Chapter VII: Preface (7)

Nor ought it to be forgotten, that the benevolence which flowed from this portico, served as a substitute for the poor's-rates, throughout the adjoining district. Thus #Food#, as well as #Mercy#, appeared to flow from Heaven, through the agency of the Romish priesthood! Thus they softened the effects of the monopolies of wealth, and assuaged the severities of power! And thus, duration was conferred on a system which violated common sense in its tenets; but, in its practices, exhibited every claim on the affections and gratitude of the people! At this gate, and at a thousand others spread over the land, no poor man sought to satisfy his hunger in vain. He was not received by any grim-visaged overseer; not called on for equivocal proofs of legal claims; not required to sell his liberty in the workhouse as the price of a single meal; not terrified by the capricious justice of a vulgar constable; nor in fear of the infernal machine, called a pass-cart--but it was sufficient that he was an hungered, and they gave him to eat--or that he was sick, and they gave him medicine! Such was the system of those times; not more perfect for being ancient, but worthy of being remembered, because justified by long experience. Thrice the relative wealth, and as much active benevolence, are at this day exerted to relieve the still unsatisfied wants of the poor, simply because our workhouses are not regularly provided with an hospitable monastic portico, where temporary wants might be supplied with a wholesome meal, without the formality of regular admission, without proofs of settlement, without the terrors of the House of Correction, or the horrors of a _middle-passage_ in the pass-cart! The tenderest sympathy would then be able to excuse itself from the obligation of granting eleemosynary aid--the act of begging might be justly punished as a crime--and crimes themselves could never be palliated by pleas of urgent want.

This entire site was too much consecrated by historical associations to be passed without further examination. A slight expression of my feelings procured every attention from Penley, the gardener, who told me that his family had occupied it since the revolution, and that he remembered every part above fifty years. He took me to a summer-house, on the wall next the water, the ruins of which were of the architecture of the time of the Plantagenets; and, indeed, the entire wall, above half a mile in circuit, was of that age. Of the ancient palace no vestige remained; and he could guess its precise site only by means of the masses of brickwork which he discovered by digging in certain parts of the garden.

If I was, however, little gratified by remains of the labours of man, I was filled with astonishment at certain specimens of vegetation, unquestionably as ancient as the last Catholic archbishops. Among these were two enormous walnut-trees, twelve feet round the trunk, the boughs of which were themselves considerable trees, spreading above twenty-six yards across. Each tree covered above a rood of ground; and so massy were the lower branches, that it has been found necessary to support them with props. Their height is equal to their breadth, or about seventy feet; and I was surprised to find, that, notwithstanding their undoubted age, they still bear abundance of fine fruit. Mr. Penley assured me, that in his time he had seen no variation in them; they had doubtless attained their full growth in his boyhood, but since then they had maintained a steady maturity. At present they must be considered as in a state of slow decay; but I have no doubt that in the year 1916 they will continue grand and productive trees.

I was equally struck with some box-trees, probably of far greater antiquity. They were originally planted in a semicircle to serve as an arbour; but in the progress of centuries they have grown to the prodigious height of thirty feet, and their trunks are from six to nine inches in diameter.[7] And what was strikingly curious, in the area which they enclose is seen the oval table of the arbour, evidently of the same age. It is of the species of stone called Plymouth marble,--massy, and so well-wrought as to prove that it was not placed there at the cost of private revenues. It was interesting, and even affecting, to behold these signs of comfort and good cheer still remaining, so many ages after those who enjoyed them have passed away like exhalations or transient meteors! I would have sat down, and, with a better conscience than Don Juan, have invoked their ghosts over a bottle of the honest gardener's currant-wine; but he had filled up the elliptical area of the trees with a pile of fagots, of which the old table serves as a dry basement.

[7] The box-wood used in England by the engravers on wood is
often twelve inches in diameter; this, however, is not of
English growth, but comes from Turkey, where it is held in
slight estimation. Of course, when engravings on wood are
larger than twelve inches in diameter, two blocks are joined
together, for it is only the transverse section that can be
wrought for this purpose. The most famous plantations of box
in England are on the White-hill, near Dorking; but the
trees there are mere sticks and shrubs compared with those
at Mortlake; yet many of them are known to be two hundred
years old.

What was less wonderful, though to the full as interesting--was the circumstance that the gardener has, at different times, in digging up the roots of his old fruit-trees, found them imbedded in skeletons of persons who were interred in or near the chapel of the archbishops. He told me, that a short time before my visit, in removing a pear-tree, he had taken up three perfect skeletons; and that one of them was pronounced by a surgeon in the neighbourhood to be the frame-work of a man full seven feet high. This probably was an accidental circumstance; for it is not to be supposed that any of the interments on this spot took place in those rude ages when bulk and stature led to rank and distinction, and, by consequence, to costly funerals and encasements of stone, which often surprize us with specimens of an apparently gigantic race. Doubtless, however, here were interred hundreds of pious persons, who calculated, in their last moments, on the protection of this consecrated ground till "the Earth should be called to give up its Dead;" and now, owing to the unsatisfied passion which the first "Defender of the Faith" felt for Anna Boleyn, this consecrated spot, and a thousand similar ones, have been converted into cabbage-gardens!

Perhaps more than one archbishop, many bishops, and scores of deans, angelic doctors, and other reverend personages, lie in this now profaned and dishonoured spot! So great an outrage might, one would have supposed, have led them, according to ordinary notions, again to walk the earth, to despoil the garden, and disturb the gardener's rest! I expressed my fears on this point to the worthy man; but he assured me, these good gentlefolks lie very quiet; and that, if they produced any visible effect, it was as manure, in rendering the part where they lie a little more productive than the other parts. I shuddered at this lesson of humility--Alas! thought I, is it for such ends that we pamper ourselves--that some of us boast of being better than others--that we seek splendid houses and superfine clothing--and render our little lives wretched by hunting after rank, and titles, and riches! After all, we receive a sumptuous funeral, and are affectionately laid in what is called consecrated ground, which some political revolution, or change of religion, converting into a market-garden, our bodies then serve but as substitutes for vulgar manure! If such an end of the illustrious and proud men, whose remains now fertilize this garden, had been contemplated by them, how truly would they have become disciples of the humble Jesus--and how horror-struck would they have been at the fantastic airs which, in their lives, they were giving themselves!--Yet, is there a reader of these pages, the end of whose mortal career may not be similar to theirs?--and ought he not to apply to himself the lesson thus taught by the known fate of the former inhabitants of the archiepiscopal palace of Mortlake?

I shook my head at Penley, and told him, that he was a terrible "leveller," and that, in making manure of archbishops and bishops, he was one of the most effective moralists I had ever conversed with!

In walking round this garden, every part proved that its soil had been enriched from all the neighbouring lands. Whether, according to Dr. #Creighton#, there are classes of organic particles adapted to form vegetables and animals over and over again; or whether, according to the modern chemistry, all organized bodies consist of carbonaceous, metallic, and gaseous substances in varied combinations; it is certain, that the well-fed priesthood, who formerly dwelt within these walls, drew together for ages such a supply of the pabulum of vegetation, as will require ages to exhaust. All the trees of this garden are of the most luxuriant size: gooseberries and currants in other gardens grow as shrubs; but here they form trees of four or five feet in height, and a circumference of five or six yards. In short, a luxuriance approaching to rankness, and a soil remarkable for its depth of colour and fatness, characterize every part. The abundant produce, as is usual through all this neighbourhood, is conveyed to Covent-Garden market in the night, and there disposed of by salesmen that attend on behalf of the gardeners.

I took my departure from this inclosure with emotions that can only be felt. I looked again and again across the space which, during successive ages, had given birth to so many feelings, and nurtured so many anxious passions; but which now, for many ages, has, among bustling generations, lost all claim to sympathy or notice; and displays, at this day, nothing but the still mechanism of vegetable life. There might be little in the past to rouse the affections; but, in the difference of manners, there was much to amuse the imagination. It had been the focus, if not of real piety, at least of ostensible religion; and, dead as the spot now appeared, its mouldering walls, some of those gigantic trees, and, above all, the box-tree arbour, had, in remote ages, echoed from hour to hour the melodious chaunts and imposing ceremonials of the Romish Church. Here moral habits sanctified the routine of life, and conferred happiness as a necessary result of restraint and decorum--and here Vice never disgraced Reason by public exhibitions; but, if lurking in any breast, confessed its own deformity by its disguises and its secresy. In surveying such a spot, the hand of Time softens down even the asperities of superstition, and the shade of this gloomy site, contrasted with the bright days of its prosperity, inclined me to forget the intolerant policy which was wont to emanate from its spiritual councils. Under those fruit-trees, I exclaimed, lie all that remains of the follies, hopes, and superstitions of the former occupants; for, of them, I cannot remark as of the torpid remains in Mortlake church-yard, that they live in the present generation.--No! these dupes of clerical fraud devoted themselves to celibacy as a service to the procreative #Cause# of #CAUSES#, and became withered limbs of their family trees. We can, however, now look on their remains, and presume to scan their errors:--but let us recollect, that, though we are gazers to-day, we shall be gazed upon to-morrow--and that, though we think ourselves wise, we are, perhaps, fated to be commiserated in our turn by the age which follows. Alas! said I, when will the generation arrive that will not merit as much pity from succeeding generations as those poor monks? Yet how wise, how infallible, and how intolerant, is every sect of religion--every school of philosophy--every party of temporary politicians--and every nation in regard to every other nation! Do not these objects, and all exertions of reasoning, prove, that the climax of human wisdom is #HUMILITY#?

Commending the bones of the monks to the respect of the gardener, whose feelings, to do him justice, were in unison with my own, I proceeded, by the side of the wall, towards the banks of the Thames.

The relics of exploded priestcraft which I had just contemplated in the adjoining garden, led me into an amusing train of thought on the origin and progress of superstition. I felt that the various mythologies which the world has witnessed, grow out of mistakes in regard to the phenomena of #SECONDARY CAUSES#; all natural phenomena, accordingly as they were _fit_ or _unfit_ to the welfare or caprices of men, being ascribed, by the barbarous tribes who subsequently became illustrious nations, to the agency of _good_ and _evil_ spirits. However absurd might be the follies of these superstitions, they became ingrafted on Society, and were implanted in the opening minds of every successive generation. Of course, the age never arrived which did not inherit the greater part of the prejudices of the preceding age. Reason and philosophy might in due time illumine a few individuals; yet even these, influenced by early prejudices, and a prudent regard for their fortunes and personal safety, would rather support, or give a beneficial direction to, mythological superstitions, than venture to expose and oppose them. Hence it was that the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, continued _polytheists_ through the most brilliant epochs of their history; and hence their philosophers, as #Pythagoras#, #Plato#, and others, gave to the whole the plausibility of system, by affecting to demonstrate that the #FIRST CAUSE# necessarily and proximately generates immortal gods! Hence too it is that philosophers have, in different past ages, undertaken to demonstrate the verity of all religions, and according to the religion of the government under which they lived, they have either supported Polytheism, Theism, Sabinism, Judaism, Popery, or Mahomedanism. The fate of #Socrates# has never been forgotten by any philosopher who possessed the chief attribute of wisdom--#PRUDENCE#; and no benevolent man will ever seek to disturb a public faith which promotes public virtue, because the memorials of history prove that no discords have been so bloody as those which have been generated by attempts to change religious faith. This class of human errors can indeed be corrected only by establishing in civilized countries practical and unequivocal systems of toleration; because, in that case, truth and reason are sure, in due time, to establish themselves, while falsehood and fraud must sink into merited contempt.

The fleeting, wild, and crude notions of savages, constituted therefore the _first stage_ in the progress of mythological superstition. Their invisible agencies would however soon have forms conferred upon them by weak or fertile imaginations, and be personified as men or animals, according to the nature of their deeds. To pray to them for benefits, and to deprecate their wrath, would constitute the _second stage_. In the mean time, individuals who might, by chance or design, become connected with some of these supernatural agencies, would be led, by vivid or gloomy imaginations, to deceive even themselves by notions of _election_ or _inspiration_; and, then superadding ceremonials to worship, they would form a select class, living, without manual labour, on the tributes offered by the people to satisfy or appease the unseen agencies. This would constitute a _third stage_. Each priest would then endeavour to extol the importance of the god, of whom he believed himself to be the minister; and he would give to his deity a visible form, cause a temple to be built for him, deliver from it his oracles or prophecies, and affect to work miracles in his name. This would constitute the _fourth stage_. The terror of unseen powers would now be found to be a convenient engine of usurped human authority, and hence an association would be formed between the temporal and invisible powers, the latter being exalted by the former in having its temples enlarged and its priests better provided for. This would constitute the _fifth stage_; or the consummation of the system as it has been witnessed in India, Persia, Egypt, Greece, and Italy.--Hence among the #Hindoos#, those personified agencies have been systematized under the titles of Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, Crishna, &c. Among the #Egyptians#, they were worshipped in the forms of living animals, and called Osiris, Ammon, Oris, Typhon, Isis, &c. Among the #Chaldeans#, and, after them, among the #Jews#, they were classed in principalities, powers, and dominions of _angels_ and _devils_, under chiefs, who bore the names of Raphael, Gabriel, Michael, Moloch, Legion, Satan, Beelzebub, &c. Among the #Greeks#, the accommodating Plato flattered the priests and the vulgar, by pretending to demonstrate that their personifications were necessary emanations from #THE ONE#; and he, and others, arranged the worship of them under the names of Jupiter, Neptune, Minerva, Venus, Pluto, Mars, &c. Among the #NORTHERN NATIONS#, they assumed the names of Woden, Sleepner, Hela, Fola, &c. Every town and village had, moreover, its protecting divinity, or guardian saint, under some fantastical name, or the name of some fantastical fanatic; and, even every man, every house, every plant, every brook, every day, and every hour, according to most of those systems, had their accompanying genius! In a word, the remains of these superstitions are still so mixed with our habits and language, that, although we pity the hundreds of wretched victims of _legal wisdom_, who under Elizabeth and the Stuarts were burnt to death for witchcraft; and abhor the ghosts of Shakespeare, his fairies, and his enchantments; yet we still countenance the system in most of the personifications of language, and practise it when we speak even of the _spirit_ of Philosophy and the _genius_ of Truth.

Nor have philosophers themselves, either in their independent systems, or in the systems of the schools, steered clear of the vulgar errors of mythologists. They have in every age introduced into nature active causes without contact, continuity, or proximity; and, even in our days, continue to extort worship towards the _unseen and occult_ powers of attraction or sympathy, and of repulsion or antipathy! It is true, they say that such words only express _results_ or _phenomena_, and others equivocate by saying there is in no case any contact:--but I reply, that to give names to proximate causes does not correspond with my notions of the proper business of philosophy; and that, in thousands of instances, there is sensible contact, and in all nature some contact of intermediate media, in the affections of which, may be traced the laws governing the phenomena of distant bodies. At the hour in which I write, the recognized philosophical divinities are called #Space#, #Matter#, #Inertia#, #Caloric#, #Expansion#, #Motion#, #Impulse#, #Clustering Power#, #Elasticity#, #Atomic Forms#, #Atomic Proportions#, #Oxygen#, #Hydrogen#, #Nitrogen#, #Chlorine#, #Iodine#, #Electricity#, #Light#, #Excitability#, #Irritability#, &c. All these have their priests, worshippers, propagandists, and votaries, among some of whom may be found as intolerant a spirit of bigotry as ever disgraced any falling church. As governments do not, however, ally themselves to Philosophy, there is happily no danger that an heretical or reforming Philosopher will, as such, ever incur the hazard of martyrdom; and, as reason decides all disputes in the court of Philosophy, there can be no doubt, but, in this court at least, #Truth# will finally prevail.

Hail, Genius of Philosophy! Hail, thou poetical personification of wisdom! Hail, thou logical abstraction of all experimental knowledge! I hail thee, as thou art represented in the geniuses of Pythagoras, Thales, Aristotle, Archimedes, Ptolemy, Columbus, Bacon, Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Boyle, Euler, Buffon, Franklin, Beccaria, Priestley, Lavoisier, Cavendish, Condorcet, Laplace, Herschel, Berzelius, Jenner, Dalton, Cuvier, and Davy; and I hail thee, as thou excitest the ambition of the solitary student of an obscure village, to raise himself among those gods of the human race! How many privations must thy votaries suffer in a sordid world; and how many human passions must they subdue, before they can penetrate thy mazy walks, or approach the hidden sanctuaries of thy temple of Truth! Little thinks the babbling politician, the pedantic linguist, or the equivocating metaphysician, of the watchful hours which thy worshippers must pass,--of the never-ending patience which they must exert,--of the concurring circumstances which must favour their enthusiasm! Whether we consider the necessary magnitude of the library, the ascending intricacy of the books, the multitude of the instruments, or the variety of the experimental apparatus in the use of which the searchers into thy mysteries must be familiar; we are compelled to reverence the courage of him who seeks preeminence through thee, and to yield to those mortals who have attained thy favours, our wonder, admiration, and gratitude![8]

[8] The system of Physics which I have for many years
inculcated, in the hope of removing from Philosophy the
equivocal word _attraction_, supposes that space is filled
with an elastic medium,--that this medium permeates bodies
in proportion to their quantities of matter,--that
resistance or re-action takes place between the universal
medium of space and the novel arrangements of matter in
bodies,--that this action and re-action diverge in the
medium of space from the surfaces of bodies,--and that, like
all diverging forces, they act inversely as the squares of
the distances. That, if there were but one body in the
universe, it would remain stationary by the uniform action
of the surrounding medium,--that the creation of another
body would produce phenomena between them, owing to each
intercepting the action of the medium of space on the other,
in proportion to the angles mutually presented by their
bulks,--that two such bodies so acted upon by an universal
medium must necessarily fall together, owing to the
difference between the finite pressure on their near sides,
and the infinite pressure on their outsides,--that a stone
falls to the earth, because, with regard to it, the earth
intercepts an angle of 180 deg. of the medium of space on its
near or under side; while, with regard to the earth, the
stone intercepts but a small proportion of a second,--that
these actual centripetal forces are very slight, between
such distant bodies as the planets,--and, that the law of
the forces is necessarily as their bulks directly, and as
the squares of their distances inversely. That the
centrifugal forces result from the same pressure or
impulse,--that the varied densities of the opposite sides of
the masses, as land and water, occasion a uniform external
pressure to produce rotation on an axis,--that the action or
oscillation of the fluid surfaces, a consequence of the
rotation, constantly changes the mechanical centre of the
mass, so as thereby to drive forward the mathematical centre
in an orbit,--and that this is the purpose and effect of the
tides, increased by the action and re-action of the fluid
and solid parts. That centripetal and centrifugal forces so
created, are necessarily varied by the diverse arrangements
of the solid and fluid parts of planetary bodies, as we see
in the northern and southern hemispheres of the earth,--and
that hence arise the varied motions, the elliptical orbits,
and all the peculiar phenomena. Attached as the moderns are
to the terms _attraction_ and _repulsion_, I produce this
theory with due deference to their prejudices; and I venture
to presume, that, on examination, it will be found to be a
fair induction from the phenomena, and also in perfect
accordance with all the laws of motion. It accounts for the
uniform direction and moderate exertion of the centripetal
force towards the largest body of a system; for the mutual
actions of a system of bodies, or of many systems, on each
other; and for the constantly varying direction of the
centrifugal force, by shewing that it is generated within
the mass. The term _repulsion_ is even more disgraceful to
Philosophy than that of _attraction_; all repulsion being in
truth but a relative phenomenon between at least three
bodies; and its most palpable appearance in electricity
being but a stronger mechanical action towards opposite
surfaces. The local impulses of magnets, and of bodies going
into chemical union, are not better explained by Kepler's
gravitating sympathy, than by this doctrine of mechanical
interception; but, I have no doubt that the former of these
will, in due time, be traced to the difference between the
rotary motion of the Equatorial and Polar regions; and the
latter to some laws of the atomic theory, arising out of the
shape and arrangement of the component particles, with
reference to those of surrounding bodies.

Overtaking three or four indigent children, whose darned stockings and carefully-patched clothes bespoke some strong motive for attention in their parents, I was induced to ask them some questions. They said they had been to Mortlake School; and I collected from them, that they were part of two or three hundred who attend one of Dr. Bell's schools, which had lately been established for the instruction of poor children in this vicinity. I found that, until this establishment had been formed, these children attended no school regularly--and, in reply to a question, one of them said, "Our father could not afford to pay Mr. ---- sixpence a week for us, so we could not go at all; but now we go to this school, and it costs father nothing." This was as it should be; the social state ought to supply a preparatory education of its members--or, how can a government expect to find moral agents in an ignorant population--how can it presume to inflict punishments on those who have not been enabled to read the laws which they are bound to respect--and how can the professors of religion consider themselves as performing their duty, if they have not enabled all children to peruse the volume of Christian Revelation? We are assured by Mr. Lancaster, that #George the Third# expressed the benevolent wish that every one of his subjects should be enabled to read the Bible; and his successors will, it is to be hoped, not lose sight of so admirable a principle. But a few ages ago, to be able to read conferred the privileges of the clerical character, and exempted men from capital punishments--how improved, therefore, is the present state of society, and how different may it yet become, as prejudices are dispelled, and as liberal feelings acquire their just ascendancy among the rulers of nations! These boys spoke of their school with evident satisfaction; and one of them, who proved to be a monitor, seemed not a little proud of the distinction. Whether the system of Mr. Lancaster or of Dr. Bell enjoy the local ascendancy; or whether these public seminaries be "schools for all," or schools in which the dogmas of some particular faith are taught, I am indifferent, provided there are some such schools, and that all children are enabled to read the Bible, and "_the Catechism of their Social Rights and Duties_."

Seeing several respectable houses facing the meadow which led to the Thames, I inquired of a passing female the names of their owners, and learnt that they were chiefly occupied by widow ladies, to whom she gave the emphatic title of _Madam_--though she called one of them _Mistress_. It appeared that those who were denominated _Madams_ were widows of gentlemen who, in their lives, bore the title of _Esquires_; but that the _Mistress_ was an old maid, whom her neighbours were ashamed longer to call by the juvenile appellation of _Miss_. _Madam ----_, whose name I ought not to have forgotten, has devoted a paddock of four or five acres to the comfortable provision of two super-annuated coach-horses. One of them, I was assured, was thirty-five years old, and the other nearly thirty; and their venerable appearance and pleasant pasture excited a strong interest in favour of their kind-hearted mistress. Such is the influence of good example, that I found her paddock was opposite the residence of the equally amiable #Valentine Morris#, who so liberally provided for all his live-stock about thirty years ago, and whose oldest horse died lately, after enjoying his master's legacy above twenty-four years.

I now descended towards a rude space near the Thames, which appeared to be in the state in which the occasional overflowings and gradual retrocession of the river had left it. It was one of those wastes which the lord of the manor had not yet enabled some industrious cultivator to disguise; and in large tracts of which Great Britain still exhibits the surface of the earth in the pristine state in which it was left by the secondary causes that have given it form. The Thames, doubtless, in a remote age, covered the entire site; but it is the tendency of rivers to narrow themselves, by promoting prolific vegetable creations on their consequently increasing and encroaching banks, though the various degrees of fall produce every variety of currents, and consequently every variety of banks, in their devious course. In due time, the course of the river becomes choaked where a flat succeeds a rapid, and the detained waters then form lakes in the interior. These lakes likewise generate encroaching banks, which finally fill up their basins, when new rivers are formed on higher levels. These, in their turn, become interrupted, and repetitions of the former circle of causes produce one class of those elevations of land above the level of the sea, which have so much puzzled geologists. The only condition which a surface of dry land requires to increase and raise itself, is the absence of salt water, consequent on which is an accumulation of vegetable and animal remains. The Thames has not latterly been allowed to produce its natural effects, because for two thousand years the banks have been inhabited by man, who, unable to appreciate the general laws by which the phenomena of the earth are produced, has sedulously kept open the course of the river, and prevented the formation of interior lakes. The Caspian Sea, and all similar inland seas and lakes, were, for the most part, formed from the choaking up of rivers, which once constituted their outlets. If the course of nature be not interrupted by the misdirected industry of man, the gradual desiccation of all such collections of water will, in due time, produce land of higher levels on their sites. In like manner, the great lakes of North America, if the St. Lawrence be not sedulously kept open, will, in the course of ages, be filled up by the gradual encroachment of their banks, and the raising of their bottoms with strata of vegetable and animal remains. New rivers would then flow over these increased elevations, and the ultimate effect would be to raise that part of the continent of North America several hundred feet above its present level. Even the very place on which I stand was, according to #Webster#, once a vast basin, extending from the Nore to near Reading, but now filled up with vegetable and animal remains; and the illustrious #Cuvier# has discovered a similar basin round the site of Paris. These once were Caspians, created by the choaking and final disappearance of some mighty rivers--they have been filled up by gradual encroachments, and now the Thames and the Seine flow over them;--but these, if left to themselves, will, in their turn, generate new lakes or basins--and the successive recurrence of a similar series of causes will continue to produce similar effects, till interrupted by _superior_ causes.

This situation was so sequestered, and therefore so favourable to contemplation, that I could not avoid indulging myself. What then are those superior causes, I exclaimed, which will interrupt this series of natural operations to which man is indebted for the enchanting visions of hill and dale, and for the elysium of beauty and plenty in which he finds himself? Alas! facts prove, however, that all things are transitory, and that change of condition is the constant and necessary result of that motion which is the chief instrument of eternal causation, but which, in causing all phenomena, wears out existing organizations while it is generating new ones. In the motions of the earth as a planet, doubtless are to be discovered the superior causes which convert seas into continents, and continents into seas. These sublime changes are occasioned by the progress of the perihelion point of the earth's orbit through the ecliptic, which passes from extreme northern to extreme southern declination, and _vice versa_, every 10,450 years; and the maxima of the central forces in the perihelion occasion the waters to accumulate alternatively upon either hemisphere. During 10,450 years, the sea is therefore gradually retiring and encroaching in both hemispheres:--hence all the varieties of marine appearances and accumulations of marine remains in particular situations; and hence the succession of layers or strata, one upon another, of marine and earthy remains. It is evident, from observation of those strata, that the periodical changes have occurred at least three times; or, in other words, it appears that the site on which I now stand has been three times covered by the ocean, and three times has afforded an asylum for vegetables and animals! How sublime--how interesting--how affecting is such a contemplation! How transitory, therefore, must be the local arrangements of man, and how puerile the study of the science miscalled Antiquities! How foolish the pride which vaunts itself on splendid buildings and costly mausoleums! How vain the ostentation of large estates, of extensive boundaries, and of great empires!--All--all--will, in due time, be swept away and effaced by the unsparing ocean; and, if recorded in the frail memorials of human science, will be spoken of like the lost Atalantis, and remembered only as a philosophical dream!

Yet, how different, thought I, is the rich scene of organized existence within my view, from that which presented itself on this spot when our planet first took its station in the solar system. The surface, judging from its present materials, was then probably of the same inorganic form and structure as the primitive rocks which still compose the Alps and Andes; or like those indurated coral islands, which are daily raising their sterile heads above the level of the great ocean, and teaching by analogy the process of fertilization. At that period, so remote and so obscure, all must have been silent, barren, and relatively motionless! But, the atmosphere and the rains having, by decomposition and solution, pulverized the rocks, and reduced them into the various earths which now fertilize the surface, from the inorganic soon sprung the vegetable, and from the vegetable, in due time, sprung the animal; till the whole was resolved into the interesting assemblage of organized existences, which now present themselves to our endless wonder and gratification.

I looked around me on this book of nature, which so eloquently speaks all languages, and which, for every useful purpose, may be read without translation or commentary, by the learned and unlearned in every age and clime. But my imagination was humbled on considering my relative and limited powers, when I desired to proceed from phenomena to causes, and to penetrate the secrets of nature below the surfaces of things. I desire, said I, to know more than my intellectual vision enables me to see in this volume of unerring truth. I can discover but the mere surfaces of things by the accidents of light. I can feel but the same surfaces in the contact of my body, and my conclusions are governed by their reciprocal relations. In like manner, I can hear, taste, and smell, only through the accidents of other media, all distinct from the nature of the substances which produce those accidents. In truth, I am the mere patient of certain illusions of my senses, and I can know nothing beyond what I derive from my capacity of receiving impressions from those illusions! Alas! thought I, I am sensible how little I know; yet how much is there which I do not, and can never, know? How much more am I incapable of knowing, with my limited organs of sense, than I might know if their capacity or their number were enlarged? How can a being, then, of such limited powers presume to examine nature beyond the mere surface? How can he measure unseen powers, of which he has no perception, but in the phenomena visible to his senses? How can he reason on the causes of effects by means of implements which reach no deeper than the accidents produced by the surfaces of things on the media which affect his senses, and which come not into contact with the powers that produce the phenomena? Ultimate causation is, therefore, hidden for ever from man; and his knowledge can reach no deeper or higher than to register mechanical phenomena, and determine their mutual relations. But there is yet enough for man to learn, and to gratify the researches of his curiosity; for, bounded as are his powers, he has always found that _art is too long and life too short_. He may nevertheless feel that his mind, in a certain sense, is within a species of intellectual prison; but, like the terrestrial prison which confines his body to one planet, no man ever lived long enough to exhaust the variety of subjects presented to his contemplation and curiosity by the intellectual and natural world.

We seem, however, said I, to be better qualified to investigate the external laws which govern #INORGANIC MATTER#, than the subtle and local powers which govern organized bodies. We appear (so to speak) to be capable of looking down upon mere matter as matter; but incapable, like the eye in viewing itself, of retiring to such a focal distance as to be able accurately to examine ourselves. It is not difficult to conceive that planetary bodies, and other masses of inorganic matter, may appear to act on each other by mutually intercepting the pressure of the elastic medium which fills space; and the pressure intercepted by each on the inner surface of the other, may, by the un-intercepted external pressure on each, produce the phenomena of mutual gravitation: nor is it improbable that the curvilinear and rotatory motions of such masses may be governed by the arrangement and mutual action of their fixed and their fluid parts; nor impracticable for the geometrician, when the phenomena are determined, to measure the mechanical relations of the powers that produce those phenomena; nor wonderful that a system of bodies so governed by general laws, should move and act in a dependent, consequent, and necessary harmony.

Thus far the intellect of an organized being may reason safely on the mechanical relations of inorganic masses, because an unequal balance of forces produces their motions, and from combined motions result the phenomena; but, in the principle of organic life, and in the duration and final purpose of the powers of vegetables and animals, there are mysteries which baffle the penetration of limited observation and reason. I behold #VEGETABLES# with roots fixed in the ground, and through them raising fluids mechanically; but my understanding is overpowered with unsatisfied wonder, when I consider the animating principle of the meanest vegetable, which constitutes a selfish individuality, and enables it to give new qualities to those fluids by peculiar secretions, and to appropriate them to its own nourishment and growth. My ambition after wisdom is humbled in the dust, whenever I inquire how the first germ of every species came into existence; whenever I consider the details of the varied powers in the energizing agency which originates each successive germ; and the independent, but coincident, passive receptacle which nurtures those germs, and, correcting aberrations, secures the continuity of every species--both acting as joint secondary causes; and whenever I reflect on the growth, maturity, beauty, and variety, of the vegetable kingdom! On these several subjects, my mind renders the profoundest homage to the #MYSTERIOUS POWER# which created and continues such miracles; and, being unable to reason upon them from the analogy of other experience, I am forced to refer such sublime results to agency not mechanical; or, if in any sense mechanical, so arranged and so moved as to exceed my means of conception.

Looking once more upon the volume of nature which lay before me, I behold a superior class of organized beings, each individual of which, constituting an independent microcosm, is qualified to move from place to place, by bodily adaptation and nervous sensibility. This kingdom of #LOCO-MOTIVE BEINGS# ascends, in gradations of power and intellect, from the hydatid to the sympathetic and benevolent philosopher; and rises in the scale of being as much above the organization of vegetables, as vegetables themselves are superior to the inorganic particles in which they flourish. That they may subsist while they move, their roots, instead of being fixed in the soil, are turned within a cavity, or receptacle, called the stomach, into which, appropriate soil, or aliment, is introduced by the industry of the creature; and, that their powers of loco-motion may be exerted with safety and advantage, they are provided with senses for smelling, tasting, feeling, and seeing their food; and with a power of hearing dangers which they cannot see. They are, for the same purpose, enabled to profit by experience in powers of association, of reasoning by analogy, and of willing according to their judgments; and they are governed by an habitual desire to associate in species, accompanied by moral feelings, resulting from obligations of mutual deference and convenience. Here again, humanly speaking, we have a series of natural miracles--a permanent connexion between external objects and the sensations, reasoning, and conduct of the organized being. We trace the animal frame to two constituent parts--the one mechanical, the other sensitive; the mechanical consisting of bones, skin, stomach, blood-vessels, glands, and intestines, provided with muscles and sinews for voluntary motion; and the sensitive, consisting of nerves and brain, which direct the motions by the feelings of the organs of sense--the results of the union constituting creatures whose essence is perception, springing from a system of brain and nerves, which, being nourished by the energies of circulating fluids, moved by a contrivance of muscles, and strengthened by an apparatus of bones, produce all those varieties of feeling, durable, moving, and powerful beings, whose functions continue as long as the original expansive powers balance the unceasing inertia of their materials. But, of that #SUBTLE PRINCIPLE# which distinguishes _organic life_ from _inert matter_--of that principle of individuality which generates the passion of self-love, and leads each individual to preserve and sustain its own existence--of that principle which gives peculiar powers of growth, and maturity, to germs of vegetables and animals--and of that principle which, being stopped, suspended, or destroyed, in the meanest or greatest of them, produces the awful difference between the living and the dead--we have no knowledge, and we seem incapable of acquiring any, by the limited powers of our senses. Whether this principle of vitality is a principle of its own kind, imparted from parent plants and animals to their germs; or whether it is the result of the totality of the being, like the centre of a sphere,--are questions which must perhaps for ever remain undetermined by the reasoning powers of man.

The creature of an hour, whose chief care it is to live and indulge his self-love, who cannot see without light, nor distinctly above a few inches from the eye, is wholly incompetent to determine those questions which have so long agitated philosophy; as, Whether the phenomena of the creation could be made to exist without action and re-action, and without space?--Whether, consequently, there are #THREE# Eternals, or #ONE# Eternal?--Whether the #SUPREME INTELLIGENCE, MATTER# void of form, and #SPACE# containing it, were all eternal--or whether the supreme intelligence alone was eternal, and matter and space created?--Whether the supreme intelligence has only been exerted proximately or remotely on inorganic matter; space being the necessary medium of creation, and organization being the result?--Whether the globe of the earth, in form, is eternal, or, according to Herschel, the effect of "a clustering power" in the matter of space, beginning and ending, according to the general analogy of organized beings?--Whether the earth was a comet, the ellipticality of whose orbit has been reduced; and, if so, what was the origin of the comet?--How the secondary mountains were liquefied--whether by fire or by water--and what were the then relations of the earth to the sun?--How and when that liquefaction ceased; and how, and when, and in what order of time, the several organizations arose upon them?--How those organizations, at least those now existing, received the powers of secondary causes for continuing their kind?--How every species now lives, and grows, and maintains an eternal succession of personal identities?--How these things were before we were, and how they now are on every side of us--are topics which have made so much learning ridiculous, that, if I were to discuss them, in the best forms prescribed by the schools, I might but imitate in folly the crawling myriads, who luxuriate for an hour on a ripening peach; and who, like ourselves, may be led by their vanity to discuss questions in regard to the eternity, and other attributes, of the prodigious globe, which they have inherited from their remote ancestry, and of which the early history is lost in the obscure traditions of their countless generations!

Without presuming, however, to argue on premises which finite creatures cannot justly estimate, we may safely infer, in regard to the world in which we are placed, that all things which #DO EXIST#, owe their existence to their #COMPATIBILITY# with other existences; to the necessary #FITNESS# of all existing things; and to the #HARMONY# which is essential to the existence of any thing in the form and mode in which it does exist: for, without reciprocal #COMPATIBILITY#, without individual #FITNESS#, and without universal #HARMONY#, nothing could #CONTINUE TO EXIST# which #DOES EXIST#; and, therefore, what does exist, is for the time #NECESSARILY COMPATIBLE# with other existences, #FIT# or #NOT INCOMPATIBLE#, and in #HARMONY# with the whole of #CO-EXISTENT BEING#. Every organized #EXISTENCE# affords, therefore, indubitable evidence of #FINAL CAUSES# or #PURPOSES#, competent to produce and sustain it; of certain relations of #FITNESS# to other beings; of #COMPATIBILITY# with other existences; and of #HARMONY# in regard to the whole. And every case of #DESTRUCTION# affords evidence, that certain #FINAL CAUSES# have become unequal to their usual office; that the being is #UNFIT# to exist simultaneously with some other beings; that its existence is #INCOMPATIBLE# with certain circumstances, or that it is contrary to the general #HARMONY# of co-existent being. May not the fifty thousand species of beings now discoverable, be all the species whose existences have continued to be fit, compatible, and harmonious? May not the known extinction of many species be received as evidence, therefore, of the gradual decay of the powers which sustain organized being on our planet? May not the extinction of one species render the existence of others more unfit, by diminishing the number of final causes? And, may not the successive breaking or wearing out of these links of final causes ultimately lead to the end of all organized being, or to what is commonly called, #THE END OF OUR WORLD#?

As I approached a sequestered mansion-house, and some other buildings, which together bear the name of #Brick-stables#, I crossed a corner of the meadow towards an angle formed by a rude inlet of the Thames, which was running smoothly towards the sea at the pace of four miles an hour. The tide unites here with the ordinary current, and, running a few miles above this place, exhibits twice a day the finely-reduced edge of that physical balance-wheel or oscillating fluid-pendulum which creates the earth's centrifugal power, varies the centre of its forces, and holds in equilibrium that delicately adjusted pressure of the medium of space, which pressure, without such balance, would, by its _clustering power_, drive together the isolated masses of suns and planets.--In viewing the beautiful process of Nature, presented by a majestic river, we cease to wonder that priestcraft has often succeeded in teaching nations to consider rivers as of divine origin, and as living emblems of Omnipotence. Ignorance, whose constant error it is to look only to the last term of every series of causes, and which charges Impiety on all who venture to ascend one term higher, and Atheism on all who dare to explore several terms (though every series implies a first term), would easily be persuaded by a crafty priesthood to consider a beneficent river as a tangible branch of the Godhead. But we now know that the waters which flow down a river, are but a portion of the rains and snows which, having fallen near its source, are returning to the ocean, there to rise again and re-perform the same circle of vapours, clouds, rains, and rivers. What a process of fertilization, and how still more luxuriant would have been this vicinity, if man had not levelled the trees and carried away the crops of vegetation! What a place of shelter would thus have been afforded to tribes of amphibiae, whose accumulated remains often surprise geologists, though necessarily consequent on the fall of crops of vegetation on each other, near undisturbed banks of rivers. Happily, in Britain, our coal-pits, or mineralized forests, have supplied the place of our living woods; or man, regardless of the fitness of all the parts to the perfection of every natural result, might here, as in other long-peopled countries, ignorantly have thwarted the course of Nature by cutting down the timber, which, acting on the electricity of the clouds, affects their density, and causes them to fall in fertilizing showers. Such has been the fate of all the countries famous in antiquity. Persia, Syria, Arabia, parts of Turkey, and the Barbary coast, have been rendered arid deserts by this inadvertency. The clouds from the Western Ocean would long since have passed over England without disturbance from the conducting powers of leaves of trees, or blades of grass, if our coal-works had not saved our natural conductors; while this Thames, the agent of so much abundance and so much wealth, might, in that case, have become a shallow brook, like the once equally famed Jordan, Granicus, or Ilyssus.