imparted to iron, gives to matter properties and powers which it possessed not before, but without extending its bulk, augmenting its weight, or altering its organization; like that to which I have compared it, it is visible only by its effects, and perceptible only by its operations. Reason, superadded to man, gives him peculiar and characteristic views, responsibilities, and destinations, exalting him above all existences that are visible, but which perish, and associating Him with those that are invisible, but which remain. Reason is that Homeric, and golden chain descending from the throne of God even unto man, uniting Heaven with Earth, and Earth with Heaven. For all is connected, and without a chasm; from an angel to an atom, all is proportion, harmony, and strength. But here we stop ;-There is an awful gulf, that must be for ever impassable, infinite, and insurmountable; The distance between the created, and the Creator: and this order of things is as fit as it is necessary; it enables the Supreme to exalt without limit, to reward without exhaustion, years have added no improvement to the hive of the bee, nor to the house of the beaver; but look at the habitations and the achievements of man; observe reflection, experience, judgment, at one time enabling the head to save the hand, at another dictating a wise and prospective œconomy, exemplified in the most lavish expenditure of means, but to be repaid with the most usurious interest, by the final accomplishment of ends. We might also add another distinction peculiar, I conceive, to reason: the deliberate choice of a small present evil to obtain a greater distant good: he, that on all necessary occasions can act upon this single principle, is as superior to other men, as other men to the brutes. And as the exercise of this principle is the perfection of reason, it happens also, as might have been anticipated, to form the chief task assigned to us by religion, and this task is in great measure accomplished from the moment our lives exhibit a practical assent to one eternal and immutable truth, apbiror a. The necessary and final connection between happiness and virtue, and misery and vice. The antient sculptors and painters always designated their Jupiter with an aspect of placid and tranquil majesty, but with an attitude slightly bending and inclining forwards, as in the act of looking down upon the whole created universe of things. This circumstance perhaps suggested to Milton those noble lines : "Now had the Almighty Father, from above, without a possibility of endangering the safety of his throne by rivalry, or tarnishing its lustre, by approximation. DLXXXVII. TIME is the most undefinable yet paradoxical of things; the past is gone, the future is not come, and the present becomes the past, even while we attempt to define it, and like the flash of the lightning, at once exists and expires.— Time is the measurer of all things, but is itself immeasurable, and the grand discloser of all things, but is itself undisclosed. Like space, it is incomprehensible, because it has no limit, and it would be still more so, if it had*. It is more obscure in its source than the Nile, and From the bright Empyrean where he sits High throned, above all height, cast down his eye, His own works, and man's works at once to view." * If we stand in the middle of a dark vista, but with a luminous ob Ject at one end of it, and none at the other, the former will appear to be short, and the latter long. And so perhaps it is with time; if we look back upon time that is past, we naturally fix our attention upon some event with the circumstances of which we are acquainted, because they have happened, and this is that luminous object which apparently shortens one end of the vista; but if we look forward into time that is to come, we have no luminous object on which to fix our attention, but all is uncertainty, conjecture, and darkness. As to time without an end, and space without a limit, these are two things that finite beings cannot clearly comprehend. But if we examine more minutely into the operations of our own minds, we shall find that there are two things much more incomprehensible, and these are time that has an end, and space that has a limit. For whatever limits these two things, must be itself unlimited, and I am at a loss to conccive where it can exist, but in space and in time. But this involves a contradiction, for that which limits, cannot be contained in that which is limited. We know that in the awful name of Jehovah, the Hebrews combined the past, the present, and the future, and St. John iɛ obliged to make use of a periphraɛis, by the expressions οἱ ὁ ως, και ὁ ny, καὶ ὁ ερχόμενος, Who is, and was, and is to come; and Sir Isaac Newton conriders infinity of space on the one hand, and eternity of duration on the other, to be the grand sensorium of the Deity: it is indeed a sphere that alone is worthy of Him who directs all the movements of nature, and who is determined by his own unalterable perfections, eventually to produce the highest happiness, by the best meaus ; summam felicitatem, optimis modis. in its termination than the Niger; and advances like the slowest tide, but retreats like the swiftest torrent. I gives wings of lightning to pleasure, but feet of lead to pain, and lends expectation a curb, but enjoyment a spur. It robs Beauty of her charms, to bestow them on her picture, and builds a monument to merit, but denies it a house; it is the transient and deceitful flatterer of falsehood, but the tried and final friend of truth. Time is the most subtle yet the most insatiable of depredators, and by appearing to take nothing, is permitted to take all, nor can it be satisfied, until it has stolen the world from us, and us from the world. It constantly flies, yet overcomes all things by flight, and although it is the present ally, it will be the future conqueror of death. Time, the cradle of hope, but the grave of ambition, is the stern corrector of fools, but the salutary counsellor of the wise, bringing all they dread to the one, and all they desire to the other; but like Cassandra, it warns us with a voice that even the sagest discredit too long, and the silliest believe too late. Wisdom walks before it, opportunity with it, and repentance behind it; he that has made it his friend, will have little to fear from his enemies, but he that has made it his enemy, will have little to hope from his friends. 262 NOTES, &c. &c. Article 10. THERE were two tyrants of this name, the last of whom ruled with such tyranny, that his people grew weary of his government. He, hearing that an old woman prayed for his life, asked her why she did so; she answered, "I have seen the death of several tyrants, and the successor was always worse than the former, then camest thou, worse than all the rest; and if thou wert gone, I fear what would become of us, if we should have a worse still." Article 107. THAT the wicked prosper in the world, that they come into no misfortune like other folk, neither are they plagued like other men, is a doctrine that divines should not broach too frequently in the present day. For there are some so completely absorbed in present things, that they would gladly subscribe to that blind and blasphemous wish of the marshal and duke of Biron, who, on hearing an ecclesiastic observe, that those whom God had forsaken, and deserted as incorrigible, were permitted their full swing of worldly pleasures, the gratification of all their passions, and a long life of sensuality, affluence, and indulgence, immediately replied, "That he should be most happy to be so forsaken." Article 188. I AM not so hardy as to affirm, that the French revolution produced little, in the absolute sense of the word. I mean that it produced little if compared with the expectations of mankind, and the probabilities that its first developement afforded of its final establishment. The papal power, the dynasty of the Bourbons, the freedom of the press, and purity of representation, are resolving themselves very much into the "statu quo ante bellum." It is far from improbable that the results of a "reformation" now going on in Spain, with an aspect far less assuming than the late revolution in France, will be more beneficial both to the present and future times than that gigantic event, which destroyed so much, but which repaired so little, and which began in civil anarchy, but ended in military despotism. Article 352. ANDREW CESALPHINUS, chief physician to pope Clement the 8th. published a book at Pisa on the 1st of June 1569, intitled, Questionum Peripateticarum, Libri V., in which there is this passage, which evidently shows that he was thoroughly acquainted with the circulation of the blood: "Idcirco Pulmo per venam arteriis similem, ex dextro cordis ventriculo, fervidum hauriens sanguinem, eumque per anastamosim arteriæ venali reddens, quæ in sinistrum cordis ventriculum tendit, transmisso interim aere frigido per asperæ arteriæ canales, qui juxta ar teriam venalem protenduntur, non tamen osculis communicantes, ut putavit Galenus, solo tactu temperat. Huic sanguinis circulationi ex dextro cordis ventriculo, per pulmones, in sinistrum ejusdem ventriculum, optime respondent ca quæ ex dissectione apparent. Nam duo sunt vasa in dextrum ventriculum desinentia, duo etiam in sinistrum. Duorum autem, unum intromittit tantum, alterum educit, membranis eo ingenio compositis." As I have a remark on inoculation in the article to which this note refers, I shall quote an ingenious writer, who says, "When it was observed that the inoculation produced fewer pustules and did not disfigure the countenance like the natural small pox, the practice was immediately adopted in those countries, where the beauty of the females constituted an important source of wealth; as for exam. ple in Georgia, and Circassia. "The Indians and the Chinese," says the same writer, "have practised inoculation for many ages, in all the empire of the Burmahs, in the island of Ceylon, in Siam, and in Cambodia." Article 576. BURKE was one of the most splendid specimens of Irish talent; but his imagination too often ran away with his judgment, and his interest with both |
