Onu.—I fear I shall shock Ambrosio, but I cannot help vindicating a little the philosophical results of human reason, which it must be allowed are entirely hostile to his ideas. I agree with Philalethes that it is the noblest gift of God to man; and I cannot think that Ambrosio's view of the paradisaical condition and the fall of man and the progress of society is at all in conformity with the ideas we ought to form of the institutions of an infinitely wise and powerful Being. Besides, Ambrosio speaks of the reasonableness of his own opinions; of course his notions of reason must be different from mine, or we have adopted different forms of logic. I do not find in the biblical history any idea of the supreme Intelligence conformable to those of the Greek philosophers; on the contrary, I find Jehovah everywhere described as a powerful material being, endowed with organs, feelings, and passions similar to those of a great and exalted human agent. He is described as making man in His own image, as walking in the garden in the cool of the evening, as being pleased with sacrificial offerings, as angry with Adam and Eve, as personally cursing Cain for his crime of fratricide, and even as providing our first parents with garments to hide their nakedness; then He appears a material form in the midst of flames, thunder and lightning, and was regarded by the Levites as having a fixed residence in the Ark. He is contrasted throughout the whole of the Old Testament with the gods of the heathens, only as being more powerful; and in the strange scene which took place in Pharaoh's court He seemed to have measured His abilities with those of certain seers or magicians, and to have proved His superiority only by producing greater and more tremendous plagues. In all the early history of the Jewish nation there is no conception approaching to the sublimity of that of Anaxagoras, who called God the Intelligence or [Greek text]. He appears always, on the contrary, like the genii of Arabian romance, living in clouds, descending on mountains, urging His chosen people to commit the most atrocious crimes, to destroy all the races not professing the same worship, and to exterminate even the child and the unborn infant. Then, I find in the Old Testament no promise of a spiritual Messiah, but only of a temporal king, who, as the Jews believe, is yet to come. The serpent in Genesis has no connection with the spirit of evil, but is described only as the most subtle beast of the field, and, having injured man, there was to be a perpetual enmity between their races—the serpent when able was to bite the heel of the man, and the man when an opportunity occurred was to bruise the head of the serpent. I will allow, if you please, that an instinct of religion or superstition belongs to the human mind, and that the different forms which this instinct assumes depend upon various circumstances and accidents of history and climate; but I am not sure that the religion of the Jews was superior to that of the Sabaeans who worshipped the stars, or the ancient Persians who adored the sun as the visible symbol of divine power, or the eastern nations who in the various forms of the visible universe worshipped the powers and energies of the Divinity. I feel like the ancient Romans with respect to toleration; I would give a place to all the gods in my Pantheon, but I would not allow the followers of Brahmah or of Christ to quarrel about the modes of incarnation or the superiority of the attributes of their trien God.

Amb.—You have mistaken me, Onuphrio, if you think I am shocked by your opinions; I have seen too much of the wanderings of human reason ever to be surprised by them, and the views you have adopted are not uncommon amongst young men of very superior talents, who have only slightly examined the evidences of revealed religion. But I am glad to find that you have not adopted the code of infidelity of many of the French revolutionists and of an English school of sceptics, who find in the ancient astronomy all the germs of the worship of the Hebrews, who identify the labours of Hercules with those of the Jewish heroes, and who find the life, death and resurrection of the Messiah in the history of the solar day. You, at least, allow the existence of a peculiar religious instinct, or, as you are pleased to call it, superstition, belonging to the human mind, and I have hopes that upon this foundation you will ultimately build up a system of faith not unworthy a philosopher and a Christian. Man, with whatever religious instincts he was created, was intended to communicate with the visible universe by sensations and act upon it by his organs, and in the earliest state of society he was more particularly influenced by his gross senses. Allowing the existence of a supreme Intelligence and His beneficent intentions towards man, the ideas of His presence which He might think fit to impress upon the mind, either for the purpose of veneration, or of love, of hope or fear, must have been in harmony with the general train of His sensations—I am not sure that I make myself intelligible. The same infinite power which in an instant could create a universe, could of course so modify the ideas of an intellectual being as to give them that form and character most fitted for his existence; and I suppose in the early state of created man he imagined that he enjoyed the actual presence of the Divinity and heard His voice. I take this to be the first and simplest result of religious instinct. In early times amongst the patriarchs I suppose these ideas were so vivid as to be confounded with impressions; but as religious instinct probably became feebler in their posterity, the vividness of the impressions diminished, and they then became visions or dreams, which with the prophets seem to have constituted inspiration. I do not suppose that the Supreme Being ever made Himself known to man by a real change in the order of Nature, but that the sensations of men were so modified by their instincts as to induce the belief in His presence. That there was a divine intelligence continually acting upon the race of Seth as his chosen people, is, I think, clearly proved by the events of their history, and also that the early opinions of a small tribe in Judaea were designed for the foundation of the religion of the most active and civilised and powerful nations of the world, and that after a lapse of three thousand years. The manner in which Christianity spread over the world with a few obscure mechanics or fishermen for its promulgators; the mode in which it triumphed over paganism even when professed and supported by the power and philosophy of a Julian; the martyrs who subscribed to the truth of Christianity by shedding their blood for the faith; the exalted nature of those intellectual men by whom it has been professed who had examined all the depths of nature and exercised the profoundest faculties of thought, such as Newton, Locke, and Hartley, all appear to me strong arguments in favour of revealed religion. I prefer rather founding my creed upon the fitness of its doctrines than upon historical evidences or the nature of its miracles. The Divine Intelligence chooses that men should be convinced according to the ordinary train of their sensations, and on all occasions it appears to me more natural that a change should take place in the human mind than in the order of nature. The popular opinion of the people of Judaea was that certain diseases were occasioned by devils taking possession of a human being; the disease was cured by our Saviour, and this in the Gospel is expressed by his casting out devils. But without entering into explanations respecting the historical miracles belonging to Christianity, it is sufficient to say that its truth is attested by a constantly existing miracle, the present state of the Jews, which was predicted by Jesus; their temple and city were destroyed, and all attempts made to rebuild it have been vain, and they remain the despised and outcasts of the world.

Onu.—But you have not answered my objections with respect to the cruelties exercised by the Jews under the command of Jehovah, which appear to me in opposition to all our views of divine justice.

Amb.—I think even Philalethes will allow that physical and moral diseases are hereditary, and that to destroy a pernicious unbelief or demoniacal worship it was necessary to destroy the whole race root and branch. As an example, I will imagine a certain contagions disease which is transmitted by parents to children, and which, like the plague, is communicated to sound persons by contact; to destroy a family of men who would spread this disease over the whole earth would unquestionably be a mercy. Besides, I believe in the immortality of the sentient principle in man; destruction of life is only a change of existence, and supposing the new existence a superior one it is a gain. To the Supreme Intelligence the death of a million of human beings is the mere circumstance of so many spiritual essences changing their habitations, and is analogous to the myriad millions of larvae that leave their coats and shells behind them and rise into the atmosphere, as flies in a summer day. When man measures the works of the Divine Mind by his own feeble combinations, he must wander in gross error; the infinite can never be understood by the finite.

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

Amb.—Undoubtedly they might, and I should allow the justness of their defence if I saw in their religion any germs of a divine institution fitted to become, like the religion of Jehovah, the faith of the whole civilised world, embracing the most perfect form of theism and the most refined and exalted morality. I consider the early acts of the Jewish nation as the lowest and rudest steps of a temple raised by the Supreme Being to contain the altar of sacrifice to His glory. In the early periods of society rude and uncultivated men could only be acted upon by gross and temporal rewards and punishments; severe rites and heavy discipline were required to keep the mind in order, and the punishment of the idolatrous nation served as an example for the Jews. When Christianity took the place of Judaism the ideas of the Supreme Being became more pure and abstracted, and the visible attributes of Jehovah and His angels appear to have been less frequently presented to the mind; yet even for many ages it seemed as if the grossness of our material senses required some assistance from the eye in fixing or perpetuating the character of religious instinct, and the Church to which I belong, and I may say the whole Christian Church in early times, allowed visible images, pictures, statues, and relics as the means of awakening the stronger devotional feelings. We have been accused of worshipping merely inanimate objects, but this is a very false notion of the nature of our faith; we regard them merely as vivid characters representing spiritual existences and we no more worship them than the Protestant does his Bible when he kisses it under a solemn religious adjuration. The past, the present, and the future being the same to the infinite and divine Intelligence, and man being created in love for the purposes of happiness, the moral and religious discipline to which he was submitted was in strict conformity to his progressive faculties and to the primary laws of his nature. It is but a rude analogy, yet it is the only one I can find, that of comparing the Supreme Being to a wise and good father who, to secure the well-being of his offspring, is obliged to adopt a system of rewards and punishments in which the senses at first and afterwards the imagination and reason are concerned; he terrifies them by the example of others, awakens their love of glory by pointing out the distinction and the happiness gained by superior men by adopting a particular line of conduct; he uses at first the rod, and gradually substitutes for it the fear of immediate shame; and having awakened the fear of shame and the love of praise or honour with respect to temporary and immediate actions he extends them to the conduct of the whole of life, and makes what was a momentary feeling a permanent and immutable principle. And obedience in the child to the will of such a parent may be compared to faith in and obedience to the will of the Supreme Being; and a wayward and disobedient child who reasons upon and doubts the utility of the discipline of such a father is much in the same state in which the adult man is who doubts if there be good in the decrees of Providence and who questions the harmony of the plan of the moral universe.

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

Amb.—You, like all other sceptics, make your own interpretations of the Scriptures and set up a standard for divine power in human reason. The infinite and eternal mind, as I said before, fits the doctrines of religion to the minds by which they are to be embraced. I see no improbability in the idea that an integrant part of His essence may have animated a human form; there can be no doubt that this belief has existed in the human mind, and the belief constitutes the vital part of the religion. We know nothing of the generation of the human being in the ordinary course of nature; how absurd then to attempt to reason upon the acts of the Divine Mind! nor is there more difficulty in imagining the event of a divine conception than of a divine creation. To God the infinite, little and great, as measured by human powers, are equal; a creature of this earth, however humble and insignificant, may have the same weight with millions of superior beings inhabiting higher systems. But I consider all the miraculous parts of our religion as effected by changes in the sensations or ideas of the human mind, and not by physical changes in the order of nature; a man who has to repair a piece of machinery, as a clock, must take it to pieces, and, in fact, re-make it, but to infinite wisdom and power a change in the intellectual state of the human being may be the result of a momentary will, and the mere act of faith may produce the change. How great the powers of imagination are, even in ordinary life, is shown by many striking facts, and nothing seems impossible to this imagination when acted upon by divine influence. To attempt to answer all the objections which may be derived from the want of conformity in the doctrines of Christianity to the usual order of events would be an interminable labour. My first principle is, that religion has nothing to do with the common order of events; it is a pure and divine instinct intended to give results to man which he cannot obtain by the common use of his reason, and which at first view often appear contradictory to it, but which when examined by the most refined tests, and considered in the most extensive and profound relations, are, in fact, in conformity with the most exalted intellectual knowledge, so that, indeed, the results of pure reason ultimately become the same with those of faith—the tree of knowledge is grafted upon the tree of life, and that fruit which brought the fear of death into the world, budding on an immortal stock, becomes the fruit of the promise of immortality.

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

Amb.—I will willingly make the decision of the general question dependent upon the decision of this particular one. No attempts have been made by the Mahometans to find any predictions respecting their founder in the Old Testament, and they have never pretended even that he was the Messiah; therefore, as far as prophecy is concerned, there is no ground for admitting the truth of the religion of Mahomet. It has been the fashion with a particular sect of infidels to praise the morality of the Mahometans, but I think unjustly; they are said to be honest in their dealings and charitable to those of their own persuasion; but they allow polygamy and a plurality of women, and are despisers and persecutors of the nations professing a different faith. And what a contrast does this morality present to that of the Gospel which inculcates charity to all mankind, and orders benevolent actions to be performed even to enemies! and the purity and simplicity of the infant is held up by Christ as the model of imitation for His followers. Then, in the rewards and punishments of the future state of the Mahometans, how gross are all the ideas, how unlike the promises of a divine and spiritual being; their paradise is a mere earthly garden of sensual pleasure, and their Houris represent the ladies of their own harems rather than glorified angelic natures. How different is the Christian heaven, how sublime in its idea, indefinite, yet well suited to a being of intellectual and progressive faculties; "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive the joys that He hath prepared for those who love Him."

Onu.—I confess your answer to my last argument is a triumphant one; but I cannot allow a question of such extent and of such a variety of bearings to be decided by so slight an advantage as that which you have gained by this answer. I will now offer another difficulty to you. The law of the Jews, you will allow, was established by God Himself and delivered to Moses from the seat of His glory amongst storms, thunder, and lightnings, on Mount Sinai; why should this law, if pure and divine, have been overturned by the same Being who established it? And all the ceremonies of the Hebrews have been abolished by the first Christians.

Amb.—I deny that the divine law of Moses was abolished by Christ, who Himself says, "I came to confirm the law, not to destroy it." And the Ten Commandments form the vital parts of the foundation of the creed of the true Christian. It appears that the religion of Christ was the same pure theism with that of the patriarchs; and the rites and ceremonies established by Moses seem to have been only adjuncts to the spiritual religion intended to suit a particular climate and a particular state of the Jewish nation, rather a dress or clothing of the religion than forming a constituent part of it, a system of discipline of life and manners rather than an essential part of doctrine. The rites of circumcision and ablution were necessary to the health and perhaps even to the existence of a people living on the hottest part of the shores of the Mediterranean. And in the sacrifices made of the first fruits and of the chosen of the flock, we may see a design not merely connected with the religious faith of the people but even with their political economy. To offer their choicest and best property as a proof of their gratitude to the Supreme Being was a kind of test of devotedness and obedience to the theocracy; and these sacrifices by obliging them to raise more produce and provide more cattle than were essential to their ordinary support, preserved them from the danger of famine, as in case of a dearth it was easy for the priests under the divine permission to apply those offerings to the necessities of the people. All the pure parts of the faith which had descended from Abraham to David were preserved by Jesus Christ; but the ceremonial religion was fitted only for a particular nation and a particular country; Christianity, on the contrary, was to be the religion of the world and of a civilised and improving world. And it appears to me to be an additional proof of its divine nature and origin, that it is exactly in conformity to the principles of the improvement and perfection of the human mind. When given to a particular race fixed in a peculiar climate, its objects were sensible, its discipline was severe, and its rites and ceremonies numerous and imposing, fitted to act upon weak, ignorant, and consequently obstinate men. In its gradual development it threw off its local character and its particular forms, and adopted ceremonies more fitted for mankind in general; and in its ultimate views, it preserves only pure, spiritual, and I may say philosophical doctrines, the unity of the divine nature and a future state, embracing a system of rewards and punishments suited to an accountable and immortal being.

Phil.—I have been attentively listening to your discussion. The views which Ambrosio has taken of Christianity certainly throw a light over it perfectly new to me; and, I must say in candour, that I am disposed to adopt his notion of the early state of society rather than that of my Genius. I have always been accustomed to consider religious feeling as instinctive; but Ambrosio's arguments have given me something approaching to a definite faith for an obscure and indefinite notion. I am willing to allow that man was created, not a savage, as he is represented in my vision, but perfect in his faculties and with a variety of instinctive powers and knowledge; that he transmitted these powers and knowledge to his offspring; but that by an improper use of reason in disobedience to the divine will, the instinctive faculties of most of his descendants became deteriorated and at last lost, but that these faculties were preserved in the race of Abraham and David, and the full power again bestowed upon or recovered by Christ. I am ready to allow the importance of religion in cultivating and improving the world; and Ambrosio's view appears to me capable of being referred to a general law of our nature; and revelation may be regarded not as a partial interference but as a constant principle belonging to the mind of man, and the belief in supernatural forms and agency, the results of prophecies and the miracles, as one only of the necessary consequences of it. Man, as a reasoning animal, must always have doubted of his immortality and plan of conduct; in all the results of faith, there is immediate submission to a divine will, which we are sure is good. We may compare the destiny of man in this respect to that of a migratory bird; if a slow flying bird, as a landrail in the Orkneys in autumn, had reason and could use it as to the probability of his finding his way over deserts, across seas, and of securing his food in passing to a warm climate 3,000 miles off, he would undoubtedly starve in Europe; under the direction of his instinct he securely arrives there in good condition. I have allowed the force of your objections to that part of my vision relating to the origin of society, but I hope you will admit that the conclusion of it is not inconsistent with the ideas derived from revelation respecting the future state of the human being.

Amb.—Revelation has not disclosed to us the nature of this state, but only fixed its certainty. We are sure from geological facts, as well as from sacred history, that man is a recent animal on the globe, and that this globe has undergone one considerable revolution, since the creation, by water; and we are taught that it is to undergo another, by fire, preparatory to a new and glorified state of existence of man; but this is all we are permitted to know, and as this state is to be entirely different from the present one of misery and probation, any knowledge respecting it would be useless and indeed almost impossible.

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

Amb.—Human fancy may imagine a thousand manners in which it may be produced, but upon such notions it is absurd to dwell. I will not allow your Genius the slightest approach to inspiration, and I can admit no verisimility in a reverie which is fixed on a foundation you now allow to be so weak. But see, the twilight is beginning to appear in the orient sky, and there are some dark clouds on the horizon opposite to the crater of Vesuvius, the lower edges of which transmit a bright light, showing the sun is already risen in the country beneath them. I would say that they may serve as an image of the hopes of immortality derived from revelation; for we are sure from the light reflected in those clouds that the lands below us are in the brightest sunshine, but we are entirely ignorant of the surface and the scenery; so, by revelation, the light of an imperishable and glorious world is disclosed to us; but it is in eternity, and its objects cannot be seen by mortal eye or imaged by mortal imagination.

Phil.—I am not so well read in the Scriptures as I hope I shall be at no very distant time; but I believe the pleasures of heaven are mentioned more distinctly than you allow in the sacred writings. I think I remember that the saints are said to be crowned with palms and amaranths, and that they are described as perpetually hymning and praising God.

Amb.—This is evidently only metaphorical; music is the sensual pleasure which approaches nearest to an intellectual one, and probably may represent the delight resulting from the perception of the harmony of things and of truth seen in God. The palm as an evergreen tree and the amaranth a perdurable flower are emblems of immortality. If I am allowed to give a metaphorical allusion to the future state of the blest, I should image it by the orange grove in that sheltered glen, on which the sun is now beginning to shine, and of which the trees are at the same time loaded with sweet golden fruit and balmy silver flowers. Such objects may well portray a state in which hope and fruition become one eternal feeling.

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

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

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

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

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

Amb.—You mistake me: as to their influencing or affecting the supreme mind it is out of the question, but they affect your own mind, they perpetuate a habit of gratitude and of obedience which may gradually end in perfect faith, they discipline the affections and keep the heart in a state of preparation to receive and preserve all good and pious feelings. Whoever passes from utter darkness into bright sunshine finds that he cannot at first distinguish objects better in one than in the other, but in a feeble light he acquires gradually the power of bearing a brighter one, and gains at last the habit not only of supporting it, but of receiving delight as well as instruction from it. In the pious contemplations that I recommend to you there is the twilight or sober dawn of faith which will ultimately enable you to support the brightness of its meridian sun.

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

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



DIALOGUE THE THIRD. THE UNKNOWN.

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

It was on the 16th of May, 18— that we left Naples at three in the morning for the purpose of visiting the remains of the temples of Paestum, and having provided relays of horses we found ourselves at about half- past one o'clock descending the hill of Eboli towards the plain which contains these stupendous monuments of antiquity. Were my existence to be prolonged through ten centuries, I think I could never forget the pleasure I received on that delicious spot. We alighted from our carriage to take some refreshment, and we reposed upon the herbage under the shade of a magnificent pine contemplating the view around and below us. On the right were the green hills covered with trees stretching towards Salerno; beyond them were the marble cliffs which form the southern extremity of the Bay of Sorento; immediately below our feet was a rich and cultivated country filled with vineyards and abounding in villas, in the gardens of which were seen the olive and the cypress tree connected as if to memorialise how near to each other are life and death, joy and sorrow; the distant mountains stretching beyond the plain of Paestum were in the full luxuriance of vernal vegetation; and in the extreme distance, as if in the midst of a desert, we saw the white temples glittering in the sunshine. The blue Tyrrhene sea filled up the outline of this scene, which, though so beautiful, was not calm; there was a heavy breeze which blew full from the southwest; it was literally a zephyr, and its freshness and strength in the middle of the day were peculiarly balmy and delightful; it seemed a breath stolen by the spring from the summer. I never saw a deeper, brighter azure than that of the waves which rolled towards the shore, and which was rendered more striking by the pure whiteness of their foam. The agitation of nature seemed to be one of breathing and awakening life; the noise made by the waving of the branches of the pine above our heads and by the rattling of its cones was overpowered by the music of a multitude of birds which sung everywhere in the trees that surrounded us, and the cooing of the turtle- doves was heard even more distinctly than the murmuring of the waves or the whistling of the winds, so that in the strife of nature the voice of love was predominant. With our hearts touched by this extraordinary scene we descended to the ruins, and having taken at a farmhouse a person who acted as guide or cicerone, we began to examine those wonderful remains which have outlived even the name of the people by whom they were raised, and which continue almost perfect whilst a Roman and a Saracen city since raised have been destroyed. We had been walking for half an hour round the temples in the sunshine when our guide represented to us the danger that there was of suffering from the effects of malaria, for which, as is well known, this place is notorious, and advised us to retire into the interior of the temple of Neptune. We followed his advice, and my companions began to employ themselves in measuring the circumference of one of the Doric columns, when they suddenly called my attention to a stranger who was sitting on a camp-stool behind it. The appearance of any person in this place at this time was sufficiently remarkable, but the man who was before us from his dress and appearance would have been remarkable anywhere. He was employed in writing in a memorandum book when we first saw him, but he immediately rose and saluted us by bending the head slightly though gracefully; and this enabled me to see distinctly his person and dress. He was rather above the middle stature, slender, but with well-turned limbs; his countenance was remarkably intelligent, his eye hazel but full and strong, his front was smooth and unwrinkled, and but for some grey hairs, which appeared silvering his brown and curly locks, he might have been supposed to have hardly reached the middle age; his nose was aquiline, the expression of the lower part of his countenance remarkably sweet, and when he spoke to our guide, which he did with uncommon fluency in the Neapolitan dialect, I thought I had never heard a more agreeable voice, sonorous yet gentle and silver-sounded. His dress was very peculiar, almost like that of an ecclesiastic, but coarse and light; and there was a large soiled white hat on the ground beside him, on which was fastened a pilgrim's cockle shell, and there was suspended round his neck a long antique blue enamelled phial, like those found in the Greek tombs, and it was attached to a rosary of coarse beads. He took up his hat, and appeared to be retiring to another part of the building, when I apologised for the interruption we had given to his studies, begged him to resume them, and assured him that our stay in the building would be only momentary, for I saw that there was a cloud over the sun, the brightness of which was the cause of our retiring. I spoke in Italian; he replied in English, observing that he supposed the fear of contracting the malaria fever had induced us to seek the shelter of the shade: but it is too early in the season to have much reasonable fear of this insidious enemy; yet, he added, this bottle which you may have observed here at my breast, I carry about with me, as a supposed preventive of the effects of malaria, and as far as my experience, a very limited one, however, has gone, it is effectual. I ventured to ask him what the bottle might contain, as such a benefit ought to be made known to the world. He replied, "It is a mixture which slowly produces the substance called by chemists chlorine, which is well known to be generally destructive to contagious matters; and a friend of mine who has lived for many years in Italy, and who has made a number of experiments with it, by exposing himself to the danger of fever in the worst seasons and in the worst places, believes that it is a secure preventive. I am not convinced of this; but it can do no harm; and in waiting for more evidence of its utility, I employ it without putting the least confidence in its power; nor do I expose myself to the same danger as my friend has done for the sake of an experiment." I said, "I believe several scientific persons—Brocchi amongst others—have doubted the existence of any specific matter in the atmosphere producing intermittent fevers in marshy countries and hot climates; and have been more disposed to attribute the disease to physical causes, dependent upon the great differences of temperature between day and night and to the refrigerating effects of the dense fogs common in such situations in the evening and morning; and, on this hypothesis, they have recommended warm woollen clothing and fires at night as the best preventives against these destructive diseases, so fatal to the peasants who remain in the summer and autumn in the neighbourhood of the maremme of Rome, Tuscany, or Naples." The stranger said, "I am acquainted with the opinions of the gentlemen, and they undoubtedly have weight; but that a specific matter of contagion has not been detected by chemical means in the atmosphere of marshes does not prove its non-existence. We know so little of those agents that affect the human constitution, that it is of no use to reason on this subject. There can be no doubt that the line of malaria above the Pontine marshes is marked by a dense fog morning and evening, and most of the old Roman towns were placed upon eminences out of the reach of this fog. I have myself experienced a peculiar effect upon the organs of smell in the neighbourhood of marshes in the evening after a very hot day; and the instances in which people have been seized with intermittents by a single exposure in a place infested by malaria in the season of fevers gives, I think, a strong support to something like a poisonous material existing in the atmosphere in such spots; but I merely offer doubts. I hope the progress of physiology and of chemistry will at no very distant time solve this important problem." Ambrosio now came forward, and bowing to the stranger, said he took the liberty, as he saw from his familiarity with the cicerone that he was well acquainted with Paestum, of asking him whether the masses of travertine, of which the Cyclopean walls and the temples were formed, were really produced by aqueous deposition from the River Silaro, as he had often heard reported. The stranger replied, "that they were certainly produced by deposition from water; and such deposits are made by the Silaro. But I rather believe," he said, "that a lake in the immediate neighbourhood of the city furnished the quarry from which these stones were excavated; and, in half an hour, if you like, after you have finished your examinations of the temples with your guide, I will accompany you to the spot from which it is evident that large masses of the travertine, marmor tiburtinum, or calcareous tufa, have been raised." We thanked him for his attention, accepted his invitation, took the usual walk round the temples, and returned to our new acquaintance, who led the way through the gate of the city to the banks of a pool or lake a short distance off. We walked to the borders on a mass of calcareous tufa, and we saw that this substance had even encrusted the reeds on the shore. There was something peculiarly melancholy in the character of this water; all the herbs around it were grey, as if encrusted with marble; a few buffaloes were slaking their thirst in it, which ran wildly away on our approach, and appeared to retire into a rocky excavation or quarry at the end of the lake; there were a number of birds, which, on examination, I found were sea swallows, flitting on the surface and busily employed with the libella or dragon- fly in destroying the myriads of gnats which rose from the bottom and were beginning to be very troublesome by their bites to us. "There," said the stranger, "is what I believe to be the source of those large and durable stones which you see in the plain before you. This water rapidly deposits calcareous matter, and even if you throw a stick into it, a few hours is sufficient to give it a coating of this substance. Whichever way you turn your eyes you see masses of this recently-produced marble, the consequence of the overflowing of the lake during the winter floods, and in that large excavation where you saw the buffaloes disappear you may observe that immense masses have been removed, as if by the hand of art and in remote times. The marble that remains in the quarry is of the same texture and character as that which you see in the ruins of Paestum, and I think it is scarcely possible to doubt that the builders of those extraordinary structures derived a part of their materials from this spot." Ambrosio gave his assent to this opinion of the stranger; and I took the liberty of asking him as to the quantity of calcareous matter contained in solution in the lake, saying that it appeared to me, for so rapid and considerable an effect of deposition, there must be an unusual quantity of solid matter dissolved by the water or some peculiar circumstance of solution. The stranger replied, "This water is like many, I may say most of the sources which rise at the foot of the Apennines: it holds carbonic acid in solution which has dissolved a portion of the calcareous matter of the rock through which it has passed. This carbonic acid is dissipated in the atmosphere, and the marble, slowly thrown down, assumes a crystalline form and produces coherent stones. The lake before us is not particularly rich in the quantity of calcareous matter that it contains, for, as I have found by experience, a pint of it does not afford more than five or six grains; but the quantity of fluid and the length of time are sufficient to account for the immense quantities of tufa and rock which in the course of ages have accumulated in this situation." Onuphrio's curiosity was excited by this statement of the stranger, and he said, "May I take the liberty of asking if you have any idea as to the cause of the large quantity of carbonic acid which you have been so good as to inform us exists in most of the waters in this country?" The stranger replied, "I certainly have formed an opinion on this subject, which I willingly state to you. It can, I think, be scarcely doubted that there is a source of volcanic fire at no great distance from the surface in the whole of southern Italy; and, this fire acting upon the calcareous rocks of which the Apennines are composed, must constantly detach from them carbonic acid, which rising to the sources of the springs, deposited from the waters of the atmosphere, must give them their impregnation and enable them to dissolve calcareous matter. I need not dwell upon Etna, Vesuvius, or the Lipari Islands to prove that volcanic fires are still in existence; and there can be no doubt that in earlier periods almost the whole of Italy was ravaged by them; oven Rome itself, the eternal city, rests upon the craters of extinct volcanoes; and I imagine that the traditional and fabulous record of the destruction made by the conflagration of Phaeton in the chariot of the sun and his falling into the Po had reference to a great and tremendous igneous volcanic eruption, which extended over Italy and ceased only near the Po at the foot of the Alps. Be this as it may, the sources of carbonic acid are numerous, not merely in the Neapolitan, but likewise in the Roman and Tuscan states. The most magnificent waterfall in Europe, that of the Velino, near Terni, is partly fed by a stream containing calcareous matter dissolved by carbonic acid, and it deposits marble, which crystallises even in the midst of its thundering descent and foam in the bed in which it falls. The Anio or Teverone, which almost approaches in beauty to the Velino in the number and variety of its falls and cascatelle, is likewise a calcareous water; and there is still a more remarkable one which empties itself into this river below Tivoli, and which you have probably seen in your excursions in the campagna of Rome, called the lacus Albula or the lake of the Solfatara." Ambrosio said, "We remember it well, we saw it this very spring; we were carried there to examine some ancient Roman baths, and we were struck by the blue milkiness of the water, by the magnitude of the source, and by the disagreeable smell of sulphuretted hydrogen which everywhere surrounded the lake." The stranger said, "When you return to Latium I advise you to pay another visit to a spot which is interesting from a number of causes, some of which I will take the liberty of mentioning to you. You have only seen one lake, that where the ancient Romans erected their baths, but there is another a few yards above it, surrounded by very high rushes, and almost hidden by them from the sight. This lake sends down a considerable stream of tepid water to the larger lake, but this water is less strongly impregnated with carbonic acid; the largest lake is actually a saturated solution of this gas, which escapes from it in such quantities in some parts of its surface that it has the appearance of being actually in ebullition. I have found by experiment that the water taken from the most tranquil part of the lake, even after being agitated and exposed to the air, contained in solution more than its own volume of carbonic acid gas with a very small quantity of sulphuretted hydrogen, to the presence of which, I conclude, its ancient use in curing cutaneous disorders may be referred. Its temperature, I ascertained, was in the winter in the warmest parts above 80 degrees of Fahrenheit, and it appears to be pretty constant, for I have found it differ a few degrees only, in the ascending source, in January, March, May, and the beginning of June; it is therefore supplied with heat from a subterraneous source, being nearly twenty degrees above the mean temperature of the atmosphere. Kircher has detailed in his "Mundus Subterraneus" various wonders respecting this lake, most of which are unfounded, such as that it is unfathomable, that it has at the bottom the heat of boiling water, and that floating islands rise from the gulf which emits it. It must certainly be very difficult, or even impossible, to fathom a source which rises with so much violence from a subterraneous excavation, and, at a time when chemistry had made small progress, it was easy to mistake the disengagement of carbonic acid for an actual ebullition. The floating islands are real, but neither the Jesuit nor any of the writers who have since described this lake had a correct idea of their origin, which is exceedingly curious. The high temperature of this water, and the quantity of carbonic acid that it contains, render it peculiarly fitted to afford a pabulum or nourishment to vegetable life. The banks of travertine are everywhere covered with reeds, lichens, confervae, and various kinds of aquatic vegetables, and, at the same time that the process of vegetable life is going on, the crystallisations of the calcareous matter, which is everywhere deposited in consequence of the escape of carbonic acid, likewise proceed, giving a constant milkiness to what, from its tint, would otherwise be a blue fluid. So rapid is the vegetation, owing to the decomposition of the carbonic acid, that, even in winter, masses of confervae and lichens, mixed with deposited travertine, are constantly detached by the currents of water from the bank and float down the stream, which being a considerable river is never without many of these small islands on its surface; they are sometimes only a few inches in size, and composed merely of dark-green confervae or purple or yellow lichens, but they are sometimes even of some feet in diameter, and contain seeds and various species of common water-plants, which are usually more or less encrusted with marble. There is, I believe, no place in the world where there is a more striking example of the opposition or contrast of the laws of animate and inanimate Nature, of the forces of inorganic chemical affinity and those of the powers of life. Vegetables in such a temperature, and everywhere surrounded by food, are produced with a wonderful rapidity, but the crystallisations are formed with equal quickness, and they are no sooner produced than they are destroyed together. Notwithstanding the sulphureous exhalations from the lake, the quantity of vegetable matter generated there and its heat make it the resort of an infinite variety of insect tribes, and even in the coldest days in winter numbers of flies may be observed on the vegetables surrounding its banks or on its floating island's, and a quantity of their larvae may be seen there sometimes encrusted and entirely destroyed by calcareous matter, which is likewise often the fate of the insects themselves, as well as of various species of shell-fish that are found amongst the vegetables, which grow and are destroyed in the travertine on its banks. Snipes, ducks, and various water-birds, often visit those lakes, probably attracted by the temperature and the quantity of food in which they abound; but they usually confine themselves to the banks, as the carbonic acid disengaged from the surface would be fatal to them if they ventured to swim upon it when tranquil. In May, 18—, I fixed a stick on a mass of travertine covered by the water, and I examined it in the beginning of the April following for the purpose of determining the nature of the depositions. The water was lower at this time, yet I had some difficulty, by means of a sharp-pointed hammer, in breaking the mass which adhered to the bottom of the stick; it was several inches in thickness. The upper part was a mixture of light tufa and the leaves of confervae; below this was a darker and more solid travertine, containing black and decomposed masses of confervae; in the inferior part the travertine was more solid and of a grey colour, but with cavities which I have no doubt were produced by the decomposition of vegetable matter. I have passed many hours, I may say many days, in studying the phenomena of this wonderful lake; it has brought many trains of thought into my mind connected with the early changes of our globe, and I have sometimes reasoned from the forms of plants and animals preserved in marble in this warm source to the grander depositions in the secondary rocks, where the zoophytes or coral insects have worked upon a grand scale, and where palms, and vegetables now unknown are preserved with the remains of crocodiles, turtles, and gigantic extinct animals of the sauri genus, and which appear to have belonged to a period when the whole globe possessed a much higher temperature. I have, likewise, often been led, from the remarkable phenomena surrounding me in that spot, to compare the works of man with those of Nature. The baths, erected there nearly twenty centuries ago, present only heaps of ruins, and even the bricks of which they were built, though hardened by fire, are crumbled into dust, whilst the masses of travertine around it, though formed by a variable source from the most perishable materials, have hardened by time, and the most perfect remains of the greatest ruins in the eternal city, such as the triumphal arches and the Colosaeum, owe their duration to this source. Then, from all we know, this lake, except in some change in its dimensions, continues nearly in the same state in which it was described 1,700 years ago by Pliny, and I have no doubt contains the same kinds of floating islands, the same plants, and the same insects. During the fifteen years that I have known it it has appeared precisely identical in these respects, and yet it has the character of an accidental phenomenon depending upon subterraneous fire. How marvellous then are those laws by which even the humblest types of organic existence are preserved though born amidst the sources of their destruction, and by which a species of immortality is given to generations floating, as it were, like evanescent bubbles, on a stream raised from the deepest caverns of the earth, and instantly losing what may be called its spirit in the atmosphere." These last observations of the stranger recalled to my recollection some phenomena which I had observed many years ago, and of which I could then give no satisfactory explanation. I was shooting in the marshes which surround the ruins of Gabia, and where there are still remains supposed to be of the Alexandrine aqueduct; I observed a small insulated hill, apparently entirely composed of travertine, and from its summit there were formations of tufa which had evidently been produced by running water, but the whole mass was now perfectly dry and encrusted by vegetables. At first I suspected that this little mountain had been formed by a jet of calcareous water, a kind of small fountain analogous to the Geiser, which had deposited travertine and continued to rise through the basin flowing from a higher level; but the irregular form of the eminence did not correspond to this idea, and I remained perplexed with the fact and unable to satisfy myself as to its cause. The views of the stranger appeared to me now to make it probable that the calcareous water had issued from ancient leaks in the aqueduct and formed a hillock that had encased the bricks of the erection, which in other parts, where not encrusted by travertine, had become entirely decayed, degraded, and removed from the soil. I mentioned the circumstance and my suspicion of its nature. The stranger said: "You are perfectly correct in your idea. I know the spot well, and if you had not mentioned it I should probably have quoted it as an instance in which the works of art are preserved, as it were, by the accidents of Nature. I was so struck by this appearance last year that I had the travertine partially removed by some workmen, and I found beneath it the canal of the aqueduct in a perfect state, and the bricks of the arches as uninjured as if freshly laid." The stranger had hardly concluded this sentence when he was interrupted by Onuphrio, who said, "I have always supposed that in every geological system water is considered as the cause of the destruction or degradation of the surface, but in all the instances that you have mentioned it appears rather as a conservative power, not destroying but rather producing." "It is the general vice of philosophical systems," replied the stranger, "that they are usually founded upon a few facts, which they well explain, and are extended by the human fancy to all the phenomena of Nature, to many of which they must be contradictory. The human intellectual powers are so feeble that they can with difficulty embrace a single series of phenomena, and they consequently must fail when extended to the whole of Nature. Water by its common operation, as poured down from the atmosphere in rain and torrents, tends to level and degrade the surface, and carries the material of the land into the bosom of the ocean. Fire, on the contrary, in volcanic eruptions usually raises mountains, exalts the surface, and creates islands even in the midst of the sea. But these laws are not invariable, as the instances to which we have just referred prove, and parts of the surface of the globe are sometimes destroyed even by fire, of which examples may be seen in the Phlegraean fields, and islands raised by one volcanic eruption have been immerged in the sea by another. There are, in fact, no accidents in Nature; what we call accidents are the results of general laws in particular operation, but we cannot deduce these laws from the particular operation or the general order from the partial result." Ambrosio said to the stranger: "You appear, sir, to have paid so much attention to physical phenomena that few things would give us more pleasure than to know your opinion respecting the early changes and physical history of the globe, for I perceive you do not belong to the modern geological schools." The stranger said, "I have certainly formed opinions or rather speculations on these subjects, but I fear they are hardly worth communicating; they have sometimes amused me in hours of idleness, but I doubt if they will amuse others." I said, "The observations which you have already been so kind as to communicate to us, on the formation of the travertine, lead us not only to expect amusement but likewise instruction."

The Stranger.—On these matters I had facts to communicate; on the geological scheme of the early history of the globe there are only analogies to guide us, which different minds may apply and interpret in different ways; but I will not trifle with a long preliminary discourse. Astronomical deductions and actual measures by triangulation prove that the globe is an oblate spheroid flattened at the poles, and this form we know, by strict mathematical demonstrations, is precisely the one which a fluid body revolving round its axis, and become solid at its surface by the slow dissipation of its heat or other causes, would assume. I suppose, therefore, that the globe, in the first state in which the imagination can venture to consider it, was a fluid mass with an immense atmosphere revolving in space round the sun, and that by its cooling a portion of its atmosphere was condensed in water which occupied a part of the surface. In this state no forms of life such as now belong to our system could have inhabited it; and, I suppose, the crystalline rocks (or, as they are called by geologists, the primary rocks), which contain no vestiges of a former order of things, were the results of the first consolidation on its surface. Upon the further cooling the water which more or less had covered it contracted, depositions took place, shell- fish and coral insects of the first creation began their labours, and islands appeared in the midst of the ocean raised from the deep by the productive energies of millions of zoophytes. Those islands became covered with vegetables fitted to bear a high temperature, such as palms and various species of plants similar to those which now exist in the hottest parts of the world; and the submarine rocks or shores of these new formations of land became covered with aquatic vegetables, on which various species of shell-fish and common fishes found their nourishment. The fluids of the globe in cooling deposited a large quantity of the materials they held in solution, and these deposits agglutinating together the sand, the immense masses of coral rocks, and some of the remains of the shells and fishes found round the shores of the primitive lands, produced the first order of secondary rocks. As the temperature of the globe became lower, species of the oviparous reptiles were created to inhabit it; and the turtle, crocodile, and various gigantic animals of the sauri kind, seem to have haunted the bays and waters of the primitive lands. But in this state of things there was no order of events similar to the present; the crust of the globe was exceedingly slender, and the source of fire a small distance from the surface. In consequence of contraction in one part of the mass, cavities were opened, which caused the entrance of water, and immense volcanic explosions took place, raising one part of the surface, depressing another, producing mountains, and causing new and extensive depositions from the primitive ocean. Changes of this kind must have been extremely frequent in the early epochas of nature, and the only living forms of which the remains are found in the strata that are the monuments of these changes, are those of plants, fishes, birds, and oviparous reptiles, which seem most fitted to exist in such a war of the elements. When these revolutions became less frequent, and the globe became still more cooled, and the inequalities of its temperature preserved by the mountain chains, more perfect animals became its inhabitants, many of which, such as the mammoth, megalonix, megatherium, and gigantic hyena, are now extinct. At this period the temperature of the ocean seems to have been not much higher than it is at present, and the changes produced by occasional eruptions of it have left no consolidated rocks. Yet one of these eruptions appears to have been of great extent and some duration, and seems to have been the cause of those immense quantities of water-worn stones, gravel and sand, which are usually called diluvian remains; and it is probable that this effect was connected with the elevation of a new continent in the southern hemisphere by volcanic fire. When the system of things became so permanent that the tremendous revolutions depending upon the destruction of the equilibrium between the heating and cooling agencies were no longer to be dreaded, the creation of man took place; and since that period there has been little alteration in the physical circumstances of our globe. Volcanoes sometimes occasion the rise of new islands, portions of the old continent are constantly washed by rivers into the sea; but these changes are too insignificant to affect the destinies of man, or the nature of the physical circumstances of things. On the hypothesis that I have adopted, however, it must be remembered that the present surface of the globe is merely a thin crust surrounding a nucleus of fluid ignited matter, and consequently we can hardly be considered as actually safe from the danger of a catastrophe by fire.

Onuphrio said: "From the view you have taken, I conclude that you consider volcanic eruptions as owing to the central fire; indeed, their existence offers, I think, an argument for believing that the interior of the globe is fluid." The stranger answered: "I beg you to consider the views I have been developing as merely hypothetical, one of the many resting places that may be taken by the imagination in considering this subject. There are, however, distinct facts in favour of the idea that the interior of the globe has a higher temperature than the surface; the heat increasing in mines the deeper we penetrate, and the number of warm sources which rise from great depths in almost all countries, are certainly favourable to the idea. The opinion that volcanoes are owing to this general and simple cause is, I think, likewise more agreeable to the analogies of things than to suppose them dependent upon partial chemical changes, such as the action of air and water upon the combustible bases of the earths and alkalies, though it is extremely probable that these substances may exist beneath the surface, and may occasion some results of volcanic fire; and on this subject my notion may, perhaps, be more trusted, as for a long while I thought volcanic eruptions were owing to chemical agencies of the newly discovered metals of the earths and alkalies, and I made many, and some dangerous, experiments in the hope of confirming this notion, but in vain."

Amb.—We are very much obliged to you for your geological illustrations; but they remind me a little of some of the ideas of our friend Philalethes in his remarkable vision, and with which we may at some time amuse you in return for your geology should we be honoured with more of your company. You are obliged to have recourse to creations for all the living beings in your philosophical romance. I do not see why you should not suppose creations or arrangements of dead matter by the same laws of infinite wisdom, and why our globe should not rise at once a divine work fitted for all the objects of living and intelligent natures.

The stranger replied: "I have merely attempted a philosophical history founded upon the facts known respecting rocks and strata and the remains they contain. I begin with what may be considered a creation, a fluid globe supplied with an immense atmosphere, and the series of phenomena which I imagine consequent to the creation, I supposed produced by powers impressed upon matter by Omnipotence."

Ambrosio said: "There is this verisimility in your history, that it is not contradictory to the little we are informed by Revelation as to the origin of the globe, the order produced in the chaotic state, and the succession of living forms generated in the days of creation, which may be what philosophers call the 'epochas of nature,' for a day with Omnipotence is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day."

"I must object," Onuphrio said, "to your interpretation of the scientific view of our new acquaintance, and to your disposition to blend them with the cosmogony of Moses. Allowing the divine origin of the Book of Genesis, you must admit that it was not intended to teach the Jews systems of philosophy, but the laws of life and morals; and a great man and an exalted Christian raised his voice two centuries ago against this mode of applying and of often wresting the sense of the Scriptures to make them conformable to human fancies; 'from which,' says Lord Bacon, 'arise not only false and fantastical philosophies, but likewise heretical religions.' If the Scriptures are to be literally interpreted and systems of science found in them, Gallileo Gallilei merited his persecution, and we ought still to believe that the sun turns round the earth."

Amb.—You mistake my view, Onuphrio, if you imagine I am desirous of raising a system of geology on the Book of Genesis. It cannot be doubted that the first man was created with a great variety of instinctive or inspired knowledge, which must have been likewise enjoyed by his descendants; and some of this knowledge could hardly fail to have related to the globe which he inhabited, and to the objects which surrounded him. It would have been impossible for the human mind to have embraced the mysteries of creation, or to have followed the history of the moving atoms from their chaotic disorder into their arrangement in the visible universe, to have seen dead matter assuming the forms of life and animation, and light and power arising out of death and sleep. The ideas therefore transmitted to or presented by Moses respecting the origin of the world and of man were of the most simple kind, and such as suited the early state of society; but, though general and simple truths, they were divine truths, yet clothed in a language and suited to the ideas of a rude and uninstructed people. And, when I state my satisfaction in finding that they are not contradicted by the refined researches of modern geologists, I do not mean to deduce from them a system of science. I believe that light was the creation of an act of the Divine will; but I do not mean to say that the words, "Let there be light, and there was light," were orally spoken by the Deity, nor do I mean to imply that the modern discoveries respecting light are at all connected with this sublime and magnificent passage.

Onu.—Having resided for a long time in Edinburgh, and having heard a number of discussions on the theory of Dr. Hutton, or the plutonic theory of geology, and having been exceedingly struck both by its simplicity and beauty, its harmony with existing facts, and the proofs afforded to it by some beautiful chemical experiments, I do not feel disposed immediately to renounce it for the views which I have just heard explained; for the principal facts which our new acquaintance has stated are, I think, not inconsistent with the refined philosophical systems of Professor Playfair and Sir James Hall.

The Unknown.—I have no objection to the refined plutonic view, as capable of explaining many existing phenomena; indeed, you must be aware that I have myself had recourse to it. What I contend against is, its application to explain the formations of the secondary rocks, which I think clearly belong to an order of facts not at all embraced by it. In the plutonic system there is one simple and constant order assumed, which may be supposed eternal. The surface is constantly imagined to be disintegrated, destroyed, degraded, and washed into the bosom of the ocean by water, and as constantly consolidated, elevated, and regenerated by fire, and the ruins of the old form the foundations of the new world. It is supposed that there are always the same types, both of dead and living matter; that the remains of rocks, of vegetables, and animals of one age are found embedded in rocks raised from the bottom of the ocean in another. Now, to support this view, not only the remains of living beings which at present people the globe might be expected to be found in the oldest secondary strata, but even those of the arts of man, the most powerful and populous of its inhabitants, which is well known not to be the case. On the contrary, each stratum of the secondary rocks contains remains of peculiar and mostly now unknown species of vegetables and animals. In those strata which are deepest, and which must consequently be supposed to be the earliest deposited, forms even of vegetable life are rare; shells and vegetable remains are found in the next order; the bones of fishes and oviparous reptiles exist in the following class; the remains of birds, with those of the same genera mentioned before, in the next order; those of quadrupeds of extinct species, in a still more recent class; and it is only in the loose and slightly consolidated strata of gravel and sand, and which are usually called diluvian formations, that the remains of animals such as now people the globe are found, with others belonging to extinct species. But in none of these formations, whether called secondary, tertiary, or diluvial, have the remains of man or any of his works been discovered. It is, I think, impossible to consider the organic remains found in any of the earlier secondary strata, the lias-limestone and its congenerous formations for instance, without being convinced that the beings, whose organs they formed, belonged to an order of things entirely different from the present. Gigantic vegetables, more nearly allied to the palms of the equatorial countries than to any other plants, can only be imagined to have lived in a very high temperature; and the immense reptiles, the megalosauri with paddles instead of legs and clothed in mail, in size equal or even superior to the whale; and the great amphibia, plethiosauri, with bodies like turtles, but furnished with necks longer than their bodies, probably to enable them to feed on vegetables growing in the shallows of the primitive ocean, seem to show a state in which low lands or extensive shores rose above an immense calm sea, and when there were no great mountain, chains to produce inequalities of temperature, tempests, or storms. Were the surface of the earth now to be carried down into the depths of the ocean, or were some great revolution of the waters to cover the existing land, and it was again to be elevated by fire, covered with consolidated depositions of sand or mud, how entirely different would it be in its characters from any of the secondary strata. Its great features would undoubtedly be the works of man—hewn stones, and statues of bronze and marble, and tools of iron—and human remains would be more common than those of animals on the greatest part of the surface; the columns of Paestum or of Agrigentum, or the immense iron and granite bridges of the Thames, would offer a striking contrast to the bones of the crocodiles or sauri in the older rocks, or even to those of the mammoth or elephas primogenius in the diluvial strata. And whoever dwells upon this subject must be convinced that the present order of things, and the comparatively recent existence of man as the master of the globe, is as certain as the destruction of a former and a different order and the extinction of a number of living forms which have now no types in being, and which have left their remains wonderful monuments of the revolutions of Nature.

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

The Unknown.—I have made use of the term "diluvian," because it has been adopted by geologists, but without meaning to identify the cause of the formations with the deluge described in the sacred writings. I apply the term merely to signify loose and water-worn strata not at all consolidated, and deposited by an inundation of water, and in these countries which they have covered man certainly did not exist. With respect to your argument derived from New Holland, it appears to me to be without weight. In a variety of climates, and in very distant parts of the globe, secondary strata of the same order are found, and they contain always the same kind of organic remains, which are entirely different from any of those now afforded by beings belonging to the existing order of things. The catastrophes which produced the secondary strata and diluvian depositions could not have been local and partial phenomena, but must have extended over the whole, or a great part of the surface, of the globe. The remains of similar shell-fishes are found in the limestones of the old and new continents; the teeth of the mammoth are not uncommon in various parts of Europe; entire skeletons have been found in America, and even the skin covered with hair and the entire body of one of these enormous extinct animals has been discovered in Siberia preserved in a mass of ice. In the oldest secondary strata there are no remains of such animals as now belong to the surface; and in the rocks which may be regarded as more recently deposited, these remains occur but rarely, and with abundance of extinct species. There seems, as it were, a gradual approach to the present system of things, and a succession of destructions and creations preparatory to the existence of man. It will be useless to push these arguments farther. You must allow that it is impossible to defend the proposition, that the present order of things is the ancient and constant order of Nature, only modified by existing laws, and, consequently, the view which you have supported must be abandoned. The monuments of extinct generations of animals are as perfect as those of extinct nations; and it would be more reasonable to suppose that the pillars and temples of Palmyra were raised by the wandering Arabs of the desert, than to imagine that the vestiges of peculiar animated forms in the strata beneath the surface belonged to the early and infant families of the beings that at present inhabit it.

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

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

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

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

Amb.—There can be no doubt that the early inhabitants of this city were Grecians and a maritime and commercial people; they have been supposed to belong to the Sybarite race, and the roses producing flowers twice a year in the spring and autumn in ancient times here, might sanction the idea that this balmy spot was chosen by a colony who carried luxury and refinement to the highest pitch.

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

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

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

The Stranger.—I agree with Ambrosio in opinion on the subjects you have just mentioned. In my youth, I was a sceptic; and this I believe is usually the case with young persons given to general and discursive reading, and accustomed to adopt something like a mathematical form in their reasonings; and it was in considering the nature of the intellectual faculties of brutes, as compared with those of man, and in examining the nature of instinctive powers, that I became a believer. After I had formed the idea that Revelation was to man in the place of an instinct, my faith constantly became stronger; and it was exalted by many circumstances I had occasion to witness in a journey that I made through Egypt and a part of Asia Minor, and by no one more than by a very remarkable dream which occurred to me in Palestine, and which, as we are now almost at the hour of the siesta, I will relate to you, though perhaps you will be asleep before I have finished it. I was walking along that deserted shore which contains the ruins of Ptolemais, one of the most ancient ports of Judaea. It was evening; the sun was sinking in the sea; I seated myself on a rock, lost in melancholy contemplations on the destinies of a spot once so famous in the history of man. The calm Mediterranean, bright in the glowing light of the west, was the only object before me. "These waves," I said to myself, "once bore the ships of the monarch of Jerusalem which were freighted with the riches of the East to adorn and honour the sanctuary of Jehovah; here are now no remains of greatness or of commerce; a few red stones and broken bricks only mark what might have been once a flourishing port, and the citadel above, raised by the Saracens, is filled with Turkish soldiers." The janissary, who was my guide, and my servant, were preparing some food for me in a tent which had been raised for the purpose, and whilst waiting for their summons to my repast, I continued my reveries, which must gradually have ended in slumber. I saw a man approaching towards me, whom, at first, I took for my janissary, but as he came nearer I found a very different figure. He was a very old man with a beard as white as snow; his countenance was dark but paler than that of an Arab, and his features stern, wild, and with a peculiar savage expression; his form was gigantic, but his arms were withered and there was a large scar on the left side of his face which seemed to have deprived him of an eye. He wore a black turban and black flowing robes, and there was a large chain round his waist which clanked as he moved. It occurred to me that he was one of the santons or sacred madmen so common in the East, and I retired as he approached towards me. He called out: "Fly not, stranger; fear me not, I will not harm you. You shall hear my story, it may be useful to you." He spoke in Arabic but in a peculiar dialect and to me new, yet I understood every word. "You see before you," he said, "a man who was educated a Christian, but who renounced the worship of the one supreme God for the superstitions of the pagans. I became an apostate in the reign of the Emperor Julian, and I was employed by that Sovereign to superintend the re-erection of the temple of Jerusalem, by which it was intended to belie the prophecies and give the deathblow to the holy religion. History has informed you of the result: my assistants were most of them destroyed in a tremendous storm, I was blasted by lightning from heaven (he raised his withered hand to his face and eye), but suffered to live and expiate my crime in the flesh. My life has been spent in constant and severe penance, and in that suffering of the spirit produced by guilt, and is to be continued as long as any part of the temple of Jupiter, in which I renounced my faith, remains in this place. I have lived through fifteen tedious centuries, but I trust in the mercies of Omnipotence, and I hope my atonement is completed. I now stand in the dust of the pagan temple. You have just thrown the last fragment of it over the rock. My time is arrived, I come!" As he spake the last words, he rushed towards the sea, threw himself from the rock and disappeared. I heard no struggling, and saw nothing but a gleam of light from the wave that closed above him. I was now roused by the cries of my servant and of the janissary, who were shaking my arm, and who informed me that my sleep was so sound that they were alarmed for me. When I looked on the sea, there was the same light, and I seemed to see the very spot in the wave where the old man had sunk. I was so struck by the vision, that I asked if they had not seen something dash into the wave, and if they had not heard somebody speaking to me as they arrived. Of course their answers were negative. In passing through Jerusalem and in coasting the Dead Sea I had been exceedingly struck by the present state of Judaea and the conformity of the fate of the Jewish nation to the predictions of our Saviour; I had likewise been reading Gibbon's eulogy of Julian, and his account of the attempts made by that Emperor to rebuild the temple: so that the dream at such a time and in such a place was not an unnatural occurrence. Yet it was so vivid, and the image of the subject of it so peculiar, that it long affected my imagination, and whenever I recurred to it, strengthened my faith.

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

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

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

Amb.—In confirmation of this opinion of Onuphrio, I can mention many instances. I once dreamt that my door had been forced, that there were robbers in my room, and that one of them was actually putting his hand before my mouth to ascertain if I was sleeping naturally. I awoke at this moment, and was some minutes before I could be sure whether it was a dream or a reality. I felt the pressure of the bedclothes on my lips, and still in the fear of being murdered continued to keep my eyes closed and to breathe slowly, till, hearing nothing and finding no motion, I ventured to open my eyes; but even then, when I saw nothing, I was not sure that my impression was a dream till I had risen from my bed and ascertained that the door was still locked.

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

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

Ambrosio spoke these words with an earnestness unusual in him, and with something of a tone which marked a zeal for proselytism, and at the same time he cast his eyes on the rosary which was suspended round the neck of the stranger, and said, "I hope I am not indiscreet in saying our faith."

The Stranger.—I was educated in the ritual of the church of England; I belong to the Church of Christ; the rosary which you see suspended round my neck is a memorial of sympathy and respect for an illustrious man. I will, if you will allow me, give you the history of it, which, I think from the circumstances with which it is connected, you will not find devoid of interest. I was passing through France in the reign of Napoleon, by the peculiar privilege granted to a scavan, on my road into Italy. I had just returned from the Holy Land, and had in my possession two or three of the rosaries which are sold to pilgrims at Jerusalem as having been suspended in the Holy Sepulchre. Pius VII. was then in imprisonment at Fontainebleau. By a special favour, on the plea of my return from the Holy Land, I obtained permission to see this venerable and illustrious Pontiff. I carried with me one of my rosaries. He received me with great kindness. I tendered my services to execute any commissions, not political ones, he might think fit to entrust me with in Italy, informing him that I was an Englishman. He expressed his thanks, but declined troubling me. I told him I was just returned from the Holy Land, and bowing with great humility, offered to him my rosary from the Holy Sepulchre. He received it with a smile, touched it with his lips, gave his benediction over it, and returned it into my hands, supposing, of course, that I was a Roman Catholic. I had meant to present it to his Holiness, but the blessing he had bestowed upon it and the touch of his lips, made it a precious relic to me and I restored it to my neck, round which it has ever since been suspended. He asked me some unimportant questions respecting the state of the Christians at Jerusalem; and on a sudden, turned the subject, much to my surprise, to the destruction of the French in Russia, and in an exceedingly low tone of voice, as if afraid of being overheard, he said, "The nefas has long been triumphant over the fas, but I do not doubt that the balance of things is even now restoring; that God will vindicate his Church, clear his polluted altars, and establish society upon its permanent basis of justice and faith. We shall meet again. Adieu!" and he gave me his paternal blessing. It was eighteen months after this interview, that I went out with almost the whole population of Rome, to receive and welcome the triumphal entry of this illustrious father of the Church into his capital. He was borne on the shoulders of the most distinguished artists, headed by Canova; and never shall I forget the enthusiasm with which he was received—it is impossible to describe the shouts of triumph and of rapture sent up to heaven by every voice. And when he gave his benediction to the people, there was an universal prostration, a sobbing and marks of emotions of joy almost like the bursting of the heart. I heard, everywhere around me, cries of "The holy Father! The most holy Father! His restoration is the work of God!" I saw tears streaming from the eyes of almost all the women about me, many of them were sobbing hysterically, and old men were weeping as if they had been children. I pressed my rosary to my breast on this occasion, and repeatedly touched with my lips that part of it which had received the kiss of the most venerable Pontiff. I preserve it with a kind of hallowed feeling, as the memorial of a man whose sanctity, firmness, meekness and benevolence are an honour to his Church and to human nature; and it has not only been useful to me, by its influence upon my own mind, but it has enabled me to give pleasure to others, and has, I believe, been sometimes beneficial in insuring my personal safety. I have often gratified the peasants of Apulia and Calabria by presenting them to kiss a rosary from the Holy Sepulchre which had been hallowed by the touch of the lips and benediction of the Pope; and it has been even respected by and procured me a safe passage through a party of brigands who once stopped me in the passes of the Apennines.

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

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

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

The Stranger.—Always; I have owed my security, partly, as I have said, to my rosary, but more to my dress and my acquaintance with the dialect of the natives. I have always carried with me a peasant as a guide, who has been intrusted with the small sums of money I wanted for my immediate purposes, and my baggage has been little more than a Cynic philosopher would have carried with him; and when I have been unable to walk, I have trusted myself to the conduct of a vetturino, a native of the province, with his single mule and caratella.

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



DIALOGUE THE FOURTH. THE PROTEUS, OR IMMORTALITY.

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

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

In my youth, and through the prime of manhood, I never entered London without feelings of pleasure and hope. It was to me as the grand theatre of intellectual activity, the field of every species of enterprise and exertion, the metropolis of the world of business, thought, and action. There I was sure to find the friends and companions of my youth, to hear the voice of encouragement and praise. There, society of the most refined kind offered daily its banquets to the mind with such variety that satiety had no place in them, and new objects of interest and ambition were constantly exciting attention either in politics, literature, or science.