The low and sweet voice ceased; it appeared as if I had fallen suddenly upon the earth, but there was a bright light before me and I heard my name loudly called; the voice was not of my intellectual guide—the genius before me was my servant bearing a flambeau in his hand. He told me he had been searching me in vain amongst the ruins, that the carriage had been waiting for me above an hour, and that he had left a large party of my friends assembled in the Palazzo F---.
DIALOGUE THE SECOND. DISCUSSIONS CONNECTED WITH THE VISION IN THE COLOSÆUM.
The same friends, Ambrosio and Onuphrio, who were my companions at Rome in the winter, accompanied me in the spring to Naples. Many conversations occurred in the course of our journey which were often to me peculiarly instructive, and from the difference of their opinions generally animated and often entertaining. I shall detail one of these conversations, which took place in the evening on the summit of Vesuvius, and the remembrance of which from its connection with my vision in the Colosæum has always a peculiar interest for me. We had reached with some labour the edge of the crater and were admiring the wonderful scene around us. I shall give the conversation in the words of the persons of the drama.
Philalethes.—It is difficult to say whether there is more of sublimity or beauty in the scene around us. Nature appears at once smiling and frowning, in activity and repose. How tremendous is the volcano, how magnificent this great laboratory of Nature in its unceasing fire, its subterraneous lightnings and thunder, its volumes of smoke, its showers of stones and its rivers of ignited lava! How contrasted the darkness of the scoriæ, the ruins and the desolation round the crater with the scene below! There we see the rich field covered with flax, or maize, or millet, and intersected by rows of trees which support the green and graceful festoons of the vine; the orange and lemon tree covered with golden fruit appear in the sheltered glens; the olive trees cover the lower hills; islands purple in the beams of the setting sun are scattered over the sea in the west, and the sky is tinted with red softening into the brightest and purest azure; the distant mountains still retain a part of the snows of winter, but they are rapidly melting and they absolutely seem to melt reflecting the beams of the setting sun, glowing as if on fire. And man appears emulous of Nature, for the city below is full of activity; the nearest part of the bay is covered with boats, busy multitudes crowd the strand, and at the same time may be seen a number of the arts belonging to civilised society in operation—house-building, ship-building, rope-making, the manipulations of the smith and of the agriculturist, and not only the useful arts, but even the amusements and luxuries of a great metropolis may be witnessed from the spot in which we stand; that motley crowd is collected round a policinello, and those smaller groups that surround the stalls are employed in enjoying the favourite food and drink of the lazzaroni.
Ambrosio.—We see not only the power and activity of man, as existing at present, and of which the highest example may be represented by the steam-boat which is now departing for Palermo, but we may likewise view scenes which carry us into the very bosom of antiquity, and, as it were, make us live with the generations of past ages. Those small square buildings, scarcely visible in the distance, are the tombs of distinguished men amongst the early Greek colonists of the country; and those rows of houses, without roofs, which appear as if newly erecting, constitute a Roman town restored from its ashes, that remained for centuries as if it had been swept from the face of the earth. When you study it in detail you will hardly avoid the illusion that it is a rising city; you will almost be tempted to ask where are the workmen, so perfect art the walls of the houses, so bright and uninjured the painting upon them. Hardly anything is wanting to make this scene a magnificent epitome of all that is most worthy of admiration in Nature and art; had there been in addition to the other objects a fine river and a waterfall the epitome would, I think, have been absolutely perfect.
Phil.—You are most unreasonable in imagining additions to a scene which it is impossible to embrace in one view, and which presents so many objects to the senses, the memory, and to the imagination; yet there is a river in the valley between Naples and Castel del Mare; you may see its silver thread and the white foam of its torrents in the distance, and if you were geologists you would find a number of sources of interest, which have not been mentioned, in the scenery surrounding us. Somma which is before us, for instance, affords a wonderful example of a mountain formed of marine deposits, and which has been raised by subterraneous fire, and those large and singular veins which you see at the base and rising through the substance of the strata are composed of volcanic porphyry, and offer a most striking and beautiful example of the generation and structure of rocks and mineral formations.
Onuphrio.—As we passed through Portici, on the road to the base of Vesuvius, it appeared to me that I saw a stone which had an ancient Roman inscription upon it, and which occupied the place of a portal in the modern palace of the Barberini.
Phil.—This is not an uncommon circumstance: Most of the stones used in the palaces of Portici had been employed more than two thousand years before in structures raised by the ancient Romans or Greek colonists; and it is not a little remarkable that the buildings of Herculaneum, a town covered with ashes, tufa, and lava, from the first recorded eruption of Vesuvius more than seventeen hundred years ago, should have been constructed of volcanic materials produced by some antecedent igneous action of the mountain in times beyond the reach of history; and it is still more remarkable that men should have gone on for so many ages making erections in spots where their works have been so often destroyed, inattentive to the voice of time or the warnings of nature.
Onu.—This last fact recalls to my recollection an idea which Philalethes started in the remarkable dream which he would have us believe occurred to him in the Colosæum, namely—that no important facts which can be useful to society are ever lost; and that, like these stones, which though covered with ashes or hidden amongst ruins, they are sure to be brought forward again and made use of in some new form.
Amb.—I do not see the justness of the analogy to which Onuphrio refers; but there are many parts of that vision on which I should wish to hear the explanations of Philalethes. I consider it in fact as a sort of poetical epitome of his philosophical opinions, and I regard this vision or dream as a mere web of his imagination in which he intended to catch us, his summer-flies and travelling companions.
Phil.—There, Ambrosio, you do me wrong. I will acknowledge, if you please, that the vision in the Colosæum is a fiction; but the most important parts of it really occurred to me in sleep, particularly that in which I seemed to leave the earth and launch into the infinity of space under the guidance of a tutelary genius. And the origin and progress of civil society form likewise parts of another dream which I had many years ago, and it was in the reverie which happened when you quitted me in the Colosæum that I wove all these thoughts together, and gave them the form in which I narrated them to you.
Amb.—Of course we may consider them as an accurate representation of your waking thoughts.
Phil.—I do not say that they strictly are so, for I am not quite convinced that dreams are always representations of the state of the mind modified by organic diseases or by associations. There are certainly no absolutely new ideas produced in sleep, yet I have had more than one instance, in the course of my life, of most extraordinary combinations occurring in this state, which have had considerable influence on my feelings, my imagination, and my health.
Onu.—Why Philalethes, you are becoming a visionary, a dreamer of dreams. We shall perhaps set you down by the side of Jacob Behmen or of Emanuel Swedenbourg, and in an earlier age you might have been a prophet, and have ranked perhaps with Mahomet. But pray give us one of these instances in which such a marvellous influence was produced on your imagination and your health by a dream that we may form some judgment of the nature of your second sight or inspirations; and whether they have any foundation, or whether they are not, as I believe, really unfounded, inventions of the fancy, dreams respecting dreams.
Phil.—I anticipate unbelief, and I expose myself to your ridicule in the statement I am about to make, yet I shall mention nothing but a simple fact. Almost a quarter of a century ago, as you know, I contracted that terrible form of typhus-fever known by the name of gaol-fever, I may say, not from any imprudence of my own, but whilst engaged in putting in execution a plan for ventilating one of the great prisons of the metropolis. My illness was severe and dangerous. As long as the fever continued, my dreams or delirium were most painful and oppressive; but when the weakness consequent to exhaustion came on, and when the probability of death seemed to my physicians greater than that of life, there was an entire change in all my ideal combinations. I remained in an apparently senseless or lethargic state, but in fact my mind was peculiarly active; there was always before me the form of a beautiful woman, with whom I was engaged in the most interesting and intellectual conversation.
Amb.—The figure of a lady with whom you were in love.
Phil.—No such thing; I was passionately in love at the time, but the object of my admiration was a lady with black hair, dark eyes, and pale complexion; this spirit of my vision, on the contrary, had brown hair, blue eyes, and a bright rosy complexion, and was, as far as I can recollect, unlike any of the amatory forms which in early youth had so often haunted my imagination. Her figure for many days was so distinct in my mind, as to form almost a visual image. As I gained strength, the visits of my good angel (for so I called it) became less frequent, and when I was restored to health they were altogether discontinued.
Onu.—I see nothing very strange in this—a mere reaction of the mind after severe pain—and, to a young man of twenty-five, there are few more pleasurable images than that of a beautiful maiden with blue eyes, blooming cheeks, and long nut-brown hair.
Phil.—But all my feelings and all my conversations with this visionary maiden were of an intellectual and refined nature.
Onu.—Yes, I suppose, as long as you were ill.
Phil.—I will not allow you to treat me with ridicule on this point till you have heard the second part of my tale. Ten years after I had recovered from the fever, and when I had almost lost the recollection of the vision, it was recalled to my memory by a very blooming and graceful maiden, fourteen or fifteen years old, that I accidentally met during my travels in Illyria; but I cannot say that the impression made upon my mind by this female was very strong. Now comes the extraordinary part of the narrative. Ten years after, twenty years after my first illness, at a time when I was exceedingly weak from a severe and dangerous malady, which for many weeks threatened my life, and when my mind was almost in a desponding state, being in a course of travels ordered by my medical advisers, I again met the person who was the representative of my visionary female, and to her kindness and care I believe I owe what remains to me of existence. My despondency gradually disappeared, and though my health still continued weak, life began to possess charms for me which I had thought were for ever gone; and I could not help identifying the living angel with the vision which appeared as my guardian genius during the illness of my youth.
Onu.—I really see nothing at all in this fact, whether the first or the second part of the narrative be considered, beyond the influence of an imagination excited by disease. From youth, even to age, women are our guardian angels, our comforters; and I dare say any other handsome young female, who had been your nurse in your last illness, would have coincided with your remembrance of the vision, even though her eyes had been hazel and her hair flaxen. Nothing can be more loose than the images represented in dreams following a fever, and with the nervous susceptibility produced by your last illness, almost any agreeable form would have become the representative of your imaginary guardian genius. Thus it is, that by the power of fancy, material forms are clothed in supernatural attributes; and in the same manner imaginary divinities have all the forms of mortality bestowed upon them. The gods of the pagan mythology were in all their characters and attributes exalted human beings; the demon of the coward, and the angelic form that appears in the dream of some maid smitten by devotion, and who, having lost her earthly lover, fixes her thoughts on heaven, are clothed in the character and vestments of humanity changed by the dreaminess of passion.
Amb.—With such a tendency, Philalethes, as you have shown to believe in something like a supernatural or divine influence on the human mind, I am astonished there should be so much scepticism belonging to your vision in the Colosæum. And your view of the early state of man, after his first creation, is not only incompatible with revelation, but likewise with reason and everything that we know respecting the history or traditions of the early nations of antiquity.
Phil.—Be more distinct and detailed in your statements, Ambrosio, that I may be able to reply to them; and whilst we are waiting for the sunrise we may discuss the subject, and for this, let us seat ourselves on these stones, where we shall be warmed by the vicinity of the current of lava.
Amb.—You consider man, in his early or first created state, a savage, like those who now inhabit New Holland or New Zealand, acquiring by the little use that they make of a feeble reason the power of supporting and extending life. Now, I contend, that if man had been so created, he must inevitably have been destroyed by the elements or devoured by savage beasts, so infinitely his superiors in physical force. He must, therefore, have been formed with various instinctive faculties and propensities, with a perfection of form and use of organs fitting him to become the master of the earth; and, it appears to me, that the account given in Genesis of the first parents of mankind having been placed in a garden fitted with everything necessary to their existence and enjoyment, and ordered to increase and multiply there, is strictly in harmony with reason, and accordant with all just metaphysical views of the human mind. Man as he now exists can only be raised with great care and difficulty from the infant to the mature state; all his motions are at first automatic, and become voluntary by association; he has to learn everything by slow and difficult processes, many months elapse before he is able to stand, and many years before he is able to provide for the common wants of life. Without the mother or the nurse in his infant state, he would die in a few hours; and without the laborious discipline of instruction and example, he would remain idiotic and inferior to most other animals. His reason is only acquired gradually, and when in its highest perfection is often uncertain in its results. He must, therefore, have been created with instincts that for a long while supplied the want of reason, and which enabled him from the first moment of his existence to provide for his wants, to gratify his desires, and enjoy the power and the activity of life.
Phil.—I acknowledge that your objection has some weight, but not so much as you would attribute to it. I will suppose that the first created man or men had certain powers or instincts, such as now belong to the rudest savages of the southern hemisphere; I will suppose them created with the use of their organs for defence and offence and with passions and propensities enabling them to supply their own wants. And I oppose the fact of races who are now actually in this state to your vague historical or traditionary records; and their gradual progress or improvement from this early state of society to that of the highest state of civilisation or refinement may, I think, be easily deduced from the exertions of reason assisted by the influence of the moral powers and of physical circumstances. Accident, I conceive, must have had some influence in laying the foundations of certain arts; and a climate in which labour was not too oppressive, and in which the exertion of industry was required to provide for the wants of life must have fixed the character of the activity of the early improving people; where nature is too kind a mother, man is generally a spoiled child; where she is severe, and a stepmother, his powers are usually withered and destroyed. The people of the south and the north and those between the tropics offer, even at this day, proof of the truth of this principle; and it is even possible now to find on the surface of the earth, all the different gradations of the states of society, from that in which man is scarcely removed above the brute, to that in which he appears approaching in his nature to a divine intelligence. Besides, reason being the noblest gift of God to man, I can hardly suppose that an infinitely powerful and all-wise Creator would bestow upon the early inhabitants of the globe a greater proportion of instinct than was at first necessary to preserve their existence, and that he would not leave the great progress of their improvement to the development and exaltation of their reasoning powers.
Amb.—You appear to me in your argument to have forgotten the influence that any civilised race must possess over savages; and many of the nations which you consider as in their original state, may have descended from nations formerly civilised; and, it is quite as easy to trace the retrograde steps of a people as their advances; the savage hordes who now inhabit the northern coast of Africa are probably descended from the opulent, commercial, and ingenious Carthaginians who once contended with Rome for the empire of the world; and even nearer home, we might find in Southern Italy and her islands, proofs of a degradation not much inferior. What I contend for is the civilisation of the first patriarchal races who peopled the East, and who passed into Europe from Armenia, in which paradise is supposed to have been placed. The early civilisation of this race could only have been in consequence of their powers and instincts having been of a higher character than those of savages. They appear to have been small families—a state not at all fitted for the discovery of arts by the exercise of the mind; and they professed the most sublime form of religion, the worship of one Supreme Intelligence—a truth which, after a thousand years of civilisation, was with difficulty attained by the most powerful efforts of reasoning by the Greek sages. It appears to me, that in the history of the Jews, nothing can be more in conformity to our ideas of just analogy than this series of events. Our first parents were created with everything necessary for their wants and their happiness; they had only one duty to perform, by their obedience to prove their love and devotion to their Creator. In this they failed, and death—or the fear of death—became a curse upon their race; but the father of mankind repented, and his instinctive or intellectual powers given by revelation were transmitted to his offspring more or less modified by their reason, which they had gained as the fruit of their disobedience. One branch of his offspring, however, in whom faith shone forth above reason, retained their peculiar powers and institutions and preserved the worship of Jehovah pure, whilst many of the races sprung from their brethren became idolatrous, and the clear light of heaven was lost through the mist of the senses; and that Being, worshipped by the Israelites only as a mysterious word, was forgotten by many of the nations who lived in the neighbouring countries, and men, beasts, the parts of the visible universe, and even stocks and stones, were set up as objects of adoration. The difficulty which the divine legislators of the Jewish people had to preserve the purity of their religion amongst the idolatrous nations by whom they were surrounded, proves the natural evil tendency of the human mind after the fall of man. And, whoever will consider the nature of the Mosaical or ceremonial law and the manner in which it was suspended before the end of the Roman Empire, the expiatory sacrifice of the Messiah, the fear of death destroyed by the blessed hopes of immortality established by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, and the triumphs of Christianity over paganism in the time of Constantine, can I think, hardly fail to acknowledge the reasonableness of the truth of revealed religion as founded upon the early history of man; and whoever acknowledges this reasonableness and this truth, must I think be dissatisfied with the view which Philalethes or his genius has given of the progress of society, and will find in it one instance, amongst many others that might be discovered, of the vague and erring results of his so much boasted human reason.
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 νους. 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 Sabæans 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 Judæa 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 Judæa 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 larvæ 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 Phlegræan 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 Pæstum, 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 Pæstum 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 Pæstum, 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 Pæstum, 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 Phæton 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° 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, confervæ, 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 confervæ 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 confervæ 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 larvæ 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 confervæ; below this was a darker and more solid travertine, containing black and decomposed masses of confervæ; 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 Colosæum, 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 Phlegræan 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.”