the west, was the only object before me.
* These waves,’ I said to myself, ‘ once bore
the ships of the monarch of Jerusalem, which
were freighted with the riches of the East to
adorn and honour the sanctuary of Jehovah;
here are now no remains of greatness or of Com¬
merce ; a few red stones and broken bricks only
mark what might have been once a flourishing
port; and the citadel above, raised by the
Saracens, is filled with Turkish soldiers.’ The
janissary, who was my guide, and my servant
were preparing some food for me in a tent which
had been raised for the purpose, and whilst
waiting for their summons to my repast, I con-
tinued my reveries, which must gradually have
ended in slumber. I saw a man approaching
towards me, whom, at first, I took for my janis-
sary, but as he came nearer, I found a very dif-
ferent figure: he was a very old man, with a
beard as white as snow; his countenance was
dark, but paler than that of an Arab, and his
features stern, wild, and vvith a peculiar savage
expression; his form was gigantic, but his arms
were ivithered, and there was a large scar on the

THE UNKNOWN.

145

left side of his face, which seemed to have de-
prived him of an eye. He wore a black turban
and black flowing robes, and there was a large
chain round his waist, which clanked as he
moved. It occurred to me that he was one of
the santons, or sacred madmen, so comnion in
the East, and I retired as he approached towards
me. He called out, ‘ Fly not, stranger, fear
me not; I will not harm you ; you shall hear
my story, it may be useful to you.’ He spoke
in Arabic, but in a peculiar dialect, and to me
new, yet I understood every word. ‘ You see
before you,’ he said, ‘ a man who was educated
a Christian, but who renounced the worship of
the one supreme God for the superstitions of the
pagans. I became an apostate in the reign of
the emperor Julian, and I was employed by that
sovereign to superintend the re-erection of the
temple of Jerusalem, by which it was intended
to belie the prophecies, and give the death-blow
to the holy religion. History has informed you
of the result; my assistants were most of them
destroyed in a tremendous storm ; I was blasted
by lightning from heaven, (he raised his withered
hand to his face and eye.) but suffered to live
and expiate my crime in the flesh. My life has

L

146 DIALOGUE III.

been spent in constant and severe penance,
and in that suffering of the špirit produced
by guilt, and is to be continued as long as
any part of the temple of Jupiter, in which I
renounced my faith, remains in this plače. I
have lived through fifteen tedious centuries,
but I trust in the mercies of Omnipotence, and
I hope my atonement is completed. I now
stand in the dust of the pagan temple. You
have j ust thrown the last fragment of it over the
rock. My time is arrived, I comef As he
spake the last words, be rushed towards the sea,
threw himself from the rock, and disappeared.
I heard no struggling, and saw nothing but a
gleam of light from the wave that closed above
him. I was now roused by the cries of my
servant and of the janissary, who were shaking
my arm, and who informed me that my sleep
was so sound that they were alarmed for me.
When I looked on the sea, there was the same
light, and I seemed to see the very spot in the
wave where the old man had šunk. I was so
štručk by the vision, that I asked if they had
not seen something dash into the wave, and if
they had not heard somebody speaking to me
as they arrived. Of course their answers were

THE UNKNOWN.

147

negative. In passing through Jerusalem and
in coasting the Dead Sea I had been exceed-
ingly štručk by the present State of Judaea, and
the conformity of the fate of the Jewish nation
to the predictions of our Saviour; I had like-
wise been reading Gibbon’s eulogy of Julian,
and his account of the attempts made by that
emperor to rebuild the temple: so that the
dream at' such a time and in such a plače was
not an unnatural occurrence; yet it was so vivid,
and the image of the subject of it so peculiar,
that it long affected my imagination, and, when-
ever I recurred to it, strengthened my faith.

Onu. —I believe ali the narratives of appari-
tions and ghost stories are founded upon dreams
of the same kind as that which occurred to
you; an ideal representation of events in the
local situation in which the person is at the
moment, and when the imaginary picture of the
plače in sleep exactly coincides with its reality
in waking.

The Stranger. —I agree with you in your
opinion. If my servant had not been with me,
and my dream had been a little less improbable,
it would have been difficult to have persuaded
me that I had not been visited by an apparition.

L 2

148 DIALOG UE III.

I mentioned the dream of Brutus, and said,
‘ His supposed evil genius appeared in his
tent; had the philosophical hero dreamt that his
genius had appeared to him in Rome, there
could have been no delusion.’ I cited the
similar vision, recorded of Dion before his death,
by Plutarch, of a gigantic female, one of the
fates or furies, who was supposed to have been
seen by him when reposing in the portico of his
palače. I referred likewise to my own vision of
the beautiful female, the guardian angel of my
recovery, who always seemed to me to be present
at my bedside.

Amb. —In confirmation of this opinion of
Onuphrio, I can mention many instances. I
once dreamt that my door had been forced, that
there were robbers in my room, and that one of
them was actually putting his hand before my
mouth, to ascertain if I was sleeping naturally;
I awoke at this moment, and was some minutes
before I could be sure whether it was a dream
or a reality. I felt the pressure of the bed-
clothes on my lips, and, stili in the fear of being
murdered, continued to keep my eyes closed
and to breathe slowly, till hearing nothing, and
finding no motion, I ventured to open my eyes;

THE UNKNOtVN.

149

but even then, vvhen I saw nothing, I was not
sure tbat my impression was a dream till I had
risen from my bed and ascertained that the door
vas stili locked.

Onu. —I ani the only one of the party unable
to record any dreams of the vivid and peculiar
nature you mention from my own experience ;
I conclude it is owing to the dulness of my
imagination. I suppose the more intense power
of reverie is a symptom of the poetical tempera¬
ment ; and, perhaps, if I possessed more en-
thusiasm, I should always have possessed more
of the religious instinct. To adopt the idea
of Philalethes, of hereditary character, I fear
my forefathers have not been correct in their
faith.

Amb. —Your glory will be greater in establish-
ing a new character, and I trust even the con-
versation of this day has given you an additional
reason to adopt our  faith.

Ambrosio spoke these last words with an
earnestness unusual in him, and with sometbing
of a tone which marked a zeal for proselytism;
and at the same time he čast his eyes on the
rosary which was suspended round the neck of

150 DIALOGUE III.

the stranger, and said, ‘ I hope I am not in«
discreet in saying our  faith.’

The Strangee. —I was educated in the
ritual of the church of England; I belong to
the church of Christ; the rosary which you see
suspended round my neck is a memorial of
sympathy and respect for an illustrious man.
I will, if you will allow me, give you the history
of it, which, I think, from the circumstances
ivith which it is connected, you will not find de-
void of interest. I was passing through France,
in the reign of Napoleon, by the peculiar privi-
lege granted to a scavan, on my road into Italy.
I had j ust returned from the Holy Land, and
had in my possession two or three of the rosaries
vvliich are sold to pilgrims at Jerusalem as
having been suspended in the holy sepulchre.
Pius VII. was then in imprisonment at Fontain-
bleau. By a special favour, on the plea of my •
return from the Holy Land, I obtained permis-
sion to see this venerable and illustrious pontiff.
I carried with me one of my rosaries. He re-
ceived me ivith great kindness; I tendered my
Services to execute any commissions, not poli-
tical ones, he might think lit to entrust me with

THE UNKNOWN.

151

in Italy, informing him that I was an English-
man; he expressed his thanks, but declined
troubling me. I told him I was j ust returned
from the Holy Land, and bowing with great
humility, offered to him my rosary from the
holy sepulchre; he received it with a smile,
touched it with his lips, gave his benediction
over it, and returned it into my hands, sup-
posing of course that I was a Roman Catholic.
I had meant to present it to his Holiness, but the
blessing he had bestowed upon it, and the touch
of his lips, made it a precious relic to me, and I
restored it to my neck, round which it bas ever
since been suspended. He asked me some un-
important questions respecting the state of the
Christians at Jerusalem; and, on a sudden,
turned the subject, much to my surprise, to the
destruction of the French in Russia, and in an
exceedingly low tone of voice, as if afraid of
being overheard, he said, ‘ The nefas  has long
been triumphant over the fas,  but I do not
doubt that the balance of things is even nov
restoring, that God will vindicate his church,
clear his polluted altars, and establish society
upon its permanent basis of justice and faith.
We shall meet again ; adieu! ’ and he gave me his

152

DIALOGUE III.

paternal blessing. It was eighteen months after
this intervievv, that I went out, with almost the
v/h o] e population of Rome, to receive and wel-
come the triumphal entry of this illustrious
father of the church into his Capital. He was
borne on the shoulders of the most distinguished
artists, headed by Canova; and never shall I
forget the enthusiasm with which he was re-
ceived—it is impossible to describe the shouts of
triumph and of rapture sent up to heaven by
every voice. And when he gave his benediction
to the people, there was a universal prostration, a
sobbing, and marks of emotions of joy almost like
the bursting of the heart; I heard, every where,
around me, cries of ‘ The holy Father, the most
holy Father, his restoration is the work of God ! ’
I saw tears streaming from the eyes of almost ali
the women about me, many of them were sobbing
hysterically, and old men were weeping as if
they had been children. I pressed my rosary
to my breast on this occasion, and repeatedly
touched with my lips that part of it which had
received the kiss of the most venerable pontiff.
I preserve it with a kind of hallowed feeling, as
the memorial of a man whose sanctity, firmness,
meekness, and benevolence are an honour to

THE UNKNOWN.

153

his church, and to human nature; and it has
not only been useful to me, by its influence upon
my own mind, but it has enabled me to give
pleasure to others, and has, I believe, been.
sometimes beneficial in insuring my personal
safety. I have often gratified the peasants of
Apulia and Calabria, by presenting them to
kiss a rosary from the holy sepulchre, which
had been hallowed by the touch of the lips and
benediction of the pope; and it has been even
respected by, and procured me a safe passage
through a party of brigands, who once stopped
me in the passes of the Apennines.

Onu. —The use you have made of this relic
puts me in mind of a device of a very ingenious
geological philosopher now living. He was on
Etna, and busily employed in making a  collec-
tion of the lavas formed from the igneous cur-
rents of that mountain ; the peasants were often
troublesome to him, suspecting that he was
searchinff for treasures. It occurred to him to
make the following speech to them : ‘ I have
been a great sinner in my youth, and, as a pe-
nance, I have made a vo\v to carry away with me
pieces of every kind of stone found upon the
mountain; permit me quietly to perform my

154

DIALOGUE III.

pious duty, tliat I may receive absolution for
my sins.’ The speech produced thc desired
effect; the peasants shouted, ‘ The holy man, the
saint!’ and gave him every assistance in their
power to enable him to carry off his burthen,
and he made his ample collections with the
utmost security and in the most agreeable man-
ner.

The Stkanger. —I do not approve of pious
frauds even for philosophical purposes; my ro-
sary excited in others the same kind of feeling
vvhich it excited in my own bosom, and vvhich I
hold to be perfectly justifiable, and of which I
shaH never be ashamed.

Amb. —You must have travelled in Italy in
very dangerous times; have you always been
secure ?

The Stkangek. —Always ; I have owed my
security, partly, as I have said, to my rosary,
but more to my dress and my acquaintance
vitli the dialect of the natives; I have always
carried with me a peasant as a gnide, who has
been intrusted with the small sums of money I
wanted for my immediate purposes, and my
baggage has been little more than a cynic phi-
losopher vvould have carried vitli him; and

THE UNKN0WN.

155

vvhen I have been unable to walk, I have trusted
myself to the conduct of a vetturino, a native of
the province, with his single mule and cara-
tella.

The sun was now setting, and the temple of
Neptune was glowing with its last purple rays.
We were informed that our horses were wait-
ing, and that it was time for us to depart to our
lodgings at Eboli. I asked the stranger to be
our companion, and to do us the honour to ac-
cept of a seat in our carriage: he declined the
invitation, and said, ‘ My bed is prepared in
the casina here for this night, and to-morrow I
proceed on a journey connected vvith scientific
objects in the parts of Calabria the scene of the
terrible earthquakes of 1783.’ I held out my
hand to him in parting; he gave it a strong and
vvarm pressure, and said, ‘ Adieu, we shall meet
again.’

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DIALOGUE THE FOURTH.

THE PROTEUS,

OR

IMMORTALITT.

The  impression made upon my mind by the
stranger, with whom we became acquainted at
Psestum, was of the strongest and most extra-
ordinary kind. The memory of his person, his
dress, his manners, the accents of his voice, and
the tone of his philosophy, for a long while
haunted my imagination in a most unaccount-
able manner, and even formed a part of my
dreams. It often occurred to me, that this was
not the first time that I had seen him, and I en-
deavoured, but in vain, to find some type or
image of him in former scenes of my life. I con-
tinually made inquiries respecting him amongst
my acquaintance, but I could never be sure
that any of them knew him, or even had seen
him. So great were his peculiarities, that he
must have escaped observation altogether, for

15S

DIALOGUE IV.

had he entered the world at ali he must have
made some noise in it. I expressed so much
interest on this subject, that at last it became a
source of ridicule amongst my acquaintance,
who often asked me, if I had not yet obtained
news of my spirit-friend or ghost-seer.

After my return from Naples to Rome, I
was almost immediately recalled to England by
a melancholy event, the death of a very near
and dear relation, and I left my two friends,
Ambrosio and Onuphrio, to pursue their travels,
vvhich were intended to be of some extent and
duration.

In my youth, and through the prime of man-
hood, I never entered London ivithout feelings
of pleasure and hope. It vas to me as the
grand theatre of intellectual activity, the field
of every species of enterprise and exertion, the
metropolis of the world of business, thought,
and action. There I was sure to find the
friends and companions of my youth, to hear
the voice of encouragement and praise. There
society of the most refined kind offered daily its
banquets to the mind, with such variety, that
satiety had no plače in them, and new objects
of interest and ambition were constantly excit-

THE PROTEUS, OR IMMORTALITV.

159

ing attention either in politics, literature, or
Science.

I novv entered this great city in a very dif-
ferent tone of mind, one of settled melancholy,
not merely produced by the mournful event
which recalled me to my country, but owing
likewise to an entire change in the condition.
of my physical, moral, and intellectual being.
My health was gone, my ambition was satisfied,
I was no longer excited by the desire of distinc-
tion; what I regarded most tenderly was in the
grave, and to take a metaphor, derived from the
change produced by time in the juice of the
grape, my cup of life was no longer sparkling,
sweet, and effervescent;—it had lost its sweet-
ness without losing its power, and it had become
bitter.

After passing a few months in England, and
enjoying (as much as I could enjoy anything)
the society of the few friends who stili remained
alive, the desire to travel again seized me. I
had preserved amidst the wreck of time, one
feeling, strong and unbrokcn, the love of natural
scenery; and this in advanced life formed a
principal motive for my plans of conduct and
action. Of ali the climates of Europe, England

160

DIALOGUE IV.

seems to me most fitted for the activity of the
mind, and the least suited to repose. The alte-
rations of a climate so various and rapid, con-
tinually awake new sensations, and the changes
in the sky from dryness to moisture, from the
blue ethereal to cloudiness and fogs, seem to
keep the nervous system in a constant State of
disturbance. In the mild climate of Nice,
Naples, or Sicily, where even in winter it is pos-
sible to enjoy the warmth of the sunsbine in the
open air beneath pahn-trees, or amidst evergreen
groves of orange-trees, covered with odorous
fruit and sweet-seented leaves, mere existence is
a pleasure, and even the pains of disease are
sometimes forgotten amidst the balmy influence
of nature, and a series of agreeable and unin-
terrupted sensations invite to repose and obli-
vion. But in the changeful and tumultuous
atmosphere of England, to be tranquil is a
labour, and employment is necessary to ward off
the attacks of ennui. The English as a nation
are pre-eminently active, and the natives of no
other country follow their objects with so much
force, fire, and constancy. And as human
powers are limited, there are few examples of
very distinguished men living in this country to

THE PROTEUS, OR IMMORTALITV. 161
old age; they usually fail, droop, and die,
before they have attained the period naturally
marked for the end of human existence. The
lives of our statesmen, vrarriors, poets, and even
philosophers, offer abundant proofs of the truth
of this opinion; vvhatever burns, consumes,
ashes remain. Before the period of youth is
passed, gray hairs usually cover those brows
which are adorned with the civic oak or the
laurel; and in the luxurious and exciting life of
the man of pleasure, their tints are not even
preserved by the myrtle wreath, or the garland
of roses from the premature winter of time.

In selecting the scenes for my new journey I
was guided by my former experience. I know
no country more beautiful than that vvhich may
be called the Alpine country of Austria, includ-
ing the Alps of the Southern Tyrol, those of
Illyria, the Noric and the Julian Alps, and the
Alps of Styria and Salzburg. T he variety of
the scenery, the verdure of the meadows and
trees, the depths of the valleys, the altitude of
the mountains, the clearness and grandeur of
the rivers and lakes, give it, I think, a decided
superiority over S\vitzerland ; and the people
are far more agreeable; various in their costumes

M

162 DIALOGUE IV.

and manners, Illyrians, Italians, or Germans,
they have ali the same simplicity of character,
and are ali distinguished by their love of their
countrv, their devotion to their sovereign, the
ivarmth and purity of their faith, their honesty,
and (with very few exceptions) I may say, their
great civility and courtesy to strangers.

In the prime of life I had visited this region,
in a society which afforded me the pleasures of
intellectual friendship, and the delights of refined
affection ; later, I had left the burning summer
of Italy and the violence of an unhealthy pas-
sion, and had found coolness, shade, repose, and
tranquillity there; in a stili more advanced
period, I had sought for and found consolation,
and partly recovered my health after a danger-
ous illness, the consequence of labour and men-
tal agitation ; there I had found the špirit of my
early vision. I was desirous, therefore, of again
passing some time in these scenes, in the hope
of re-establishing a broken constitution; and
though this hope was a feeble one, yet at least
I expected to spend a few of the last days of
life more tranquilly and more agreeably than in
the metropolis of my own country. Nature
never deceives us—the rocks, the mountains, the

THE PROTEUS, OR IMMORTALITT.

163

streams, always speak the same language; a
shower of snow may bide the verdant woods in
spring, a thunder-Storm may render the blue
limpid streams foul and turbulent; but these
effects are rare and transient—in a few hours, or
at least days, ali the sources of beauty are reno-
vated. And nature affords no continued trains
of misfortunes and miseries, such as depend
upon the constitution of humanity, no hopes for
ever blighted in the bud, no beings full of life,
beauty, and promise, taken from us in the prime
of youth. Her fruits are ali balmy, bright, and
sweet; she affords none of those blighted ones
so common in the life of man, and so like the
fabled apples of the Dead Sea, fresh and beau-
tiful to the sight, but, when tasted, full of bitter-
ness and ashes. I have already mentioned the
strong effect produced on my mind by the
stranger, whom I had met so accidentally at
Passtum; the hope of seeing him again vas
another of my motives for vishing to leave Eng-
land, and (vhy I k nov not) I had a decided
presentiment that I vas more likely to meet him
in the Austrian States than in England, his own
country.

For this journey I had one companion, an

M 2

164

DIALOGUE IV.

early friend and medical adviser. He had lived
much in the world, had acguired a considerable
fortune, had given up his profession, vas nov
retired, and sought, like myself, in this journey,
repose of mind, and the pleasures derived from
natural scenery. He vas a man of a very
poiverful and acute understanding, but had less
of the poetical temperament than any person
vhom I had ever knovn vith similar vivacity of
mind. He vas a severe thinker, with great
variety of Information, an excellent physiologist,
and an accomplished naturalist. In his reason-
ings, he adopted the precision of a geometer,
and vas alvays upon his guard against the
influence of imagination. He had passed the
meridian of life, and his health vas veak like my
own, so that we vere veli suited as travelling
companions, moving alvays slowly from plače
to plače vithout hurry or fatigue. I shall call
this friend Eubathes. I will say nothing of the
progress of our journey through France and
Germany ; I shall dvell only upon that part of
it vhich has stili a strong' interest for me, and
vhere events occurred that I shall never forget.
We passed into the Alpine country of Austria,
by Lintz, on the Danube, and folloved the

THE PROTEUS, OR IMMORTALITV. 165
course of the Traun to Gmiinden on the Traun
See, or Lake of the Traun, where we halted for
some days. If I were disposed to indulge in
minute picturesque descriptions, I might occupy
hours with details of the various characters of
the enchanting scenery in this neighbourhood.
The vales have that pastoral beauty and con-
stant verdure which is so familiar to us in Eng-
land, with similar enclosures and hedge-rovs,
and fruit and forest trees. Above are noble
hills planted with beeches and oaks ; mountains
bound the viev—here covered with pines and
larches, there raising their marble crests capped
with eternal snows above the clouds. The
lowerpart of the Traun See is always, even in
the most rainy season, perfectly pellucid; and
the Traun pours out of it,' over ledges of rocks,
a large and magnificent river, beautifully clear,
and of the purest tint of the beryl. The fall of
the Traun, about ten miles below Gmiinden,
vas one of our favourite haunts. It is a cata-
ract vhich, vhen the river is full, may be
almost compared to that of Schaffhausen for
magnitude, and possesses the same peculiar cha¬
racters of grandeur in the precipitous rush of its
awful and overpovering vaters, and of beauty

166

DIALOGUE IV.

in the tints of its streams and foam, and in the
forms of the rocks over which it falls, and the
cliffs and woods by which it is overhung. In
this spot an accident, which had nearly been
fatal to me, occasioned the renevval of my
acquaintance in an extraordinary manner with
the mysterious unknovvn stranger. Eubathes,
who was very fond of fly-fishing, was amusing
himself by catching graylings for our dinner in
the stream above the fall. I took one of the
boats which are used for descending the canal or
lock artificially cut in the rock by the side of
the fall, on vvhich salt and wood are usually
transported from Upper Austria to the Danube;
and I desired two of the peasants to assist my
servant in permitting the boat to descend by a
rope to the level of the river below. My inten-
tion was to amuse myself by this rapid species
of locomotion along the descending sinice. For
some moments the boat glided gently along the
smooth current, and I enjoyed the beauty of the
moving scene around me, and had my eye fixed
upon the bright rainbow seen upon the spray of
the cataract above my head ; when I was sud-
denly roused by a shout of alarm from my ser¬
vant, and looking round, I saw that the piece

THE PROTEUS;, OR IMMORTALITV, 167
of wood to which the rope had been attached
had given way, and the boat was floating down
the river at the mercy of the stream. I was
not at first alarmed, for I saw that my assist-
ants were procuring long poles ivith which it
appeared easy to arrest the boat before it en-
tered the rapidly-descending water of the sinice,
and I called out to them to use their united
force to reach the longest pole across the water,
that I might be able to catch the end of it in
my hand. And at this moment I felt perfect
security; but a breeze of  wind suddenly čarne
down the valley, and b]ew from the nearest
bank—the boat was turned by it out of the side
current, and thrown nearer to the middle of
the river, and I soon saw that I was likely to be
precipitated over the cataract. My servant and
the boatmen rushed into the water, but it was
too deep to enable them to reach the boat; I
was soon in the white water of the descending
stream, and my danger was inevitable. I had
presence of mind enough to consider vvhether my
chance of safety would be greater by throwing
myself out of the boat, or by remaining in it,
and I preferred the latter expedient. I looked
from the rainbov upon the bright sun above my

168

DIALOGUE IV.

head, as if taking leave for ever of that glorious
luminary; I raised one pious aspiration to the
divine source of light and life; I was immedi-
ately stunned by the thunder of the fall, and my
eyes were closed in darkness. How long I re-
mained insensible I know not. My first recol-
lections after this accident were of a bright light
shining above me, of warmth and pressure in
different parts of my body, and of the noise of
the rushing cataract sounding in my ears. I
seemed aivakened by the light from a sound sleep,
and endeavoured to recall my scattered thoughts,
but in vain; I soon fell again into slum-
ber. From this second sleep, I was awakened
by a voice which seemed not altogether unknown
to me, and looking upwards, I saw the bright
eye and noble countenance of the Unknown
Stranger whom I had met at Psestum. I faintly
articulated, ‘ I am in another world.’ ‘ No,’
said the Stranger, ‘ you are safe in this; you
are a little bruised by your fall, but you will
soon be well; be tranquil and compose yourself.
Yourfriend is here, and you will want no other
assistance than he can easily give you.’ He then
took one of my hands, and I recognised the same
strong and warm pressure which I had felt from

THE PROTEUS, OR IMMORTALITV. 169
his parting salute at Paastum. Eubathes, vrhom
I now saw with an expression of joy and of
warmth unusual to him, gave a hearty shake to
the otherhand, and they both said, ‘ You must
repose a few hours longer.’ After a sound sleep
till the evening, I was able to take some refresh-
ment, and found little inconvenience from the
accident, except some bruises on the lower part
of the body, and a slight svvimming in the head.
The next day, I was able to return to Gmiinden,
vvhere I learnt from the Unknown the history
of my escape, which seemed almost miraculous
to me. He said, that he was often in the habit
of combining pursuits of natural history with the
amusements derived from rural sports, and was
fishing, the day that my accident happened,
below the fall of the Traun, for that peculiar
species of the large sedmo  of the Danube, which
fortunately for me is only to be caught by very
strong tackle. He saw, to his very great astonish-
ment and alarm, the boat and my body precipi-
tated by the fall; and was so fortunate as to
entangle his hooks in a part of my dress when I
had been scarcely more than a minute under
water, and by the assistance of his servant, who
was armed with the gaff, or curved hook for

170 DIALOGUE IV.

landing large fish, I was safe]y conveyed to tlie
shore, undressed, put into a warm bed, and
by the modes of restoring suspended animation,
ivhich were familiar to hirn, I soon recovered my
sensibility and consciousness. I was desirous of
reasoning with him and Eubathes upon the State
of annihilation of power and transient death
which I had suffered when in the water, but they
both requested me to defer those inquiries, which
required too profound an exertion of thought,
till the effects of the shock on my weak constitu-
tion were over, and my strength was somevvhat
re-established; and I was the more contented
to comply with their request, as the Unknown
said, it was his intention to be our companion
for at least some days longer, and that his
objects of pursuit lay in the very country
in which we were making our summer tour. It
was some weeks before I was sufficiently strong
to proceed on our journey, for my frame was
little fitted to bear such a trial as that which it
had experienced; and, considering the weak
State of my body when I was immerged in the
water, I could hardly avoid regarding my re-
covery as providential, and the presence and
assistance of the Stranger as in some way con-

THE PROTEUS, OR IMMORTALITV. 171
nected with the future destiny and utility of my
life. In the middle of August we pursued our
plans of travel. We first visited those romantic
lakes Hallsstadt, Aussee, and Toplitz See, which
collect the melted snows of the higher moun-
tains of Styria, to supply the unfailing sources
of the Traun. We visited that elevated region
of the Tyrol, vvhich forms the crest of the Pus-
terthal, and where the same chains of glaciers
send down streams to the Drave and the Adige,
to the Black Sea and to the Adriatic. We re-
raained for many days in those two magnificent
valleys which afford the sources of the Save,
where that glorious and abundant river rises,
as it were, in the very bosom of beauty, leaping
from its subterraneous reservoirs in the snowy
mountains of Terglou and Manhardt in thun-
derinsf cataracts amongst cliffs and woods into
the pure and deep cerulean lakes of Wochain
and Wurzen, and pursuing its course amidst
pastoral meadows, so ornamented with plants
and trees as to look the garden of nature. The
subsoil or strata of this part of Illyria is entirely
calcareous and full of subterranean caverns, so
that in every declivity large funnel-shaped
cavities, like the craters of volcanoes, may

172 DIALOGUE IV.

be seen, in which the waters that fall from the
atmosphere are lost; and almost every lake or
river has a subterraneous source, and often a
subterraneous exit. The Laibach river rises
twice from the limestone rock, and is twice
again swallowed up by the earth before it makes
its final appearance, and is lost in the Save.
The Zirknitz See or lake is a mass of water
entirely fillcd and emptied by subterraneous
sources; and its natural history, though sin-
gular, has in it nothing of either prodigy,
mystery, or wonder. The grotto of the Mad-
dalena, at Adelsberg, occupied more of our
attention than the Zirknitz See. I shall give
the conversation that took plače in that extra-
ordinary cavern, entire, as well as I can remem-
ber it, in the words used by my companions.

Eub. —We must be many hundred feet below
the surface ; yet the temperature of this cavern
is fresh and agreeable.

The Unknoivn. —This cavern has the mean
temperature of the atmosphere, ivhich is the
čase with ali subterraneous cavities removed
from the influence of the šolar light and heat;
and in so hot a day in August as this, I know
no more agreeable or salutary manner of taking

THE PROTEUS, OR IMMORTALITV. 173

a cold bath, than in descending to a part of the
atmosphere out of the influence of those causes
vvhich occasion its elevated temperature.

Eub.— Have you, Sir, been in this country
before ?

The Unknown. —This is the third summer
that I have made it the scene of an annual visit.
Independently of the natural beauties found in
IIlyria, and the various sources of amusement
which a traveller fond of natural history may
flnd in this region, it bas had a peculiar object
of interest for me in the extraordinary animals
vvhich are found in the bottom of its subterra-
neous cavities ; I allude to the Proteus anguinus,
a far greater vvonder of nature than any of those
vvhich the Baron Valvasa detailed to the Royal
Society, a century and a half ago, as belonging
to Carniola, with far too romantic an air for a
philosopher.

Phil. —I have seen these animals, in passing
through this country before ; but I should be
very glad to be better acguainted vvith their
natural history.

The Unknovvn. —We shall soon be in that
part of the grotto vvhere they are found; and

174

DIALOGUE IV.

I shall willingly communicate the little that I
have been able to learn respecting their natural
characters and habits.

Eub. —The grotto nov becomes really mag-
nificent; I have seen no subterraneous cavity
ivith so many traits of beauty and of grandeur.
The irregularity of its surface, the magnitude
of the masses broken in pieces which compose
its sides, and which seem toru from the bosom
of the mountain by some great convulsion of
nature, their dark colours and deep shades, form
a singular contrast with the beauty, uniformity,
I may say, order, and grace of the white stalac-
tical concretions which hang from the canopy
above, and where the light of our torches, re-
flected from the brilliant or transparent cal-
careous gems, create a scene ivhich almost looks
like one produced by enchantment.

Phil,— If the awful chasms of dark masses
of rock surrounding us, appear like the work of
demons, who might be imagined to have risen
from the centre of the earth, the beautiful
works of nature above our heads may be com-
pared to a scenic representation of a temple or
banquet hali for fairies or genii, such as those
fabled in the Arabian romances.

THE PROTEUS, OR IMMORTALITV. 175

The Unknown —A poet might certainly plače
hcre the palače of the king of the Gnomes, and
might find marks of his Creative power in the
small lake close by, on which the Hame of the
torch is now falling •, for, there it is that I ex-
pect to find the extraordinary animals which
have been so long the objects of my attention.

Eub. —I see three or four creatures like slen-
der fish, moving on the mud beloiv the water.

The Unknovn. —I see them ; they are the
Protei; no\v I have them in my fishing net,
and now they are safe in the pitcher of water.
At first vievv, you might suppose this animal to
be a lizard, but it has the motions of a fish.
Its head, and the lower part of its body, and its
tail, bear a strong resemblance to those of the
eel; but it has no fins ; and its curious bronchial
organs are not like the gills of fishes ; they form
a singular vascular structure, as you see, almost
like a crest, round the throat, which may be
removed without occasioning the death of the
animal, who is likewise furnished with lungs.
With this double apparatus for supplying air to
the blood, it can live either below or above the
surface of the water. Its fore feet resemble
hands, but they have only three claws or fmgers,

176

DIA.L0GUE IV.

and are too feeble to be of use in grasping or
supporting the weight of the animal; the hinder
feet bave only two claws or toes, and in tbe
larger specimens are found so imperfect as to be
almost obliterated. It has small points in plače
of eyes, as if to preserve the analogy of nature.
It is of a fleshy whiteness and transparency in
its natural State, but when exposed to light, its
skin gradually becomes darker, and at last gains
an olive tint. Its nasal organs appear large;
and it is abundantly furnished with teeth, from
ivhich it may be concluded that it is an animal
of prey, yet in its confined State it has never
been known to eat, and it has been kept alive
for many years by occasionally changing the
water in which it was placed.

Eub. —Is this the only plače in Carniola
where these anitnals are found ?

The Unknown. —They were first discovered
bere by the late Baron Zois; but they have
since been found, though rarely, at Sittich,
about thirty miles distant, thrown up by water
from a subterraneous cavity ; and I have lately
heard it reported that some individuals of the
same species have been recognized in the cal-
careous strata in Sicily.

THE PROTEUS, OR IMMORTALITV. 177

Eub. —This lake in which we have seen these
animals is a very small one; do you suppose
they are bred bere ?

The Unknown. —Certainly not; in dry
seasons they are seldom found bere, but after
great rains they are often abundant. I think it
cannot be doubted, that their natural residence
is in an extensive deep subterranean lake,
from which, in great floods, they sometimes are
forced through the crevices of the rocks in to
this plače ivhere they are found ; and it does
not appear to me impossible, ivhen the peculiar
nature of the country in which vve are is con-
sidered, that the same great cavity may furnish
the individuals which have been found at Adels-
berg and at Sittich.

Eub. —This is a very extraordinary view of
the subject. Is it not possible that it may be
the larva of some large unknown animal in-
habiting these limestone cavities ? Its feet are
not in harmony with the rest of its organization,
and were they removed, it would have ali the
characters of a fish.

The Unknovvn. —I cannot suppose that they
are larvae. There is, I believe, in nature no
instance of a transition by this species of meta-

N '

178

DIALOGUE IV.

morphosis, from a more perfect to a less perfect
animal. The tadpole has a resemblance to a
fish before it becomes a frog ; the Caterpillar and
the maggot gain not only more perfect powers
of motion on the earth in their new state, but
acquire organs by which they inhabit a new
element. This animal, I dare say, is much
larger than we now see it, when mature in its
native plače; but its comparative anatomy is
exceedingly hostile to the idea that it is an
animal in a state of transition. It has been
found of various sizes, from that of the thick-
ness of a quill to that of the thumb, but its
form of organs has been always the same. It
is surely a perfect animal of a peculiar species.
And it adds one instance more to the number
already known of the wonderful manner in
vhich life is produced and perpetuated in every
part of our globe, even in places which seem
the least suited to organized existences.—And
the same infinite power and wisdom which has
fitted the camel and the ostrich for the deserts
of Africa, the swallow that secretes its own nest
for the caves of Java, the whale for the Polar
seas, and the morse and ivhite bear for the
Arctic ice, has given the Proteus to the deep

THE PROTEUS, OR IMMORTALITV. 179

and dark subterraneous lakes of Illyria,—an
aninial to whom the presence of light is not
essential, and who can live indiflferently in air
and in water, on the surface of the rock, or in
the depths of the m ud.

Phil. —It is nov ten years since I first
visited this spot. I was exceedingly anxious to
see the Proteus, and came here with the gnide
in the evening of the day I arrived at Adels-
berg, but though we exarained the bottom of
the cave with the greatest čare, we could find
no specimens. We returned the next morning
and were more fortunate, for we discovered five
close to the bank on the mud covering the
bottom of the lake; the mud was smooth and
perfectly undisturbed, and the water quite clear.
This fact, of their appearance during the night,
seemed to me so extraordinary, that I could
hardly avoid the fancy that they were new
creations. I saw no cavities through vhich
they could have entered, and the undisturbed
State of the lake seemed to give weight to my
notion. My reveries became discursive; I was
carried in imagination back to the primitive
State of the globe, vhen the great animals of
the satiri kind vere created under the pressure

N 2

ISO

DIALOGU E IV.

of a heavy atmosphere ; and my notion on this
subject was not destroyed, when I heard from a
celebrated anatomist, to whom I sent tbe speci-
mens I had collected, that the organization of
the spine of tbe Proteus was analogous to that
of one of the sauri, the remains of which are
found in the older secondary strata. It was
said at this time that no organs of reproduction
had been discovered in any of the specimens ex-
amined by physiologists, and this lent a vveight
to my opinion of the possibility of their being
actually nevv creations, which I suppose you
will condemn as wholly visionary and unphilo-
sophical.

Eub. —From the tone in which you make
your statements, I think you yourself consider
them as unworthy of discussion. On such
ground, eels might be considered nevv creations,
for their mature ovaria have not yet been dis¬
covered, and they come from the sea into rivers
under circumstances when it is difficult to trače
their course.

The Unknown. —The problem of the re¬
production of the Proteus, like that of the
common eel, is not yet solved ; but ovaria have
been discovered in animals of both species, and

THE PROTEUS, OR IMMORTALITV.

181

in this instance as in ali others belonging to the
existing order of tbings, Harvey’s maxim of
‘ omne vivum ab ovo'  will apply.

Eub. —You just now said, that this animal
bas been long an object of attention to you ;
have you studied it as a comparative anatomist,
in search of tbe solution of the problem of its
reproduction ?

The Unknown. —No: this enquiry bas been
pursued by much abler investigators, by Scbrei-
ber and Configliachi ; roy researches were made
upon its respiration, and the cbanges occasioned
in \vater by its bronchiae.

Eub. —I hope they have been satisfactory.

The Unknovn. —They proved to me at
least, that not merely the oxygen dissolved in
water, but likewise a part of the azote was
absorbed in the respiration of this animal.

Eub. —So that your researches confirm those
of the French sgavansand Alexander von Hum¬
boldt, that in the respiration of animals which
separate air from water, both principles of the
atmosphere are absorbed.

Phil. —I have heard so many and such va-
rious opinions on the nature of the function of
respiration, during my education, and since,

182

DIALOGUE IV.

that I should like to know what is the modern
doctrine on this subject; I can hardly refer to
better authority tban yourself, and I have an
additional reason for vvishing for some accurate
knovvledge on this matter, having, as you well
know, been the subject of an experiment in re-
lation to it, which, but for your kind and active
assistance, must have terminated fatally.

The Unknovvn. —I shall gladly State vvhat
I know, vvhich is very little. In pbysics and
in chemistry, the Science of dead matter, vve
possess many facts and a few principles or laws ;
but vvhenever the functions of life are considered,
though the facts are numerous, yet there is, as
yet, scarcely any approach to general lavvs; and
we must usually end where vve begin, by con-
fessing our entire ignorance.

Eub. —I will not allovv this ignorance to be en¬
tire. Something, undoubtedly, has been gained
by the knovvledge of the circulation of the blood
and its aeration in the lungs,—these, if not laws,
are at least fundamental principles.

The Unknovvn. —I speak only of the func¬
tions in their connexion with life. We are stili
ignorant of the source of animal heat, though
half a century ago the chemists thought they

THE PROTEUS, OR IMMORTALITV.

183

had proved it was owing to a sort of combustion
of the carbon of tbe blood.

Phil. —As we return to our inn, I hope you
will both be so good as to give me your views of
the nature of this function, so important to ali
living beings; teli me what you know,  or what
you believe,  or what others imagine they know.

The Unknown. —The powers of the organic
system depend upon a continued State of change;
the waste of the body produced in muscular
action, perspiration, and various secretions, is
made up for, by the constant supply of nutritive
matter to the blood by the absorbents ; and by
the action of the heart, the blood is preserved in
perpetual motion through every part of the
body. In the lungs, or bronchia, the venous
blood is exposed to the influence of air, and un-
dergoes a remarkable change, being converted
into arterial blood. The obvious Chemical alter-
ation of the air is sufficiently simple in this
process ; a certain quantity of carbon only is
added to it, and it receives an addition of heat
or vapour ; the volumes of elastic fluid, inspired
and expired, (making allowance for change of
temperature,) are the same, and, if ponderable
agents only were to be regarded, it would appear

184

DIALOGUE IV.

as if the only use of respiration were to free the
blood from a certain quantity of carbonaceous
matter. But it is probable that this is only a
secondary object, and that the change produced
by respiration upon the blood is of a mucli more
important kind. Oxygen, in its elastic state,
bas properties ivhich are very characteristic; it
gives out light by compression, which is not
certainly known to be the čase with any other
elastic fluid, except those with which oxygen
has entered without undergoing combustion;
and from the fire it producesin certain processes,
and from the manner in which it is separated by
positive electricity in the gaseous state from its
combinations, it is not easy to avoid the suppo-
sition that it contains, besides its ponderable
elements, some very subtile matter which is
capable of assuming the form of heat and light.
Mij idea  is, that the common air inspired enters
into the venous blood entire, in a state of disso-
lution, carrying with it its subtile or ethereal
part, which in ordinary cases of Chemical change
is given off; that it expels from the blood car-
bonic acid gas and azote ; and that, in the course
of the circulation, its ethereal part and its pon¬
derable part undergo changes which belong to

THE PROTEUS, OR IMMORTALITV. 185
laws that cannot be considered as Chemical,—
the ethereal part probably producing animal
beat and other effects, and the ponderable part
contributing to form carbonic acid and other
products. The arterial blood is necessary to ali
the functions of life, and it is no less connected
with the irritability of the muscles and the sen-
sibility of the nerves than vvith the performance
of ali the secretions.

Eub. —No one can be more convinced than I
am of the very limited extent of our knowledge
in Chemical physiology; and, when I say that,
having been a disciple and friend of Dr. Black,
I am stili disposed to prefer his ancient view to
your new one, I vvish merely to induce you to
pause and to hear my reasons ; they may appear
insufficient to you, but I am anxious to explain
them. First, then, in ali known Chemical
changes in which oxygen gas is absorbed and
carbonic acid gas formed, heat is produced; I
could mention a thousand instances, from the
combustion of wood or spirits of vrine, to the
fermentation of fruit, or the putrefaction of
animal matter. This general fact, which may
be almostcalled a law, is in favour of the viewof
Dr. Black. Another circumstance in favour of

186

DIALOGUE IV.

it is, that those animals which possess the highest
temperature consume the greatest quantity of
air; and, under different circumstances of action
and repose, the heat is in great 'measure pro-
portional to the quantity of oxygen consumed.
Then, those animals which absorb the smallest
quantity of air are cold-blooded. Another ar¬
gument in favour of Dr. Black’s opinion is, the
change of colour [of blood from black to red;
which seems to show that it loses carbon.

The Unknown. —With the highest respect
for the memory of Dr. Black, and for the opinion
of his disciple, I shall answer the arguments I
have just heard. I will not allow any facts
or laws from the action of dead matter to apply
to living structures : the blood is a living fluid,
and of this we are sure, that it does not burn
in respiration. The term s warmth and cold,
as applied to the blood of animals, are improper
in the sense in which they have been just used ;
ali animals are, in fact, warm-blooded, and the
degrees of their temperature are fitted to the
circumstances under which they live, and those
animals, the life of which is most active, possess
most heat, which may be the result of general
actions, and not a particular effect of respiration.

THE PROTEUS, OR IMMORTALITV.

187

Besides, a distinguisbed physiologist * bas
rendered it probable, tbat the animal heat de-
pends more upon the functions of tbe nerves
than upon any result of respiration. The argu¬
ment derived from cbange of colour is perfectly
delusive: it would not follow, if carbon were
liberated from the blood, tbat it must necessarily
become brighter ; sulphur combining with char-
coal becomes a clear fluid, and a black oxide of
copper becomes red in uniting with a substance
which abounds in carbon. No cbange in sensible
gualities can ever indicate with precision the
nature of chemical cbange.

I shall resume my view, which I cannot be
said to have fully developed. When I stated
tbat carbonic acid was formed in the venous
blood in the processes of life, I meant merely to
say, that this blood, in consequence of certain
changes, became capable of giving off carbon and
oxygen in union with each other, for the moment
inorganic matter enters into the composition of
living organs it obeys new laws. The action of
the gastric juice is chemical, and it will only
dissolve dead matters, and it dissolves them when
they are in tubes of metal as well as in the stomach,

* Mr. Brodie.

188 DIALOGUE IV.

but it has no action upon living matter. Respi-
ration is no more a chemical process than the
absorption of chyle ; and the changes that take
plače in the lungs, though they appear so simple,
may be very complicated ; it is as little philoso-
pbical to consider them as a mere combustion of
carbon, as to consider the formation of muscle
from the arterial blood as crystallization. There
can be no doubt that ali the powers and agencies
of matter are employed in the purposes of or-
ganization, but the phenomenon of organization
can no more be referred to chemistry than those
of chemistry to mechanics. As oxygen stands
in that electrical relation to the other elements
of animal matter which has been called electro-
positive, it may be supposed that some electrical
function is exercised by oxygen in the blood ;
but this is a mere hypothesis. An attempt has
been made, founded on experiments on the de-
composition of bodies by electricity, to explain
secretion by weak electrical powers, and to sup-
pose the glands electrical organs, and even to ima-
gine the action of the nerves dependent upon
electricity ■ these, like ali other notions of the
same kind, appear to me very little refined. If
electrical effects be the exhibition of certain

THE PROTEUS, OR IMMORTALITV. 189
powers belonging to matter, which is a fair
supposition, then no change can take plače
without their being more or less concerned ;
but, to imagine the presence of electricity
to'solve phenomena, the cause of which is un-
known, is merely to substitute one undefined
word for another. In some animals electrical
organs are found, but then they furnish the
artillery of the animal, and means of seizing its
prey, and of its defence. And speculations of
this kind must be ranked with those belong¬
ing to some of the more superficial followers of
the Nevvtonian philosophy, who explained the
properties of animated nature by mechanical
powers, and muscular action by the expansion
and contraction of elastic bladders; man, in this
State of vague philosophical inquiry, was sup-
posed a species of hydraulic machine. And
when the pneumatic chemistry was invented,
orsanic structures were soon imagined to be
laboratories, in which combinations and decom-
positions produced ali the effects of living
actions; the muscular contractions were sup-
posed to depend upon explosions like those of
the detonating compounds, and the formation
of blood from chyle was considered as a pure

190

DIALOGUE IV.

Chemical solution. And now that the progress
of Science has opened new and extraordinary
views in electricity, these views are not un-
naturally applied by speculative reasoners to
solve some of the mysterious and recondite phe-
nomena of organized beings. But the analogy
is too remote and incorrect; the sources of life
cannot be grasped by stich macbinery; to look
for them in the powers of electro-chemistry, is
seeking the living among the dead ; that which
touches will not be felt; that which sees will not
be visible ; that which commands sensations vvill
not be their subject.

Phil. —I conclude from what you last said,
that though you are inclined to believe that
some unknown subtile matter is added to the
organized system by respiration, yet you would
not have us believe that this is electricity, or
that there is any reason to suppose that electri-
city has a peculiar and special share in producing
the functions of life.

The Unknown. —I wish to guard you against
the adoption of any hypothesis on this recon¬
dite and abstruse subject. But, however dif-
ficult it may be to define the exact nature of re¬
spiration, yet the effect of it and its connexions

THE PROTEUS, OR IMMORTALITV. 191
with the functions of the body are sufficiently
striking. By the action of air on the blood it is
fitted for the purposes of life, and from the
moment that animation is marked by sensation
or volition this function is performed, the punc-
tum saliens in the ovum seems to receive as it
were the breath of life in the influence of air.
In the economy of the reproduction of the
species of animals, one of the most important
circumstances is the aeration of the ovum ; and
when this is not performed from the blood of
the mother, as in the mammalia by the pla¬
centa, there is a system for aerating, as in the
oviparous reptiles or fishes, which enables the
air freely to pass through the receptacles in
which the eggs are deposited, or the egg itself is
aerated out of the body through its coats or
shell, and when air is excluded, incubation or
artificial heat has no effect. Fishes, which de-
posit their eggs in water that contains only a
limited portion of air, make combinations whicli
would seem almost the result of scientific know-
ledge or reason, though depending upon a more
unerring principle, their instinct for preserving
their offspring. Those fishes that spawn in
spring, or the beginning of summer, and which

192 DIALOGUE IV.

inhabit deep and stili vvaters, as the carp, bream,
pike, tench, &c., deposit their eggs upon aquatic
vegetables, vvhicb, by the influence of the šolar
light, constantlv preserve the water in a  State of
aeration. The trout, salmon, hucho, and others
of the salmo genus, vvhich spawn in the begin-
ning or end of vvinter, and which inhabit rivers
fed by cold and rapid streams vvhich descend
from the mountains, deposit their eggs in shal-
lows on heaps of gravel, as near as possible to
the source of the stream, vvhere the vvater is
fully combined vvitli air; and, to accomplish
this purpose, they travel for hundreds of miles
against the current, and leap over cataracts and
dams— thus the salmo salar ascends by the
Rbone and the Aar to the glaciers by Svvitzer-
land, the hucho by the Danube, the Isar, and
the Save, passing through the lakes of the Tyrol
and Styria, to the highest torrents of the Noric
and Julian Alps.

Phil. —My own experience proves in the
strongest manner the immediate connexion of
sensibility with respiration ; ali that I can re-
member in my accident was a certain violent and
painful sensation of oppression in the chest,
vvhich must have been immediately succeeded by
loss of sense.

TIIE PROTEUS, OR IMMORTALITV.

193

Eub, —I have no doubt that ali your suf-
fering was over at the moment you describe;
as far as sensibility isconcerned, you were in-
animate when your friend raised you from the
bottom. This distinct connexion of sensibility
with the absorption of air by the blood, is, I
think, in favour of the idea advanced by our
friend, that some subtile and ethereal matter is
supplied to the system in the elastic air, vhich
may be the cause of vitality.

The Unknown. —Softly, if you please; I
must not alloiv you to mistake my view. I
think it probable that some subtile matter is
derived from the atmosphere connected with the
functions of life; but nothing can be more re-
mote from my opinion tban to suppose it the
cause of vitality.

Phil. —This might have been fully inferred
from the whole tenor of your conversation, and
particularly from that expression, ‘ that vhich
commands sensations will not be their subject; 1
I think I shall not mistake your views wben I
say, that you do not consider vitality dependent
upon any material cause or principle.

The Unknown. —You do not: we are en-
tirely ignorant on this subject; and I confess,

O

194

DIALOGUE IV.

in the utmost humility, my ignorance. I know
there bave been distinguished pbysiologists who
have imagined that by organization, powers not
naturally possessed by matter were developed,
and that sensibility was a property belonging to
some unknoivn combination of unknown ethereal
elements. But sucb notions appear to me
unphilosophical, and tbe mere substitution of
unknown words for unknown things. I can
never believe that any division, or refinement, or
subtilization, or juxtaposition, or arrangement
of the particles of matter, can give to tbem
sensibility; or that intelligence  can result from
combinations of insensate and brute atoms. I
can as easily imagine that the planets are moving
by their will or design round the sun, or that a
cannon-ball is reasoning in making its parabolic
curve. The materialists have cpioted a passage
of Locke in favour of their doctrine, who seemed
to doubt ‘ whether it might not have pleased
God to bestow a power of thinking on matter.’
But vvith the highest veneration for this great
reasoner, the founder of modern philosophical
logic, I think there is little of his usual strength
of mind in this doubt. It appears to me that
he might as well have asked, whether it might

THE PROTEUS, OR 1MMORTALITV.

195

not have pleased God to make a house its own
tenant.

Eub. —I am not a professed materialist; but
I think you treat rather too lightly the modest
doubts of Locke on this subject. And without
considering me as a partisan, you will, I hope,
allow me to state some of the reasons vvhich I
have heard good physiologists advance in favour
of that opinion to which you are so hostile. In
the first accretion of the parts of animated
beings, they appear almost like the crystallized
matter, with the simplest kind of Ufe, scarcely
sensitive. The gradual operations by which
they acquire new organs, and new powers cor-
responding to these organs, till they arrive at
full maturity, forcibly strikes the mind with the
idea that the powers of life reside in the arrange-
ment by which the organs are produced. Then,
as there is a gradual increase of power corre-
sponding to the increase of perfection of the
organization, so there is a gradual diminution
of it connected with the decay of the body. As
the imbecility of infancy corresponds to the
weakness of organization, so the energy of youth
and the power of manhood are marked by its
strength ; and the feebleness and dotage of old

O 2

196

DIALOGUE IV.

ao-e are in the direct ratio of the decline of the
perfection of the organization ; and the mental
powers in extreme old age seem destroyed at
the same time with the corporeal ones, till the
ultimate dissolution of the frame, when the
elements are again restored to that dead nature
from ivhich they were originally derived. Then,
there was a period, when the greatest philoso-
pher, statesman, or hero that ever existed, was
a mere living atom, an organized form with the
sole power of perception ; and the combinations
that a Newton formed before birth or imme-
diately after, cannot be imagined to have pos-
sessed the slightest intellectual character. If a
peculiar principle be supposed necessary to in-
telligence, it must exist throughout animated
nature. The elephant approaches nearer to
man in intellectual power, than the oyster does
to the elephant •, and a link of sensitive nature
may be traced from the polypus to the philo-
sopher. Now, in the polypus the sentient prin¬
ciple is divisible, and from one polypus or one
earthworm may be formed two or three, ali of
vvhich become perfect animals and have percep¬
tion and volition ; therefore, at least, the sentient
principle has this property in common vvith

THE PROTEUS, OR IMMORTALITV. 197
matter, that it is divisible. Tben, to these
difficulties, add the dependence of ali the higber
faculties of the mind upon the State of the
brain; remember that not only ali the intel-
lectual powers, but even sensibility, is destroyed
by the pressure of a little blood upon the cere-
bellum, and the difficulties increase. Call to
mind likevvise the suspension of animation in
cases similar to that of our friend, when there
are no siuns of life, and when animation returns
only with the return of organic action. Surely,
in ali these instances, everything which you
consider as belonging to špirit appears in inti-
mate dependence upon the arrangements and
properties of matter.

The Unknown. —The afguments you have
used, are those which are generally employed
by physiologists. They have weight in appear-
ance, but not in reality ; they prove that a cer-
tain perfection of the machinery of the body is
essential to the exercise of the powers of the
mind,—but they do not prove that the machine
is the mind. Without the eye there can be no
sensations of vision, and without the brain there
could be no recollected visible ideas; but neither
the optic nerve nor the brain can be considered

198

DIALOGUE IV.

as the precipient principle—tbey are but the
Instruments of a power which has nothing in
common with them. What may be said of the
nervous system may be applied to a different
part of the frame ; stop the motion of the heart,
and sensibility and life cease, yet the living
principle is not in the heart nor in the arterial
blood which it sends to every part of the sys-
tem. A savage who saw the operation of a
number of power-looms weaving stockings cease
at once on the stopping of the motion of a
vvheel, might well imagine that the motive force
was in the wheel; he could not divine that it
more immediately depended upon the steam,
and ultimately upon a fire below a concealed
boiler. The philosopher sees the fire which is
the cause of the motion of this complicated
machinery, so unintelligible to the savage ; but
both are equally ignorant of the divine fire
which is the cause of the mechanism of orga-
nized structures. Profoundly ignorant on this
subject, ali that we can do is to give a history of
our own minds. The external world or matter
is to us in fact nothing but a heap or cluster of
sensations; and in looking back to the memory of
our own being, we find one principle which may

THE PROTEUS, OR IMMORTALITV.

199

be called tbe monad,  or self,  constantly present,
intimately associated with a particular class of
sen sat ion s, which we call our own body or
organs. These organs are connected with other
sensations, and move as it were with them in
circles of existence, quitting for a time some
trains of sensation to return to others, but tbe
monad is always present; we can fix no begin-
ning to its operations, we can plače no limit to
them. We sometimes, in sleep, lose the begin-
ning and end of a dream, and recollect the
middle of it, and one dream has no connexion
with another, and yet we are conscious of an
infinite variety of dreams, and there is a strong
analogv for believing in an infinity of past exist-
ences, which must have had connexion; and
human life may be regarded as a type of  infinite
and immortal life, and its succession of sleep
and dreams as a tvpe of the changes of death
and birth to which from its nature it is liable
That the ideas belonging to the mind were ori¬
ginal^ gained from those classes of sensations
called organs, it is impossible to deny, as it is
impossible to deny that mathematical truths
depend upon the signs which express them ; but
these sisrns are not themselves the truths, nor

O y

200

DIALOGUE IV.

are the organs of the mind. The whole history
of intellect is a history of change according to a
certain law ; and we retain the memory only of
those changes which may be useful to us;—the
child forgets what happened to it in the womb;
the recollections of the infant Iikewise before
two years are soon lost; yet many of the habits
acquired in that age are retained through life.
The sentient principle gains thoughts by mate¬
rial Instruments, and its sensations change as
those Instruments change; and in old age, the
mind, as it vere, falls asleep, to wake to a new
existence. AVitli its present organization, the
intellect of man is naturally limited and imper-
fect; but this depends upon its material ma-
chinery ; and in a higher organized form it may
be imagined to possess infinitely higher powers.
Were man to be immortal with his present cor-
poreal frame, this immortality would only belong
to the machinery ; and with respect to acquisi-
tions of mind, he would virtually die every two
or three hundred years—that is to say, a certain
quantity of ideas only could be remembered,
and the supposed immortal being would be, with
respect to v h at had happened a thousand years
ago, as the adult now is with respect to what

THE PROTEUS, OR IMMORTALITV.

201

happened in the first year of his life. To
attempt to reason upon the manner in which the
organs are connected with sensation \vould be
useless; the nerves and brain have some imme-
diate relation to these vital functions, but hov
they act it is impossible to say. From the rapi-
dity and infinite variety of the phenomena of
perception, it seems extremely probable that
there must be in the brain and nerves, matter
of a nature far more subtile and refined than
anything discovered in them by observation and
experiment, and that the immediate connexion
between the sentient principle and the body may
be established by kinds of ethereal matter, which
can never be evident to the senses, and which
may bear the same relations to heat, light, and
electricity, that these refined forms or modes of
existence of matter bear to the gases. Motion
is most easily produced by the lighter species of
matter •, and yet imponderable agents, such as
electricity, possess force sufficient to overturn
the veightiest structures. Nothing can be
farther from my meaning than to attempt any
definition on this subject, nor would I ever
embrace or give authority to that idea of Nev-
ton, who supposes that the immediate cause of

202

DIALOGUE IV.

sensation may be in undulations of an etbereal
medium. It does not, however, appear impro-
bable to me, that some of the more refined ma-
chinerv of thought may adhere, even in another
State, to the sentient principle; for, though the
organs of gross sensation, the nerves and brain,
are destroyed by death, yet something of the
more ethereal nature, which I have supposed,
may be less destructible. And I sometimes
imagine, that many of those powers which have
been called instinctive, belong to the more refined
clothing of the špirit; conscience, indeed, seems
to have some undefined source, and may bear
relation to a former State of being.

Eub. —Ali your notions are merely ingenious
speculations. Revelation gives no authority to
your ideas of spiritual nature; the Christian
immortality is founded upon the resurrection of
the body.

The Unknown. —This I will not allovv.
Even in the Mosaic history of the creation of
man, his frame is made in the image of God,
that is, capable of intelligence ; and the Creator
breathes into it the breath of life, his own
essence. Then our Saviour has said, ‘ Of the
God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob,’ ‘ He

THE PROTEUS, OR IMMORTALITV,

203

is not the God of the dead, but of the living.’
St. Paul has described the clothing of the špirit
in a new and glorious body, taking the analogy
from the living germ in the seed of the plant,
vvhich is not quickened till after apparent death ;
and the catastrophe of our planet, vvhich, it is
revealed, is to be destroyed and purified by lire,
before it is fitted for the habitation of the blest,
is in perfect harmony with the view I have ven-
tured to suggest.

Eub. —I cannot make your notions coincide
vvith what I have been accustomed to consider
the meaning of holy writ. You allow every-
thing belonging to the material life to be de-
pendent upon the organization of the body, and
yet you imagine the špirit after death clothed
vvith a new body ; and, in the system of revvards
and punishmcnts, this body is rendered happy
or miserable for actions committed by another
and extinct frame. A particular organization
may impel to improper and immoral gratifica-
tion ; it does not appear to me, according to the
principles of eternal justice, that the body of
the resurrection should be punished for crimes
dependent upon a conformation now dissolved
and destroyed.

204 DIALOGUE IV.

The Unknoivn. —Nothing is more absurd, I
may say more impious, than for man, with a ken
surrounded by the densemistsof sense, to reason
respecting the decrees of eternal justice. You
adopt here the same limited view that you em-
braced in reasoning against the indestructibility
cf the sentient principle in man, from the ap-
parent division of the living principle in the
polypus, not recollecting that, to prove a quality
can be increased or exalted, does not prove that
it can be annihilated. If there be, which I think
cannot be doubted, a consciousness of good and
evil constantly belonging to the sentient principle
in man, then rewards and punishments naturally
belong to acts of this consciousness, to obedience
or disobedience ; and the indestructibility of the
sentient being is necessary to the decrees of eter¬
nal justice. On your vieiv, even in this Ufe,
just  punishments for crimes would be almost
impossible: for the materials of which human
beings are composed cbange rapidly, and in a
few years probably not an atom of the primitive
structure remains; yet even the materialist is
obliged in old age to do penance for the sins of
his youth, and does not complain of the injustice
of his decrepit body, entirely changed and made

THE PROTEUS, OR IMMORTALITV. 205
stiff by time, suffering for the intemperance of
his youthful flexible frame. In my idea, con-
science is the frame of the mind, fitted for its
probation in mortality. And this is in exact
accordance with the foundations of our religion,
the divine origin of which is marked no less by
its history tban its harmony with the principles
of our nature. Obedience to its precepts not
only prepares for a better State of existence in
another world, but is likevvise calculated to make
us happy here. We are constantly taught to
renounce sensual pleasure and selfish gratifica-
tions, to forget our body and sensible organs, to
associate our pleasures with mind, to fix our
affections upon the great ideal generalization of
intelligence in the one Supreme Being. And,
that we are capable of forming to ourselves an
imperfect idea even of the Infinite Mind, is, I
think, a strong presumption of our own immor-
talitv, and of the distinct relation vvhich our
finite knovvledge bears to eternal wisdom.

Phil. —I am pleased with your views ; they
coincide with those I had formed at the time my
imagination was employed upon the vision of the
Colosasum, vvhich I repeated to you, and are not
in opposition with the opinions that the cool

206

DIALOGUE IV.

judgment and sound and humble faith of Am-
brosio have led me since to embrace. The
doctrine of the materialists  was always, even in
my youth, a cold, heavy, dull, and insupport-
able doctrine to me, and necessarily tending to
atheism. When I had heard with disgust, in
the dissecting rooms, the plan of the physiologist,
of the gradual accretion of matter and its becom-
ing endowed with irritability, ripening into sen-
sibility, and acquiring such organs as vvere
necessary, by its own inherent forces, and at last
rising into intellectual existence, a walk into the
green fields, or woods by the banks of rivers,
brought back my feelings from nature to God :
I saw in ali the powers of matter the Instruments
of the deity ; the sunbeams, the breath of the
zephyr, awakened animation in forms prepared
by divine intelligence to receive it; the insensate
seed, the slumbering egg, which were to be
vivified, appeared like the nevv-born animal,
vvorks of a divine mind ; I saw love  as the Creative
principle in the material world, and this love
only as a divine attribute. Then, my own mind
I felt connected with new sensations and indefi-
nite hopes, a thirst for immortality; the great
names of other ages and of distant nations ap-

THE PROTEUS, OR IMMORTALITV. 207
peared to me to be stili living around me ; and,
even in the funeral monuments of the heroic and
the great, I saw, as it were, the decree of the
indestructibility of mind. These feelings, though
generally considered as poetical, yet, I think,
offer a sound philosophical argument in favour
of the immortality of the soul. In ali the habits
and instincts of young animals, their feelings or
movements raay be traced in intimate relation
to their improved perfect State; their sports
have always affinities to their modes of hunting
or catching their food, and young birds even
in the nest show marks of fondness, vvhich when
their frames are developed become signs of actions
necessary to the reproduction and preservation
of the species. The desire of glory, of honour,
of immortal farne, and of constant knowledge,
so usual in young persons of well-constituted
minds, cannot, I think, be other than symptoms
of the infinite and progressive nature of intellect
—bopes which, as they cannot be gratified here,
belong to a frame of mind suited to a nobler
state of existence.

The Unknown. —Religion, whether natural
or revealed, has always the same beneficial in¬
fluence on the mind. In youth, in health, and

208

DIALOGUE IV.

prosperity, it awakens feelings of gratitude and
sublime love, and purifies at the same time that
it exalts; but it is in misfortune, in sickness, in
age, that its effects are most truly and beneficially
felt; ivhen submission in faith and humble trust
in the divine will, from duties become pleasures,
undecaving sources of consolation: then it creates
powers which were believed to be extinct, and
gives a freshness to the mind, which was supposed
to have passed away for ever, but which is now
renovated as an immortal hope; then it is the
Pharos, guiding the wave-tost mariner to his
home, as the calm and beautiful stili basins or
fiords surrounded by tranquil groves and pas¬
toral meadows to the Norvregian pilot escaping
from a heavy storm in the North Sea, or as the
green and dewy spot gushing with fountains, to
the exhausted and thirsty traveller in the midst
of the desert. Its influence outlives ali earthly
enjoyments, and becomes stronger as the organs
decay and theframe dissolves ; it appears as that
evening-star oflight in the horizon of life, which
we are sure is to become, in another season, a
morning-star, and it throvvs its radiance tbrough
the gloom and shadow of death.

DIALOGUE THE FIFTH.

THE CHEMICAL PHILOSOPHER.

I had  been made religious by the conversations
of Ambrosio in Italy ; my faith was strengthened
and exalted by the opinions of the Unknown,
for whom I had not merely that veneration
awakened by exalted talents, but a strong affec-
tion, founded upon the essential benefit of the
preservation of my life, owing to him. I ven-
tured, the evening after our visit to the cave of
Adelsberg, to ask him some questions relating to
his history and adventures. He said, to atterapt
to give you any idea of the formation of my
character would lead me into the history of my
youtb, which almost approaches to a tale of
romance. The source of the little Information
and inteliigence I possess, I must refer to a
restless activity of špirit, a love of glory which
ever belonged to my infancy, and a sensibility
easily excited and not easily conquered. My
parentage was humble; yet I can believe a tra-

P

210

DIALOGUE V.

ditional history of tny paternal grandmother,
that the origin of our family vvas from an old
Norman stock; I found this belief upon certain
feelings vvhich I can only refer to an hereditary
source, a pride of decorum, a tact and refine-
ment even in boyhood, and vvhich are contra-
dictory to the idea of an origin from a race of
peasants. Accident opened to me in early youtli
a.philosophical career, vvhich I pursued with
success. In manhood, fortune smiled upon me
and made me independent; I then really became
a philosopher, and pursued my travels vvith the
object of instructing myself and of benefiting
mankind. I have seen most parts of Europe,
and conversed, I believe, vvith ali the illustrious
men of Science belonging to them. My life has
not been unlike that of the ancient Greek sages.
I have added some little to the quantity of human
knovvledge, and I have endeavoured to add some-
thing to the quantity of human happiness. In
my early life I vvas a sceptic—I have informed
you bovv I became a believer; and I constantly
bless the Supreme Intelligence for the favour of
some gleams of divine light vvhich have been
vouchsafed to me in this our State of darkness
and doubt.

THE CHEMICAL PHILOSOPHER.

211

Phil. — I am surprised that, with your
powers, you did not enter into a professional
career eitber of law or politics; you would
have gained the highest honours and distinc-
tions.

The Unknown.— To 'me there never has
been a higher source of honour or distinction
than that connected with advances in Science.
I have not possessed enough of the eagle in njy
character to make a direct flight to the loftiest
altitudes in the social world; and I certainly
never endeavoured to reach those heights by
using the creeping povvers of the reptile, who, in
ascending, generally chooses the dirtiest path,
because it is the easiest.

Eub.' —I have often v/ondercd that men of
fortune and of rank do not apply themselves
more to philosophical pursuits : they offer a
delightful and enviable road to distinction, one
founded upon the blessings and benefits con-
ferred on our fellovv-creatures ; they do not
supply the same sources of temporary popula-
rity as successes in the senate or at the bar, but
the glory resulting from them is permanent, and
independent of vulgar taste or caprice. In
looking back to the history of the last five

P 2

212

DIALOGUE V.

reigns in England, we find Boyles, Cavendishes,
and Howards, who rendered these great names
more illustrious by their scientific honours : but
we may in vain search the aristocracy now for
philosophers; and there are very few persons
who pursue Science with true dignity ; it is fol-
lowed more as connected with objects of profit
than those of farne, and there are fifty persons
who take out patents for supposed inventions,
for one who makes a real discovery.

Phil. —The information we have already re-
ceived from you proves to me that chemistry
has been your favourite pursuit. I am surprised
at this. The higher mathematics and pure
physics appear to me to offer much more noble
objects of contemplation and fields of discovery ;
and, practically considered, the results of the
chemist are much more humble, belonging
principally to the apothecary’s shop and the
kitchen.

Eub. —I feel disposed to join you in attack-
ing this favourite study of our friend, but
merely to provoke him to defend it. I wish
our attack would induce him to vindicate his
Science, and that we might enjoy a little of
the šport of literary gladiators, at least, in

THE CHEMICAL PHILOSOPHER.

213

order to call forth his škili and awaken his
eloquence.

The Unknovvn.— I have no objection. Let
there be a fair discussion; remember we fight
only with foils, and the point of mine sball be
covered with velvet. In your attack upon che-
mistry, Philalethes, you limited the use of it to
the apothecary’s shop and the kitchen. The
first is an equivocal use ; by introducing it into
the kitchen you make it an art fundamental to
ali others. But if what you had stated had
really meant to be serious, it vvould not have
deserved a reply ; as it is in mere playfulness, it
shall not be thrown away; I want eloquence,
however, to adorn my subject, yet it is suffi-
ciently exciting even to awaken feeling. Persons
in general look at the magnificent fabric of civi-
lized society as the result of the accumulated
labour, ingenuity, and enterprise of man, through
a long course of ages, vvithout attempting to
define what bas been owing to the different
branches of human industry and Science; and
usually attribute to politicians, statesmen, and
vvarriors, a much greater sbare than really be-
longs to them in the work ; what they have done
is in reality little. The beginning of civilization

214

DIALOGUE V.

is the discovery of some useful arts, by which
men acquire property, comforts, or luxuries.
The necessity or desire of preserving them leads
to laws and social institutions. The discovery
of peculiar arts gives superiority to particular
nations ; and the love of power induces them to
employ this superiority to subjugate other na¬
tions, who learn their arts, and ultimately adopt
their manners; so that in reality the origin as
veli as the progress and improvement of civil
society, is founded in mechanical and chemical
inventions. No people have ever arrived at any
degree of perfection in their institutions who
have not possessed in a high degree the useful
and refined arts. The comparison of savage and
civilized man, in fact, demonstrates the triumph
of chemical and mechanical philosophy, as the
causes not only of the physical, but ultimately
even of moral improvement. Look at the con-
dition of man in the lowest state in which we are
acquainted with him. Take the native of New
Holland, advanced only a few steps above the
animal creation, and that principally by the use
of fire; naked, defending himself against wild
beasts, or killing them for food only by weapons
made of wood hardened in the fire, or pointed

THE CHEMICAL PHILOSOPHER.

215

with stones or fish-bones ; living only in holes dug
out of the earth, or in huts rudely constructed
of a few branches of trees covered with grass ;
having no approach to tbe enjoyment of lux-
uries or even comforts; unable to provide for
his most pressing wants; having a language
scarcely articulate, relating only to the great
objects of nature, or to his most pressing neces-
sities or desires ; and living solitary or in single
families, unacquainted with religion, govern-
ment, or laws, submitted to the mercy of nature
or the elements. How different is man in his
highest State of cultivation ! every part of his
body covered with the products of different
Chemical and mechanical arts, made not only
useful in protecting him from the inclemency of
the seasons, but combined in forms of beauty
and variety; creating out of the dust of the
earth, from the clay under his feet, Instruments
of use and ornament; extracting metals from
the rude ore, and giving to them a hundred
different shapes for a thousand different pur-
poses ; selecting and improving the vegetable
productions with which he covers the earth ; not
only subduing, but taming and domesticating

216

DIALOGVE V.

the vildest, the fleetest, and the strongest in-
habitants of the wood, the mountain, and the
air ; making the winds carry him on every part
of the immense ocean ; and compelling the ele-
ments of air, water, and even fire, as it were,
to labour for him ; concentrating in small space
materials which act as the thunderbolt, and
directing their energies so as to destroy at im-
mense distances; blasting the rock, removing
the mountain, carrying water from the valley to
the hill; perpetuating thought in imperishable
words, rendering immortal the exertion of genius,
and presenting them as common property to ali
awakening minds,-—becoming, as it were, the
true image of divine intelligence, receiving and
bestowing the breath of life in the influence of
civilization.

Eub.' —Really you are in the poetical, not
the chemical chair, or rather on the tripod. We
claim from you some accuracy of detail, some
minute Information, some proofs of what you
assert. What you attribute to the chemical
and mechanical arts, we might with the same
propriety attribute to the fine arts, to letters, to
political improvement, and to those inventions of

THE CHEMICAL PHILOSOPHER. 217

which Minerva and Apollo, and not Vulcan, are
the patrons.

The Unknoivn. —I will be more minute. You
'vvill alloiv that the rendering skins insoluble in
water, by combining with them the astringent
principle of certain vegetables, is a chemical in-
vention, and that without leather our shoes, our
carriages, our equipages would be very ill made;
you will permit me to say, that the bleaching and
dyeing of wool and silk, cotton and-flax, are Che¬
mical processes, and that the conversion of them.
into different clothes is a mechanical invention;
that the working of iron, copper, tin, and lead,
and the other metals, and the combining them
in different alloys, by which almost ali the Instru¬
ments necessary for the turner, the joiner, the
stone-mason, the ship-builder, and the smith,
are made, are chemical inventions: even the
press, to the influence of which I am disposed
to attribute as much as you can do, could not
have existed in any state of perfection ivithout
a metallic alloy ; the combining of alkali and
sand, and certain clays and flints together to
form glass and porcelain, is a chemical pro-
cess; the colours which the artist employs to
frame resemblances of natural objects, or to

218

DIALOGUE V.

create combinations more beautiful than ever
existed in nature, are derived from chemistry:
in short, in every branch of the common and
fine arts, in every department of human in-
dustry, the influence of this Science is felt; and
vre may find in the fable of Prometheus taking
the flame from heaven to animate his man of
clay, an emblem of the effects of fire in its appli-
cation to Chemical purposes in creating the
activity and almost the life of civil society.

Phil. —It appears to me that you attribute
to Science what in many cases has been the re-
sult of accident. The processes of most of the
useful arts, which you call chemical, have been
invented and improved vvithout any refined
views, without any general system of know-
ledge. Lucretius attributes to accident the dis-
covery of the fusion of the metals; a person in
touching a shell-fish observes that it emits a
purple liquid as a  dye, hence the Tyrian
purple; clay is observed to harden in the fire,
and hence the invention of bricks, vvhich could
hardly fail ultimately to lead to the discovery
of porcelain. Even glass, the most perfect and
beautiful of those manufactures you call Che¬
mical, is said to have been discovered by acci-

THE CHEMICAL PIIILOSOPIIER.

219

dent: Theophrastus States, that some merchants
wbo were cooking on lumps of soda or natron,
near the mouth of the river Beluš, observed
that a bard and vitreous substance was formed
where the fused natron ran in to the sand.

The Unknown.— I will readily allow that
accident has had much to do with the origin
of the arts as with the progress of the Sciences.
But it has been by scientific processes and ex-
periments that these accidental results have been
rendered really applicable to the purposes of
common life. Besides, it requires a certain
dogrce of knowledge and scientific combination
to understand and seize upon the facts which
have originated in accident. It is certain that
in ali fires, alkaline substances and sand are
fused together, and clay hardened ; yet for ages
after this discovery of fire, glass and porcelain
were unknown, till some men of genius profited
by scientific combinations often observed but
never applied. It suits the indolence of those
minds which never attempt anything, and whicb,
probably, if they did attempt anything, vvould
not succeed, to refer to accident that vvhich
belongs to genius. It is sometimes said by such
persons, that the discovery of the law of gravi-

220

DIALOGUE V.

tation was owing to accident; and a ridiculous
story is told of the falling of an apple, as the
cause of this discovery. As well might the
invention of fluxions, or the architectural won-
ders of the dome of St. Peter’s, or the mi-
racles of art, the St. John of Raphael, or
the Apollo Belvidere, be supposed to be owing
to accidental combinations. In the progress of
an art, from its rudest to its more perfect State,
the whole process depends upon experiments.
Science is, in fact, nothing more than the refine-
ment of common sense making use of facts
already known to acquire new facts. Clays
which are yellovv are known to burn red ; calca-
reous earth renders flint fusible,—the persons
■vvho have improved earthenware made their
selections accordingly. Iron was discovered at
least one thousand years before it was rendered
malleable; and from what Herodotus says of
this discovery, there can be little doubt that it
was developed by a scientific worker in metals.
Vitruvius tehs us, that the ceruleum, a colour
made of copper, which exists in perfection in ali
the old paintings of the Greeks and Romans,
and on the mummies of the Egyptians, was
discovered by an Egvptian king; there is,

THE CHEMICAL PHILOSOFHER.

221

therefore, every reason to believe that it was
not the result of accidental combination, but of
experiments made for producing or improving
colours. Amongst the ancient philosophers,
many discoveries are attributed to Democritus
and Anaxagoras ; and, connected with chemical
arts, the narrative of the inventions of Archi-
medes alone, by Plutarch, would seem to show
how great is the effect of science in creating
power. In modern times, the refining of sugar,
the preparation of nitre, the manufacturing of
acids, salts, &c., are ali results of pure chemistry.
Take gunpowder as a specimen: no person,
but a man infinitely diversifying his processes
and guided by analogy, could have made such
a discovery. Look into the books of the alche-
mists, and some idea may be formed of the
effects of experiments. It is true, these persons
were guided by false views, yet they made most
useful researcbes; and Lord Bacon has justly
compared them to the husbandman who, search-
ing for an imaginary treasure, fertilized the
soil. They might likewise be compared to
persons who, looking for gold, discover the
fragments of beautiful statues, which separately
are of no value, and which appear of little

222

DIALOGUE V.

value to the persons who found them; but
which, when selected and put together by artists,
and their defective parts supplied, are found to
be wonderfully perfect, and worthy of conser-
vation. Look to the progress of the arts, since
they have been enlightened by a system  of
Science,  and observe with what rapidity they
have advanced. Again, the steam-engine in its
rudest form was the result of a chemical expe-
riment; in its refined state, it required the
combinations of ali the most recondite principles
of chemistry and meehanics ; and tbat excellent
philosopher who has given this wonderful in¬
strument of power to civil society, was led to
the great improvements he made by the dis-
coveries of a kindred genius, on the heat ab-
sorbed when water becomes steam, and of the
heat evolved when steam becomes vvater. Even
the most superficial observer must allow in this
čase a triumph of Science ; for what a wonderful
impulse has this invention given to the progress
of the arts and manufactures in our country—
how much has it diminished labour, how much
has it increased the real strength of the country!
Acting, as it were, with a thousand hands, it
has multiplied our active population; and re-

THE CHEMICAL PHILOSOPHER. 223
ceiving its elements of activitv from the bowels
of the earth, it performs operations which for-
merly were painful, oppressive, and unhealthy
to the labourers, with regularity and constancy,
and gives security and precision to the efforts of
the manufacturer. And the inventions con-
nected with the steam-engine, at the same time
that they have greatly diminished labour of
body, have tended to increase power of mind
and intellectual resources. Adam Smith well
observes, that manufacturers are always more
ingenious than husbandmen ; and manufacturers
who use machinery will probably always be found
more ingenious than handicraft manufacturers.
You spoke of porcelain as a result of accident:
the improvements invented in this country, as
well as those made in Germany and France,
have been entirely the result of chemical experi-
ments; the Dresden and the Sevres manufac-
tures have been the work of men of Science, and
it was by multiplying his chemical researches
that Wedgwood was enabled to produce, at so
cheap a rate, those beautiful imitations which,
vvhile they surpass the ancient vases in solidity
and perfection of material, equal them in ele¬
gance, variety, and tasteful arrangement of their

224

DIALOGUE V.

forms. In another department, the use of the
electrical conductor was a pure scientific com-
bination, and the sublimity of the discovery of
the American philosopher was only equalled by
the happy application he immediately made of it.
In our own times, it would be easy to point out
numerous instances in which great improvements
and beneficial results connected tvith the com-
forts, the happiness, and even life of our fellovv-
creatures, have been the results of scientific
combinations; but I cannot do this without
constituting myself a judge of the works of
philosophers who are stili alive, whose re-
searches are known, whose labours are respected,
and who will rcceive from posterity praises that
their contemporaries hardlv dare to bestow upon
them.

Eub.— We will allow that you have shown
in many cases the utility of scientific investiga-
tions, as connected with the progress of the use-
ful arts. But, in general, both the principles
of chemistry are follovved, and series of experi-
ments perfoi med, without any view to utility;
and a great noise is made if a new metal or
a new substance is discovered, or if some ab-
stracted law is made known relating to the

THE CHEMICAL PHILOSOPHER.

225

phenomena of nature; yet amongst the variety
of new substances, few have been applied to any
trifiing  use even, and the greater number have
had no application at ali; and with respect to
the general views of the Science, it would be
difficult to show that any real good had resulted
frorn the discovery or extension of them. It
does not add much to the dignity of a pursuit,
that those persons who have followed it for
profit have really been most useful; and that
the mere artizan or chemical manufacturer has
done more for society than the chemical phi—
losopher. Besides, it has always appeared to
me, that it is in the nature of this Science to
encourage mediocrity, and to attach importance
to insignificant things: very slight chemical
labours seem to give persons a claim to the
title of philosopher; to have dissolved a few
grains of chalk in an acid, to have shown that a
very useless stone contains certain known in-
gredients, or that the colouring matter of a
flower is soluble in acid and not in alkah, is
thought by some a foundation for chemical
celebrity. I once began to attend a course of
chemical lectures, and to read the journals con-
taining the ephemeral productions of this sci-
Q

226

DIALOGUE V.

ence : I was dissatisfied with the nature of the
evidence which the professor adopted in his
demonstrations, and disgusted with the series
of observations and experiments, which were
brought forward one month to be overturned
the next. In November there was a Zingiberic
acid, which in January was shown to have no
esistence ; one year there was a vegetable acid,
which, the next, was shown to be the same as
an acid known tbirty years ago; to-day, a man
was celebrated for having discovered a new
metal or a new alkali, and they flourished like the
scenes in a new pantomime only to disappear.
Then, the great object of the hundred triflers
in the Science appeared to be to destroy the
reputation of the three or four great men whose
labours were really useful, and had in them
something of dignity. And, there not being
enough of trifling results or false experiments
to fill the pages of the monthly journals, the
deficiency was supplied by some crude theories
or speculations of unknown persons, or by
some ill-judged censure or partial praise of the
editor.

The Unknovvn. —I deny in toto  the accu-
racy of what you are advancing. I have already

THE CHEMICAL PHILOSOPHER.

227

shown that real philosophers, not labouring for
profit, have done much by their own inven-
tions for the useful arts ; and, amongst the new
substances discovered, many have had imme-
diate and very important applications. The
chlorine, or oxymuriatic gas of Scheele, was
scarcely known before it vvas applied by Ber-
thollet to bleaching ; scarcely was muriatic acid
gas discovered by Priestley, when Guyton de
Morveau used it for destroying contagion. Con-
sider the varied and diversified applications of
platinum, vvhich has owed its existence, as a
useful metal, entirely to the labours of an illus-
trious chemical philosopher ; look at the beauti-
ful yellow afforded by one of the new metals,
chrome ; consider the medical effects of iodine,
in some of the most painful and disgusting ma-
ladies * belonging to human nature, and remem-
ber how short a time investigations have been
made for applying the new substances. Be-
sides, the mechanical or chemical manufacturer
has rarely discovered anything; he has merely
applied what the philosopher has made known,
he has merely worked upon the materials fur-
nished to him. We have no history of the

* Cancer and Bronchocele,

Q 2

22S

DIALOGUE V.

manner in vvhich iron was rendered malleable;
but we know that platinum could only have
been worked by a person of the most refined
Chemical resources, who made multiplied expe-
riments upon it, after tbe most ingenious and
profound views. But, waivingall common uti-
lity, ali vulgar applications;—there is something
in knowing and understanding the operation of
nature, some pleasure in contemplating the order
and harmony of the arrangements belonging to
the terrestrial system of things. There is no
absolute utility in poetry; but it gives pleasure,
refines and exalts the mind. Philosophic pur-
suits have likewise a noble and independent
use of this kind ; and there is a double reason
offered for pursuing them—for, whilst in their
sublime speculations they reach to the heavens,
in their application they belong to the earth;
vvhilst they exalt the intellect, they provide food
for our common vvants, and likevvise minister to
the noblest [appetites and most exalted views
belonoing to our nature. The results of this
Science are not like the temples of the ancients,
in which the statues of the gods were placed,
vvhere incense was offered and sacrifices were
performed, and which were presented to the

THE CHEMICAL PHILOSOPIIER.

229

adoration of the multitude, founded upon super-
stitious feelings; but they are rather like the
palaces of the moderns, to be admired and used,
and where the statues, which, in the ancients,
raised feelings of adoration and awe, now pro-
duce on]y feelings of pleasure, and gratify a
refined taste. It is surely a pure delight to
know how and by what processes this earth is
clothed with verdure and life; how the clouds,
mists, and rain are formed ; vvhat causes ali the
changes of this terrestrial system of things, and
by what divine laws order is preserved amidst
apparent confusion. It is a sublime occupation
to investigate the cause of the tempest and the
volcano, and to point out their use in the eco-
nomy of things—to bring the lightning from the
clouds, and make it subservient to our experi-
ments, to produce, as it were, a microcosm in
the laboratory of art, and to measure and weigh
those invisible atoms, which, by their motions
and changes, according to laws impressed upon
them by the Divine Intelligence, constitute the
universe of things. The trne chemical philoso-
pher sees good in ali the diversified forms of the
external world. Whilst he investigates the
operations of infinite power guided by infinite

230

DTALOGUE V.

wisdom, ali low prejudices, ali mean supersti-
tions disappear from his mind. He sees man
an atom amidst atoms fixed upon a point in
space; and yet modifying the laws that are
around him by understanding them; and gain-
ing, as it vvere, a kind of dominion over time,
and an empire in material space, and exerting,
on a scale infinitely small, a power seeming a
sort of shadow or reflection of a Creative energy,
and which entitles him to the distinction of
being made in the image of God, and animated
by a spark of the Divine mind. Whilst Che¬
mical pursuits exalt the understanding, they do
not depress the imagination, or weaken genuine
feeling; vvhilst they give the mind habits of
accuracy, by obliging it to attend to facts, they
]ikewise extend its analogies ; and though con-
versant with the minute form of things, they
have for their ultimate end the great and mag-
nificent objects of nature. They regard the
formation of a crystal, the structure of a pebble,
the nature of a clay or earth ; and they apply
to the causes of the diversity of our mountain
chains, the appearances of the winds, thunder-
storms, meteors, the earthquake, the volcano,
and ali those phenomena which offer the most

THE CHEMICAL PHILOSOPHER.

231

striking images to the poet and the painter.
They keep alive that inextinguishable thirst
after knowledge, which is one of the greatest cha-
racteristics of our nature; for every discovery
opens a new field for investigation of facts—
shows us the imperfection of our theories. It
has justly been said that, the greater the circle
of light, the greater the boundary of darkness
by vvhich it is surrounded. This strictly ap-
plies to chemical inquiries; and hence they are
wonderfully suited to the progressive nature of
the human intellect, which by its increasing
efforts to acquire a higher kind of wisdom, and
a State in which truth is fully and brightly re-
vealed, seems as it were to demonstrate its birth-
right to immortality.

Eub, —I am glad that our opposition has led
you to so complete a vindication of your favourite
Science. I vvant no farther proof of its utility.
I regret that I have not before made it a parti-
cular object of study.

Phil. —As our friend has so fully convinced
us of the importance of chemistry, I hope he
will descend to some particulars as to its real
nature, its objects, its Instruments. I would
willingly have a definition of chemistry, and

232

DIALOGUE V.

some idea of the qualifications necessary to be-
coine a chemist, and of the apparatus essential
for understanding what has been already done in
the Science, and for pursuing new inquiries.

The Unknown. —There is nothingmore dif-
ficult than a good definition ; for it is scarcely
possible toexpress, in a few words, the abstracted
view of an infinite variety of facts. Dr. Black
has defined chemistry to be that Science which
treats of the changes produced in bodies by
motions of their ultimate particles or atoms;
but this definition is hypothetical, for the ulti¬
mate particles or atoms are mere creations of the
imagination. I will give you a definition, vvhich
will have the merit of novelty, and vvhich is
probably general in its application. Chemistry
relates to those operations by which the intimate
nature of bodies is changed, or by which they
acquire new properties.  This definition will
not app]y to the effects of mixture, but to the
phenomena of electricity, and, in short, to ali
the changes vvhich do not merely depend upon
the motion or division of masses of matter.
Hovvever difficult it may have been to have
given you a definition of chemistry, it is stili
more difficult to give you a detail of ali the qua-

THE CHEMICAL PHILOSOPHER.

233

lities necessary for a Chemical philosopher. I
will not name as many as Athena?us has named
for a cook, who, he says, ought to be a mathe-
matician, a theoretical musician, a natural philo¬
sopher, a natural historian, &c., though you
had a disposition j ust now to make chemistry
merely subservient to the uses of the kitchen.
But I will seriously mention some of the studies
fundamental to the higher departments of this
Science; a man may be a good practical che-
mist, perhaps, without possessing them, but
he never can become a great chemical philoso¬
pher. The person who wishes to understand the
higher departments of chemistry, or to pursue
them in their most interesting relations to the
economy of nature, ought to be well grounded
in elementary mathematics ; he will oftener have
to refer to arithmetic than algebra, and to algebra
than to geometry. But ali these Sciences lend
their aid to chemistry ; arithmetic, in determin-
ing the proportions of analytical results, and the
relative weights of the elements of bodies; al¬
gebra, in ascertaining the laws of the pressure of
elastic fluids, the force of vapour, as dependent
upon temperature, and the effects of masses and
surfaces on the communication and radiation of

234

DIALOGUE V.

heat; the applications of geometry are princi-
pally limited to the determination of the crystal-
line forms of bodies, which constitute the most
important type of their nature, and often offer
useful hints for analytical researches respecting
their composition. The first principles of natural
philosophy, or general physics, ought not to be
entirely unknown to the chemist. As the most
active agents are fluids, elastic fluids, heat, light,
and electricity, he ought to have a general know-
ledge of mechanics, hydronamics, pneumatics,
optics, and electricity. Latin and Greek among
the dead, and French among the modern lan-
guages, are necessary ; and, as the most import¬
ant after French, German and Italian. In
natural history and in literature, what belongs to
a liberal education, such as that of our universi-
ties, is ali that is required; indeed, a young man
who has performed the ordinary course of college
studies, which are supposed fitted for common
life, and for refined society, has ali the prelimi-
nary knowledge necessary to commencethe study
of chemistry. The apparatus essential to the
modern Chemical philosopher is much less bulky
and expensive than that used by the ancients.
An air-pump, an electrical machine, a Voltaic

THE CHEMICAL PHILOSOPIIER.

235

battery (ali of which may be upon a small scale), a
blow-pipe apparatus, a bellows and a forge, a mer-
curial and vvater-gas apparatus, cups and basins of
platinum and glass, and the common reagents of
chemistry, are what are required. Ali the im-
plements absolutely necessary may be carried in
a small trunk; and some of the best and most
refined researches of modern chemists have been
made by means of an apparatus which might
with ease be contained in a small travelling car-
riage, and the expense of which is only a few
pounds. The facility with which Chemical in-
quiries are carried on, and the simplicity of the
apparatus, offer additional reasons, to those I
have already given, for thepursuitof this Science.
It is not injurious to the health; the modern
chemist is not like the ancient one, who passed
the greater part of his time exposed to the heat
and smoke of a furnace, and the unwholesome
vapours of acids and alkalies, and other menstrua,
of which, for a single experiment, he consumed
several pounds. His processes may be carried
on in the drawing-room, and some of them are
no less beautiful in appearance than satisfactory
in their results. It vvas said, by an author be-
longing to the last century, of alchemy, ‘ that

236

DIALOGUE V.

its beginning was deceit, its progress labour, and
its end beggary.’ It may be said of modern
chemistry, that its beginning is pleasure, its pro¬
gress knovvledge, and its objects truth and uti-
lity. I have spoken of the scientific attainments
necessary for the Chemical philosopher—I will
say a few words of the intellectual qualities ne-
cessary for discovery, or for the advancement of
the Science. Amongst them patience, industry,
and neatness in manipulation, and accuracy and
minuteness in observing and registering the phe-
nomena which occur, are essential. A steady
band and a quick eye are most usefid auxiliaries,
but there have been very few great chemists who
have preserved these advantages through life :
for the business of the laboratory is often a Ser¬
vice of danger, and the elements, like the refrac-
tory spirits of romance, though the obedient
slave of the magician, yet sometimes escape the
influence of his talisman and endanger hisperson.
Both the hands and eyes of others, hovvever, may
be sometimes advantageously made use of. By
often repeating a process or an observation, the
errors connected with hasty operations or imper-
fect views are annihilated; and, provided the
assistant has no preconceived notions of his own,

THE CHEMICAL PHILOSOPHER.

237

and is ignorant ofthe objectof his employer in
making the experiment, his simple and bare
detail of facts will often be the best foundation
for an opinion. With respect to the higher
qualities of intellect necessary for understanding
and developing the general laws of the Science,
the same talents, I believe, are required as for
making advancement in every other department
of human knowledge; I need not be very minute.
The imagination must be active and brilliant in
seeking analogies ; yet entirely under the influ¬
ence of the judgment in applying them. The
memory must be extensive and profound ; rather,
however, calling up general views of things than
minute trains of thought;—the mind must not
be like an encyclopsedia, a burthen of knowledge,
but rather a critical dictionary, which abounds
in generalities, and points out where more mi¬
nute Information may be obtained. In detailing
the results of experiments, and in giving them
to the world, the Chemical philosopher should
adopt the simplest style and manner; he will
avoid ali ornaments as something injurious to his
subject, and should bear in mind the saying of
the first king of Great Britain, respecting a sermon,
which was excellent in doctrine but overcharged

238

DIALOGUE V.

with poetical allusions and figurative language,
‘ that the tropes and metaphors of the speaker were
like the brilliant wild flovvers in a field of corn,
very pretty, but which did very much hurt the
corn.’ Inannouncing even thegreatest and most
important discoveries, the trne philosopher will
communicate his details with modesty and reserve;
he tvill rather be a useful servant of the public,
bringing forth a light front under his cloak when
it is needed in darkness, than a charlatan exhibit-
ing fireworks,and havinga trumpeterto announce
their magnificence. I see you are smiling, and
think what I am saying in bad taste ; yet, not-
withstanding, I will provoke your smiles stili far-
ther, by saying a word or two on his other moral
qualities. That he should be humble-minded
you will readily allow, and a diligent searcher
after truth, and neither diverted from this great
object by the love of transient glory nor temporary
popularity, looking rather to the opinion of ages ?
than to that of a day, and seeking to be remem-
bered and named rather in the epochas of histo-
rians, than in the columns of newspaper writers
or journalists. He should resemble the modern
geometricians in the greatness of his views and
the profoundness of his researches^ and the an-

THE CHEMICAL PHI LOSOPIIER.

239

cient alchemists in industry and piety. I do not
mean that he should affix written prayers and
inscriptions of recommendations of his processes
to Providence, as was the custom of Peter Wolfe,
and who was alive in my early days; but his
mind should always be awake to devotional feel-
ing, and in contemplating the variety and the
beauty of the external world, and in developing
its scientific wonders, he will always refer to that
infinite wisdom, through whose beneficence he is
permitted to enjoy knowledge ; and in becotning
wiser, he will become better—he will rise at once
in the scale of intellectual and moral existence—
his increased sagacity will be subservient to a
more exalted faith, and in proportion as the veil
becomes thinner through which hesees thecauses
of things, he will admire more the brightness
of the divine light by which they are rendered
visible.

DIALOGUE THE SIXTH.

POLA, OR TIME.

During  our stay in Illyria, I made an excur-
sion by water with the Unknown, my preserver,
novv become my friend, and Eubathes, to Pola,
in Istria. We entered the harbour of Pola in
a felucca, when the sun was setting; and I know
no scene more splendid than the amphitheatre
seen from the sea in this light. It appears not
as a building in ruins, but like a newly-erected
work; and the reflection of the colours of its
brilliant marble and beautiful forms seen upon
the calm surface of the waters, gave to it a
double effect,—that of a glorious production of
art, and of a magnificent picture. We examined
with pleasure the remains of the arch of Au-
gustus, and the temple, very perfect monuments
of imperial grandeur. But the splendid exte-
rior of the amphitheatre was not in harmony
with the bare and naked walls of the interior;
there were none of those durable and grand

242 DIALOG UE VI.

seats of marble, such as adorn the amphitheatre
of Verona; from which it is probable that the
ivhole of the arena and conveniences for the spec-
tators had been constructed of wood. Their
total disappearance led us to reflect upon the
causes of the destruction of so many of the
ivorks of the elder nations. I said, in our
metaphysical abstractions, we refer the changes,
the destruction of material fonns, to time.,  but
there must be physical laws in nature by ivhich
they are produced; and I begged our new
friend to give us some ideas on this subject,
in his character of chemical philosopher. If
human Science, I said, has discovered the prin-
ciple of the decay of things, it is possible that
human art may supply means of conservation,
and bestow immortality on some of the ivorks,
ivhich appear destined by their perfection for
future ages.

The Unknoivn. —I shall ivillingly commu-
nicate to you my views of the operation of
Time, philosophically considered. A great phi¬
losopher has said, man can in no other way
command nature, but in obeying her laws ; and
in these laws, the principle of change is a prin-
ciple of life; ivithout decay, there can be no

POLA, OR TIME,

243

reproduction; and everything belonging to the
earth, whether in its primitive state, or modified
by human hands, is submitted to certain and
immutable laws of destruction, as permanent
and universal as those which produce the plane-
tary motions. The property which, as far as
our experience extends, universally belongs to
matter, gravitation,  is the first and most general
cause of change in our terrestrial system ; and
whilst it preserves the great mass of the globe
in an uniform state, its influence is continually
producing alterations upon the surface. The
water, raised in vapour by the šolar heat, is pre-
cipitated by the cool air in the atmosphere; it
is carried down by gravitation to the surface,
and gains its mechanical force from this law.
Whatever is elevated above the superficies by
the powers of vegetation, or animal life, or by
the effbrts of man, by gravitation constantly
tends to the common centre of attraction ; and
the great reason of the duration of the pyramid
above ali other forms is, that it is most fitted to
resist the force of gravitation. The arch, the
pillar, and ali perpendicular constructions are
liable to fall, when a degradation, from chemical
or mechanical causes, takes plače in their infe-

R 2

244

DIALOGUE VI.

rior parts. The forms upon the surface of the
globe are preserved from the influence of gravi-
tation by the attraction of cohesion, or by Che¬
mical attraction ; but if their parts had freedom
of motion, they would ali be levelled by this
power, gravitation, and the globe would appear
as a plain and smooth oblate spheroid, flattened
at the poles. The attraction of cohesion, or
Chemical attraction, in its most energetic state,
is not liable to be destroyed by gravitation ;
this power only assists the agencies of other
causes of degradation ; attraction, of whatever
kind, tends, as it were, to produce rest, a sort of
eternal sleep in nature. The great antagonist
power is heat.  By the influence of the sun, the
globe is exposed to great varieties of tempera¬
ture ; an addition of heat expands bodies, and
an abstraction of heat causes them to contract;
by variation of heat, certain kinds of matter are
rendered fluid or elastic, and changes from
fluids into solids, or from solids or fluids into
elastic substances, and vice versa, are produced ;
and ali these phenomena are connected with
alterations tending to the decay or destruction
of bodies. It is not probable that the mere
contraction or expansion of a solid, from the

POLA, OR TIME.

245

subtraction or addition of heat, tends to loosen
its parts ; but if water exists in these parts, then
its expansion, either in becoming vapour or ice,
tends not only to diminish their cohesion, but to
break them into fragments. There is, you
know, a very remarkable property of water, its
expansion by cooling, and at the time of be¬
coming ice; and this is a great cause of destruc-
tion in the northern climates: for where ice
forms in the crevices or cavities of stones, or
when water which has penetrated into cement
freezes, its expansion acts with the force of the
lever or the screw in destroying or separating
the parts of bodies. The mechanical powers of
water, as rain, hail, or snow, in descending from
the atmosphere, are not entireiy vvithout effect,
for in acting upon the projections of solids, drops
of water, or particles of snow, and stili more of
hail, have a power of abrasion ; and a very soft
substance, from its mass assisting gravitation,
may break a much harder one. The glacier,
by its motion, grinds into powder the surface of
the granite rock, and the Alpine torrents that
have their origin under glaciers are ahvays
turbid, from the destruction of the rocks on
which the glacier is fonned. The effect of a

246

DIALOGUE VI.

torrent in deepening its bed will explain the
mechanical agency of fluid water; though this
effect is infinitely increased, and sometimes
almost entirely dependent upon the solid matters
which are carried down by it. An angular
fragment of Stone, in the course of ages, moved
in the cavity of a rock, niakes a deep, round ex-
cavation, and is worn itself into a spherical form.
A torrent of rain flowing down the side of a
building carries with it the silicious dust, or sand,
or matter, which the wind has deposited there,
and acts upon a scale infinitely more minute,
but according to the same law. The buildings
of ancient Rome have not only been liable to
the constant operation of the rain courses, or
minute torrents produced by rains, but even the
Tiber, swollen with floods of the Sabine moun-
tains and the Apennines, has often entered into
the city; and a winter seldom passes away in
which the area of the Pantheon has not been
filled with water, and the reflection of the cupola
seen in a smooth lake below. The monuments
of Egypt are, perhaps, the most ancient and
permanent of those belonging to the earth, and
in that country rain is almost unknown. And
ali the causes of degradation connected with the

POLA, OR TIME.

247

agency of water, act more in the temperate cli-
mates than in the hot ones, and most of ali in
those countries where the inequalities of tempe¬
rature are greatest. The mechanical effects of
air are principally in the action of winds, in
assisting the operation of gravitation, and in
abrading by dust, sand, stones, and atmospheric
water. These effects, unless it be in the čase of
a building blown down by a tempest, are im-
perceptible in days, or even years ; yet a gentle
current of air carrying the silicious sand of the
desert, or the dust of a road for ages against the
face of a structure, must ultimately tend to in-
jure it; for with infinite or unlimited duration,
an extremely small cause will produce a very
great effect. The mechanical agency of elec-
tricity is very limited; the effects of lightning
have, however, been witnessed, even in some of
the great monuments of antiquity—the Colo-
sasum at Rome, for instance; and only last
year, in a violent thunder-storm, some of the
marble, I have 'been informed, was štručk from
the top of one of the arches in this building,
and a perpendicular rent made, of some feet in
diameter. But the chemical effects of elec-
tricity, though excessively slow and gradual,

248

DIALOGUE VI.

yet are much more efficient in the great work of
destruction. It is to the general chemical doc-
trines of the changes produced by this powerful
agent that I must now direct your especial
attention.

Eub. —Would not the consideration of the
subject have been more distinct, and your ex-
planations of the phenomena more simple, had
you commenced by dividing the causes of change
into mechanical and chemical—if you had first
considered them separately, and then their joint
effects ?

The Unknovvn. —The order I have adopted
is not very remote from this. But I was, per-
baps, wrong in treating first of the agency of
gravitation, which owes almost ali its powers to
the operation of other causes. In consequence
of your hint, I shall alter my plan a little, and
consider first the chemical agency of water, then
that of air, and lastly, that of electricity. In
every species of chemical change, temperature is
concerned. But unless the results of volcanoes
and earthquakes be directly referred to this
power, it has no chemical  effect in relation to
the changes ascribed to time simply considered
as heat, but its operations, which are the most

POLA, OR TIME.

249

important belonging to the terrestrial cycle of
changes, are blended with, or bring into activity,
those of other agents. One of the most distinct
and destructive agencies of water depends upon
its solvent  powers, which are usually greatest
when its temperature is highest. Water is
capable of dissolving, in larger or smaller propor-
tions, most compound bodies, and the calcareous
and alkaline elements of stones are particularly
liable to this kind of operation. When ivater
holds in solution carbonic acid, which is always
the čase when it is precipitated from the atmo-
sphere, its power of dissolving carbonate of lime
is very muck increased, and in the neighbour-
hood of great cities, where the atmosphere con-
tains a large proportion of this principle, the
solvent powers of rain upon the marble exposed
to it must be greatest. Whoever examines the
marble statues in the British Museum, vvhich
have been removed from the exterior of the
Parthenon, will be convinced that they have
suffered from this agency ; and an effect distinct
in the pure atmosphere and temperate climate of
Athens, must be upon a higher scale in the
vicinity of other great European cities, where
the consumption of fuel produces carbonic acid

250

DIALOGUE VI.

in large quantities. Metallic substances, such
as iron, copper, bronze, brass, tin, and lead,
whether they exist in stones, or are used for
support or connexion in buildings, are liable to
be corroded by water holding in solution the
principles of the atmosphere; and the rust and
corrosion which are made, poetically, qualities
of time, depend upon the oxydating powers of
water, which, by supplying oxygen in a dis-
solved or condensed State, enables the metals to
form new combinations. Ali the vegetable sub¬
stances, exposed to water and air, are liable to
decay, and even the vapour in the air attracted
by wood, gradually reacts upon its fibres, and
assists decomposition, or enables its elements to
take new arrangements. Hence it is that none
of the roofs of ancient buildings more than one
thousand years old remain, unless it be such as
are constructed of stone, as those of the Pan-
theon of Rome, and the tomb of Theodoric at
Ravenna, the cupola of which is composed of
a single block of marble. The pictures of
the Greek masters, which were painted on
the wood of the abies, or pine of the Me-
diterranean, likeivise, as we are informed by
Pliny, owed their destruction not to a change

POLA, OR TIME.

251

in the colours, not to the alteration of the cal-
careous ground on which they were painted, but
to the decay of the tablets of wood on which the
intonaco or stucco was laid. Amongst the sub-
stances enployed in building, wood, iron, tin,
and lead, are most liable to decay from the
operation of water ; then marble, when exposed
to its influence in the fluid form ; brass, copper,
granite, sienite, and porphyry, are more durable.
But in stones, mucli depends upon the peculiar
nature of their constituent parts; vvhen the
feldspar of the granite rocks contains little alkali
or calcareous earth, it is a very permanent stone;
but when in granite, porphyry, or sienite, eitber
the feldspar contains much alkaline matter, or
the mica, schorl, or hornblende, much protoxide
of iron, the action of water containing oxygen
and carbonic acid on the ferruginous elements
tends to produce the disintegration of the stone.
The red granite, black sienite, and red porpyhry
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 extreme]y liable to
undergo alteration : the feldspar contains much
alkaline matter, and the mica and schorl much

252

DIALOGUE VI.

protoxide of iron. A remarkable instance of
the decay of granite may be seen in the hanging
tower of Piša : vvhilst the marble pillars in the
basement remain scarcely altered, the granite
ones have lost a considerable portion of their
surface, vvhich falls off continually in scales, and
exhibits everywhere stains from the formation of
peroxide of iron. The kaolin, or clay, used in
most countries for the manufacture of fine por-
celain or china, is generally produced from the
feldspar of decomposing granite, in which the
cause of decay is the dissolution and separation
of the alkaline ingredients.

Eub. —I have seen serpentines, basalts, and
lavas which internally were dark, and which
from their vveight, I should suppose, must con-
tain oxide of iron, superficially brown or red,
and decomposing. Undoubtedly this was from
the action of water impregnated with air upon
their ferruginous elements.

The Unknown. —You are perfectly right.
There are few compound stones, possessing a
considerable specific gravity, which are not liable
to change from this cause; and oxide of iron,
amongst the metallic substances anciently known,
is the most generally diffused in nature, and

POLA, OR TIME.

253

most concerned in the changes which take plače
on the surface of the globe. The chemical
action of carbonic acid is so much connected
with that of water, that it is scarcely possible to
speak of them separately, as must be evident
from what I have before said; but the same
action ivhich is exerted by the acid dissolved in
water, is likewise exerted by it in its elastic
State, and in this čase the facility with which the
quantity is changed makes up for the difference
of the degree of condensation. There is no
reason to believe that the azote of the atmo-
sphere has any considerable action in producing
changes of the nature we are studying on the
surface; the aqueous vapour, the oxygen, and
the carbonic acid gas are, however, constantly
in combined activity, and above ali, the oxygen.
And whilst water uniting its effects ivith those
of carbonic acid, tends to disintegrate the parts
of stones, the oxygen acts upon vegetable
matter. And this great chemical agent is at
once necessary in ali the processes of life, and
in ali those of decay, in which nature, as it were,
takes again to herself those Instruments, organs,
and powers which had for a while been borrowed
and employed for the purpose or the wants of

254

DIALOGUE VI.

the living principle. Almost everything effected
by rapid combinations in combustion, may also
be effected gradually by the slow absorption of
oxygen ; and though the productions of the
animal and vegetable kingdom are much more
submitted to the power of atmospheric agents,
than those of the mineral kingdom, yet, as in
the instances which have j ust been mentioned,
oxygen gradually destroys the equilibrium of
the elements of stones, and tends to reduce into
powder, to render fit for soils, even the hardest
aggregates belonging to our globe. Electricity,
as a Chemical agent, may be considered, not
only as directly producing an infinite variety of
changes, but likeivise as influencing almost ali
which take plače. There are not two substances
on the surface of the globe that are not in dif-
ferent electrica] relations to each other; and
Chemical attraction itself seems to be a peculiar
form of the exhibition of electrical attraction:
and ivherever the atmosphere, or water, or any
part of the surface of the earth, gains accumu-
lated electricity of a different kind from the
contiguous surfaces, the tendency of this elec-
tncity is to produce new arrangements of the
parts of these surfaces : thus, a positively elec-

POLA, OR TIME.

255

trified cloud, acting even at a great distance
on a moistened stone, tends to attract its oxy-
genous or acidiform, or acid ingredients, and a
negatively electrified cloud has tbe same effect
upon its earthy, alkaline, or metallic matter;
and tbe silent and slow operation of electricity
is much more important in tbe economy of
nature than its grand and impressive operation
in ligbtning and thunder. The chemical
agencies of water and air are assisted by those
of electricity; and their joint effects, combined
with those of gravitation and the mechanical
ones I first described, are sufficient to account
for the results of time. But the physical
powers of nature in producing decay are as¬
sisted Iikewise by certain agencies or energies
of organized beings. A polished surface of a
building, or a statue, is no sconer made rough
from the causes that have been mentioned,
than the seeds of lichens and mosses, which
are constantly floating in our atmosphere, make
it a plače of repose, grow and increase, and from
their death, their decay, and decomposition,
carbonaceous matter is produced, and at length
a soil is formed, in which grass can fix its roots.
In the crevices of walls, where this soil is washed

256

DIALOGUE VI.

down, even the seeds of trees grow, and gradu-
ally, as a building becomes more ruined, ivy and
other parasitical plants cover it. Even the
animal creation lends its aid in the process of
destruction, when man no longer labours for the
conservation of his works. The fox burroivs
amongst ruins, bats and birds nestle in the
cavities in walls, the snake and the lizard
likevvise make their habitation. Insects act
upon a smaller scale, but by their united
energies sometimes produce great effect; the
ant, by establishing her colony and forming her
magazines, often saps the foundations of the
strongest buildings, and the most insignificant
creatures triumpb, as it were, over the grandest
works of man. Add to these sure and slow
operations, the devastations of war, the effects
of the destructive zeal of bigotry, the predatory
fury of barbarians seeking for concealed wealth
under the foundations of buildings, and tearing
from them every metallic substance—and it is
rather to be wondered, tbat any of the works of
the great nations of antiquity are stili in exist-
ence.

Phil. —Your view of the causes of devasta-
tion really is a melancholy one. Nor do I see

POLA, OR TIME.

257

any remedy; the most important causes vvill
always operate. Yet supposing the constant
existence of a highly civiiized people, the
ravages of time might be repaired, and by de-
fending the finest works of art from the external
atmosphere, their changes would be scarcely
perceptible.

Eub. —I doubt much vvhether it is for the
interests of a people, that its public works should
be of a durable kind. One of the great causes
of the decline of the Roman empire was, that
the people of the republic and of the first empire
left nothing for their posterity to do; aque-
ducts, temples, forums, everything was sup-
plied, and there were no objects to avvaken
activity, no necessity to stimulate their inventive
faculties, and hardly any wants to call forth
their industry.

The Unknown. —At least, you must allo\v
the importance of preserving objects of the fine
arts. Almost everything we have wortby of
admiration, is ovving to what has been preserved
from the Greek school; and the nations, who
have not possessed these vvorks or models, have
made little or no progress tovvards perfection.
Nor does it seem that a mere imitation of nature

S

258 DIALOGUE VI.

is sufficient to produce the beautiful or perfect;
but the climate, the manners, customs, and dress
of the people, its genius and taste, ali co-operate.
Such principles of conservation as Philalethes
has referred to are obvious. No works of ex-
cellence ought to be exposed to the atmosphere ;
and it is a great object to preserve them in
apartments of equable temperature and ex-
tremely dry. The roofs of magnificent build-
ings should be of materials not likely to be dis-
solved by water or changed by air. Many elec-
trical conductors should be placed so as to pre-
vent the slow or the rapid effects of atmospheric
electricity. In painting, lapis lazuli, or coloured
bard glasses, in which the oxides are not liable
to chano-e, should be used, and should be laid
on marble, or stucco incased in stone, and no
animal or vegetable substances, except pure
carbonaceous matter, should be used in the
pigments, and none should be mixed with the
varni shes.

Eub. —Yet, when ali is done that can be
done, in the work of conservation, it is only
producing a difference in the degree of dura-
tion. And from the statements that our friend
has made, it is evident that none of the works

POLA, OR TIME.

259

of a mortal being can be eternal, as none of
tbe combinations of a limited intellect can be
infinite. The operations of Nature, when slov,
are no less sure; however man may for a time
usurp dominion over her, she is certain of re-
covering her empire. He converts her rocks,
her stones, her trees, into forras of palaces,
houses, and ships ; he employs the metals found
in the bosom of the earth as Instruments of
power, and the sands and clays which consti-
tute its surface as ornaments and resources of
luxury; he imprisons air by vater, and tor-
tures water by fire to change, or modify, or
destroy the natural forms of things. But in
some lustrums his works begin to change, and
in a few centuries they decay and are in ruins ;
and his mighty temples, framed, as it were, for
divine purposes, and his bridges formed of
granite, and ribbed with iron, and his walls for
defence, and the splendid monuments by which
he has endeavoured to give eternity even to his
perishable remains, are gradually destroyed;
and these structures which have resisted the
waves of the ocean, the tempest of the sky,
and the stroke of the lightning, shall yield to
the operation of the dews of heaven, of frost,

S 2

260

DIALOGUE VI.

rain, vapour, and imperceptible atmospheric
influences ; and as the worm devours the linea-
ments of his moral beauty, so the lichens and
the moss, and the most insignificant plants shall
feed upon his columns and his pyramids, and
the most humble and insignificant insects shall
undermine and sap the foundations of his colossal
works, and make their habitations amongst the
ruins of his palaces, and the falling seats of his
earth]y glory.

Phil.— Your history of the laws of the in-
evitable destruction of material form s, recalls
to my memory our discussion at Adelsberg.
The changes of the material universe are in har-
mony with those which belong to the human
body, and which you suppose to be the frame
or machinery of the sentient principle. May
we not venture to imagine, that the visible and
tangible world, with which we are acquainted
by our sensations, bears the same relation to the
divine and infinite Intelligence, that our organs
bear to our mind—with this only difference,
that in the changes of the divine system, there
is no decay, there being in the order of things a
perfect unity, and ali the powers springing from
one will, and being a consequence of that will,

POLA, OR TIME.

26 L

are perfectly and unalterably balanced. Newton
seemed to apprehend, that, in the laws of the
planetary motions, there was a principle which
would ultimately be the cause of the destruc-
tion of the system. Laplace, by pursuing and
refining the principles of our great philosopher,
has proved, that what appeared sources of dis-
order, are, in fact, the perfecting machinery of
the system, and that the principle of conserva-
tion is as eternal as that of motion.

The Unknoivn. —I dare not offer any specu-
lations on this grand and avvful subject. We
can hardly comprehend the cause of a simple
atmospheric phenomenon, such as the fall of a
heavy body froni a meteor; we cannot even
embrace in one view the millionth part of the
objects surrounding us, and yet we have the
presumption to reason upon the infinite universe,
and the eternal mind by which it was created
and is governed. On these subjects, I have no
confidence in reason, I trust only to faith, and,
as far as we ought to inquire, we have no other
guide but revelation.

Phil. —I agree with you, that ivhenever we
attempt metaphysical speculations, we must begin
with a foundation of faith. And being sure,

262 DIALOGUE VI.

from revelation, tbat God is omnipotent and
omnipresent, it appears to me no improper use
of our faculties to trače, even in the natural
universe, the acts of his power, and the results
of his wisdom, and to draw parallels from the
infinite to the Anite mind. Remember, we are
taught that man was created in the image of
God, and I think it cannot be doubted that, in
the progress of society, man has been made a
great instrument by his energies and labours
for improving the moral universe. Compare
the Greeks and Romans with the Assyrians
and Rabylonians, and the ancient Greeks and
Romans with the nations of modern Chris-
tendom, and it cannot, I think, be questioned,
that there has been a great superiority in the
latter nations, and that their improvements have
been subservient to a more exalted state of intel-
lectual and religious existence. If this little
globe has been so modified by its powerful and
active inhabitants, I cannot help thinking that,
in other systems, beings of a superior nature,
under the influence of a divine will, may act
nobler parts. We know from the sacred writings
that there are intelligences of a higher nature
t.ian man, and I cannot help sometimes referring

POLA, OR TIME.

263

to my vision in the Colosteum, and in sup-
posing some acts of power of those genii or
seraphs similar to those which I have imagined
in the higher planetary systems. There is
much reason to infer, from astronomical observa-
tions, that great changes take plače in the
system of the fixed stars : Sir William Her-
schel, indeed, seems to have believed that he
saw nebulous or luminous raatter in the process
of formins suns : and there are some astrono-
mers who believe that stars have been extinct;
but it is more probable that they have disap-
peared from peculiar motions. It is, perhaps,
rather a poetical than a philosophical idea, yet
I cannot help forming the opinion, that genii or
seraphic intelligences may inhabit these systems,
and may be the ministers of the eternal mind
in producing changes in them similar to those
which have taken plače on the earth. Time is
almost a human word, and change entirely a
human idea; in the system of nature we should
rather say progress than change. The sun
appears to sink in the ocean in darkness, but it
rises in another hemisphere ; the ruins of a city
fall, but they are often used to form more mag-
nificent structures, as at Rome; but even when

264 DIALOGUE VI.

they are destroyed, so as to produce only dust,
nature asserts ber empire over them, and the
' vegetable world rises in constant youth, and in a
period of annual successions, by the labours of
man, providing food, vitality, and beauty upon
the wrecks of monuments which were once raised
for purposes of glory, but which are now applied
to objects of utility.

THE END.

London: Printed by William Clowes,  Stamford-Street.