Chapter XVI: Part 16

Hume, he said, was evidently playing with scepticism; for himself, he had no heart to jest upon the subject. The Scotch sceptic acknowledged that the metaphysical riddles of his "absolute scepticism" exercised, and ought to exercise, no practical influence on himself or any man; that the moment he quitted them, and entered into society, "they appeared to him so frigid and unnatural" that he could not get himself to interest himself about them any further; that a dinner with a friend, or a game at backgammon, put them all to flight, and restored him to the undoubting belief of all the maxims which his meditative hours had stripped him of. It was natural, Harrington said; for such scepticism was impossible. He added, however, that, had Hume been honest, he would never have employed his subtilty in the one-sided way he did; "for," said he, "if his principles be true, they tell just as much against those who deny any religious dogmas as against those who maintain them. Yet everywhere in relation to religion--take the question of miracles, for example--he argues not as a sceptic at all, but as a dogmatist, only on the negative side. If his doctrine of 'Ideas' and of 'Causation' be true, he ought to have maintained that; for any thing we know, miracles may have occurred a thousand times, and may as often occur again. Hume," he said, "was amusing himself; but I am not: nor can any one really feel--many pretend to do so without feeling at all--the pressure of such doubts as envelop me, and be content to amuse themselves with them."

I found it very difficult to attack him in the intrenchments he had thrown up. I thought I would just try for a moment to act on the Spiritualist's advice, and, throwing aside all "intellectual and logical processes," all appeals to the "critical faculties," advance "lightly equipped as Priestley himself," making my appeal to the "spiritual faculty." I cannot say that the result was at all what "spiritualism" promises. On the contrary, Harrington parried all such appeals in a twinkling. He said he did not admit that he had any "spiritual faculty" which acted in isolation from the intellect; that religious faith must be founded on religious truth, and even quasi-religious faith on quasi-religious truth. That the intellect and the moral and spiritual faculties (if he had any) acted together, since he felt that he was indivisible, and that the former man be satisfied as well as the latter; that it was so with all his faculties, none of which acted in isolation; that however hunger might prompt to food, he never took what his senses of sight and touch told him was sand or gravel; that if he indulged love, or pity, or anger, it was only as the senses and the imagination and the understanding were busied with objects adequate to elicit them; that if beautiful poetry excited emotion, it was only as he understood the meaning and connection of the words. "And what else are you doing now, while urging me to realize by direct 'insight,' by 'gazing' on 'spiritual truth,' and so forth, the things you wish me to realize, --I say what are you doing but appealing to me, through these same media of the senses and the imagination, by rhetoric and logic? How else can you gain any access to my supposed 'spiritual faculties'?" I replied, that even the spiritualist did that,--he endeavored to convince men, I supposed. "Yes," he replied, laughing, "because he is privileged doubly to abuse logic at one and the same time; to abuse it in one sense as a fallacious instrument of religious conviction in the hands of others, and to abuse it in another sense, as an instrument of fallacious conviction in his own. But you are not so privileged."

Harrington insisted on the fact, that the whole thing was a delusion; I might appeal, he said, if I thought proper, to any faculties, or rudiments of faculties, he possessed, spiritual or otherwise; but he really could not pretend even to comprehend one syllable I said, if I denied him the use of his understanding. I might as well, and for the same reasons, appeal to him without the intervention of his senses, --for his "soul" could not be more different from his "intellect" than from them. "Besides," he continued, "I know you do not imagine that any spiritual faculty acts thus independently of the intellect; and therefore you are only mocking me."

I thought it best to cut my cable and leave this unsafe anchorage.

I told him that, as he doubted whether man had any distinctly marked religious and spiritual faculties, while I affirmed that he had, --although he was quite right in supposing that I did not believe that they acted except in close conjunction with the intellect,--it made it difficult to hold any discourse with him. Doubting the Bible, he had also learned to doubt that doctrine of human depravity, which he once thought harmonized--and I still thought did alone harmonize--the great facts of man's essentially religious constitution and his eternally varied and most egregiously corrupt religious development.

However, I told him that, even in the concession of the probable as a sufficient rule of conduct in this life, he had granted enough to condemn utterly his sceptical position.

He now looked sincerely interested. "Let me," said I, "ask you a few questions." He glanced towards me an arch look. "What!" he said, "you wish to get the Socratic weather-gage of me, do you? You forget, my dear uncle, that you introduced me to the Platonic dialectics."

"Heaven forgive you," said I, "for the thought. You know I make little pretension to your favorite erotetic method: and if I did, oh! do you not know, Harrington, my son, that, if I could but convince you on this one subject, I would consent to be confuted by you on every other every day in the year?--nay, to be trampled under your feet?" I added, with a faltering voice. "And, besides that, do you not know that there can be no rivalry between father and son; that it is the only human affection which forbids it; that pride, and not envy, swells a father's heart, when he finds himself outdone?"

He was not unmoved; told me he knew that I loved him well, and desired me to ask any questions I pleased.

He saw how gratified his affection made me feel. I said, gayly, "Well, then, let me ask (as our old friend with the queer face might have said), Do you not grant there is such a thing as prudence?"

"I do," he said.

"But to be prudent is, I think, to do that which is most likely to promote our happiness."

"That which seems most likely, for I do not admit that we know what will."

"That which seems, then, for it is of no consequence."

"Of no consequence! surely there is a little difference between being and seeming to be."

"All the difference in the world," I replied, "but not in relation to our choice of conduct, We choose, if prudent, that conduct which, on the whole, deliberately seems most likely to promote our happiness, and, as far as that goes, what seems is."

"I grant it; and that probabilities are the measure of it," said Harrington.

"You are of Bayle's opinion, that there is in relation to the present life a probable prudent, and that it would be gross folly to neglect it?"

"Certainly."

"And in proportion as the interest was greater, and extended over a longer time, you would be content with less and less probabilities to justify action?"

"I freely grant I should."

"If now a servant came into the room to say that he feared your farm-house at King's O--- was on fire, though you might think it but faintly probable, you would not think it prudent to neglect the information?"

"I certainly should not."

"And if you were immortal here on earth, and the neglect of some probably, or (we will say) only possibly, true information in relation to some vital interest might affect it through that whole immortality, you would consider it prudent to act on almost no probability at all, on the very faintest presumption of the truth?"

"I must in honesty agree with you so far."

"What does your scepticism promise you, if it be well founded? Much happiness?"

"To me none; rather the contrary; and to none, I think, can it promise much."

"And if Christianity be true,--for I speak only of that,--I know there is not in your estimate any other religion that comes into competition with it--immortal felicity, immortal misery, depends on it?"

"Yes; it cannot be denied."

"You admit that scepticism may be false, even though it has a thousand to one in its favor; for by its very principles you know nothing, and can know nothing, on the subjects to which its doubts extend?"

"I acknowledge it."

"And Christianity may be true by the very same reasoning, though the chances be only as one to a thousand?"

"It is so."

"Then by your own confession you are not prudent, for you do not act in relation to Christianity on the principles on which you say you act in the affairs of the present life; where you acknowledge that the least presumption will move you, when the interests are sufficiently permanent and great."

He told me, with a smile, I might have arrived at the same conclusion without any argument; for he was willing to acknowledge in general that he was not prudent, and in relation to this very subject should always admit, with Byron, that the sincere Christian had an undeniable advantage over both the infidel and the sceptic; "since," he added, putting the admission into a very concise form, "their best is his worst."

"Very well," said I, "Harrington, only remember that your imprudence is none the less for your admission of it."

"None in the world," he admitted; but be contended there was a flaw in the argument; for that it was impossible to accept any religion on merely prudential grounds. And he then went on, in his curious way, to lament that an unreasonable candor prevented him from here taking advantage of an ingenious argument adopted by some of the modern "spiritualists" in reasoning on the probabilities of a "future life." They contend that it is necessary to insulate the soul (if it would discover "spiritual truth") from all bias of self- interest,--from all oblique glances at prospective advantage; in fact, that only he is fully equipped for discovering "spiritual truth" who is disinterestedly indifferent as to whether it be discovered or not. Harrington said he could not pretend that even the sceptic was so favorably circumstanced as that. "For my part," he said, "I cannot honestly adopt this view, and always think it prudent to accept as large an armful of happiness as I can grasp, when truth and duty do not come in the way."

"And in the name of common sense," I said, "what truth and duty are to stand in your way? Is not your truth, that there is none?"

"Yes," he replied, smiling; "but is not the truth the truth, as Falstaff said? though to be sure it was when he was manufacturing his eleven men in buckram out of two. However, as Mr. Newman, when some one foretold that he would be some day a Socinian or an infidel, replied, 'Well, if Socinianism or any thing else be the truth, Socinians or any thing else let us be'; so I must say, if no truth be the truth, no-truth men let us be."

"Very well," I replied. "Then, it seems, truth stands in the way of acting prudently; and, instead of remedying our first paradox, we have started on another, that truth and prudence are here opposed: for in no other cases (I think) in which you apply your own rule of the probable to the present life will a mind of your comprehensiveness say they are opposed; I am sure you will admit the general maxims, that to lie is inexpedient, and that honesty is the best policy, and so on."

He granted it.

"But further," said I, "what sort of truth is this, which involves duty, and yet is opposed to prudence? It is, that there is no truth, it seems, and this completes the paradox. This strange truth--the Alpha Omega of the sceptic, his first and his last--is to involve duty; he is to be a confessor and martyr for it! Nothing less than happiness and prudence are to be sacrificed to conscience in the matter. Truly, if the truth that there is no truth involves any duty, it ought to be the duty of believing that there is no duty to be performed; and you might as well call yourself a no-duty man as a no-truth man."

He smiled, but replied, that, seriously, it was impossible to adopt any religious opinions, or to change them, at the bidding of the will.

I admitted, of course, that the will had no direct power in the matter; but reminded him that, if he meant it had no influence, or even a little, on the formation or retention of opinions, no one could be a more strenuous assertor of the contrary than he had often been. I reminded him it was so notorious that man usually managed to believe as he wished, that was no one maxim more frequently on the lips of the greatest philosophers, orators, and poets. But I added that there is also a legitimate way of influencing will, and that is through the understanding; and was with the hope of inducing him to reconsider the paradoxes of scepticism, and not with any expectation of instant or violent change, that I was anxious to enumerate them on the present occasion.

It is impossible for me to recollect exactly the course of the long conversation that ensued; suffice it to say, that he willingly granted many other paradoxes, some of them so readily, as to confirm the suspicion I had sometimes felt, that he must often have doubted the validity of his doubts. He admitted, for example, that since men in general (whether from the possession of a distinct religious faculty, though it might be corrupt and depraved, or a mere rudimentary tendency to religion) had adapted some religion, religious scepticism, in an intelligible sense, was opposed to nature; --that it was equally opposed to nature, inasmuch as the general constitution of man sought and loved certainty, or supposed certainty, and found a state of perpetual doubt intolerable; and that if this be attributed to a tendency to dogmatism, that is the very tendency of nature which is affirmed;--that it is opposed to nature again in this way, that whereas restlessness and agitation of mind are usually, at all events, warnings to seek relief, scepticism produces these as its pure and proper result;--that since, by the confession of every mind worthy of respect, the great doctrines of religion, if not true, are such that we cannot but wish they were; since, by his own confession, scepticism has nothing to allure in it, and rather causes misery than happiness; and since, by his confession and that of every one else, men in general easily believe as they wish, it is an unaccountable paradox, that any one should remain a sceptic for a day, except, indeed, from a guilty fear of the truth;--that, since scepticism tends to misery, it is better not to know its truth, and that therefore ignorance is better than knowledge;--that, if Christianity be an illusion, it, at all events, tends to make men happier than the truth of scepticism, and that therefore error is better than truth;--that religious scepticism is open to the same objection as scepticism absolute; for whereas the last is taunted with trusting to reason to prove that reason can in nothing be trusted, religious scepticism is chargeable with declaring the certainty of all uncertainty, and, while proclaiming: that there is nothing true, avowing that that is truth and lastly, that if, in consistency, it leaves even that uncertainty uncertain, it arrives at a conclusion which everlastingly remits us to renewed investigation!

"But," said he, "the sceptic does affirm the certainty of all uncertainty. That is precisely my state of mind, even in relation to Christianity. Both its truth and falsehood are--uncertain."

"Then," said I, "I must not say you reject Christianity, but only that you do not receive it?

"Precisely so," said he, with a smile and a blush at the same time. I was much amused with this logical ceremoniousness, by which a man is not to say that he rejects any thing so conditioned, but only that he does not receive it. I told him I imagined they came to much the same thing.

"It is impossible," said he, after a pause, "to affirm any thing on these subjects."

"It is equally impossible?" said I, "to affirm nothing; on the contrary, you sceptics have two conclusions, though in a negative form, for every body else's one,--together with the pleasant addition, that they are contraries to one another; and as Pascal said that the man who attempted to be neuter between the sceptic and dogmatist was a sceptic par excellence, so the genuine sceptic may be called a dogmatist par excellence."

"For my part," said he, smiling sadly, "I hardly think it is very difficult either to believe nothing or every thing. Fellowes, you see, has believed everything, and now he is in a fair way to believe nothing. However, all I mean is, that the evidence on these subjects reduces one to a state of complete mental suspense, in which it is equally unreasonable to say that we believe, as to say that we believe not. However, I grant you most of the paradoxes you mention; but a sceptic is not to be startled by paradoxes, I trow; alas! they prove nothing."

"Prove nothing! nay, I think you do your system injustice; I think it is entitled to the distinction of making great discoveries. You confess that the only truth on these subjects is, that there is no truth; that to act on this truth necessitates a conduct opposed to nature, to prudence, to happiness; that it is a knowledge worse than ignorance; that it is a truth that is worse than error; that it never did, will, or can be embraced by many, and that it makes the few who embrace it miserable; you admit further, with me, that men generally believe as they wish. Why, then, do you not fly from so hideous a monster, on the very ground (only in this case it is stronger) on which you doubt all religious systems,--that is, on account of the supposed paradoxes they involve? It may be but a little argument with you, who seem to demand demonstration of religious truth; but for myself, I feel that, whatever be the truth, such a chimera as scepticism, bristling all over with paradoxes, must be--a lie."

"Well," he replied, "but then which religion is the true?"

"Nay," I said, "that is an after consideration; if you can but be brought to believe that any is true, I know you will believe but one."

"You touched just now," he replied, "on the very difficulty. I shall believe as soon as any one gives me what you truly say I ask,-- demonstration of the truth of some one of the thousand and one religious systems which men have believed."

"And that, demonstration," said I, "you cannot have; for God has not granted demonstration to man on that or any other subject in which duty is involved."

"But why might I not have had it? and should I not have had it, if it had been incumbent on me to believe it?"

We had now come to the very knot of the whole argument.

"Incumbent on you to believe! I suppose you mean, if there had been any system which you could not but believe; which you must believe whether you would or not. No doubt, in that case, the requisite evidence would have been such that scepticism would have been impossible; that word 'incumbent' implies duty; and that word duty is the key to the whole mystery, for it implies the possibility of resisting its claims. We do not speak of its being incumbent on a man to run out of a burning house, or to swim, if he can, when thrown into deep water. He cannot help it. If there be a Supreme Ruler of the universe, and if the posture of his intelligent creatures be that of submissive obedience to him, it is inconceivable that a man can ever have experience of his being willing to perform that duty with the sort of demonstration which you demand; and, for aught we know, it may be impossible, constituted as we are, that we should ever be actually trained to that duty, except in the midst of very much less than certainty. Now, if this be so,--and I defy you or any man to prove that it may not be so,--then we are asking a simple impossibility when we ask that we may be freed from these conditions; for it is asking that we may perform our duty, under circumstances which shall render all duty impossible." I pursued this subject at some length, and reminded him that the supposed law of our religious condition was throughout in analogy with that of the entire condition of our present life, and in conformity with his own rule of the probable; that it is probable evidence only that is given to man in either case, and "probable evidence," as Bishop Butler says, "often of even wretchedly insufficient character." Nature, or rather God himself, everywhere cries aloud to us, "O mortals! certainty, demonstration, infallibility, are not for you, and shall not be given to you; for there must be a sphere for faith, hope, sincerity, diligence, patience." And as if to prove to us, not only that this evidence is what we must trust to, but that we safely may, He impels us by strong necessities of our lower nature operating on the higher (which would otherwise, perhaps, plead for the sceptic's inaction in relation to this as well as to another world) to play our part; if we stand shivering on the brink of action, necessity plunges us headlong in; if we fear to hoist the sail, the strength of the current of life snaps our moorings, and compels us to drive. I reminded him, that the general result also shows that, as man must, so he may, can, will, shall, (and so through all the moods and tenses of contingency,) do well; that faith in that same sort of evidence which the sceptic rejects when urged in behalf of religion, prompts the farmer to cast in his seed, though he can command no blink of sunshine, nor a drop of rain; the merchant to commit his treasures to the deep, though they may all go to the bottom, and sometimes do; the physician to essay the cure of his patient, though often half in doubt whether his remedy will kill or save. "It is," said I, "in that same faith that we build, and plant, and lay our little plans each day; sometimes coming to nothing, but generally, and according to the fidelity and manliness with which we have conducted ourselves, securing more than a return for the moral capital embarked; and even where this is not the case, issuing, when there have been the qualities which would naturally secure success, a vigor and robustness of character, which, like the rude health glowing in the weather-beaten mariner, who has buffeted with wind and wave, are a more precious recompense than success itself. In these examples God says to us in effect, 'On such evidence you must and shall act,' and shows us that we safely may. Without promising us absolute success in all our plans, or absolute truth in the investigation of evidence, he says, in either case, 'Do your best; be faithful to the light you have, diligent and conscientious in your investigations of available evidence, great or little,--act fearlessly on what appears the truth, and leave the rest to me.'"

Harrington here asked the question I expected:--"But suppose different men coming (as they do) on religious subjects to different conclusions, after the diligence and fidelity of which you speak, what then?"

"Then, if the fidelity and diligence have been absolute,--if all has been done which, under the circumstances, could be done,--I doubt not they are blameless. But I fear there are very few who can absolutely say this; and for those who cannot say it at all, their guilt is proportionate to the demands which the momentous nature of the subject made on diligence and fidelity."

"I suppose" said he, with some hesitation, "you will not allow that I have exercised this impartial search; and yet, supposing that I have, will you not hold me blameless on the very principles now laid down?"

It was a painful question; but I was resolved I would have nothing to reproach myself with; and therefore answered steadily, that it was not for me to judge the degree of blame which attached to his present state of mind, which I trusted was only transient; that the argument from sincerity was itself only one of the probable things of which we had been speaking; that, so subtle are the operations of the human mind, so mysterious the play of the passions and affections, the reason and conscience, so intimate the connection amongst all our powers and faculties, that it is one of the most difficult things to be able to say, with truth, that we are perfectly sincere; that I did not see any difficulty in believing that there is many a man who, without hesitation and without any conscious hypocrisy, would avow his sincerity, who, upon being suffered to look into his own mind through a moral solar microscope, would see there all sorts of misshapen monsters, and turn away from the spectacle with disgust and horror; that such a microscope (to speak in figure) might one day be applied by that Power to whom only the human heart is fully known. I added, however, that, if I knew more of his mental history for some years past, (into which my affection-should never induce me impertinently to pry,) I might, perhaps, in some measure, account for his scepticism; that I could even conceive cases of minds so "encompassed with infirmity," or so dependent on states of health, as to render such a state involuntary, and therefore to take them out of the sphere of our argument. But, apart from some such causes, I plainly told him I could not permit myself to believe that religious scepticism could be free from heavy blame, if only on the ground that such as feel it do not act consistently with its maxims in other cases, where the evidence is of the same dubious nature, or rather is much more dubious. The parallel case would be, (if we could find it,) of a man whose interest urgently required him to act one way or the other, and who, instead of acting accordingly, sat down in absolute inaction, on the score that he did not know what course to pursue. That indecision would be always blamable. "Ah!" said I, "those cool heads and skilful hands which pilot the little bark of their worldly fortunes amidst such dangerous rocks and breakers, under such dark and stormy skies, what can they say, if asked why they gave up all thought of religion on the score of doubt, when its hopes are at least as high as those of the schemes of earthly success, and its claims at least as strong as those of present duty? What will they be able to say?

"O Harrington!" I continued, in some such words as these, "supposing the draught of our present condition not to be such as I have sketched; that the sceptical view of the gloom in which we are placed is the true one, and that the Christian's is false; which, nevertheless, is likely to be not merely the happier, but the nobler being,--he who sits down in querulous repining or slothful inactivity, as the result of doubt, or he who, buoyant with faith and hope, encounters the gloom, and, while longing for the dawn, is confident that it will come? But if that sketch be a true one,--if the trial of which I have spoken be necessary for you and for all, to develop and discipline those qualities which alone will elicit and mature an Immortal Virtue, and secure to us at last the privilege of indefectible 'children of God,'--then with what feelings will you hear the Great Master say, 'In every other case but this, you acted on the principles and maxims by which I taught you (not obscurely) that I summoned you to act in this case also: doubts and difficulties were necessary to you as to all, and I exacted of you no more than were necessary ultimately to secure for you an eternal exemption from them. But because you could not have that certainty which the very necessity of the case excluded, you declined the trial, and have accounted yourself unworthy of eternal life!' Ah! how different if you could hear him say, 'It was indeed a temptation; amidst numberless blessings denied to others, I yet gave you, too, your trial;--the questionable talent of an inquisitive intellect, and leisure to use or abuse it. Tempted to absolute doubt, you would not succumb to it; you would not be so inconsistent here as to relinquish those maxims on which I compelled you to act in every other case in life, nor deny to ME the confidence which you granted to every common friend! Warned by the very misery which was sent to caution you that in that direction lay death, you struggled against the incursions of your subtle foes, and you overcame. Welcome, child of clay! welcome to that world in which there is no more NIGHT!'"

We had been talking on till long past midnight; and the lamp suddenly warned us that its light was just expiring. Harrington took off the shade, and was about to light a candle by the dying flame, when it went out. "It matters not," he said, "I have the means of kindling a light close at hand." "Let it alone," said I, rising, and gently laying my hand on his arm, and speaking in a low voice, but with much earnestness; "this darkness is an emblem of our present life. You cannot see me, but you hear my voice and feel the touch of my hand. For any thing you know, I may be seized with a sudden fit of insanity. I may be about to stab you in this darkness; such things have been. You have lost, with the light, more than half the indications of affection which that would disclose. But you trust to the probable; your pulse does not beat any the quicker, nor do your nerves tremble. You may have similar, nay, how much stronger proofs (if you will) of the confidence with which you may trust God, and Him, the compassionate One, "whom he hath sent," in spite of all the gloom in which this life is involved. That certainty for which you have just now asked will only be granted when the darkness is passed away; and then you will 'rejoice in the light of his countenance.' And, further," I continued, "there is yet one thing which I wish to say to you; and I feel as if I could say it better in this darkness; for I will not venture to say that I should not manifest more feeling than is consistent in a hard-hearted metaphysician. Yes! it is on the side of feeling that I would also address you. You will say, feeling is not argument? No; but is man all reason? I firmly believe, indeed, that man is not called upon to do any thing for which his reason does not tell him that he has sufficient evidence; but a part of that very evidence is often the dictate of feeling; and genuine reason will listen to the heart, as not always, nor perhaps more frequently than otherwise, a suspicious pleader. If, as Pascal says so truly, it sometimes has its reasons which the reason cannot comprehend, it has also its reasons which the reason thoroughly understands.

"You were early an orphan; you do not remember your mother; but I do; ah, how well! I saw her the last time she ever saw you. You were brought to her bedside when she was in the full possession of all her faculties, and deeply conscious that she had not many hours to live. She looked at you as you were held in your nurse's arms, smiling upon her with to me an agonizing unconsciousness of your approaching orphanage. She gazed upon you with that intense look of inexpressible affection which only maternal love, sharpened by death, can give; she looked long and earnestly, but spoke not one syllable. As you were at length taken from the room, she followed you with her eyes till the door closed, and then it seemed as if the light of this world had been quenched in them for ever. 'I charge you,' she said at length, 'let me see him again.' I made a motion as if to recall the attendant 'Not here,' she added, laying her hand gently on my arm, and I understood her but too well. You know whether I have in any degree fulfilled my trust. But is it possible that I can think of an utter failure, and not be more than troubled? And if Christianity be true, and if I am so happy as to obtain admission to that 'blessed country into which an enemy never entered, and from which a friend never went away,' and she whom I loved so well should ask me why you come not,--that she had tarried for you long,--must I say that you will never come? that her child had wandered from the fold of the Good Shepherd, and had gone I knew not whither? that I sought him in the lonely glens and mountains, but found him not? I hardly know, but I almost think--such was the love she had for you--that such reply would shade that radiant face even amidst the glories of Paradise. And now--let all this be a dream--suppose that not simply by your own fault you will never see that mother more, but that from the sad truth of your no truth--you never can; that the 'Vale, vale, in aeternum, vale,' is all that you can say to her: yet I say this,--that to live only in the hope of the possibility of fulfilling the better wishes of such a friend, and rejoining her for ever in (if you will) the fabulous 'islands of the blest,' would not only make you a happier, but even a nobler, being than your present mood can ever make you. My FABULOUS is better than your TRUE."

I felt that he was not unmoved. I was myself moved too much to allow me to stay any longer, and saying that I could find my way very well to my chamber in the dark, where I had the means of kindling a light, I softly closed the door and left him. ____

As I was to leave very early in the morning, I had told Harrington that I should depart for the neighboring town (whither his servant was to drive me) without disturbing him. But I could not tear myself away, after the singular close of our interview on the last evening, without a more express farewell. I tapped at his chamber door, but, receiving no reply, gently entered. He was resting in unquiet slumber. A table, lamp, and books, by his bedside, bore witness to his perseverance in that pernicious habit which he had early formed! I gently drew back one of the curtains, and let in the light of the summer morning on his pallid, but most speaking features, and gazed on them with a sad and foreboding feeling. I recalled those days when I used nightly to visit the slumbers of the little orphan, and trace in his features the image of his mother. He was not aroused by my entrance; most likely he had sunk to slumber at a late hour. Presently he began to talk in his sleep, which was almost a constant habit in his younger days, and which I used to consider one of the symptoms of that intense cerebral activity by which he was distinguished. On the present occasion I thought I could interpret the fitful and fleeting images which were chasing each other by the laws of association through his mind. "But how shall I know that these thing which I call real, are different from the phenomena of sleep which I call real?" Alas! thought I, the ruling passion is strong in sleep, as in waking moments! How I dread lest it should be strong "in death" itself, of which this sleep is the image! After a pause, an expression of deepest sadness crept over the features, and he murmured, with a slight alteration, two lines from Coleridge's translation of that glorious scene in which Wallenstein looks forth into the windy night in search of his "star," and thinks of that brighter light of his life which had been just extinguished. Harrington used to say, that he preferred the translation of that scene even to the magnificent original itself. These lines, (now a little varied,) I had often heard him quote with delight:--

"Methinks If I but saw her, 't would be well with me; She was the star of my nativity."

Was he, by the magic of dream-land, transported back to childhood? Was he as an orphan child thinking of his mother, the image of whose dying hours I had so recently called up before him? Or was it the recollection of a still brighter and more recently extinguished "star," which thus troubled his wandering fancy?--There was another pause, and again the fitful breeze of association awakened the sad and plaintive melody of the AEolian lyre; but I could not distinguish the words.

Presently the scene again changed; and he suddenly said, "Beautiful shadow! if thou art a shadow,--thou hast said, Come to me all ye that are weary,--and surely if ever man was weary--To whom can I go--" It was with intense feeling that I watched for something more; but to my disappointment, (I may almost call it anguish,) he continued silent. I could not find it in my heart to rouse him, and, softly leaving the chamber, departed for home. ____

October 31. The young Sceptic has since gone where doubts are solved for ever; but I am not without hope, that in his last hours he was able to finish the sentence which his dream-left incomplete. "To whom can I go, but unto Thee? THOU ONLY HAST THE WORDS OF ETERNAL LIFE." For me, I have nothing more to live for here. In a few weeks I gladly go to join my brother in his distant exile;--and for Thee, my Country, "Peace be within thy dwellings, and prosperity within thy palaces!" And that it may be so, may that Christianity, which, all imperfectly as it has been exemplified, has yet been thy Palladium and thy Glory, be ever and increasingly dear to thee! ____

December 27. I have resolved that the fragments which originally constituted this journal shall not be destroyed. I have employed the interval since the last date in adapting and disguising them for publication. How far an embroidery of fiction has been necessary in attaining this object, is a matter of no consequence to any one; since the book aspires to none of the appropriate attractions of either a novel or a history. No doubt a much stronger interest, of a certain kind, might have been secured by a free employment of fictitious embellishment, or even by a more liberal indulgence in biographical details. But I have been content, for a special object, to do what some tell us is to be done with the Bible,--to separate, from the mass of incident which might have varied or adorned the narrative the exclusively "Religious Element." If the discussions in the preceding pages shall in any instance convince the youthful reader of the precarious nature of those modern book-revelations which are somewhat inconsistently given us in books which tell us that all book-revelations of religious truth are superfluous or even impossible; if they shall convince him how easily an impartial doubter can retort with interest the deistical arguments against Christianity, or how little merely insoluble objections can avail against any thing; if they shall convince him that the differences with which the assailants of the Bible taunt its advocates are neither so numerous nor half so appalling as those which divide its enemies; or, lastly, if they shall, par avarice, in any degree protect those who, like Harrington D----, are being made, or are in danger of being made, sceptical as to all religious truth, by the religious distractions of the present day,--I shall be well content to bear the charge of having spoiled a Fiction, or even of having mutilated a Biography.

F.B.

THE END.