LETTER XXXIII.
Ed. Otway, Esq. to Rev. Mr. Oliphant.
Marsden.
My dear and excellent Friend,
I begin my letter with news which, if it convey to you in any proportion the pleasure which its announcement imparts to me, may well be called cheering intelligence. From the time that General Douglas heard of our late rector’s illness, he was anxious to procure the succession of that parish, in which Glenalta stands, for you; but doubtful of his power to accomplish the end in view, he begged that you might not be informed of his design. Last night’s post put us in possession at the same moment of the papers which mention Mr. Green’s death, and a letter stating the agreeable information that all difficulties in the way to your preferment are smoothed by the general’s promise to provide for a young person, by the gift of a small living, of which he has the advowson, in this country. The joy of this little circle is quite vociferous. Your young friends have not slept, I believe, since the glad tidings were communicated; and would gladly resign the happiness of travelling into new scenes, for the gratification of helping to make the bonfires which they think will redden the horizon in token of good will upon the present occasion. I heard Fanny telling her brother this morning that she had no doubt St. John’s Eve never presented such a blaze upon the Beacon Hill, as your appointment will kindle. This is a bold prophecy, but she stakes her credit on the justness of her prediction.
Now, my dear Oliphant, I have a request to make, which you will not refuse. The glebe house wants a library to make it comfortable. I enclose you a draught for £500, and desire that, by the time of my return, I may find you in possession of a room in which you can write your sermons, and pore over your Elzevirs in all the quiet of abstraction from household cares. Poor Mrs. Green and her children will be desirous to leave their present abode, I dare say; and you will oblige me by requesting them, in my name, to make use of Lisfarne, as an asylum, while it may suit their convenience. When they have evacuated your new premises, desire Barnes, my steward, to send trees, shrubs, and plants, of whatever kind you may want, to furnish your garden and shrubbery.
And now I must tell you an anecdote of your friend Frederick, which will delight your heart. His uncle, who wins hourly upon our affections, alarmed us a few days ago by a fainting fit, which seemed to threaten sudden dissolution, but before the arrival of a physician, for whom we sent to the next town, his sister’s skill had brought him back to life, and his eyes opened on a group of such tender and genuine mourners, as must have gratified the best feelings of his breast. For a day or two Dr. Pancras looked grave, and paused in giving his opinion; but the dear general has rallied considerably, and wishes to hasten his departure.
On Tuesday evening Mr. Peltry, the solicitor, reached Marsden from town, bringing with him the title deeds of this place, and some other papers of consequence. On the following day, after breakfast, my valued friend sent for me to his study, desiring that Frederick should join us immediately. As soon as we were together he took his nephew by the hand and said, “My dear boy, I have sent to London for the gentleman who arrived last night, in order that I may legally dispose of my property, and provide for some who are dear to me before ‘I go hence, and am no more seen.’ I intend Marsden for you, and wish that this kind guardian (turning his eyes upon me), who has aided your beloved mother in the task which she has so admirably performed, should be witness to my purposes. There is but one condition which I desire to propose in leaving Marsden to you. It is that you should all live here during the next five years, or till the marriage of your sisters may naturally occasion a dispersion of the family. After this trial, which will be of sufficient length to ascertain the wishes of each individual, if you should prefer Ireland to England, you are at liberty to bring this place to the hammer. I bought it myself; it is no hereditary possession. I shall soon leave it, and should inflict rather than confer a kindness were I to impose a restriction on your inclinations that might have the effect of converting what I mean to be a benefit into a burthen.”
Frederick, whose face had expressed every variety and gradation of feeling which such an address was calculated to inspire in a breast which is the abode of all that is most noble, and most tenderly affectionate, could restrain his emotion no longer. He pressed his uncle’s pale hand to his lips with ardour, and bathed it with tears of honest grief and affection. My poor friend was deeply agitated, which his nephew perceiving, he struggled with his own feelings to avoid exciting those of the invalid; and, making an effort, thanked his benefactor with that warm yet dignified expression of countenance and manner, which, while it bespoke the vividness of gratitude, betrayed no symptom whatsoever of joy in the mere acquisition of fortune.
“Now then, we will call in Mr. Peltry, and you may go, my dear Frederick,” said the general.
“Oh not yet,” replied the generous youth. “Do not banish me for a little while; I have an earnest request to make, and only hesitate lest you, my dear uncle, should think me for a moment, either ungrateful or presumptuous.”
“I cannot think you either,” answered General Douglas; “proceed, tell me what you would have, and if I can, I will indulge you.”
“Forgive me then,” said Frederick, “if I speak all that is on my heart. I say nothing to deter you from making a final disposition of your property, because every man must feel a weight of anxiety taken from his mind when he has performed an act by which he provides for the future interest of those who are dear to him. Such an act, far from shortening his days, is likely to prolong them, by removing a painful pressure from his mind; and therefore I shall have pleasure in thinking that this deed is done, as well as in being thought worthy of mention in it. But, dearest uncle, a slight remembrance in point of vulgar estimation may be rendered supremely valuable by the manner of bestowing it, and should I survive you, any mark of your affection will be preserved with love and veneration while I live. May I then, without dread of offending, by the appearance of dictating to your better judgment, suggest Arthur Howard as a fitter representative of your fortune than I am. He is a noble fellow; and by the disinterestedness of his conduct, likely to be reduced from high expectations to almost abject poverty. He is at this moment raising money to keep his brother-in-law, Lord Crayton, out of jail, and prevent the effects of such event upon his mother’s shattered nerves. I, on the contrary, have been educated with the view to improving my patrimony by professional labour, the idea of which is not at all displeasing to me; and I frankly own that the love of my native soil is so strongly impressed upon my heart, that little Glenalta has greater charms for me than a ducal residence in any other place could possess.”
Frederick sat on the sofa by his uncle, and held his hand while he spoke. When he paused, the general clasped him round the neck, and concealing his tears, which were flowing fast, by leaning his head on his nephew’s shoulder, he exclaimed, “There I recognize the son of Henry Douglas! Yes, Frederick, you are worthy of the father and the mother from whom you spring. Your fine disposition shall be indulged, though not in exactly the manner which you suggest. You shall be lord of Marsden: but I promise you to take care of Arthur by leaving him such a sum, as shall free his estate from a portion, at least, of its incumbrances; and now, dear boy, leave me; I must not lose time, and I am anxious to see Mr. Peltry. Say nothing, I charge you, of this conversation to your mother and sisters, I know them too well not to be assured that the recital of what has passed between us, would give them pain, and I wish to spare them every uneasiness in my power to prevent them from suffering.”
Your young friend then left the room, the solicitor was sent for, and such testamentary arrangements were made by this interesting being, who has just come to make us feel the full value of what we are about to lose, as reflect the highest honour on his justice and impartiality.
We shall soon set out, and I feel a mournful presentiment that we shall return to England a diminished number. The progress of my poor friend’s disease is very slow, and imperceptible, and he has intervals of apparent improvement, so encouraging to our hopes, that had experience not frequently proved how delusive are these temporary amendments, we should be led from time to time to increase the measure of disappointment by giving way to fallacious expectations.
I am summoned to attend him in an airing, and must say adieu.
Your faithful friend,
Ed. Otway.
LETTER XXXIV.
Mrs. Douglas to the Rev. Mr. Oliphant.
My very dear good Friend,
If my pen had kept pace with my heart, my congratulations would have reached you long ere this; but you know me too well to doubt their truth; and it would be equally injurious to your confidence, and my sincerity, were I to expend the short time I allow myself for writing, in apologies which are unnecessary.
Accept my heart-felt rejoicings on your preferment, which I consider as providential to myself. Your task was concluded. You had safely piloted my beloved child through his collegiate course; and would have missed your wonted employment, while no other sufficiently marked to occupy your whole time, seemed to detain you henceforward at Glenalta, I dreaded to hear that you must leave me; but wherever duty called you would have followed her voice, and could I have asked you to stay if conscience disapproved the lengthened sojourn? Now you belong to us. All the energies of your admirable nature will be employed where your old friends may still benefit by them. You will continue to be our teacher and friend. You will become our pastor, and be reverenced and beloved by the poor, whose blessings you have so often felt in grateful showers on your head. I have settled in my own mind that you will not possess a comfortable home without inviting your worthy sister and her only child, to share it with you; and if such be your intention, you must permit me to assist in furnishing your dwelling for a lady’s reception. Much as we have been in the habit of looking up to you, I am not sure that we should defer to your taste in such a matter.
I write by this post to Dublin, from whence you will receive my “bread and salt,” as the Russians call this species of offering to a new establishment. Oh, my dear friend, how deep is my gratitude to the Almighty giver of good, for the mercies I continually experience! It would have been a great alloy to the happiness of knowing how comfortably you are placed beyond the reach of those sordid cares which depress the spirit, had you owed the independence now conferred, to a stranger. I must have felt some pleasure under any circumstances at your being enabled to continue that character to which your pupils once assigned the appellation of the “good Benefico (the good giant),” but your little volatile friend Fanny, said to me a few days ago, and reflected my own feelings as she spoke, “Mamma, there are but two people in the world besides you to whom I cannot grudge the delight of making dear Mr. Oliphant a man of easy fortune; and those two are my uncle and Mr. Otway.” But this theme, all inspiring as it is, must not make me forgetful of your request.
You earnestly desire to be made acquainted as minutely as possible with the progress of my dearly loved brother’s mind towards that heavenly rest, without the possession of which, the approach of that mysterious change which awaits all created beings, must be awful beyond description. You know that I was fortunate in seizing upon the character of my brother’s mind at an early period of our acquaintance. One of the first outlines that I took, discovered to me his strong aversion to control, even in conversation. I perceived that having been long accustomed to exert an unrestrained free will in the regulation of his own occupations as well as amusements, and having also seen so much of design in the ordinary intercourse of the world as to make him suspicious of every formal attack upon his opinions, he met with a sort of predetermined opposition the slightest attempt to alter his views, upon any subject of interest. With this clue, I pursued my way, turning aside from, rather than courting, any opportunity of conversing upon topics respecting which I burned to know his thoughts. The usual style of our conversation was of that mixed nature which gave me an early insight into a mind replete with various powers. Its predominating tone was that of playfulness, and a common observer might have been borne out in calling General Douglas a humourist; but though possessed of all the requisites to inspire mirth, as well as taste its influence, I could see a dark cloud gathering underneath a smile, and catch a half breathed sigh, that wafted to my heart’s core the sounds, “All, all is vanity—delusion all,” when gaiety seemed to dance around his heart. What would I not have given at such moments to have seized a hand, and with affectionate energy pressed admission to the sacred repository of gloomy contemplation; but the time was not come. A premature remark, however tenderly whispered, would have alarmed a retiring and delicate, as well as proud mind, unaccustomed to see itself exposed to view. I therefore waited till opportunity should naturally invite communication; and such presented itself ere long after my brother’s arrival amongst us at Glenalta.
You may remember the time when you and Frederick were reading Butler’s Analogy as part of the College course. My dear boy was fond of talking over with me each chapter as he proceeded, and I determined to read that inestimable work anew, for the purpose of refreshing my memory, in conversation with him. One day, employed in this manner, I was sitting alone in my dressing-room, when my brother tapped at the door, saying that you wanted me for a few minutes in the study, and asked whether he might remain till my return, as he also wished to speak with me. On my return, I found him eagerly devouring the chapter on a future state; and so absorbed was he, that at first he did not perceive my entrance into the room. When he did, he started, and said, “Caroline, I have to apologize for taking up your book to see what you were reading, and I find something that has struck me: but I make a discovery that you are fond of these dark themes. Why have you never broached these subjects with me?” “Because,” said I, “that they are both dark and deep, and lie hidden between us and our Creator. The controversies of men are seldom beneficial, and more frequently excite the passions than satisfy the pride of human presumption.” “Do you mean, then, to say,” replied our dear inquirer, “that religion is incapable of proof?” “So far from it,” answered I, “that every object in nature bears proof to demonstration of the great leading tenets of religion; but I mean to say, such is the perverseness of our hearts, that we repel, when offered by another, those arguments which we should be proud to originate ourselves, and refuse conviction, unless our vanity be gratified by taking some credit to itself, at least in the selection of those reasons which operate a change of opinion. For this cause we suffer books to teach, though we deny a friend the delight of converting us from the evil of our ways, and why? Alas! in human weakness we have the answer. The choice of a book is a free act; the continuing to read it is a free act. The advocacy of its doctrines, if they be arrayed with power, talent, and genius, reflects honour on our discrimination, and, to a certain degree, identifies us with the author, who perhaps has vanished from the arena of our paltry rivalry, having been called to his account; or, should he still be alive, is removed from the immediate field of competition. I know these humiliating facts experimentally, for I have doubted, and I have been perverse.”
From this moment, every reserve on my brother’s part was at an end. He looked steadfastly in my face, with an expression which seemed to ask, is this indeed the truth, and not said to inveigle me into confidence? His own penetration assured him that I practised no deception. He took my hand, and spoke to the following effect:
“You are the very being to whom my whole soul shall be unfolded. Much is locked up within my breast that ‘ferments for want of air.’ You are right; you have in a few words drawn my picture; and so truly, that I now confess I should not have acknowledged this moment the fidelity of your portrait, had you boasted the superiority over me, of one who had not been drawn aside yourself from the path to which you have returned. But though your having once doubted, is a bond between us, like that of a common language in a foreign land; there is much room yet for discrepancy; and the nature of our stumbling blocks may be so extremely different that we may lose, rather than gain accession of sympathy by attempting to travel together in a course where so many intricate bye-paths present themselves to distract attention and divide our choice. Every thinking mind which has felt what it was to be perplexed, has been conscious of gradation in the difficulties that embarrassed its progress: some were but apparent, and vanished on the approach of knowledge; others, more stubborn, required more time and pains to conquer, but yielded at length to the force of reason, while there are some obstacles to Faith so harassing, that no efforts of the understanding are of any avail in breaking down the barriers which they present to sincere uncompromising belief:
and if all attempts to comprehend, are rendered futile by the imperfection of his faculties, it is vain to call upon his faith. Credulity, indeed, may receive all things; but where Heaven has granted intellect, impalpable and unseen as are its operations, it excludes the dogmatizing influence of arbitrary control, and will not bend to mere authority. Tell me then, Caroline, what chiefly puzzled you—what were the obstructions which principally encumbered your path, and if they resemble those which block my way. I will next inquire how you removed them; ask you to be my Hannibal; and prepare to follow in that track which you shall excavate for me through the rocky defile.”
I told him that after avowing the fact on which I look back with pain, of having been sceptically inclined in that period of youthful arrogance when new-born reason, proud of her first flights, imagines that her wing can soar above the clouds, and penetrate the sanctuaries of the Most High, I could have no objection to inform him how far I had been enabled to overcome, as also where my presumption met with its first check, while Reason was my only guide. I then gave him a brief sketch of my former uneasy sensations, and the causes which had led to them. He listened with the deepest attention, and, when I concluded, answered that by a remarkable coincidence in our views, the only difficulties which had greatly harassed me were precisely those which still haunted him with ceaseless perplexity. “I never,” added he, “stuck at the historical discordances of the Bible, because, though I did not take the trouble of going minutely into the inquiry myself, I was aware that others of superior learning did do so; and when such a man as Sir William Jones, versed in Oriental literature, and examining the records of antiquity with critical acumen, was satisfied with his researches, so as to pronounce upon the increase of evidence which every added information produced to him, confirmatory of Scriptural truth, I could not tarry to believe that apparent contrarieties only require investigation to be satisfactorily reconciled to my understanding also, were I patiently to pursue the testimony which might be collected. I never felt that Herodotus was to be set aside as a historian, because superstition has deformed his work, and fable occasionally obscured the truth of his narrative. Nor have I ever doubted that Cæsar wrote the Commentaries imputed to his pen, though Hirtius has added a supplement to the book. Why then should I deny that Moses was author of the Pentateuch, because the account of that great lawgiver’s death and burial is supplied by another hand; or conclude it impossible that Joshua, the son of Nun, should have compiled the narrative ascribed to him, in consequence of finding a few mistakes in the arrangement of facts, for which he was, probably, not to blame, and which are the cause of certain unimportant anachronisms in the story? My difficulties have been of another kind, and the three points of free-will, the soul’s separate state, and personal identity, have been with me, as with you, the barrier over which I have hitherto been unable to pass. I have heard much of a Novel which has lately appeared, and I brought it with me, though I have not yet looked into it, feeling how idle it is to expect argument in a story.”
I told him that I had read Tremaine with great pleasure, that I thought it an excellent, though not a faultless work, and should be happy to go over it again with him.
“You must tell me first,” said he, “how you arrived at your present conclusions? You were not in need of Tremaine when you read that book.” “Tremaine,” answered I, “would have set me thinking, but would not have convinced me upon all the topics which he discusses, though some of his reasoning is admirable. He meets many difficult questions very ably, but to read any author on these subjects with advantage, the mind, if inclined to infidelity, must undergo a process for restoring it to its neutral state; and a few arguments of the negative kind are a very necessary preparation for those of a positive character.” “What are these negative arguments?” replied my brother. The first I told him presented itself in the form of a question, as to the spirit in which I had doubted; and a little serious self examination “landed” me in the mortifying, but salutary assurance, that in the strength of reason I had taken so much for granted, and assumed so many arbitrary positions on which to ground my scepticism, that, when brought back to first principles, I was obliged to confess the folly of my own inconsistency, and admit that the dogmas which I laid down required proof quite as much as those which they attempted to controvert. Till then I had misunderstood the Scriptural admonition to come as a little child for instruction; and conceived that it amounted to no less than a prohibition against the exercise of those faculties given us for the very purpose of discriminating between truth and falsehood. I now began to comprehend that the soundest philosophy called upon me for a total relinquishment of my own theories in learning any science. The empiric who sets up for medical skill, untaught by the rules of art, is not in a fit state to practice physic, nor even to become a student, till he has got rid of preconceived notions which militate against the best authority. Neither is the man who thinks himself a better lawyer than can be found in the Courts, without having been himself educated to the bar, in any condition to decide upon an intricate case. To learn any human branch of knowledge, requires that the person desirous to learn should come in a teachable state to the task, and not inflated with the vain idea of being already capable of communicating instruction. What more is demanded of us in the commencement of our religious course, than we see to be but reasonable in undertaking any earthly enterprize? And with what additional force does the injunction to prepare by an humble spirit for the reception of divine knowledge apply to the understanding, when we reflect on our utter inability to search into the counsels of God with our finite powers of capacity! When I had reached this conclusion, I saw every thing in a new light, and began to rest satisfied with the measure of information which the Almighty has seen fit to impart; determining no longer to waste life in prying into the hidden things which are not more suited to the present condition of our intellectual strength, than the unmitigated blaze of a meridian sun is fitted to the structure of our visual organs. I began to perceive the absurdity of expressions which had passed for sound sense upon my understanding. How often had I talked flippantly (at least thought within my own breast) of the course of nature, never recollecting that the poor Indian’s concatenation of supporters for the world, in his list of elephants and tortoises, is not more easily resolved into ignorance, than the arguments by which infidelity delays the confession that it is in utter darkness? Will the most sagacious reasoning on the formation of a bone, by the gradual accretion of calcareous matter; or the most ingenious display of physiological lore in tracing the growth of a plant from the cotyledon up to the forest’s king, apply to the first created animal, or the first formed oak? There the course of nature deserts us. The anatomist, and the naturalist, alike lay down their arms; here they are baffled and arrested. The former has no need of his animal laboratory in which the chyle is separated in the process of digestion from the daily food, and phosphate of lime is added to the soft cartilages that are intended to become the bony skeleton. The latter neither requires the acorn nor the “nursing leaves” to advance the oak from the seedling to the sapling, and thence to the full-grown monarch of the wood. He wants no gradual process of deposition by water; no metamorphosis produced by fire, neither calx, nor crystalization is demanded for the primary minerals of the earth—the great “back bone” of creation. In some period of time there was a beginning of these things. Remove that period indefinitely, and you may lose sight of the difficulty in its distance from your eye, but you cannot reduce its real dimensions; it exists in its full size and bulk, though placed without the range of your vision. Arrived at this point (and driven to it you must be sooner or later) you are involved in the absolute necessity of a revelation of some sort or other, unless you can believe that matter is self created, and carries within itself all the power, energy, and intelligence which we know that it does not possess, or that man is a being governed entirely by instinct, like the inferior animals, and capable, at his first entrance into life of performing all the functions requisite to sustain his existence, and perpetuate its succession, as a crow is to build its nest. Neither of these opinions being tenable without a surrender of that very experience derived through our senses, which we consider as the highest possible source of demonstration; the question which next occurs is what account is there of any instruction to the first pair who were placed in the vast expanse of an unknown world, in which they were to become the founders of an unborn race of creatures? Some record of a matter so vitally important to the new creation might reasonably be expected, and we naturally look for such. One narrative alone there is to satisfy the curiosity of inquirers on this interesting subject, and to cavil at that is easier than to supply another, or give a satisfactory reason why none whatsoever should have been preserved. Once admit, that those things most important are usually handed down in some way or other from generation to generation, and that it is therefore probable some attempt was made to continue the knowledge of God’s first intercourse with mankind to succeeding posterity, it then remains only to try the history which is presented to us by the rules that we employ in every subject of human testimony. Now, the wise and the learned declare that the more severely they investigate, the more thoroughly are they convinced that there is evidence for the Bible’s having been written by the various authors to whom the several books which compose the Sacred Volume have been attributed, beyond that which can be found to substantiate the genuineness of any other work which has ever been printed. The wise and the learned also protest that the farther they scrutinize into collateral testimony, the more completely are they satisfied that these authors recorded truth, and not falsehood; and that the farther the search is carried, the more certain is the result to corroborate the validity of Scripture. When such gigantic minds as those of Newton, Boyle, and Bacon, with the long list that might be added on their side, bear evidence to this declaration, shall we take the ipse dixit of a Voltaire, a Bayle, or a Bolingbroke, who may choose to deny, without being able to prove the negative, or set up any attested credentials to supply the place of that revelation which they are desirous to annul? Testimony, be it ever remembered, has no concern save with matters of fact. When human reason has taken cognizance of all the circumstances for or against the existence of any event which is said to have taken place, it has done its duty, and finished its work. With the nature of such an event, it may have nothing at all to do. If a hundred spectators, who have no motive for collusion, declare to having seen a stone three feet in length, and two in breadth, descend from the clouds, and if one of these witnesses happening to be a chemist, should report to me its analysis, which I find to differ from that of any stone on the surface of the earth, I am very unphilosophical in contradicting the possibility of an occurrence verified by so many credible spectators, upon the simple ground of my own ignorance. Though I may never have heard of an Aërolite, such things are, and, being a product of the atmosphere, it is not extraordinary that its composition should differ from that of stones produced on the earth. Thus all my reasoning to the non-existence of these meteoric phenomena grounded on analogy would be fallacious, like that of the king in some Eastern climate, who laughed incredulously when he first heard of ice, never having himself seen water, except in a liquid state. The more ignorant, the less are we enabled to believe, if we measure truth by the estimate of our understandings. So far then is scepticism from being proof of a powerful mind, that the reverse is oftener the fact; and every advance which we make in knowledge and intelligence increases the expansion of faith, not only by enlarging the sphere of experience, and multiplying those arguments of which the mind takes advantage in examining any new matter presented to its contemplation; but what is of higher value, we are taught at every step a lesson of humility by being compelled to acknowledge the narrow limits of those abilities on which we so arrogantly relied for scanning the attributes of Divinity. Had the Bible not told of things difficult to comprehend, I should have wanted one direct argument in favour of its coming from God. No scheme of merely human invention would have baffled all human sagacity to understand it in all its bearings, unless the difficulty of doing so arose from contradiction to reason, which is not the case. The Bible tells us that it contains mysteries too deep for human penetration; were such discovered, they would cease to be what the word of God has declared them; and of that word we are told that not a tittle shall pass away. We are desired to read and to search the Scriptures; but we are not told that the utmost limit of curiosity shall be satisfied in this world. It is vain to attempt the Penetralia which will be shut against us, till the soul shall awaken in the etherial regions of a spiritual existence, disencumbered of its “mortal coil.” Respecting internal evidence, the great stress rests with me in a small compass; I look no farther than into my own heart to see such depravity, such continual danger of yielding to temptation, which urges me to do the thing which my better spirit condemns, that I am ready to own my utter helplessness to attain, without a guide, either happiness or virtue. If I try the goods of this life, I am forced to cry with Solomon that all is vanity; pleasure but a bubble, which, glittering for a moment, passes away; that riches, fame, rank, power, beauty, are but gewgaws incapable of satisfying the cravings of an immortal soul; but even when the mind is of such mundane temperament that these things do seem sufficient, and that it would fain build its tabernacle amongst them, Death, ‘the great teacher Death,’ interposes to prevent the dreamer from long enjoying the illusion of his wishes. Death comes at last to force the unwelcome conviction on all who will not otherwise entertain it, that the idols of earth must inevitably be torn from our grasp, and that the cold grave must close on every tie which binds us to this sublunary scene. This strong and simple truth is one of those irresistible and universal arguments that apply to all capacities of intellect, and to all conditions of fortune. All shall die; all leave whatever ministered to pride or vanity behind them. ‘A little earth that saves the world a nuisance,’ once scattered on the silent remains, the inheritance is seized, and he who, but a week before, lived in every tongue, descends into the narrow house where all things are forgotten. No more trace exists to mark his brilliant career on earth than lingers on the bosom of yonder ocean, whose waves dance gladly in the sunbeams, as if laughing at the engulphment of that majestic sail which lately skimmed upon its surface. In this one general fact there is unspeakable reality of wretchedness—irrefragable assurance of human nothingness—and in this solitary certainty there is argument enough to make all mankind, from the emperor to the beggar, ponder on the possibility, if not the probability of an hereafter. All men hate to die. They are told that they shall not die, that the body only shall return to its dust, and ‘the spirit to God who gave it.’ Here is a motive the most powerful, to seek, in order to believe, and if to believe, to act as shall accord with the directions afforded for securing a blessed immortality. Driven by that motive I go to my Bible, and not only discover the only lamp which lights up a dark and dreary valley through which I must pass, however horrible to my imagination; but I find also, that even the most imperfect efforts to assimilate my actions to that conduct which the Scripture enjoins, the feeblest endeavours to cultivate those tempers and affections which the Sacred Volume enforces, are rewarded by an inward peace which nothing beside has power to impart; and that in proportion as I attempt to prepare for another world, I am happy in this, which is but its vestibule.
When I had proceeded so far in my little sketch of a “Confession of Faith,” my dear brother said, “You prove to me, that the subjects on which my mind has been long and anxiously revolving, are familiar to you; and from the little that you have said respecting these obscure points, I anticipate much comfort in entering more at large with you into the field of inquiry, but remember, that my chief difficulties remain untouched, and before I let you entirely behind the scenes of my own incertitude, I must know how you get over a barrier which seems in my mind so insurmountable. You must also tell me whether you are one of those who hold belief to be within our own power. If you are, I fear that we shall have to combat on the threshold, for I confess nothing irritates me half so much as to be told that I can believe if I please. I feel that my will has nothing to do with my understanding. Nay, so far from adopting the popular maxim, that we have faith according to our wishes, I find the tendency of my mind is rather to suspect in proportion to the desire that any proposition may be true, and, dreading disappointment, I investigate with more precision whatever I am most interested in hoping may prove to be a fact, than those matters of common occurrence, which are indifferent to me in their consequences.”
I replied, that I had purposely left the topics to which he alluded for the last. “You desired,” said I, “to know on what shore I had been landed, what haven of rest I have found, after having been tempest-tossed like yourself upon the ocean of doubt and vacillation. I complied with your requisition, and have told you that my bark is, I trust, safely moored in the harbour of conviction. I will now retrace my way, and tell you how I have been enabled to meet the tremendous questions of free-will, spiritual immortality, and personal identity, so far as to satisfy myself completely, that while in the flesh it is a vain attempt to explain them in any other way than by saying, that they are too high, and elude mortal grasp altogether. To know this is something, and we arrive at the knowledge by means of reason, it is doubly satisfactory. Whether my reasoning will carry any weight to your mind, I will not presume to anticipate; but, as briefly as possible I will give you an idea of the course which I pursued myself with success.”
As my letter has run on to an overgrown length, I will conclude it here, where the subject naturally divides itself; and in my next will proceed with my narrative, in the hope that you will aid my purpose by observing on every defect in the chain of my endeavours, and furnishing strength to my weakness from the stores of your own information. My whole soul is engrossed in the cause which heaven has blessed already beyond my most sanguine expectations. Our dear friend, Mr. Otway, is a powerful auxiliary. I should say that he were the principal instrument, if his knowledge of human nature did not teach him to lie by in a great degree, till I, as a pioneer, have cleared the path. “The still small voice” of female affection, like the mouse in the fable, will sometimes achieve more than the lion’s force, and I am heartily contented to rank no higher than “yon wee bit sleek, and cowering beastie.” as our favourite Burns styles this tiny animal, if I may only be permitted by my humble efforts, to unloose the cords which would restrain the spirit’s flight, and bind to groveling earth an angel of the skies.
Adieu, dear friend,
Your faithful and affectionate,
Caroline Douglas.
LETTER XXXV.
From the same to the same.
Marsden.
My dear Friend,
You are expecting a letter, and it shall be delayed no longer. To return to the subject of my last: my brother confessed, as I told you, that his great difficulties lay in questions without the range of Bible testimony, considered either as a system of moral virtue, or a history of mankind.
“I know enough,” added he, “to give it the palm of excellence over the several claims of Confucius, Menu, Zoroaster, and Mohammed. The nobleness of its principle, in making the love of God stand forward grandly as the only test of true religion, is sufficient to raise it beyond the finest compositions of human skill, which rest their foundations in convenience or necessity. I am likewise aware that much of what is to be admired in the best specimens of ancient wisdom, is directly imitated from the laws of Moses. I know that this lawgiver has been the means of preserving the people committed to his charge, and that too amidst the most tremendous reverses and astonishing vicissitudes of fortune for almost four thousand years by the same laws; while the boasted Grecian philosophy of the Lycurgus’, the Solons, the Platos, though indebted to him, has passed away in empty air. I know also, that the infidel hue and cry that Moses borrowed his plans of jurisprudence and morality from the Egyptians, has been transmitted through the crowd as mere sound divested of sense, and is easily arrested by the least degree of acquaintance with that mythology from which unbelievers pretend to derive the Hebraical Institutes. Could I be assured that I am to live hereafter, the Bible should unquestionably be the light and staff of my journey towards that unseen world which you are so certain of beholding, and in the existence of which there is nothing revolting to my understanding, except the difficulty of knowing myself in a disembodied state. What is to convince me of my identity?”
To this question I ventured to reply, “The argument of identity has been much misunderstood by a large portion of mankind, including almost all the sceptics whose writings I am acquainted with, and who confound this idea with that of consciousness. Now, Butler, whose book you see before you, has admirably and clearly drawn the true distinction, and shewn that consciousness takes cognizance of identity, but is not the thing itself. You may sleep for a million of years as for a single night, without destroying your identity. Were it not so, each interruption from forgetfulness, however short, or from whatever cause, whether a natural slumber, lapse of memory, epileptic fit, swoon, or contusion of the brain, would be as fatal to the continuity of self, as the longest term of oblivion.
“How then do I arrive at the idea of identity? I say by intuitive knowledge, so totally independent of the circumstances with which it is combined in the body, that these may undergo every variety of change without impairing its force. Suppose that you were taken at your birth, like Hunter, and brought up amongst the North American Indians; that you believed a tatooed chief of a particular village to be your father, and a certain squaw to be your mother. At one-and-twenty, you are brought to Europe, and discover, by a remarkable chain of circumstances, that you are not a North American Indian, but a child of British parents. You are not what you believed yourself to be; yet this has nothing to do with your identity—you are still yourself.
“Suppose again, that by successive cannon shots, you have been deprived of your limbs; your arms and legs have been shot away, and, as nearly as is compatible with continued existence, you are reduced to a mere trunk. No diminution takes place in the consciousness of your personal identity, any more than results from the gradual substitution of new particles which, it is calculated, replace those which composed the whole of the former body, once in every seven years. Memory of the past is not necessary to our belief that we are ourselves. Whole years may be blotted from our recollection, and still we have some invisible, intuitive assurance that we have continuity of being, and have not gone through any metempsychosis, which destroys it; but this knowledge is limited by certain boundaries, beyond which we have absolutely nothing to guide us, except the evidence of other people. Ask yourself solemnly, and searchingly, what is your ground for believing that, ere you saw the light, you lived during nine months in another state as different from your present condition of existence, as the present union of body and spirit can possibly be from a future mode of being in which the soul, freed from human restraint, shall expatiate with as much more liberty than it can now exert, as it enjoys at present, when compared with the former period of its imprisonment.
“Is there one human creature who could be so certain that you are absolutely the person for whom we take you, as not by possibility to be deceived? Even your mother, after her heart had yearned to the first faint cry of her own baby, may have been deceived. Suppose that her own had died, and that you were presented to her. How do you know what or where you were before sensible objects began to make impression on your faculties? You have no more actual connection with your former being, even during the first six or eight months,—I might go on to say the first year of childhood—when you slept in your nurse’s arms, than you have with that oak that overshadows your window, if you estimate that connection by your power of tracing its links without any hiatus in the chain.
“You were pleased the other day with that admirable essay, which you were reading, entitled “Historical doubts respecting the existence of Napoleon Buonaparte,” in which the argument is so perfectly established that, if we give reins to scepticism, we have no demonstrative proof, at this moment, that the wonderful Buonaparte who swayed the world by the magic of an almost preternatural influence for a few years, and is now forgotten, put himself under the protection of Captain Maitland, and visited Spithead on board the Bellerophon. What wonder that you should know no more than that your boat put off from the shore, on which you saw a dense crowd of assembled spectators, that you neared the stern of a great vessel, saw a little man with a star on his breast and a cocked hat upon his head, were told and believed that it was the royal prisoner, the usurper of France, the wizard Corsican at whom you gazed from your wherry, when you have no demonstration that you are General Douglas, no irrefragable proof that you belong to that line of Scottish heroes from whom you believe yourself to be sprung, and may not be, on the contrary, a foundling transplanted from the parish of St. Giles’ into your splendid cradle, where first you received the fond caresses of your reputed parents.
“See then how much we are obliged to take for granted; and is there any greater difficulty in believing that consciousness of identity, which we never doubted, may form a part of our essence hereafter, than that it is inseparable from our existence here, however the continuity of remembrance may be interrupted? All analogy is with me, and I now find this idea, which once was a stumbling block, easy and familiar.
“Then, as to the soul’s existence after being separated from the body. Let us only consider how unreasonably we argue, when we confound the mental and corporeal functions, simply because we see them combined. Analogy here also is against such reasoning. A spark of electricity or galvanism is only rendered apparent to the eye by certain circumstances. As long as these subtle fluids pass quietly through conductors, they are wholly invisible, and pervade the earth and atmosphere entirely unseen: yet we doubt not the existence of electricity and magnetism, because they float invisibly in æther. We never doubt the existence of the sun’s light, though the substitution of a wooden block for a transparent window of glass shall totally obstruct his rays. These are mere analogies; but they are in our favour. We see the operations of the spirit through the means of our bodily organs, as we perceive the light of the sun through glass, which is so constituted as to transmit its beams to our senses; but we have no more right to confound the vehicle, or medium, with the matter of light, or the power of thought, conveyed in the one case than in the other. Will you call me fanciful if I say that I consider all intellectual energy, all that we denominate soul, as emanating from divinity; and I find no more difficulty now in imagining a certain portion of this divine principle arrested and concentrated in the organic structure which we call man, than I find in collecting the sun’s rays in a burning glass or a prism.
“Mingling with the dross incident to a temporary junction with the base particles of matter, the spirit partakes of the feculence of the channel through which it permeates (if you will permit me to use the language of metaphor), just as the rays of the sun are broken, refracted, or reflected by the cloudy atmosphere, or shattered glass, through which they pass. Remove the medium, and the emancipated essence regains its source; with this difference, that while the light, which is only material, the magnetism and electricity, which are unconscious forces, recover all their purity with their liberated expansion, the soul of man, on which the boon of immortality is conferred,—the soul which shall not be extinguished like that splendid orb that illumines our nether sphere shall receive its final billet, and be admitted into one or the other of two classes of spiritualized existence, according to the use which has been made during its sojournment in the body, of free will, bestowed upon the human species at its creation.”
Here my brother heaved a sigh, which seemed to issue from the very centre of his heart: “Aye, Caroline,” said he, “there’s the rub; there is the inscrutable mystery, the impenetrable veil;” “Which,” answered I, “no mortal intellect—no human eye will ever pierce.”—“Then how believe what I despair of comprehending?” “If,” replied I, “we turn a subject according to two opposite theories, and after the clearest investigation which we are enabled to bestow upon each, find that both involve an equal measure of incompatibility with our reason and experience, we arrive at least naturally at a state of neutrality which would leave us unbiased and ready to lean to one side or the other, as new motives might be suggested to incline the understanding through force of evidence or probability, towards the adoption of one scheme in preference to the other, its own powers being confessedly unequal to unravel the difficulties of either. Let us view the wonderful question of free-will in this light: that the Almighty could decree man to be free, we have no reason to deny. Omnipotence can achieve all things; and even were we inclined to declare, that not being satisfied that free-will exists, we will not give credit to the Great Framer of the universe for more than we see, still we are pinned on the other side; for if we only admit what we see, we cannot by the same rule consistently negative that which we do not see. Ignorance is not entitled to predicate for or against. We can only with propriety say, that what is hidden, is hidden. But my experience tells me that I am free; and that when not coerced from without, when not restrained by extrinsic force, I follow the dictates of my will, I find that no temptation assails me with such violence as to make it impossible that I should not have resisted its approaches: and find that the common sense of all mankind is with me, since every human law is founded on the distinction between voluntary and compulsory action. Every species of control, moral or physical, is taken into account; every aberration which disturbs the balance of the mental faculties is allowed to operate favourably in excusing the delinquent who is brought to judgment; and nothing but free, determined wickedness is punished by the laws of man. Whatever injury has been sustained by society, crime is not imputed to the person who has been an unwilling instrument of wrong. So far there is no contrariety in the decisions; no variety amongst the opinions of men. What says the Bible, which we have already agreed should be the lamp of our feet, provided that we submit to be guided where our own light is not sufficient? It tells us, that God placing us here in a merely probationary state, and designing us for an ulterior destiny, made us free in order to our being accountable. Now that we should be accountable without being free is a solecism which no human sagacity could comprehend, not merely because it is too high for us to reach, but because it absolutely contradicts that reason through the means of which we come at the ideas of truth and falsehood. The Bible says, that “good and evil are placed before us,” and that we are responsible at the bar of a future Tribunal for the choice which we make between them. Here is an exact accordance between revelation and the natural conclusions of reason. Again, if we consider what is most suitable to our ideas of grandeur and power in the Deity, we hesitate not in saying, that to form a free creature is a much more magnificent exhibition of Divinity than is manifested in the creation of puppets that must obey the original impulse imparted to them. How much grander is the idea of an Almighty Ruler who, giving the greatest latitude of action within its individual sphere, to each separate congeries of nerves and muscles, which He has ordained to be the seat of a human soul, can so order the ends of His astonishing plan, that not a tittle of His word shall be frustrated; not a particle of the great scheme subverted; than any notion which we can substitute of a Creator who had tied down and limited the work of His hands in the moment of casting the first specimen of its existence, so as to secure a monotonous and necessary result from the mechanical revolution of certain wheels, or the mindless operation of certain fixed springs, not one of which could by possibility vary in its round, or be altered in the quantum of its elasticity. Thus far reason and experience move harmoniously together, and authority confirms their joint conclusion. We feel that we are free; reason tells us that we ought to be free; and Scripture, which professes to be the revealed Word of God, informs us that we are free. The mass of probability appears, then, entirely on this side: let us now consider the other.
“If man be a mere machine, irresistibly governed according to fixed laws, from which he cannot swerve, and performing every action through the influence of an impelling power, which he is unable to resist; it is plain, first, that he cannot be an accountable creature, for accountableness can only be understood when there is liberty to do, or abstain from doing; and, secondly, this scheme involves an absolute contradiction between our experience and the fact, supposing us to be creatures of necessity, by which, if we be really overruled, and placed in duresse from which we have no power to emancipate ourselves; we are, then, put into the extraordinary predicament of being one thing, while we are so constituted as to believe ourselves to be another. That is to say, in fine, that we are conscious of freedom, though in reality we are bound; and are thus practically and irresistibly acting all our lives upon a fraud, a delusion, which compels us to give up the testimony of our senses, at the same time that we declare their evidence to furnish the most unquestionable source of knowledge that we possess, and to afford the principal rule upon which our whole conduct is regulated, either in public or private life.
“There is a sublime simplicity in the works of Providence, in comparison with which the strange incongruity which I have been describing would present a case so completely anomalous as to disturb the harmony of creation, and leave us a bewildered race, without helm or compass to guide our course. But a contradiction still more monstrous and difficult to reconcile would result from such an order of things as we are now supposing. The necessity which we are considering must either be independent of, or immediately proceeding from, God. If the former, it supersedes the Deity, or, identified with Him, is itself the sovereign ruler of the universe. If the latter, all the evil deeds of man are performed by the express order of that Being who threatens with eternal punishment those of his creatures who will not obey His commandment to be “holy even as He is holy.” The preposterous absurdities involved in this view are levelled at once by the belief that man at his birth is decreed to be a free agent, all whose actions are in his own power; who will never be tempted above what he is enabled to bear; and who, if he sincerely desire after righteousness, will never fail in attaining it.
“How far the ultimate ends of all that we see may be fixed by the fiat of Divine ordinances, is not our business to inquire into, any more than what future worlds the Creator may please to form when our planetary system shall have passed away. Our own actions are our immediate concern: thousands of events may hinge upon every one of them, with which we do not design the remotest connection; while the ends which we intend to bring about are never achieved. Yet, in secular matters, no man ever believes his free will to have been restrained. If he make a bad bargain, or act upon a false calculation, he may regret his want of prudence, or lament a deficiency of information; but it never occurs to the most sceptical amongst those with whom I have ever met, to fancy, for a single moment, that he might not have done differently, inquired farther, or been less precipitate.
“Whence this division? Why are temporal affairs regulated by the law of responsibility while spiritual conduct only is to be considered under the inflexible control of a necessary compulsion? The reason is plain: the creed of the fatalist is only adopted to screen him from the examination which he dreads, and serve as an opiate to his conscience. The fatalism of the ancient heathen world was more rational and consistent than that of modern infidelity, inasmuch as it was applied to earthly concerns, and frequently led to contentment under misfortune and privation. Perhaps you are ready to say how much less puzzling you would find the doctrine of free-will than that of necessity were it not for one stumbling block. How can fore-knowledge be reconciled with freedom? Were human analogies to satisfy our inquiry, there would be no difficulty to encounter in this question. In this world, the prophetic wisdom which, like that of Edmund Burke, looks deeply into the volume of futurity, and predicts events to come, is rarely, if ever concerned in the practical occurrence of them; but on the contrary, is generally in diametrical opposition, as he was to the horrors of that revolution which he so clearly foresaw. So far analogy separates fore-knowledge from necessity. Imagine once that man is created free by the Almighty’s decree, and the difficulty vanishes. If free, man is empowered to act for himself; and though beyond a certain limit he may not be able to see or to do, he has liberty within a given circuit, and that liberty once conferred, there is nothing more incomprehensible in the fore-knowledge of God, than in that of an earthly parent, who having endowed his children with a certain measure of power, limited by his discretion, and recallable at his will, foresees, without choosing to control its exercise. That species of active interference sometimes employed to bring about the designs of self-interest by people who plan devices, and then are busied in executing them; is not what we mean by fore-knowledge humanly speaking. What we speak of as such, is founded on information from without, and derived from our own judgment in drawing conclusions relative to future events from certain data presented to our understandings. I repeat, therefore, that so far from being accustomed to couple this species of wisdom with the facts which it predicts, there is, generally speaking, not the most remote connection between the prognostic and its fulfilment. Now, as all our ideas respecting the divine attributes, when we depend on reason alone for believing in them, are but an extension of those which we see in each other, we are not instructed by any analogy to expect that the prescience of the Almighty brings about the downfall of a nation as its necessary consequence, any more than that Burke’s foresight of the effects which would follow on the spread of infidelity and disloyalty should be instrumental in compassing the overthrow of monarchy in France. Nor should we reason so anomalously, were it not that in considering God as the creator of all those beings whose conduct he foresees, looking in short, upon the divine fore-knowledge as infallible, and not subject to the contingencies which accompany even the highest degree of human sagacity, we attach a characteristic to the prescience of the Deity which does not belong to that of man; and therefore while reason and analogy are professedly our guides, we desert their standard, and set up a new light for ourselves which is as remote from revealed as from natural religion, and leaves us inextricably bogged in a morass from which we shall in vain attempt to disentangle ourselves. If the Almighty made us free, we can imagine how he may fore-know our actions without controlling them; though he formed all created things, because in the very idea of freedom, such independence is essential; any compulsion would destroy liberty, and involve a contradiction in terms; but here is the final limit to which human understanding can attain.
“How this wonderful union of divine power, and the creature’s free agency is effected, belongs to higher matters than we can reach. We only know, as I said before, that we know nothing, if we are not free. The arguments of a necessitarian may seem irrefragable, and convince you that you are impelled to every action; but in the moment that you close his book you feel that you can open or shut it at pleasure, and call up, or dismiss at will, those motives from your mind, which shall be the proximate and immediate causes of your so doing.
“In like manner Berkeley has perhaps convinced you in the abstract that you cannot vouch for the existence of matter, and that ideas or shadows are all that you can answer for; but do you really and substantially believe less in the existence of a bullet which blows out the brains of a fellow creature, or that of the sword which pierces his body, because Berkeley assures you that they are only ideas, and you are not able metaphysically to contradict him?
“You have, my beloved brother, honoured me so far as to consult my understanding upon these great, these awful subjects, and nothing could tempt me to accept the office of guide, conscious as I am of my own weakness, were I not firmly persuaded, that while mortal affairs require human strength to unravel their intricacies, and overcome their obstructions, humility is the only pilot to heaven.
“I was once led astray in the mazes of a bewildering philosophy which grew darker and more uncertain the farther I presumed to penetrate its recesses. I found torches, indeed, blazing at the portals, and proud of a little daring, I entered on the labyrinth, vain-gloriously resolved to reject all clue, and clear a passage for myself; but the damps of ignorance and doubt soon extinguished the glaring lights that illuminated the entrance. I found myself ere long involved in the thickest obscurity, and when the abyss threatened to engulph the groping wanderer, was grateful for that aid which in the pride of my own strength, I had indignantly rejected. Assisted by revelation, I retraced my erring steps; and am now contented with such measure of knowledge as God vouchsafes to his creatures, as well as resolved never more to tempt the paths which lead but to confusion worse confounded.
“Where difficulties present themselves, I thankfully incline to that side which is the least obscure; and, as a belief in necessity, besides the natural contrariety of its existence with the evidence of our senses, which proclaim us free agents, would involve an absolute and unqualified rejection of the Christian scheme, I find no hesitation in abandoning it to the winds.
“Natural religion presents God to our contemplation in the wonderful unapproachable character of sovereignty, wisdom, and power. The Christian sees him brought home to our hearts, and domesticated with our gratitude, our tenderness, and admiration. In Jesus Christ we behold the Emanuel, the God with us; redeeming in his love, sustaining by his spirit, astonishing by his mercy. If I turn from the only door, the only way, the only shepherd that is provided for me, and look to myself for a staff of support through the valley of death, what do I find? Alas! infirmity so pitiable, sin so inseparable from every purpose and every performance, that I am ready to give my suffrage to the truth of Hooker’s eloquent, but melancholy avowal, that ‘the very best action of the most virtuous human being, requires to be forgiven.’”
You have now, my dear friend, an outline of the plan upon which we set out with our search after Truth: and from the moment in which the conversation that I have reported took place, my brother has passed some hours of every day in reading and talking on these solemn subjects.
Butler’s Analogy with Wilson’s excellent Letters of Explanation; Gregory’s Letters and Chalmers’ Evidences, have particularly delighted him. We have read Tremaine together, and some parts of the reasoning contained in the third volume of that valuable little work have most powerfully impressed his mind, while others have failed of satisfying him. My principal objections to Tremaine are, that the author contents himself with allowing us to suppose that the hero becomes a Christian. Secondly, Dr. Evelyn, though a very worthy, and a very sensible man, appears more like a good humoured country gentleman, than a clergyman, the professional piety of whom might have been added to his counsel without detracting from its force. It is a pity also that so strong a stimulant as love should be allowed by possibility to mingle in the motives to conversion, and by so doing, sully the integrity of change. With these defects, however, and some inequalities in the argument, Tremaine is a charming work, and breathes nothing from beginning to end, which is not calculated, in some way or other, to render people wiser and better who read it; a character which it would be a great happiness were to be able with truth to attribute in this age of novels to many of the most celebrated amongst them.
Having said so much of my invalid’s mind, I must mournfully add of his bodily frame, that it gradually declines, yet so imperceptibly, that it requires such minute observation as strong affection can alone awaken, to perceive the progress of decay. My dear children, and our friend Mr. Otway, unite in kindest remembrances to you. Speak of us all to our poor neighbours with affectionate recollection, and tell them that I long to re-visit my little valley, and am only supported through the pain of absence from home, and the fatigue of more society, than for many years I have been accustomed to, by the pleasant assurance that I am not uselessly employed. The remarks of my young people, in a land of strangers, furnish me too with a perpetual source of gratification, they are so true to nature and good sense, as well as feeling. We continue to hear constantly from Arthur, who is happy in the company of Mr. Charles Falkland, a young man whose friendship I anticipate for my Frederick with great pleasure. We hear also of Lord and Lady Crayton, of whom I wish I could add that our accounts are agreeable. Lord C. is, I fear, ill calculated to make my poor niece happy; and they both exhibit, but too faithfully, a specimen of fashionable marriage. I tremble, as I look forward, and bless God when I gaze with thankfulness on my children, that they have been preserved from the vortex of folly, which draws thousands daily into its dangerous and seductive abyss. Can all the riches of the East, added to all “the boast of heraldry, and pomp of power,” supply the place of domestic love, or compensate for the absence of moral virtue? I sometimes feel like an old picture that, after having been hung up during a century, has suddenly received the gift of animation, and descended from its frame to mingle in the social group. The world, even as seen at this distance from our metropolis, appears almost as new to me as to my girls; and, I am sorry to confess, how little find in it to gratify my mental taste. Perhaps retirement may have soured my disposition, but if this be not the case, society is not improved in this kingdom. We are encircled by people of princely fortune; and luxury, in all its fertility of invention, reigns throughout this rich and beautiful country. But, oh! how much I miss the England of my early recollections! Mr. Otway and I often mourn over the progress of what is falsely called refinement, which has made the lower classes forget the simple sobriety, the active industry, the nice cleanliness of former times, and has rendered the higher orders a disgusting engraftment of foreign manners, customs, and language, upon a British stock. My dear home! My pure mountain breezes and rational fire-side, I sigh to behold you once more! Adieu, my valued friend. I hope to hear from you before we leave Marsden, and am,
Sincerely yours,
Caroline Douglas.