But the intensity of belief, like that of every other passion, is

precisely proportioned to the degrees of excitement. A graduated scale,

on which should be marked the capabilities of propositions to approach

to the test of the senses, would be a just measure of the belief which

ought to be attached to them: and but for the influence of prejudice or

ignorance this invariably _is_ the measure of belief. That is believed

which is apprehended to be true, nor can the mind by any exertion avoid

attaching credit to an opinion attended with overwhelming evidence.

Belief is not an act of volition, nor can it be regulated by the mind:

it is manifestly incapable therefore of either merit or criminality.

The system which assumes a false criterion of moral virtue, must be as

pernicious as it is absurd. Above all, it cannot be divine, as it is

impossible that the Creator of the human mind should be ignorant of its

primary powers.

The degree of evidence afforded by miracles and prophecies in favour of

the Christian Religion is lastly to be considered.

Evidence of a more imposing and irresistible nature is required

in proportion to the remoteness of any event from the sphere of

our experience. Every case of miracles is a contest of opposite

improbabilities, whether it is more contrary to experience that a

miracle should be true, or that the story on which it is supported

should be false: whether the immutable laws of this harmonious world

should have undergone violation, or that some obscure Greeks and Jews

should have conspired to fabricate a tale of wonder.

The actual appearance of a departed spirit would be a circumstance

truly unusual and portentous; but the accumulated testimony of twelve

old women that a spirit had appeared is neither unprecedented nor

miraculous.

It seems less credible that the God whose immensity is uncircumscribed

by space, should have committed adultery with a carpenter’s wife,

than that some bold knaves or insane dupes had deceived the credulous

multitude.[29] We have perpetual and mournful experience of the latter:

the former is yet under dispute. History affords us innumerable

examples of the possibility of the one: Philosophy has in all ages

protested against the probability of the other.

Every superstition can produce its dupes, its miracles, and its

mysteries; each is prepared to justify its peculiar tenets by an equal

assemblage of portents, prophecies and martyrdoms.

Prophecies, however circumstantial, are liable to the same objection as

direct miracles: it is more agreeable to experience that the historical

evidence of the prediction really having preceded the event pretended

to be foretold should be false, or that a lucky conjuncture of events

should have justified the conjecture of the prophet, than that God

should communicate to a man the discernment of future events.[30] I

defy you to produce more than one instance of prophecy in the Bible,

wherein the inspired writer speaks so as to be understood, wherein his

prediction has not been so unintelligible and obscure as to have been

itself the subject of controversy among Christians.

That one prediction which I except is certainly most explicit and

circumstantial. It is the only one of this nature which the Bible

contains. Jesus himself here predicts his own arrival in the clouds to

consummate a period of supernatural desolation, before the generation

which he addressed should pass away.[31] Eighteen hundred years have

past, and no such event is pretended to have happened. This single

plain prophecy, thus conspicuously false, may serve as a criterion of

those which are more vague and indirect, and which apply in an hundred

senses to an hundred things.

Either the pretended predictions in the Bible were meant to be

understood, or they were not. If they were, why is there any dispute

concerning them: if they were not, wherefore were they written at all?

But the God of Christianity spoke to mankind in parables, that seeing

they might not see, and hearing they might not understand.

The Gospels contain internal evidence that they were not written by

eye-witnesses of the event which they pretend to record. The Gospel of

St. Matthew was plainly not written until some time after the taking

of Jerusalem, that is, at least forty years after the execution of

Jesus Christ: for he makes Jesus say that _upon you may come all the

righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel

unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias whom ye slew between

the altar and the temple_.[32] Now Zacharias, son of Barachias, was

assassinated between the altar and the temple by a faction of zealots,

during the siege of Jerusalem.[33]

You assert that the design of the instances of supernatural

interposition which the Gospel records was to convince mankind that

Jesus Christ was truly the expected Redeemer. But it is as impossible

that any human sophistry should frustrate the manifestation of

Omnipotence, as that Omniscience should fail to select the most

efficient means of accomplishing its design. Eighteen centuries have

passed and the tenth part of the human race have a blind and mechanical

belief in that Redeemer, without a complete reliance on the merits

of whom, their lot is fixed in everlasting misery: surely if the

Christian system be thus dreadfully important its Omnipotent author

would have rendered it incapable of those abuses from which it has

never been exempt, and to which it is subject in common with all human

institutions, he would not have left it a matter of ceaseless cavil or

complete indifference to the immense majority of mankind. Surely some

more conspicuous evidences of its authenticity would have been afforded

than driving out devils, drowning pigs, curing blind men, animating a

dead body, and turning water into wine. Some theatre worthier of the

transcendent event, than Judea, would have been chosen, some historians

more adapted by their accomplishments and their genius to record the

incarnation of the immutable God. The humane society restores drowned

persons; every empiric can cure every disease; drowning pigs is no

very difficult matter, and driving out devils was far from being an

original or an unusual occupation in Judea. Do not recite these stale

absurdities as proofs of the Divine origin of Christianity.

If the Almighty has spoken, would not the Universe have been convinced?

If he had judged the knowledge of his will to have been more important

than any other science to mankind, would he not have rendered it more

evident and more clear?

Now, O Eusebes, have I enumerated the general grounds of my disbelief

of the Christian Religion.--I could have collated its Sacred Writings

with the Brahminical record of the early ages of the world, and

identified its institutions with the antient worship of the Sun. I

might have entered into an elaborate comparison of the innumerable

discordances which exist between the inspired historians of the same

event. Enough however has been said to vindicate me from the charge of

groundless and infatuated scepticism. I trust therefore to your candour

for the consideration, and to your logic for the refutation, of my

arguments.

Eusebes.

I will not dissemble, O Theosophus, the difficulty of solving your

general objections to Christianity, on the grounds of human reason.

I did not assist at the councils of the Almighty when he determined

to extend his mercy to mankind, nor can I venture to affirm that it

exceeded the limits of his power to have afforded a more conspicuous or

universal manifestation of his will.

But this is a difficulty which attends Christianity in common with the

belief in the being and attributes of God. This whole scheme of things

might have been, according to our partial conceptions, infinitely more

admirable and perfect. Poisons, earthquakes, disease, war, famine and

venomous serpents; slavery and persecution are the consequences of

certain causes, which according to human judgment might well have been

dispensed with in arranging the economy of the globe.

Is this the reasoning which the Theist will choose to employ? Will he

impose limitations on that Deity whom he professes to regard with so

profound a veneration? Will he place his God between the horns of a

logical dilemma which shall restrict the fulness either of his power or

his bounty?

Certainly he will prefer to resign his objections to Christianity,

than pursue the reasoning upon which they are found, to the dreadful

conclusions of cold and dreary Atheism.

I confess that Christianity appears not unattended with difficulty to

the understanding which approaches it with a determination to judge its

mysteries by reason. I will ever[34] confess that the discourse, which

you have just delivered, ought to unsettle any candid mind engaged

in a similar attempt. The children of this world are wiser in their

generation than the children of light.

But if I succeed in convincing you that reason conducts to conclusions

destructive of morality, happiness, and the hope of futurity, and

inconsistent with the very existence of human society, I trust that you

will no longer confide in a director so dangerous and faithless.

I require you to declare, O Theosophus, whether you would embrace

Christianity or Atheism, if no other systems of belief shall be found

to stand the touchstone of enquiry.

Theosophus.

I do not hesitate to prefer the Christian system, or indeed any

system of religion, however rude and gross, to Atheism. Here we truly

sympathize; nor do I blame, however I may feel inclined to pity, the

man who in his zeal to escape this gloomy faith, should plunge into the

most abject superstition.

The Atheist is a monster among men. Inducements, which are omnipotent

over the conduct of others, are impotent for him. His private judgment

is his criterion of right and wrong. He dreads no judge but his own

conscience, he fears no hell but the loss of his self-esteem. He is

not to be restrained by punishments, for death is divested of its

terror, and whatever enters into his heart to conceive, that will he

not scruple to execute. _Iste non timet omnia providentem et

cogitantem, et animadvertentem, et omnia ad se pertinere putantem,

curiosum et plenum negotii Deum._

This dark and terrible doctrine was surely the abortion of some

blind speculator’s brain; some strange and hideous perversion of

intellect, some portentous distortion of reason. There can surely be

no metaphysician sufficiently bigoted to his own system to look upon

this harmonious world, and dispute the necessity of intelligence; to

contemplate the design and deny the designer; to enjoy the spectacle of

this beautiful Universe and not feel himself instinctively persuaded to

gratitude and adoration. What arguments of the slightest plausibility

can be adduced to support a doctrine rejected alike by the instinct of

the savage and the reason of the sage?

I readily engage, with you, to reject reason as a faithless guide, if

you can demonstrate that it conducts to Atheism. So little, however,

do I mistrust the dictates of reason, concerning a supreme Being, that

I promise, in the event of your success, to subscribe the wildest and

most monstrous creed which you can devise. I will call credulity,

faith; reason, impiety; the dictates of the understanding shall be the

temptations of the Devil, and the wildest dreams of the imagination,

the infallible inspirations of Grace.

Eusebes.

Let me request you then to state, concisely, the grounds of your belief

in the being of a God. In my reply I shall endeavour to controvert your

reasoning, and shall hold myself acquitted by my zeal for the Christian

religion, of the blasphemies which I must utter in the progress of my

discourse.

Theosophus.

I will readily state the grounds of my belief in the being of a God.

You can only have remained ignorant of the obvious proofs of this

important truth, from a superstitious reliance upon the evidence

afforded by a revealed religion. The reasoning lies within an extremely

narrow compass; _quicquid enim nos vel meliores vel beatiores

facturum est, aut in aperto, nut in proximo posuit natura_.

From every design we justly infer a designer. If we examine the

structure of a watch, we shall readily confess the existence of a

watch-maker. No work of man could possibly have existed from all

eternity. From the contemplation of any product of human art, we

conclude that there was an artificer who arranged its several parts. In

like manner, from the marks of design and contrivance exhibited in the

Universe, we are necessitated to infer a designer, a contriver. If the

parts of the Universe have been designed, contrived, and adapted, the

existence of a God is manifest.

But design is sufficiently apparent. The wonderful adaptation of

substances which act to those which are acted upon; of the eye to

light, and of light to the eye; of the ear to sound, and of sound to

the ear; of every object of sensation to the sense which it impresses

prove that neither blind chance, nor undistinguishing necessity has

brought them into being. The adaptation of certain animals to certain

climates, the relation borne to each other by animals and vegetables,

and by different tribes of animals; the relation, lastly, between

man and the circumstances of his external situation are so many

demonstrations of Deity.

All is order, design, and harmony, so far as we can descry the tendency

of things, and every new enlargement of our views, every new display of

the material world, affords a new illustration of the power, the wisdom

and the benevolence of God.

The existence of God has never been the topic of popular dispute. There

is a tendency to devotion, a thirst for reliance on supernatural aid

inherent in the human mind. Scarcely any people, however barbarous,

have been discovered, who do not acknowledge with reverence and awe the

supernatural causes of the natural effects which they experience. They

worship, it is true, the vilest and most inanimate substances, but they

firmly confide in the holiness and power of these symbols, and thus own

their connexion with what they can neither see nor perceive.

If there is motion in the Universe, there is a God.[35] The power of

beginning motion is no less an attribute of mind than sensation or

thought. Wherever motion exists it is evident that mind has operated.

The phenomena of the Universe indicate the agency of powers which

cannot belong to inert matter.

Every thing which begins to exist must have a cause: every combination,

conspiring to an end, implies intelligence.

Eusebes.

Design must be proved before a designer can be inferred. The matter

in controversy is the existence of design in the Universe, and it is

not permitted to assume the contested premises and thence infer the

matter in dispute. Insidiously to employ the words contrivance, design,

and adaptation before these circumstances are made apparent in the

Universe, thence justly inferring a contriver, is a popular sophism

against which it behoves us to be watchful.

To assert that motion is an attribute of mind, that matter is inert,

that every combination is the result of intelligence is also an

assumption of the matter in dispute.

Why do we admit design in any machine of human contrivance? Simply

because innumerable instances of machines having been contrived by

human art are present to our mind, because we are acquainted with

persons who could construct such machines; but if, having no previous

knowledge of any artificial contrivance, we had accidentally found a

watch upon the ground, we should have been justified in concluding

that it was a thing of Nature, that it was a combination of matter

with whose cause we were unacquainted, and that any attempt to account

for the origin of its existence would be equally presumptuous and

unsatisfactory.

The analogy which you attempt to establish between the contrivances of

human art, and the various existences of the Universe, is inadmissible.

We attribute these effects to human intelligence, because we know

beforehand that human intelligence is capable of producing them.

Take away this knowledge, and the grounds of our reasoning will be

destroyed. Our entire ignorance, therefore, of the Divine Nature leaves

this analogy defective in its most essential point of comparison.

What consideration remains to be urged in support of the creation

of the Universe by a supreme Being? Its admirable fitness for the

production of certain effects, that wonderful consent of all its

parts, that universal harmony by whose changeless laws innumerable

systems of worlds perform their stated revolutions, and the blood is

driven through the veins of the minutest animalcule that sports in

the corruption of an insect’s lymph: on this account did the Universe

require an intelligent Creator, because it exists producing invariable

effects, and inasmuch as it is admirably organised for the production

of these effects, so the more did it require a creative intelligence.

Thus have we arrived at the substance of your assertion, “That whatever

exists, producing certain effects, stands in need of a Creator, and the

more conspicuous is its fitness for the production of these effects,

the more certain will be our conclusion that it would not have existed

from eternity, but must have derived its origin from an intelligent

creator.”

In what respect then do these arguments apply to the Universe, and not

apply to God? From the fitness of the Universe to its end you infer

the necessity of an intelligent Creator. But if the fitness of the

Universe, to produce certain effects, be thus conspicuous and evident,

how much more exquisite fitness to his end must exist in the Author

of this Universe? If we find great difficulty from its admirable

arrangement in conceiving that the Universe has existed from all

eternity, and to resolve this difficulty suppose a Creator, how much

more clearly must we perceive the necessity of this very Creator’s

creation whose perfections comprehend an arrangement far more accurate

and just.

The belief of an infinity of creative and created Gods, each more

eminently requiring an intelligent author of his being than the

foregoing, is a direct consequence of the premises which you have

stated. The assumption that the Universe is a design, leads to a

conclusion that there are [an] infinity of creative and created Gods,

which is absurd. It is impossible indeed to prescribe limits to

learned error, when Philosophy relinquishes experience and feeling for

speculation.

Until it is clearly proved that the Universe was created, we may

reasonably suppose that it has endured from all eternity. In a case

where two propositions are diametrically opposite, the mind believes

that which is less incomprehensible: it is easier to suppose that the

Universe has existed from all eternity, than to conceive an eternal

being capable of creating it. If the mind sinks beneath the weight of

one, is it an alleviation to increase the intolerability of the burthen?

A man knows, not only that he now is, but that there was a time when he

did not exist; consequently there must have been a cause. But we can

only infer, from effects, causes exactly adequate to those effects.

There certainly is a generative power which is effected by particular

instruments; we cannot prove that it is inherent in these instruments,

nor is the contrary hypothesis capable of demonstration. We admit

that the generative power is incomprehensible, but to suppose that

the same effects are produced by an eternal Omnipotent and Omniscient

Being, leaves the cause in the same obscurity, but renders it more

incomprehensible.

We can only infer from effects causes exactly adequate to those

effects. An infinite number of effects demand an infinite number

of causes, nor is the philosopher justified in supposing a greater

connexion or unity in the latter, than is perceptible in the former.

The same energy cannot be at once the cause of the serpent and the

sheep; of the blight by which the harvest is destroyed, and the

sunshine by which it is matured; of the ferocious propensities by which

man becomes a victim to himself, and of the accurate judgment by which

his institutions are improved. The spirit of our accurate and exact

philosophy is outraged by conclusions which contradict each other so

glaringly.

The greatest, equally with the smallest motions of the Universe, are

subjected to the rigid necessity of inevitable laws. These laws are

the unknown causes of the known effects perceivable in the Universe.

Their effects are the boundaries of our knowledge, their names the

expressions of our ignorance. To suppose some existence beyond, or

above them, is to invent a second and superfluous hypothesis to

account for what has already been accounted for by the laws of motion

and the properties of matter. I admit that the nature of these laws

is incomprehensible, but the hypothesis of a Deity adds a gratuitous

difficulty, which so far from alleviating those which it is adduced

to explain, requires new hypotheses for the elucidation of its own

inherent contradictions.

The laws of attraction and repulsion, desire and aversion, suffice

to account for every phenomenon of the moral and physical world. A

precise knowledge of the properties of any object, is alone requisite

to determine its manner of action. Let the mathematician be acquainted

with the weight and volume of a cannon ball, together with the degree

of velocity and inclination with which it is impelled, and he will

accurately delineate the course it must describe, and determine the

force with which it will strike an object at a given distance. Let the

influencing motive, present to the mind of any person be given, and

the knowledge of his consequent conduct will result. Let the bulk and

velocity of a comet be discovered, and the astronomer, by the accurate

estimation of the equal and contrary actions of the centripetal and

centrifugal forces, will justly predict the period of its return.

The anomalous motions of the heavenly bodies, their unequal velocities

and frequent aberrations, are corrected by that gravitation by which

they are caused. The illustrious Laplace has shewn that the approach

of the Moon to the Earth, and the Earth to the Sun, is only a secular

equation of a very long period, which has its maximum and minimum. The

system of the Universe then is upheld solely by physical powers. The

necessity of matter is the ruler of the world. It is vain philosophy

which supposes more causes than are exactly adequate to explain the

phenomena of things. _Hypotheses non fingo: quicquid enim ex

phænomenis non deducitur, hypothesis vocanda est; et hypotheses vel

metaphysicæ, vel physicæ, vel qualitatum occultarum, seu mechanicæ, in

philosophiâ locum non habent._

You assert that the construction of the animal machine, the fitness

of certain animals to certain situations, the connexion between the

organs of perception and that which is perceived; the relation between

everything which exists, and that which tends to preserve it in its

existence, imply design. It is manifest that if the eye could not see,

nor the stomach digest, the human frame could not preserve its present

mode of existence. It is equally certain, however, that the elements

of its composition, if they did not exist in one form, must exist in

another; and that the combinations which they would form, must so long

as they endured, derive support for their peculiar mode of being from

their fitness to the circumstances of their situation.

It by no means follows, that because a being exists, performing certain

functions, he was fitted by another being to the performance of these

functions. So rash a conclusion would conduct, as I have before shewn,

to an absurdity; and it becomes infinitely more unwarrantable from

the consideration that the known laws of matter and motion, suffice

to unravel, even in the present imperfect state of moral and physical

science, the majority of those difficulties which the hypothesis of a

Deity was invented to explain.

Doubtless no disposition of inert matter, or matter deprived of

qualities, could ever have composed an animal, a tree, or even a stone.

But matter deprived of qualities, is an abstraction, concerning which

it is impossible to form an idea. Matter, such as we behold it, is not

inert. It is infinitely active and subtile. Light, electricity, and

magnetism are fluids not surpassed by thought itself in tenuity and

activity: like thought they are sometimes the cause and sometimes the

effect of motion; and, distinct as they are from every other class of

substances with which we are acquainted, seem to possess equal claims

with thought to the unmeaning distinction of immateriality.

The laws of motion and the properties of matter suffice to account

for every phenomenon, or combination of phenomena exhibited in the

Universe. That certain animals exist in certain climates, results

from the consentaneity of their frames to the circumstances of

their situation: let these circumstances be altered to a sufficient

degree, and the elements of their composition must exist in some new

combination no less resulting than the former from those inevitable

laws by which the Universe is governed.

It is the necessary consequence of the organization of man, that his

stomach should digest his food: it inevitably results also from his

gluttonous and unnatural appetite for the flesh of animals that his

frame be diseased and his vigour impaired; but in neither of these

cases is adaptation of means to end to be perceived. Unnatural diet,

and the habits consequent upon its use are the means, and every

complication of frightful disease is the end, but to assert that these

means were adapted to this end by the Creator of the world, or that

human caprice can avail to traverse the precautions of Omnipotence,

is absurd. These are the consequences of the properties of organized

matter; and it is a strange perversion of the understanding to argue

that a certain sheep was created to be butchered and devoured by a

certain individual of the human species, when the conformation of the

latter, as is manifest to the most superficial student of comparative

anatomy, classes him with those animals who feed on fruits and

vegetables.[36]

The means by which the existence of an animal is sustained, requires a

designer in no greater degree than the existence itself of the animal.

If it exists, there must be means to support its existence. In a world

where _omne mutatur nihil interit_, no organized being can exist

without a continual separation of that substance which is incessantly

exhausted, nor can this separation take place otherwise than by the

invariable laws which result from the relations of matter. We are

incapacitated only by our ignorance from referring every phenomenon,

however unusual, minute or complex, to the laws of motion and the

properties of matter; and it is an egregious offence against the first

principles of reason to suppose an immaterial creator of the world,

_in quo omnia moventur sed sine mutuâ passione_: which is equally a

superfluous hypothesis in the mechanical philosophy of Newton, and a

useless excrescence on the inductive logic of Bacon.

What then is this harmony, this order which you maintain to have

required for its establishment, what it needs not for its maintenance,

the agency of a supernatural intelligence? Inasmuch as the order

visible in the Universe requires one cause, so does the disorder

whose operation is not less clearly apparent, demand another. Order

and disorder are no more than modifications of our own perceptions of

the relations which subsist between ourselves and external objects,

and if we are justified in inferring the operation of a benevolent

power from the advantages attendant on the former, the evils of the

latter bear equal testimony to the activity of a malignant principle,

no less pertinacious in inducing evil out of good, than the other is

unremitting in procuring good from evil.

If we permit our imagination to traverse the obscure regions of

possibility, we may doubtless imagine, according to the complexion of

our minds, that disorder may have a relative tendency to unmingled

good, or order be relatively replete with exquisite and subtile evil.

To neither of these conclusions, which are equally presumptuous

and unfounded, will it become the philosopher to assent. Order and

disorder are expressions denoting our perceptions of what is injurious

or beneficial to ourselves, or to the beings in whose welfare we are

compelled to sympathize by the similarity of their conformation to our

own.[37]

A beautiful antelope panting under the fangs of a tiger, a defenceless

ox, groaning beneath the butcher’s axe, is a spectacle which instantly

awakens compassion in a virtuous and unvitiated breast. Many there

are, however, sufficiently hardened to the rebukes of justice and the

precepts of humanity, as to regard the deliberate butchery of thousands

of their species, as a theme of exultation and a source of honour, and

to consider any failure in these remorseless enterprises as a defect in

the system of things. The criteria of order and disorder are as various

as those beings from whose opinions and feelings they result.

Populous cities are destroyed by earthquakes, and desolated by

pestilence. Ambition is everywhere devoting its millions to

incalculable calamity. Superstition, in a thousand shapes, is employed

in brutalizing and degrading the human species, and fitting it to

endure without a murmur the oppression of its innumerable tyrants. All

this is abstractedly neither good nor evil, because good and evil are

words employed to designate that peculiar state of our own perceptions,

resulting from the encounter of any object calculated to produce

pleasure or pain. Exclude the idea of relation, and the words good and

evil are deprived of import.

Earthquakes are injurious to the cities which they destroy, beneficial

to those whose commerce was injured by their prosperity, and

indifferent to others which are too remote to be affected by their

influence. Famine is good to the corn-merchant, evil to the poor,

and indifferent to those whose fortunes can at all times command a

superfluity. Ambition is evil to the restless bosom it inhabits, to

the innumerable victims who are dragged by its ruthless thirst for

infamy, to expire in every variety of anguish, to the inhabitants of

the country it depopulates, and to the human race whose improvement it

retards; it is indifferent with regard to the system of the Universe,

and is good only to the vultures and the jackalls that track the

conqueror’s career, and to the worms who feast in security on the

desolation of his progress. It is manifest that we cannot reason

with respect to the universal system from that which only exists in

relation to our own perceptions.

You allege some considerations in favour of a Deity from the

universality of a belief in his existence.

The superstitions of the savage, and the religion of civilized Europe

appear to you to conspire to prove a first cause. I maintain that it

is from the evidence of revelation alone that this belief derives the

slightest countenance.

That credulity should be gross in proportion to the ignorance of the

mind which it enslaves, is in strict consistency with the principles

of human nature. The idiot, the child, and the savage, agree in

attributing their own passions and propensities[38] to the inanimate

substances by which they are either benefited or injured. The former

become Gods and the latter Demons; hence prayers and sacrifices, by the

means of which the rude Theologian imagines that he may confirm the

benevolence of the one, or mitigate the malignity of the other. He has

averted the wrath of a powerful enemy by supplications and submission;

he has secured the assistance of his neighbour by offerings; he has

felt his own anger subside before the entreaties of a vanquished foe,

and has cherished gratitude for the kindness of another. Therefore does

he believe that the elements will listen to his vows. He is capable of

love and hatred towards his fellow beings, and is variously impelled

by those principles to benefit or injure them. The source of his error

is sufficiently obvious. When the winds, the waves and the atmosphere,

act in such a manner as to thwart or forward his designs, he attributes

to them the same propensities of whose existence within himself he is

conscious when he is instigated by benefits to kindness, or by injuries

to revenge. The bigot of the woods can form no conception of beings

possessed of properties differing from his own: it requires, indeed, a

mind considerably tinctured with science, and enlarged by cultivation

to contemplate itself, not as the centre and model of the Universe, but

as one of the infinitely various multitude of beings of which it is

actually composed.

There is no attribute of God which is not either borrowed from the

passions and powers of the human mind, or which is not a negation.

Omniscience, Omnipotence, Omnipresence, Infinity, Immutability,

Incomprehensibility, and Immateriality, are all words which designate

properties and powers peculiar to organised beings, with the addition

of negations, by which the idea of limitation is excluded.[39]

That the frequency of a belief in God (for it is not universal) should

be any argument in its favour, none to whom the innumerable mistakes of

men are familiar, will assert. It is among men of genius and science

that Atheism alone is found, but among these alone is cherished an

hostility to those errors, with which the illiterate and vulgar are

infected.

How small is the proportion of those who really believe in God, to the

thousands who are prevented by their occupations from ever bestowing

a serious thought upon the subject, and the millions who worship

butterflies, bones, feathers, monkeys, calabashes and serpents. The

word God, like other abstractions, signifies the agreement of certain

propositions, rather than the presence of any idea. If we found our

belief in the existence of God on the universal consent of mankind, we

are duped by the most palpable of sophisms. The word God cannot mean

at the same time an ape, a snake, a bone, a calabash, a Trinity, and a

Unity. Nor can that belief be accounted universal against which men of

powerful intellect and spotless virtue have in every age protested.

_Non pudet igitur physicum, id est speculatorem venatoremque

naturæ, ex animis consuetudine imbutis petere testimonium veritatis?_

Hume has shewn, to the satisfaction of all philosophers, that the only

idea which we can form of causation is derivable[40] from the constant

conjunction of objects, and the consequent inference of one from the

other. We denominate that phenomenon the cause of another which we

observe with the fewest exceptions to precede its occurrence. Hence it

would be inadmissible to deduce the being of a God from the existence

of the Universe; even if this mode of reasoning did not conduct to the

monstrous conclusion of an infinity of creative and created Gods, each

more eminently requiring a Creator than its predecessor.

If Power[41] be an attribute of existing substance, substance could not

have derived its origin from power. One thing cannot be at the same

time the cause and the effect of another.--The word power expresses the

capability of any thing to be or act. The human mind never hesitates to

annex the idea of power to any object of its experience. To deny that

power is the attribute of being, is to deny that being can be. If power

be an attribute of substance, the hypothesis of a God is a superfluous

and unwarrantable assumption.

Intelligence is that attribute of the Deity, which you hold to be most

apparent in the Universe. Intelligence is only known to us as a mode of

animal being. We cannot conceive intelligence distinct from sensation

and perception, which are attributes to organized bodies. To assert

that God is intelligent, is to assert that he has ideas; and Locke has

proved that ideas result from sensation. Sensation can exist only in

an organized body, an organised body is necessarily limited both in

extent and operation. The God of the rational Theosophis is a vast and

wise animal.

You have laid it down as a maxim that the power of beginning motion is

an attribute of mind as much as thought and sensation.

Mind cannot create, it can only perceive. Mind is the recipient of

impressions made on the organs of sense, and without the action of

external objects we should not only be deprived of all knowledge of

the existence of mind, but totally incapable of the knowledge of any

thing. It is evident, therefore, that mind deserves to be considered as

the effect, rather than the cause of motion. The ideas which suggest

themselves too are prompted by the circumstances of our situation,

these are the elements of thought, and from the various combinations of

these our feelings, opinions, and volitions inevitably result.

That which is infinite necessarily includes that which is finite. The

distinction therefore between the Universe, and that by which the

Universe is upheld, is manifestly erroneous. To devise the word God,

that you may express a certain portion of the universal system, can

answer no good purpose in philosophy: In the language of reason, the

words God and Universe are synonymous. _Omnia enim per Dei

potentiam facta sunt, imo, quia naturæ potentia nulla est nisi ipsa Dei

potentia, artem est nos catemus Dei potentiam non intelligere quatenus

causas naturales ignoramus; adeoque stultè ad eandam Dei

potentiam recurritur, quando rei alicujus, causam naturalem, sive est,

ipsam Dei potentiam ignoramus._[42]

Thus from the principles of that reason to which you so rashly appealed

as the ultimate arbiter of our dispute, have I shewn that the popular

arguments in favour of the being of a God are totally destitute of

colour. I have shewn the absurdity of attributing intelligence to the

cause of those effects which we perceive in the Universe, and the

fallacy which lurks in the argument from design. I have shewn that

order is no more than a peculiar manner of contemplating the operation

of necessary agents, that mind is the effect, not the cause of motion,

that power is the attribute, not the origin of Being. I have proved

that we can have no evidence of the existence of a God from the

principles of reason.

You will have observed, from the zeal with which I have urged arguments

so revolting to my genuine sentiments, and conducted to a conclusion

in direct contradiction to that faith which every good man must

eternally preserve, how little I am inclined to sympathise with those

of my religion who have pretended to prove the existence of God by

the unassisted light of reason. I confess that the necessity of a

revelation has been compromised by treacherous friends to Christianity,

who have maintained that the sublime mysteries of the being of a God

and the immortality of the soul are discoverable from other sources

than itself.

I have proved that on the principles of that philosophy to which

Epicurus, Lord Bacon, Newton, Locke and Hume were addicted, the

existence of God is a chimera.

The Christian Religion then, alone, affords indisputable assurance that

the world was created by the power, and is preserved by the Providence

of an Almighty God, who, in justice has appointed a future life for the

punishment of the vicious and the remuneration of the virtuous.

Now, O Theosophus, I call upon you to decide between Atheism and

Christianity; to declare whether you will pursue your principles to the

destruction of the bonds of civilized society, or wear the easy yoke of

that religion which proclaims “peace upon earth, good-will to all men.”

Theosophus.

I am not prepared at present, I confess, to reply clearly to your

unexpected arguments. I assure you that no considerations, however

specious, should seduce me to deny the existence of my Creator.

I am willing to promise that if, after mature deliberation, the

arguments which you have advanced in favour of Atheism should appear

incontrovertible, I will endeavour to adopt so much of the Christian

scheme as is consistent with my persuasion of the goodness, unity, and

majesty of God.

FOOTNOTES:

[13] _Judæi, impulsore Chresto, turbantes, facile

comprimuntur._--_Suet. in Tib._

_Affecti suppliciis Christiani, genus hominum superstitionis novæ et

maleficæ._--_Id. in Nerone._

[14] _Multi omnis ætatis utriusque sexus etiam; neque enim civitates

tantum, sed vicos etiam et agros superstitionis istius contagio

pervagata est._--_Plin. Epist._

[15] Tacit. Annal L. xv., Sect. xlv.

[16] See the _Internal Evidence of Christianity_; see also Paley’s

Evidences, Vol. II., p 27.

[17] Paley’s Evidences, Vol. I., p. 3.

[18] Plin. Nat. His. Cap. de Deo., Euripides, Bellerophon, Frag. xxv.

_Hunc igitur terrorem animi, tenebrasque necesse est_

_Non radii solis, neque lucida tela diei_

_Discutient, sed naturæ species ratioque:_

_Principium hinc cujus nobis exordia sumet_,

Nullam rem nihilo gigni divinitus unquam.

Luc. de Rer. Nat. Lib. 1 [_v._ 147-151].

[19] See Cicero de Natura Deorum.

[20] Hobbes.

[21] See Preface to Le Bon Sens.

[22] See Hosea, chap. i., chap. ix. Ezekiel, chap. iv., chap. xvi.,

chap. xxiii. Heyne, speaking of the opinions entertained of the Jews by

ancient poets and philosophers, says:--_Meminit quidem superstitionis

Judaicæ Horatius, verum ut eam risu exploderet._--_Heyn. ad Virg. Poll.

in Arg._

[23] I. Sam. chap. v., 8.

[24] Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads.

[25] Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Who is on the

Lord’s side? let him come unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered

themselves together unto him. And he said unto them, _Thus saith the

Lord God of Israel_, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in

and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, _and slay every man his

brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour_. And

the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses: and there fell

of the people on that day twenty-three thousand men.--_Exodus_ xxxii.,

26.

And they warred against the Midianites, as the Lord commanded Moses;

and they slew all the males. And the children of Israel took all the

women of Midian captives, and their little ones, and took the spoil

of all their cattle, and all their flocks, and all their goods. And

they burned all their huts wherein they dwelt, and all their goodly

castles, with fire. And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the

princes of the congregation, went forth to meet them without the camp.

And Moses was [wroth] with the officers of the host, with the captains

over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle.

And Moses said unto them, _Have ye saved all the women alive?_ behold,

these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to

commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was

a plague among the congregation of the Lord. _Now therefore kill every

male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by

lying with him. But all the women-children, that have not known a man

by lying with him_, KEEP ALIVE FOR YOURSELVES.--_Numbers_ xxxi., 7-18.

And we utterly destroyed them, as we did unto Sihon, king of Heshbon,

utterly destroying the men, women, and children of every city.--_Deut._

iii., 6.

And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and

woman, young and old, and ox and sheep and ass, with the edge of the

sword.--_Joshua._

So Joshua fought against Debir, and utterly destroyed all the souls

that were therein: he left none remaining, but utterly destroyed all

that breathed, as the Lord God of Israel commanded.--_Joshua_, chap. x.

And David gathered all the people together, and went to Rabbah, and

took it. And he brought forth the people therein, and _put them under

saws, and under harrows of iron, and made them pass through the brick

kiln; this did he also unto all the children of Ammon._--_II. Sam._

xii., 29.

[26] Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote to me; it is good for a

man not to touch a woman.

I say, therefore, to the unmarried and widows, it is good for them if

they abide even as I. But if they cannot contain, let them marry; it is

better to marry than burn.--_I. Cor._ chap. vii.

[27] _See_ Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall,” vol. ii., p. 210.

[28] Ibid. Vol. ii., p. 269.

[29] See Paley’s Evidences. Vol. i. chap. 1.

[30] See the Controversy of Bishop Watson and Thomas Paine.--Paine’s

Criticism on the xixth chapter of Isaiah.

[31] Immediately after the tribulation of these days shall the sun be

darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall

fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: and

then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven, and then shall

all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man

coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall

send his angel with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather

together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the

other. _Verily I say unto you, this generation shall not pass, until

all these things be fulfilled._--_Matt._ chap, xxiv.

[32] See Matthew, chap. xxiii. v. 35.

[33] Josephus.

[34] Qy.? _even_.

[35] See Dugald Stewart’s Outlines of Moral Philosophy, and Paley’s

Natural Theology.

[36] See Cuvier Leçons d’Anat. Comp. tom. iii. p. 169, 373, 448, 465,

480. Rees’ Cyclopædia, Art. Man.

Ουκ αιδεισθε τους ἡμερους καρπους αιματι και φονῳ μιγνυοντες; αλλὰ

δράκοντας ἀγρίους καλεῖτε καὶ παρδάλεις καἰ λέοντας, αὐτοὶ δὲ

μιαιφονεῖτε εἰς ὠμότητα καταλιπόντες ἐκείνοις οὐδέν. Ἐκείνοις μὲν γὰρ ὁ

φόνος τροφὴ, ὑμῖν δε ὄψον ἐστίν.

Ὅτι γὰρ οὐκ ἔστιν ἀνθρώπῳ κατὰ φύσιν τὸ σαρκοφαγεῖν, πρῶτον μὲν ἀπὸ τῶν

σωμάτων δηλοῦται τῆς κατασκευῆς. Οὐδενὶ γὰρ ἔοικε τὸ ἀνθρώπου σῶμα τῶν

ἐπὶ σαρκοφαγίᾳ γεγονότων, οὐ γρυπότης χείλους, οὐκ ὀξύτης ὄνυχοϛ, οὐ

τραχύτης ὀδόντων πρόσεστιν, οὐ κοιλίας εὐτονία καὶ πνεύματος θερμότης,

τρέψαι καὶ κατεργάσασθαι δυνατὴ τὸ βαρὺ καὶ κρεῶδες. Ἀλλ’ αὐτόθεν ἡ

φύσις τῇ λειότητι τῶν ὀδόντων, καὶ τῇ σμικρότητι τοῦ στόματος, καὶ τῇ

μαλακότητι τῆς γλώσσης, καὶ τῇ πρὸς πέψιν ἀμβλύτητι τοῦ πνευματος,

ἐξόμνυται τὴν σαρκοφαγίαν. Εἰ δὲ λέγεις, πεφυκέναι σεαυτὸν ἐπὶ τοιαύτην

ἐδωδὴν, ὅ βούλει φαγεῖν, πρῶτος αὐτὸς ἀπόκτεινον· αλλ’ αὐτὸς, διὰ

σεαυτοῦ, μὴ χρησάμενος κοπίδι, μηδὲ τυμπάνῳ τινὶ μηδὲ πελέκει· ἀλλὰ,

ὡς λύκοι καὶ ἄρκτοι, καὶ λεόντες αὐτοὶ ὡς ἐσθίουσι φονευούσιν, ἄνελε

δήγματι βοῦν, ἢ σώματι σῦν, ἢ ἄρνα ἤ λαγωὸν διάῤῥηξον, καὶ φάγε

προσπεσῶν ἔτι ζῶντος ὡς ἐκεῖνα.

Πλουτ. περὶ Σαρκοφαγ. Λογ. β.

[The same passage is quoted in the Notes to Queen Mab (Vol. iii. p.

359-360).]

[37] See Godwin’s Political Justice, Vol. i. p. 449.

[38] See Southey’s History of Brazil, p. 255.

[39] See Le Systeme de la Nature: this book is one of the most eloquent

vindications of Atheism.

[40] Printed _deniable_.

[41] For a very profound disquisition on this subject, see Sir William

Drummond’s Academical Questions, chap. i. p. 1.

[42] Spinosa. Tract. Theologico.-Pol., chap. i. p. 14. [Quoted also in

the Notes to Queen Mab (Vol. iii. p. 328).]

HISTORY

OF

A SIX WEEKS’ TOUR

THROUGH

A PART OF FRANCE,

SWITZERLAND, GERMANY, AND HOLLAND:

WITH LETTERS

DESCRIPTIVE OF

A SAIL ROUND THE LAKE OF GENEVA, AND OF

THE GLACIERS OF CHAMOUNI.

LONDON:

* * * * *

PUBLISHED BY T. HOOKHAM, JUN.

OLD BOND STREET;

AND C. AND J. OLLIER,

WELBECK STREET.

* * * * *

1817.

[_The two following Letters were addressed by_ Shelley _to_ Thomas

Love Peacock. _The remainder of the little volume was written by_ Mrs.

Shelley.]

[Decoration]

To T. P. Esq.

MELLERIE--CLARENS--CHILLON--VEVAI--LAUSANNE.

Montalegre, near Coligni. Geneva, July 12th, 1816.

It is nearly a fortnight since I have returned from Vevai. This journey

has been on every account delightful, but most especially, because

then I first knew the divine beauty of Rousseau’s imagination, as it

exhibits itself in _Julie_. It is inconceivable what an enchantment

the scene itself lends to those delineations, from which its own most

touching charm arises. But I will give you an abstract of our voyage,

which lasted eight days, and if you have a map of Switzerland, you can

follow me.

We left Montalegre at half-past two on the 23rd of June. The lake

was calm, and after three hours of rowing we arrived at Hermance,

a beautiful little village, containing a ruined tower, built, the

villagers say, by Julius Cæsar. There were three other towers similar

to it, which the Genevese destroyed for their own fortifications

in 1560. We got into the tower by a kind of window. The walls are

immensely solid, and the stone of which it is built so hard, that it

yet retained the mark of chisels. The boatmen said, that this tower

was once three times higher than it is now. There are two staircases

in the thickness of the walls, one of which is entirely demolished,

and the other half ruined, and only accessible by a ladder. The town

itself, now an inconsiderable village inhabited by a few fishermen,

was built by a Queen of Burgundy, and reduced to its present state by

the inhabitants of Berne, who burnt and ravaged everything they could

find.

Leaving Hermance, we arrived at sunset at the village of Nerni. After

looking at our lodgings, which were gloomy and dirty, we walked out by

the side of the lake. It was beautiful to see the vast expanse of these

purple and misty waters broken by the craggy islets near to its slant

and “beached margin.” There were many fish sporting in the lake, and

multitudes were collected close to the rocks to catch the flies which

inhabited them.

On returning to the village, we sat on a wall beside the lake, looking

at some children who were playing at a game like nine-pins. The

children here appeared in an extraordinary way deformed and diseased.

Most of them were crooked, and with enlarged throats; but one little

boy had such exquisite grace in his mien and motions, as I never

before saw equalled in a child. His countenance was beautiful for the

expression with which it overflowed. There was a mixture of pride and

gentleness in his eyes and lips, the indications of sensibility, which

his education will probably pervert to misery or seduce to crime; but

there was more of gentleness than of pride, and it seemed that the

pride was tamed from its original wildness by the habitual exercise of

milder feelings. My companion gave him a piece of money, which he took

without speaking, with a sweet smile of easy thankfulness, and then,

with an unembarrassed air, turned to his play. All this might scarcely

be; but the imagination surely could not forbear to breathe into the

most inanimate forms some likeness of its own visions, on such a serene

and glowing evening, in this remote and romantic village, beside the

calm lake that bore us hither.

On returning to our inn, we found that the servant had arranged our

rooms, and deprived them of the greater portion ot their former

disconsolate appearance. They reminded my companion of Greece: it was

five years, he said, since he had slept in such beds. The influence

of the recollections excited by this circumstance on our conversation

gradually faded, and I retired to rest with no unpleasant sensations,

thinking of our journey to-morrow, and of the pleasure of recounting

the little adventures of it when we return.

The next morning we passed Yvoire, a scattered village with an ancient

castle, whose houses are interspersed with trees, and which stands at a

little distance from Nerni, on the promontory which bounds a deep bay,

some miles in extent. So soon as we arrived at this promontory, the

lake began to assume an aspect of wilder magnificence. The mountains of

Savoy, whose summits were bright with snow, descended in broken slopes

to the lake: on high, the rocks were dark with pine-forests, which

become deeper and more immense, until the ice and snow mingle with the

points of naked rock that pierce the blue air; but below, groves of

walnut, chesnut, and oak, with openings of lawny fields, attested the

milder climate.

As soon as we had passed the opposite promontory, we saw the river

Drance, which descends from between a chasm in the mountains, and makes

a plain near the lake, intersected by its divided streams. Thousands

of _besolets_, beautiful water-birds, like sea-gulls, but smaller,

with purple on their backs, take their station on the shallows, where

its waters mingle with the lake. As we approached Evian, the mountains

descended more precipitously to the lake, and masses of intermingled

wood and rock overhung its shining spire.

We arrived at this town about seven o’clock, after a day which involved

more rapid changes of atmosphere than I ever recollect to have observed

before. The morning was cold and wet; then an easterly wind, and the

clouds hard and high; then thunder showers, and wind shifting to every

quarter; then a warm blast from the south, and summer clouds hanging

over the peaks, with bright blue sky between. About half an hour after

we had arrived at Evian, a few flashes of lightning came from a dark

cloud, directly overhead, and continued after the cloud had dispersed.

“Diespiter, per pura tonantes egit equos:” a phenomenon which

certainly had no influence on me, corresponding with that which it

produced on Horace.

The appearance of the inhabitants of Evian is more wretched, diseased,

and poor, than I ever recollect to have seen. The contrast indeed

between the subjects of the King of Sardinia and the citizens of the

independent republics of Switzerland, affords a powerful illustration

of the blighting mischiefs of despotism, within the space of a few

miles. They have mineral waters here, _eaux savonneuses_, they call

them. In the evening we had some difficulty about our passports, but so

soon as the syndic heard my companion’s rank and name, he apologized

for the circumstance. The inn was good. During our voyage, on the

distant height of a hill, covered with pine-forests, we saw a ruined

castle, which reminded me of those on the Rhine.

We left Evian on the following morning, with a wind of such violence as

to permit but one sail to be carried. The waves also were exceedingly

high, and our boat so heavily laden, that there appeared to be some

danger. We arrived, however, safe at Mellerie, after passing with great

speed mighty forests which overhung the lake, and lawns of exquisite

verdure, and mountains with bare and icy points, which rose immediately

from the summit of the rocks, whose bases were echoing to the waves.

We here heard that the Empress Maria Louisa had slept at Mellerie,

before the present inn was built, and when the accommodations were

those of the most wretched village, in remembrance of St. Preux. How

beautiful it is to find that the common sentiments of human nature can

attach themselves to those who are the most removed from its duties

and its enjoyments, when Genius pleads for their admission at the gate

of Power. To own them was becoming in the Empress, and confirms the

affectionate praise contained in the regret of a great and enlightened

nation. A Bourbon dared not even to have remembered Rousseau. She owed

this power to that democracy which her husband’s dynasty outraged, and

of which it was, however, in some sort the representative among the

nations of the earth. This little incident shows at once how unfit and

how impossible it is for the ancient system of opinions, or for any

power built upon a conspiracy to revive them, permanently to subsist

among mankind. We dined there, and had some honey, the best I have ever

tasted, the very essence of the mountain flowers, and as fragrant.

Probably the village derives its name from this production. Mellerie

is the well-known scene of St. Preux’s visionary exile; but Mellerie

is indeed enchanted ground, were Rousseau no magician. Groves of pine,

chesnut, and walnut overshadow it; magnificent and unbounded forests

to which England affords no parallel. In the midst of these woods are

dells of lawny expanse, inconceivably verdant, adorned with a thousand

of the rarest flowers and odorous with thyme.

The lake appeared somewhat calmer as we left Mellerie, sailing close

to the banks, whose magnificence augmented with the turn of every

promontory. But we congratulated ourselves too soon: the wind gradually

increased in violence, until it blew tremendously; and as it came from

the remotest extremity of the lake, produced waves of a frightful

height, and covered the whole surface with a chaos of foam. One of

our boatmen, who was a dreadfully stupid fellow, persisted in holding

the sail at a time when the boat was on the point of being driven

under water by the hurricane. On discovering his error, he let it

entirely go, and the boat for a moment refused to obey the helm; in

addition, the rudder was so broken as to render the management of it

very difficult; one wave fell in, and then another. My companion, an

excellent swimmer, took off his coat; I did the same, and we sat with

our arms crossed, every instant expecting to be swamped. The sail was

however again held, the boat obeyed the helm, and, still in imminent

peril from the immensity of the waves, we arrived in a few minutes at a

sheltered port, in the village of St. Gingoux.

I felt in this near prospect of death a mixture of sensations, among

which terror entered, though but subordinately. My feelings would have

been less painful had I been alone; but I know that my companion would

have attempted to save me, and I was overcome with humiliation, when

I thought that his life might have been risked to preserve mine. When

we arrived at St. Gingoux, the inhabitants, who stood on the shore,

unaccustomed to see a vessel as frail as ours and fearing to venture at

all on such a sea, exchanged looks of wonder and congratulation with

our boatmen, who, as well as ourselves, were well pleased to set foot

on shore.

St. Gingoux is even more beautiful than Mellerie; the mountains are

higher, and their loftiest points of elevation descend more abruptly

to the lake. On high, the aerial summits still cherish great depths of

snow in their ravines, and in the paths of their unseen torrents. One

of the highest of these is called Roche de St. Julien, beneath whose

pinnacles the forests become deeper and more extensive; the chesnut

gives a peculiarity to the scene, which is most beautiful, and will

make a picture in my memory, distinct from all other mountain scenes

which I have ever before visited.

As we arrived here early, we took a _voiture_ to visit the mouth of

the Rhone. We went between the mountains and the lake, under groves of

mighty chesnut trees, beside perpetual streams, which are nourished by

the snows above, and form stalactites on the rocks, over which they

fall. We saw an immense chesnut tree, which had been overthrown by the

hurricane of the morning. The place where the Rhone joins the lake

was marked by a line of tremendous breakers; the river is as rapid as

when it leaves the lake, but is muddy and dark. We went about a league

farther on the road to La Valais, and stopped at a castle called La

Tour de Bouverie, which seems to be the frontier of Switzerland and

Savoy, as we were asked for our passports, on the supposition of our

proceeding to Italy.

On one side of the road was the immense Roche de St. Julien, which

overhung it; through the gateway of the castle we saw the snowy

mountains of La Valais, clothed in clouds, and on the other side was

the willowy plain of the Rhone, in a character of striking contrast

with the rest of the scene, bounded by the dark mountains that overhang

Clarens, Vevai, and the lake that rolls between. In the midst of the

plain rises a little isolated hill, on which the white spire of a

church peeps from among the tufted chesnut-woods. We returned to St.

Gingoux before sunset, and I passed the evening in reading _Julie_.

As my companion rises late, I had time before breakfast, on the ensuing

morning, to hunt the waterfalls of the river that fall into the lake

at St. Gingoux. The stream is indeed, from the declivity over which

it falls, only a succession of waterfalls, which roar over the rocks

with a perpetual sound, and suspend their unceasing spray on the leaves

and flowers that overhang and adorn its savage banks. The path that

conducted along this river sometimes avoided the precipices of its

shores, by leading through meadows; sometimes threaded the base of the

perpendicular and caverned rocks. I gathered in these meadows a nosegay

of such flowers as I never saw in England, and which I thought more

beautiful for that rarity.

On my return, after breakfast, we sailed for Clarens, determining first

to see the three mouths of the Rhone, and then the castle of Chillon;

the day was fine, and the water calm. We passed from the blue waters of

the lake over the stream of the Rhone, which is rapid even at a great

distance from its confluence with the lake; the turbid waters mixed

with those of the lake, but mixed with them unwillingly. (_See Nouvelle

Héloise, Lettre 17, Part 4._) I read _Julie_ all day; an overflowing,

as it now seems, surrounded by the scenes which it has so wonderfully

peopled, of sublimest genius, and more than human sensibility.

Mellerie, the Castle of Chillon, Clarens, the mountains of La Valais

and Savoy, present themselves to the imagination as monuments of things

that were once familiar, and of beings that were once dear to it. They

were created indeed by one mind, but a mind so powerfully bright as to

cast a shade of falsehood on the records that are called reality.

We passed on to the Castle of Chillon, and visited its dungeons and

towers. These prisons are excavated below the lake; the principal

dungeon is supported by seven columns, whose branching capitals

support the roof. Close to the very walls, the lake is 800 feet deep;

iron rings are fastened to these columns, and on them were engraven a

multitude of names, partly those of visitors, and partly doubtless of

the prisoners, of whom now no memory remains, and who thus beguiled a

solitude which they have long ceased to feel. One date was as ancient

as 1670. At the commencement of the Reformation, and indeed long after

that period, this dungeon was the receptacle of those who shook, or who

denied the system of idolatry from the effects of which mankind is

even now slowly emerging.

Close to this long and lofty dungeon was a narrow cell, and beyond it

one larger and far more lofty and dark, supported upon two unornamented

arches. Across one of these arches was a beam, now black and rotten,

on which prisoners were hung in secret. I never saw a monument more

terrible of that cold and inhuman tyranny which it has been the delight

of man to exercise over man. It was indeed one of those many tremendous

fulfilments which render the “pernicies humani generis” of the great

Tacitus, so solemn and irrefragable a prophecy. The gendarme, who

conducted us over this castle, told us that there was an opening to

the lake, by means of a secret spring, connected with which the whole

dungeon might be filled with water before the prisoners could possibly

escape!

We proceeded with a contrary wind to Clarens, against a heavy swell. I

never felt more strongly than on landing at Clarens, that the spirit

of old times had deserted its once cherished habitation. A thousand

times, thought I, have Julia and St. Preux walked on this terrassed

road, looking towards these mountains which I now behold; nay, treading

on the ground where I now tread. From the window of our lodging our

landlady pointed out “le bosquet de Julie.” At least the inhabitants

of this village are impressed with an idea, that the persons of that

romance had actual existence. In the evening we walked thither. It is

indeed Julia’s wood. The hay was making under the trees; the trees

themselves were aged, but vigorous, and interspersed with younger ones,

which are destined to be their successors, and in future years, when we

are dead, to afford a shade to future worshippers of nature, who love

the memory of that tenderness and peace of which this was the imaginary

abode. We walked forward among the vineyards, whose narrow terraces

overlook this affecting scene. Why did the cold maxims of the world

compel me at this moment to repress the tears of melancholy transport

which it would have been so sweet to indulge, immeasurably, even until

the darkness of night had swallowed up the objects which excited them?

I forgot to remark, what indeed my companion remarked to me, that our

danger from the storm took place precisely in the spot where Julie

and her lover were nearly overset, and where St. Preux was tempted to

plunge with her into the lake.

On the following day we went to see the castle of Clarens, a square

strong house, with very few windows, surrounded by a double terrace

that overlooks the valley, or rather the plain of Clarens. The road

which conducted to it wound up the steep ascent through woods of walnut

and chesnut. We gathered roses on the terrace, in the feeling that they

might be the posterity of some planted by Julia’s hand. We sent their

dead and withered leaves to the absent.

We went again to the “bosquet de Julie,” and found that the precise

spot was now utterly obliterated, and a heap of stones marked the place

where the little chapel had once stood. Whilst we were execrating

the author of this brutal folly, our guide informed us that the land

belonged to the convent of St. Bernard, and that this outrage had been

committed by their orders. I knew before, that if avarice could harden

the hearts of men, a system of prescriptive religion has an influence

far more inimical to natural sensibility. I know that an isolated man

is sometimes restrained by shame from outraging the venerable feelings

arising out of the memory of genius, which once made nature even

lovelier than itself; but associated man holds it as the very sacrament

of his union to forswear all delicacy, all benevolence, all remorse,

all that is true, or tender, or sublime.

We sailed from Clarens to Vevai. Vevai is a town more beautiful in its

simplicity than any I have ever seen. Its market-place, a spacious

square interspersed with trees, looks directly upon the mountains of

Savoy and La Valais, the lake, and the valley of the Rhone. It was at

Vevai that Rousseau conceived the design of _Julie_.

From Vevai we came to Ouchy, a village near Lausanne. The coasts of the

Pays de Vaud, though full of villages and vineyards, present an aspect

of tranquillity and peculiar beauty which well compensates for the

solitude which I am accustomed to admire. The hills are very high and

rocky, crowned and interspersed with woods. Waterfalls echo from the

cliffs, and shine afar. In one place we saw the traces of two rocks of

immense size, which had fallen from the mountain behind. One of these

lodged in a room where a young woman was sleeping, without injuring

her. The vineyards were utterly destroyed in its path, and the earth

torn up.

The rain detained us two days at Ouchy. We, however, visited Lausanne,

and saw Gibbon’s house. We were shown the decayed summer-house where

he finished his History, and the old acacias on the terrace from which

he saw Mont Blanc after having written the last sentence. There is

something grand and even touching in the regret which he expresses at

the completion of his task. It was conceived amid the ruins of the

Capitol. The sudden departure of his cherished and accustomed toil must

have left him, like the death of a dear friend, sad and solitary.

My companion gathered some acacia leaves to preserve in remembrance

of him. I refrained from doing so, fearing to outrage the greater and

more sacred name of Rousseau; the contemplation of whose imperishable

creations had left no vacancy in my heart for mortal things. Gibbon had

a cold and unimpassioned spirit. I never felt more inclination to rail

at the prejudices which cling to such a thing, than now that Julie

and Clarens, Lausanne and the Roman empire, compelled me to a contrast

between Rousseau and Gibbon.

When we returned, in the only interval of sunshine during the day, I

walked on the pier which the lake was lashing with its waves. A rainbow

spanned the lake, or rather rested one extremity of its arch upon the

water, and the other at the foot of the mountains of Savoy. Some white

houses, I know not if they were those of Mellerie, shone through the

yellow fire.

On Saturday the 30th of June we quitted Ouchy, and after two days of

pleasant sailing arrived on Sunday evening at Montalegre.

S.

* * * * *

TO T. P. ESQ.

ST. MARTIN--SERVOZ--CHAMOUNI--MONTANVERT--MONT BLANC.

Hôtel de Londres, Chamouni, July 22nd, 1816.

Whilst you, my friend, are engaged in securing a home for us, we are

wandering in search of recollections to embellish it. I do not err in

conceiving that you are interested in details of all that is majestic

or beautiful in nature; but how shall I describe to you the scenes

by which I am now surrounded? To exhaust the epithets which express

the astonishment and the admiration--the very excess of satisfied

astonishment, where expectation scarcely acknowledged any boundary,

is this to impress upon your mind the images which fill mine now even

till it overflow? I too have read the raptures of travellers; I will

be warned by their example; I will simply detail to you all that I can

relate, or all that, if related, would enable you to conceive of what

we have done or seen since the morning of the 20th, when we left Geneva.

We commenced our intended journey to Chamouni at half-past eight in the

morning. We passed through the champain country, which extends from

Mont Salève to the base of the higher Alps. The country is sufficiently

fertile, covered with corn-fields and orchards, and intersected by

sudden acclivities with flat summits. The day was cloudless and

excessively hot, the Alps were perpetually in sight, and as we

advanced, the mountains, which form their outskirts, closed in around

us. We passed a bridge over a stream, which discharges itself into the

Arve. The Arve itself, much swoln by the rains, flows constantly to the

right of the road.

As we approached Bonneville through an avenue composed of a beautiful

species of drooping poplar, we observed that the corn-fields on each

side were covered with inundation. Bonneville is a neat little town,

with no conspicuous peculiarity, except the white towers of the prison,

an extensive building overlooking the town. At Bonneville the Alps

commence, one of which, clothed by forests, rises almost immediately

from the opposite bank of the Arve.

From Bonneville to Cluses the road conducts through a spacious and

fertile plain, surrounded on all sides by mountains, covered like

those of Mellerie with forests of intermingled pine and chesnut.

At Cluses the road turns suddenly to the right, following the Arve

along the chasm, which it seems to have hollowed for itself among the

perpendicular mountains. The scene assumes here a more savage and

colossal character: the valley becomes narrow, affording no more space

than is sufficient for the river and the road. The pines descend to

the banks, imitating with their irregular spires, the pyramidal crags

which lift themselves far above the regions of forest into the deep

azure of the sky, and among the white dazzling clouds. The scene, at

the distance of half a mile from Cluses, differs from that of Matlock

in little else than in the immensity of its proportions, and in its

untameable, inaccessible solitude, inhabited only by the goats which we

saw browsing on the rocks.

Near Maglans, within a league of each other, we saw two waterfalls.

They were no more than mountain rivulets, but the height from which

they fell, at least of _twelve_ hundred feet, made them assume a

character inconsistent with the smallness of their stream. The first

fell from the overhanging brow of a black precipice on an enormous

rock, precisely resembling some colossal Egyptian statue of a female

deity. It struck the head of the visionary image, and, gracefully

dividing there, fell from it in folds of foam more like to cloud than

water, imitating a veil of the most exquisite woof. It then united,

concealing the lower part of the statue, and hiding itself in a winding

of its channel, burst into a deeper fall, and crossed our route in its

path towards the Arve.

The other waterfall was more continuous and larger. The violence with

which it fell made it look more like some shape which an exhalation had

assumed than like water, for it streamed beyond the mountain, which

appeared dark behind it, as it might have appeared behind an evanescent

cloud.

The character of the scenery continued the same until we arrived at

St. Martin (called in the maps Sallanches), the mountains perpetually

becoming more elevated, exhibiting at every turn of the road more

craggy summits, loftier and wider extent of forests, darker and more

deep recesses.

The following morning we proceeded from St. Martin on mules to

Chamouni, accompanied by two guides. We proceeded, as we had done the

preceding day, along the valley of the Arve, a valley surrounded on

all sides by immense mountains, whose rugged precipices are intermixed

on high with dazzling snow. Their bases were still covered with the

eternal forests, which perpetually grew darker and more profound as we

approached the inner regions of the mountains.

On arriving at a small village, at the distance of a league from St.

Martin, we dismounted from our mules, and were conducted by our guides

to view a cascade. We beheld an immense body of water fall two hundred

and fifty feet, dashing from rock to rock, and casting a spray which

formed a mist around it, in the midst of which hung a multitude of

sunbows, which faded or became unspeakably vivid, as the inconstant sun

shone through the clouds. When we approached near to it, the rain of

the spray reached us, and our clothes were wetted by the quick-falling

but minute particles of water. The cataract fell from above into a deep

craggy chasm at our feet, where, changing its character to that of a

mountain stream, it pursued its course towards the Arve, roaring over

the rocks that impeded its progress.

As we proceeded, our route still lay through the valley, or rather, as

it had now become, the vast ravine, which is at once the couch and the

creation of the terrible Arve. We ascended, winding between mountains

whose immensity staggers the imagination. We crossed the path of a

torrent, which three days since had descended from the thawing snow,

and torn the road away.

We dined at Servoz, a little village, where there are lead and copper

mines, and where we saw a cabinet of natural curiosities, like those

of Keswick and Bethgelert. We saw in this cabinet some chamois’ horns,

and the horns of an exceedingly rare animal called the bouquetin, which

inhabits the deserts of snow to the south of Mont Blanc: it is an

animal of the stag kind; its horns weigh at least twenty-seven English

pounds. It is inconceivable how so small an animal could support so

inordinate a weight. The horns are of a very peculiar conformation,

being broad, massy, and pointed at the ends, and surrounded with a

number of rings, which are supposed to afford an indication of its age:

there were seventeen rings on the largest of these horns.

From Servoz three leagues remain to Chamouni.--Mont Blanc was before

us--the Alps, with their innumerable glaciers on high all around,

closing in the complicated windings of the single vale--forests

inexpressibly beautiful, but majestic in their beauty--intermingled

beech and pine, and oak, overshadowed our road, or receded, whilst

lawns of such verdure as I have never seen before occupied these

openings, and gradually became darker in their recesses. Mont Blanc

was before us, but it was covered with cloud; its base, furrowed with

dreadful gaps, was seen above. Pinnacles of snow intolerably bright,

part of the chain connected with Mont Blanc, shone through the clouds

at intervals on high. I never knew--I never imagined what mountains

were before. The immensity of these aerial summits excited, when

they suddenly burst upon the sight, a sentiment of ecstatic wonder,

not unallied to madness. And remember this was all one scene, it all

pressed home to our regard and our imagination. Though it embraced a

vast extent of space, the snowy pyramids which shot into the bright

blue sky seemed to overhang our path; the ravine, clothed with gigantic

pines, and black with its depth below, so deep that the very roaring

of the untameable Arve, which rolled through it, could not be heard

above--all was as much our own, as if we had been the creators of such

impressions in the minds of others as now occupied our own. Nature was

the poet, whose harmony held our spirits more breathless than that of

the divinest.

As we entered the valley of Chamouni (which in fact may be considered

as a continuation of those which we have followed from Bonneville and

Cluses) clouds hung upon the mountains at the distance perhaps of 6000

feet from the earth, but so as effectually to conceal not only Mont

Blanc, but the other _aiguilles_, as they call them here, attached and

subordinate to it. We were travelling along the valley, when suddenly

we heard a sound as of the burst of smothered thunder rolling above;

yet there was something earthly in the sound, that told us it could not

be thunder. Our guide hastily pointed out to us a part of the mountain

opposite, from whence the sound came. It was an avalanche. We saw the

smoke of its path among the rocks, and continued to hear at intervals

the bursting of its fall. It fell on the bed of a torrent, which it

displaced, and presently we saw its tawny-coloured waters also spread

themselves over the ravine, which was their couch.

We did not, as we intended, visit the _Glacier de Boisson_ to-day,

although it descends within a few minutes’ walk of the road, wishing

to survey it at least when unfatigued. We saw this glacier which

comes close to the fertile plain, as we passed; its surface was

broken into a thousand unaccountable figures: conical and pyramidical

crystallizations, more than fifty feet in height, rise from its

surface, and precipices of ice, of dazzling splendour, overhang the

woods and meadows of the vale. This glacier winds upwards from the

valley, until it joins the masses of frost from which it was produced

above, winding through its own ravine like a bright belt flung over

the black region of pines. There is more in all these scenes than mere

magnitude of proportion: there is a majesty of outline; there is an

awful grace in the very colours which invest these wonderful shapes--a

charm which is peculiar to them, quite distinct even from the reality

of their unutterable greatness.

* * * * *

July 24.

Yesterday morning we went to the source of the Arveiron. It is

about a league from this village; the river rolls forth impetuously

from an arch of ice, and spreads itself in many streams over a vast

space of the valley, ravaged and laid bare by its inundations. The

glacier by which its waters are nourished, overhangs this cavern and

the plain, and the forests of pine which surround it, with terrible

precipices of solid ice. On the other side rises the immense glacier of

Montanvert, fifty miles in extent, occupying a chasm among mountains

of inconceivable height, and of forms so pointed and abrupt, that they

seem to pierce the sky. From this glacier we saw, as we sat on a rock

close to one of the streams of the Arveiron, masses of ice detach

themselves from on high, and rush with a loud dull noise into the vale.

The violence of their fall turned them into powder, which flowed over

the rocks in imitation of waterfalls, whose ravines they usurped and

filled.

In the evening I went with Ducrée, my guide, the only tolerable person

I have seen in this country, to visit the glacier of Boisson. This

glacier, like that of Montanvert, comes close to the vale, overhanging

the green meadows and the dark woods with the dazzling whiteness

of its precipices and pinnacles, which are like spires of radiant

crystal, covered with a net-work of frosted silver. These glaciers flow

perpetually into the valley, ravaging in their slow but irresistible

progress the pastures and the forests which surround them, performing a

work of desolation in ages which a river of lava might accomplish in an

hour, but far more irretrievably; for where the ice has once descended

the hardiest plant refuses to grow; if even, as in some extraordinary

instances, it should recede after its progress has once commenced.

The glaciers perpetually move onward, at the rate of a foot each day,

with a motion that commences at the spot where, on the boundaries of

perpetual congelation, they are produced by the freezing of the waters

which arise from the partial melting of the eternal snows. They drag

with them from the regions whence they derive their origin all the

ruins of the mountain, enormous rocks, and immense accumulations of

sand and stones. These are driven onwards by the irresistible stream

of solid ice; and when they arrive at a declivity of the mountain,

sufficiently rapid, roll down, scattering ruin. I saw one of these

rocks which had descended in the spring (winter here is the season of

silence and safety) which measured forty feet in every direction.

The verge of a glacier, like that of Boisson, presents the most vivid

image of desolation that it is possible to conceive. No one dares to

approach it; for the enormous pinnacles of ice which perpetually fall,

are perpetually reproduced. The pines of the forest, which bound it at

one extremity, are overthrown and shattered to a wide extent at its

base. There is something inexpressibly dreadful in the aspect of the

few branchless trunks, which, nearest to the ice rifts, still stand

in the uprooted soil. The meadows perish, overwhelmed with sand and

stones. Within this last year, these glaciers have advanced three

hundred feet into the valley. Saussure, the naturalist, says, that they

have their periods of increase and decay: the people of the country

hold an opinion entirely different; but as I judge, more probable. It

is agreed by all, that the snow on the summit of Mont Blanc and the

neighbouring mountains perpetually augments, and that ice, in the form

of glaciers, subsists without melting in the valley of Chamouni during

its transient and variable summer. If the snow which produces this

glacier must augment, and the heat of the valley is no obstacle to the

perpetual existence of such masses of ice as have already descended

into it, the consequence is obvious; the glaciers must augment and

will subsist, at least until they have overflowed this vale.

I will not pursue Buffon’s sublime but gloomy theory--that this globe

which we inhabit will at some future period be changed into a mass of

frost by the encroachments of the polar ice, and of that produced on

the most elevated points of the earth. Do you, who assert the supremacy

of Ahriman, imagine him throned among these desolating snows, among

these palaces of death and frost, so sculptured in this their terrible

magnificence by the adamantine hand of necessity, and that he casts

around him, as the first essays of his final usurpation, avalanches,

torrents, rocks, and thunders, and above all these deadly glaciers, at

once the proof and symbols of his reign;--add to this, the degradation

of the human species--who in these regions are half deformed or

idiotic, and most of whom are deprived of anything that can excite

interest or admiration. This is a part of the subject more mournful and

less sublime; but such as neither the poet nor the philosopher should

disdain to regard.

This morning we departed, on the promise of a fine day, to visit the

glacier of Montanvert. In that part where it fills a slanting valley,

it is called the Sea of Ice. This valley is 950 toises, or 7600 feet

above the level of the sea. We had not proceeded far before the rain

began to fall, but we persisted until we had accomplished more than

half our journey, when we returned, wet through.

* * * * *

Chamouni, July 25th.

We have returned from visiting the glacier of Montanvert, or, as it is

called, the Sea of Ice, a scene in truth of dizzying wonder. The path

that winds to it along the side of a mountain, now clothed with pines,

now intersected with snowy hollows, is wide and steep. The cabin of

Montanvert is three leagues from Chamouni, half of which distance is

performed on mules, not so sure footed, but that on the first day the

one which I rode fell in what the guides call a _mauvais pas_, so that

I narrowly escaped being precipitated down the mountain. We passed

over a hollow covered with snow, down which vast stones are accustomed

to roll. One had fallen the preceding day, a little time after we had

returned: our guides desired us to pass quickly, for it is said that

sometimes the least sound will accelerate their descent. We arrived at

Montanvert, however, safe.

On all sides precipitous mountains, the abodes of unrelenting frost,

surround this vale: their sides are banked up with ice and snow,

broken, heaped high, and exhibiting terrific chasms. The summits are

sharp and naked pinnacles, whose overhanging steepness will not even

permit snow to rest upon them. Lines of dazzling ice occupy here and

there their perpendicular rifts, and shine through the driving vapours

with inexpressible brilliance: they pierce the clouds like things not

belonging to this earth. The vale itself is filled with a mass of

undulating ice, and has an ascent sufficiently gradual even to the

remotest abysses of these horrible deserts. It is only half a league

(about two miles) in breadth, and seems much less. It exhibits an

appearance as if frost had suddenly bound up the waves and whirlpools

of a mighty torrent. We walked some distance upon its surface. The

waves are elevated about 12 or 15 feet from the surface of the mass,

which is intersected by long gaps of unfathomable depth, the ice of

whose sides is more beautifully azure than the sky. In these regions

everything changes, and is in motion. This vast mass of ice has one

general progress, which ceases neither day nor night; it breaks and

bursts for ever: some undulations sink while others rise; it is never

the same. The echo of rocks, or of the ice and snow which fall from

their overhanging precipices, or roll from their aerial summits,

scarcely ceases for one moment. One would think that Mont Blanc, like

the god of the Stoics, was a vast animal, and that the frozen blood for

ever circulated through his stony veins.

We dined (M----, C----, and I) on the grass, in the open air,

surrounded by this scene. The air is piercing and clear. We returned

down the mountain, sometimes encompassed by the driving vapours,

sometimes cheered by the sunbeams, and arrived at our inn by seven

o’clock.

* * * * *

Montalegre, July 28th.

The next morning we returned through the rain to St. Martin. The

scenery had lost something of its immensity, thick clouds hanging over

the highest mountains; but visitings of sunset intervened between the

showers, and the blue sky shone between the accumulated clouds of

snowy whiteness which brought them; the dazzling mountains sometimes

glittered through a chasm of the clouds above our heads, and all the

charm of its grandeur remained. We repassed _Pont Pellisier_, a wooden

bridge over the Arve, and the ravine of the Arve. We repassed the

pine-forests which overhang the defile, the château of St. Michel,

a haunted ruin, built on the edge of a precipice, and shadowed over

by the eternal forest. We repassed the vale of Servoz, a vale more

beautiful, because more luxuriant, than that of Chamouni. Mont Blanc

forms one of the sides of this vale also, and the other is inclosed by

an irregular amphitheatre of enormous mountains, one of which is in

ruins, and fell fifty years ago into the higher part of the valley; the

smoke of its fall was seen in Piedmont, and people went from Turin to

investigate whether a volcano had not burst forth among the Alps. It

continued falling many days, spreading, with the shock and thunder of

its ruin, consternation into the neighbouring vales. In the evening we

arrived at St. Martin. The next day we wound through the valley, which

I have described before, and arrived in the evening at our home.

We have bought some specimens of minerals and plants, and two or three

crystal seals, at Mont Blanc, to preserve the remembrance of having

approached it. There is a cabinet of _Histoire Naturelle_ at Chamouni,

just as at Keswick, Matlock, and Clifton, the proprietor of which is

the very vilest specimen of that vile species of quack that, together

with the whole army of aubergistes and guides, and indeed the entire

mass of the population, subsist on the weakness and credulity of

travellers as leeches subsist on the sick. The most interesting of my

purchases is a large collection of all the seeds of rare alpine plants,

with their names written upon the outside of the papers that contain

them. These I mean to colonize in my garden in England, and to permit

you to make what choice you please from them They are companions which

the Celandine--the classic Celandine, need not despise; they are as

wild and more daring than he, and will tell him tales of things even as

touching and sublime as the gaze of a vernal poet.

Did I tell you that there are troops of wolves among these mountains?

In the winter they descend into the valleys, which the snow occupies

six months of the year, and devour everything that they can find out

of doors. A wolf is more powerful than the fiercest and strongest dog.

There are no bears in these regions. We heard, when we were at Lucerne,

that they were occasionally found in the forests which surround that

lake. Adieu.

S.

A Proposal

FOR PUTTING

REFORM TO THE VOTE

_THROUGHOUT THE KINGDOM_.

BY THE HERMIT OF MARLOW.

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR C. AND J. OLLIER,

3, WELBECK STREET, CAVENDISH SQUARE;

_By C. H. Reynell, 21, Piccadilly_.

1817.

[Decoration]

A PROPOSAL, &c.

A great question is now agitating in this nation, which no man or

party of men is competent to decide; indeed there are no materials of

evidence which can afford a foresight of the result. Yet on its issue

depends whether we are to be slaves or free men.

It is needless to recapitulate all that has been said about Reform.

Every one is agreed that the House of Commons is not a representation

of the people. The only theoretical question that remains is, whether

the people ought to legislate for themselves, or be governed by laws

and impoverished by taxes originating in the edicts of an assembly

which represents somewhat less than a thousandth part of the entire

community. I think they ought not to be so taxed and governed. An

hospital for lunatics is the only theatre where we can conceive so

mournful a comedy to be exhibited as this mighty nation now exhibits: a

single person bullying and swindling a thousand of his comrades out of

all they possessed in the world, and then trampling and spitting upon

them, though he were the most contemptible and degraded of mankind,

and they had strength in their arms and courage in their hearts. Such

a parable realized in political society is a spectacle worthy of the

utmost indignation and abhorrence.

The prerogatives of Parliament constitute a sovereignty which is

exercised in contempt of the People, and it is in strict consistency

with the laws of human nature that it should have been exercised

for the People’s misery and ruin. Those whom they despise, men

instinctively seek to render slavish and wretched, that their scorn may

be secure. It is the object of the Reformers to restore the People to a

sovereignty thus held in their contempt. It is my object, or I would be

silent now.

Servitude is sometimes voluntary. Perhaps the People choose to be

enslaved; perhaps it is their will to be degraded and ignorant and

famished; perhaps custom is their only God, and they its fanatic

worshippers will shiver in frost and waste in famine rather than deny

that idol, perhaps the majority of this nation decree that they will

not be represented in Parliament, that they will not deprive of power

those who have reduced them to the miserable condition in which they

now exist. It is _their_ will--it is their own concern. If such be

their decision, the champions of the rights and the mourners over the

errors and calamities of man, must retire to their homes in silence,

until accumulated sufferings shall have produced the effect of reason.

The question now at issue is, whether the majority of the adult

individuals of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland desire

or no a complete representation in the Legislative Assembly.

I have no doubt that such is their will, and I believe this is the

opinion of most persons conversant with the state of the public

feeling. But the fact ought to be formally ascertained before we

proceed. If the majority of the adult population should solemnly state

their desire to be, that the representatives whom they might appoint

should constitute the Commons House of Parliament, there is an end to

the dispute. Parliament would then be required, not petitioned, to

prepare some effectual plan for carrying the general will into effect;

and if Parliament should then refuse, the consequences of the contest

that might ensue would rest on its presumption and temerity. Parliament

would have rebelled against the People then.

If the majority of the adult population shall, when seriously called

upon for their opinion, determine on grounds, however erroneous, that

the experiment of innovation by Reform in Parliament is an evil of

greater magnitude than the consequences of misgovernment to which

Parliament has afforded a constitutional sanction, then it becomes us

to be silent; and we should be guilty of the great crime which I have

conditionally imputed to the House of Commons, if after unequivocal

evidence that it was the national will to acquiesce in the existing

system we should, by partial assemblies of the multitude, or by any

party acts, excite the minority to disturb this decision.

The first step towards Reform is to ascertain this point. For which

purpose I think the following plan would be effectual:--

That a Meeting should be appointed to be held at the _Crown and

Anchor_ Tavern on the ---- of ----, to take into consideration the

most effectual measures for ascertaining whether or no, a Reform in

Parliament is the will of the majority of the individuals of the

British Nation.

That the most eloquent and the most virtuous and the most venerable

among the Friends of Liberty, should employ their authority and

intellect to persuade men to lay aside all animosity and even

discussion respecting the topics on which they are disunited, and

by the love which they bear to their suffering country conjure them

to contribute all their energies to set this great question at

rest--whether the Nation desires a Reform in Parliament or no?

That the friends of Reform, residing in any part of the country, be

earnestly entreated to lend perhaps their last and the decisive effort

to set their hopes and fears at rest; that those who can should go to

London, and those who cannot, but who yet feel that the aid of their

talents might be beneficial, should address a letter to the Chairman

of the Meeting, explaining their sentiments: let these letters be

read aloud, let all things be transacted in the face of day. Let

Resolutions, of an import similar to those that follow be proposed.

1. That those who think that it is the duty of the People of this

nation to exact such a Reform in the Commons House of Parliament, as

should make that House a complete representation of their will, and

that the People have a right to perform this duty, assemble here for

the purpose of collecting evidence as to how far it is the will of

the majority of the People to acquit themselves of this duty, and to

exercise this right.

2. That the population of Great Britain and Ireland be divided into

three hundred distinct portions, each to contain an equal number of

inhabitants, and three hundred persons be commissioned, each personally

to visit every individual within the district named in his commission,

and to inquire whether or no that individual is willing to sign the

declaration contained in the third Resolution, requesting him to annex

to his signature any explanation or exposure of his sentiments which

he might choose to place on record. That the following Declaration be

proposed for signature:--

3. That the House of Commons does not represent the will of the People

of the British Nation; we the undersigned therefore declare, and

publish, and our signatures annexed shall be evidence of our firm and

solemn conviction that the liberty, the happiness, and the majesty of

the great nation to which it is our boast to belong, have been brought

into danger and suffered to decay through the corrupt and inadequate

manner in which Members are chosen to sit in the Commons House of

Parliament; we hereby express, before God and our country, a deliberate

and unbiassed persuasion, that it is our duty, if we shall be found in

the minority in this great question, incessantly to petition; if among

the majority, to require and exact that that House should originate

such measures of Reform as would render its Members the actual

Representatives of the Nation.

4. That this Meeting shall be held day after day, until it determines

on the whole detail of the plan for collecting evidence as to the will

of the nation on the subject of a Reform in Parliament.

5. That this Meeting disclaims any design, however remote, of lending

their sanction to the revolutionary and disorganizing schemes which

have been most falsely imputed to the Friends of Reform, and declares

that its object is purely constitutional.

6. That a subscription be set on foot to defray the expenses of this

Plan.

In the foregoing proposal of Resolutions, to be submitted to a National

Meeting of the Friends of Reform, I have purposely avoided detail. If

it shall prove that I have in any degree afforded a hint to men who

have earned and established their popularity by personal sacrifices and

intellectual eminence such as I have not the presumption to rival, let

it belong to them to pursue and develop all suggestions relating to the

great cause of liberty which has been nurtured (I am scarcely conscious

of a metaphor) with their very sweat, and blood, and tears: some have

tended it in dungeons, others have cherished it in famine, all have

been constant to it amidst persecution and calumny, and in the face of

the sanctions of power:--so accomplish what ye have begun.

I shall mention therefore only one point relating to the practical

part of my Proposal. Considerable expenses, according to my present

conception, would be necessarily incurred: funds should be created by

subscription to meet these demands. I have an income of a thousand a

year, on which I support my wife and children in decent comfort, and

from which I satisfy certain large claims of general justice. Should

any plan resembling that which I have proposed be determined on by you,

I will give £100, being a tenth part of one year’s income, towards its

object; and I will not deem so proudly of myself, as to believe that

I shall stand alone in this respect, when any rational and consistent

scheme for the public benefit shall have received the sanction of those

great and good men who have devoted themselves for its preservation.

A certain degree of coalition among the sincere Friends of Reform, in

whatever shape, is indispensable to the success of this proposal. The

friends of Universal or of Limited Suffrage, of Annual or Triennial

Parliaments, ought to settle these subjects on which they disagree,

when it is known whether the Nation desires that measure on which they

are all agreed. It is trivial to discuss what species of Reform shall

have place, when it yet remains a question whether there will be any

Reform or no.

Meanwhile, nothing remains for me but to state explicitly my sentiments

on this subject of Reform. The statement is indeed quite foreign to the

merits of the Proposal in itself, and I should have suppressed it until

called upon to subscribe such a requisition as I have suggested, if the

question which it is natural to ask, as to what are the sentiments of

the person who originates the scheme, could have received in any other

manner a more simple and direct reply. It appears to me that Annual

Parliaments ought to be adopted as an immediate measure, as one which

strongly tends to preserve the liberty and happiness of the Nation; it

would enable men to cultivate those energies on which the performance

of the political duties belonging to the citizen of a free state as

the rightful guardian of its prosperity essentially depends; it would

familiarize men with liberty by disciplining them to an habitual

acquaintance with its forms. Political institution is undoubtedly

susceptible of such improvements as no rational person can consider

possible, so long as the present degraded condition to which the vital

imperfections in the existing system of government has reduced the vast

multitude of men, shall subsist. The securest method of arriving at

such beneficial innovations, is to proceed gradually and with caution;

or in the place of that order and freedom which the Friends of Reform

assert to be violated now, anarchy and despotism will follow. Annual

Parliaments have my entire assent. I will not state those general

reasonings in their favour which Mr. Cobbett and other writers have

already made familiar to the public mind.

With respect to Universal Suffrage, I confess I consider its adoption,

in the present unprepared state of public knowledge and feeling, a

measure fraught with peril. I think that none but those who register

their names as paying a certain small sum in _direct taxes_ ought

at present to send Members to Parliament. The consequences of the

immediate extension of the elective franchise to every male adult,

would be to place power in the hands of men who have been rendered

brutal and torpid and ferocious by ages of slavery. It is to suppose

that the qualities belonging to a demagogue are such as are sufficient

to endow a legislator. I allow Major Cartwright’s arguments to be

unanswerable; abstractedly it is the right of every human being to

have a share in the government. But Mr. Paine’s arguments are also

unanswerable; a pure republic may be shown, by inferences the most

obvious and irresistible, to be that system of social order the fittest

to produce the happiness and promote the genuine eminence of man. Yet

nothing can less consist with reason, or afford smaller hopes of any

beneficial issue, than the plan which should abolish the regal and the

aristocratical branches of our constitution, before the public mind,

through many gradations of improvement, shall have arrived at the

maturity which can disregard these symbols of its childhood.

“WE PITY THE PLUMAGE, BUT FORGET THE DYING BIRD.”

* * * * *

AN ADDRESS to the PEOPLE ON

_The Death of the Princess Charlotte_.

* * * * *

BY

The Hermit of Marlow.

[Decoration]

AN ADDRESS, &c.

I. The Princess Charlotte is dead. She no longer moves, nor thinks,

nor feels. She is as inanimate as the clay with which she is about to

mingle. It is a dreadful thing to know that she is a putrid corpse,

who but a few days since was full of life and hope; a woman young,

innocent, and beautiful, snatched from the bosom of domestic peace, and

leaving that single vacancy which none can die and leave not.

II. Thus much the death of the Princess Charlotte has in common with

the death of thousands. How many women die in childbed and leave

their families of motherless children and their husbands to live on,

blighted by the remembrance of that heavy loss? How many women of

active and energetic virtues; mild, affectionate, and wise, whose life

is as a chain of happiness and union, which once being broken, leaves

those whom it bound to perish, have died, and have been deplored with

bitterness, which is too deep for words? Some have perished in penury

or shame, and their orphan baby has survived, a prey to the scorn and

neglect of strangers. Men have watched by the bedside of their expiring

wives, and have gone mad when the hideous death-rattle was heard within

the throat, regardless of the rosy child sleeping in the lap of the

unobservant nurse. The countenance of the physician had been read by

the stare of this distracted husband, till the legible despair sunk

into his heart. All this has been and is. You walk with a merry heart

through the streets of this great city, and think not that such are

the scenes acting all around you. You do not number in your thought

the mothers who die in childbed. It is the most horrible of ruins:--In

sickness, in old age, in battle, death comes as to his own home; but in

the season of joy and hope, when life should succeed to life, and the

assembled family expects one more, the youngest and the best beloved,

that the wife, the mother--she for whom each member of the family was

so dear to one another, should die!--Yet thousands of the poorest poor,

whose misery is aggravated by what cannot be spoken now, suffer this.

And have they no affections? Do not their hearts beat in their bosoms,

and the tears gush from their eyes? Are they not human flesh and blood?

Yet none weep for them--none mourn for them--none when their coffins

are carried to the grave (if indeed the parish furnishes a coffin for

all) turn aside and moralize upon the sadness they have left behind.

III. The Athenians did well to celebrate, with public mourning, the

death of those who had guided the republic with their valour and

their understanding, or illustrated it with their genius. Men do

well to mourn for the dead; it proves that we love something beside

ourselves; and he must have a hard heart who can see his friend depart

to rottenness and dust, and speed him without emotion on his voyage to

“that bourne whence no traveller returns.” To lament for those who have

benefited the State, is a habit of piety yet more favourable to the

cultivation of our best affections. When Milton died it had been well

that the universal English nation had been clothed in solemn black,

and that the muffled bells had tolled from town to town. The French

nation should have enjoined a public mourning at the deaths of Rousseau

and Voltaire. We cannot truly grieve for every one who dies beyond

the circle of those especially dear to us; yet in the extinction of

the objects of public love and admiration, and gratitude, there is

something, if we enjoy a liberal mind, which has departed from within

that circle. It were well done also, that men should mourn for any

public calamity which has befallen their country or the world, though

it be not death. This helps to maintain that connexion between one man

and another, and all men considered as a whole, which is the bond of

social life. There should be public mourning when those events take

place which make all good men mourn in their hearts,--the rule of

foreign or domestic tyrants, the abuse of public faith, the wresting of

old and venerable laws to the murder of the innocent, the established

insecurity of all those, the flower of the nation, who cherish an

unconquerable enthusiasm for public good. Thus, if Horne Tooke and

Hardy had been convicted of high treason, it had been good that there

had been not only the sorrow and the indignation which would have

filled all hearts, but the external symbols of grief. When the French

Republic was extinguished, the world ought to have mourned.

IV. But this appeal to the feelings of men should not be made lightly,

or in any manner that tends to waste, on inadequate objects, those

fertilizing streams of sympathy, which a public mourning should be

the occasion of pouring forth. This solemnity should be used only to

express a wide and intelligible calamity, and one which is felt to be

such by those who feel for their country and for mankind; its character

ought to be universal, not particular.

V. The news of the death of the Princess Charlotte, and of the

execution of Brandreth, Ludlam, and Turner, arrived nearly at the same

time. If beauty, youth, innocence, amiable manners, and the exercise

of the domestic virtues could alone justify public sorrow when they

are extinguished for ever, this interesting Lady would well deserve

that exhibition. She was the last and the best of her race. But there

were thousands of others equally distinguished as she, for private

excellences, who have been cut off in youth and hope. The accident

of her birth neither made her life more virtuous nor her death more

worthy of grief. For the public she had done nothing either good or

evil; her education had rendered her incapable of either in a large

and comprehensive sense. She was born a Princess; and those who are

destined to rule mankind are dispensed with acquiring that wisdom and

that experience which is necessary even to rule themselves. She was

not like Lady Jane Grey, or Queen Elizabeth, a woman of profound and

various learning. She had accomplished nothing, and aspired to nothing,

and could understand nothing respecting those great political questions

which involve the happiness of those over whom she was destined to

rule. Yet this should not be said in blame, but in compassion: let

us speak no evil of the dead. Such is the misery, such the impotence

of royalty--Princes are prevented from the cradle from becoming

anything which may deserve that greatest of all rewards next to a good

conscience, public admiration and regret.

VI. The execution of Brandreth, Ludlam, and Turner is an event of

quite a different character from the death of the Princess Charlotte.

These men were shut up in a horrible dungeon for many months, with the

fear of a hideous death and of everlasting hell thrust before their

eyes; and at last were brought to the scaffold and hung. They too had

domestic affections, and were remarkable for the exercise of private

virtues. Perhaps their low station permitted the growth of those

affections in a degree not consistent with a more exalted rank. They

had sons, and brothers, and sisters, and fathers, who loved them, it

should seem, more than the Princess Charlotte could be loved by those

whom the regulations of her rank had held in perpetual estrangement

from her. Her husband was to her as father, mother, and brethren.

Ludlam and Turner were men of mature years, and the affections were

ripened and strengthened within them. What these sufferers felt shall

not be said. But what must have been the long and various agony of

their kindred may be inferred from Edward Turner, who, when he saw

his brother dragged along upon the hurdle, shrieked horribly and fell

in a fit, and was carried away like a corpse by two men. How fearful

must have been their agony, sitting in solitude on that day when the

tempestuous voice of horror from the crowd, told them that the head

so dear to them was severed from the body! Yes--they listened to the

maddening shriek which burst from the multitude: they heard the rush

of ten thousand terror-stricken feet, the groans and the hootings

which told them that the mangled and distorted head was then lifted

into the air. The sufferers were dead. What is death? Who dares to

say that which will come after the grave?[43] Brandreth was calm, and

evidently believed that the consequences of our errors were limited by

that tremendous barrier. Ludlam and Turner were full of fears, lest God

should plunge them in everlasting fire. Mr. Pickering, the clergyman,

was evidently anxious that Brandreth should not by a false confidence

lose the single opportunity of reconciling himself with the Ruler of

the future world. None knew what death was, or could know. Yet these

men were presumptuously thrust into that unfathomable gulf, by other

men, who knew as little and who reckoned not the present or the future

sufferings of their victims. Nothing is more horrible than that man

should for any cause shed the life of man. For all other calamities

there is a remedy or a consolation. When that Power through which we

live ceases to maintain the life which it has conferred, then is grief

and agony, and the burthen which must be borne: such sorrow improves

the heart. But when man sheds the blood of man, revenge, and hatred,

and a long train of executions, and assassinations, and proscriptions

is perpetuated to remotest time.

VII. Such are the particular, and some of the general considerations

depending on the death of these men. But, however deplorable, if it

were a mere private or customary grief, the public as the public should

not mourn. But it is more than this. The events which led to the death

of those unfortunate men are a public calamity. I will not impute blame

to the jury who pronounced them guilty of high treason, perhaps the

law requires that such should be the denomination of their offence.

Some restraint ought indeed to be imposed on those thoughtless men who

imagine they can find in violence a remedy for violence, even if their

oppressors had tempted them to this occasion of their ruin. They are

instruments of evil, not so guilty as the hands that wielded them, but

fit to inspire caution. But their death, by hanging and beheading,

and the circumstances of which it is the characteristic and the

consequence, constitute a calamity such as the English nation ought to

mourn with an unassuageable grief.