Scene II.Scene—Deeside.Time-SevenP.C.North—Buller—Seward—Talboys.

"Mœnia lata, videt, triplici circumdata muro,Quæ rapidus flammis ambit torrentibus amnisTartareus Phlegethon, torquetque sonantia saxa."

No Phlegethon with torrents of fire surrounding and shaking Byron's Hell. I do not understand it—an unaccountable blunder.

NORTH.

In next stanza, what is gained by

"How profoundThe gulf! and how the giant elementFrom rock to rock leaps with delirious bound"?

Nothing. In the First Stanza, we had the "abyss," "the gulf," and the agony—all and more than we have here.

SEWARD.

Check-mate.

TALBOYS.

Confound the board!—no, not the board—but Hurwitz himself could not play in such an infernal clatter.

NORTH.

Buller has not got to the word "infernal" yet, Phillidor—but he will by-and-by. "Crushing the Cliffs"-crushing is not the right word—it is the wrong one—for not such is the process—visible or invisible. "Downwardworn" is silly. "Fierce footsteps," to my imagination, is tame and out of place—though it may not be to yours;—and I thunder in the ears of the Chess-players that the first half of the next stanza—the third—is as bad writing as is to be found in Byron.

TALBOYS.

Or in North.

NORTH.

Seward—you may give him likewise a Bishop—

"Look back:Lo! where it comes like an Eternity!"

I do not say that is not sublime. If it is an image of Eternity—sublime it must be—but the Poet has chosen his time badly for inspiring us with that thought—for we look back on what he had pictured to us as falling into hell—and then flowing diffused "only thus to be parents of rivers that flow gushingly with many windings through the vale"—images of Time.

"As if to sweep down all things in its track,"

is well enough for an ordinary cataract, but not for a cataract that comes "like an Eternity."

TALBOYS.

"Charming the eye with dread—a matchless cataract,Horribly beautiful."

SEWARD.

One game each.

TALBOYS.

Let us go to the Swiss Giantess to play out the Main.

NORTH.

In Stanza Fourth—"Buton the verge," is very like nonsense—

TALBOYS.

Not at all.

NORTH.

The Swiss Giantess is expecting you—good-bye, my dear Talboys. Now, Buller, I wish you, seriously and calmly, to think on this image—

"An Iris sits, amidst the infernal surge,Like Hope upon a death-bed."

Did Hope—could Hope ever sit bysucha death-bed! The infernal surge—the hell of waters—the howling—the hissing—the boiling in endless torture—the sweat of the great agony wrung out—and more of the same sort—these image the death-bed. Hope has sat beside many a sad—many a miserable death-bed—but not by such as this; and yet, here, such a death-bed is hinted at as not uncommon—in a few words—"like Hope upon a death-bed." The simile came not of itself—it was sought for—and had far better have been away. There is much bad writing here, too—"unworn"—"unshorn" —"torn"—"dyes"—"hues"—"beams"—"tortureof the scene"—epithet heaped on epithet, without any clear perception, or sincere emotion—the Iris changing from Hope upon a death-bed to Love watching Madness—both of which I pronounce, before that portion of mankind assembled in this Tent, to be on theFALSETTO—and wide from the thoughts that visit the suffering souls of the children of men remembering this life's greatest calamities.

SEWARD.

Yet throughout, sir, there is Power.

NORTH.

Power! My dear Seward, who denies it? But great Power—true poetical Power—is self-collected—not turbulent though dealing with turbulence—in its own stately passion dominating physical nature in its utmost distraction—and in her blind forces seeing a grandeur—a sublimity that only becomes visible or audible to the senses, through the action of imagination creating its own consistent ideal world out of that turmoil—making the fury of falling waters appeal to our Moral Being, from whose depths and heights rise emotions echoing all the tones of the thundering cataract. In these stanzas of Byron, the main Power is in the Cataract—not in the Poetry—loud to the ear—to the eye flashing and foaming—full of noise and fury, signifying not much to the soul, as it stuns and confounds the senses—while its more spiritual significationsare uncertain, or unintelligible, accepted with doubt, or rejected without hesitation, because felt to be false and deceitful, and but brilliant mockeries of the Truth.

TALBOYS.

Spare Byron, who is a Poet—and castigate some popular Versifier.

NORTH.

I will not spare Byron—and just because he is a Poet. For popular Versifiers, they may pipe at their pleasure, but aloof from our Tents—chirp anywhere but in this Encampment; and if there be a Gowdspink or Yellow-hammer among them, let us incline our ear kindly to his chattering or his yammering, "low doun in the broom," or high up on his apple-tree, in outfield or orchard, and pray that never naughty schoolboy may harry his nest.

SEWARD.

Would Sir Walter's Poetry stand such critical examination?

NORTH.

All—or nearly so—directly dealing with War—Fighting in all its branches. Indeed, with any kind of Action he seldom fails—in Reflection, often—and, strange to say, almost as often in description of Nature, though there in his happier hours he excels.

SEWARD.

I was always expecting, during that discussion about the Clitumnus, that you would have brought in Virgil.

NORTH.

Ay, Maro—in description—is superior to them all—in the Æneid as well as in the Georgics. But we have no time to speak of his Pictures now—only just let me ask you—Do you remember what Payne Knight says of Æneas?

SEWARD.

No, for I never read it.

NORTH.

Payne Knight, in hisAnalytical Inquiry into the Principles of Taste—a work of high authority in his own day, and containing many truths vigorously expounded, though characterised throughout by arrogance and presumption—speaks of that "selfish coldness with which the Æneas of Virgil treats the unfortunate princess,whose affections he had seduced," and adds, that "Every modern reader of the Æneid finds that the Episode of Dido, though in itself the most exquisite piece of composition existing, weakens extremely the subsequent interest of the Poem, it being impossible to sympathise either cordially or kindly with the fortunes or exertions of a hero who sneaks away from his high-minded and much-injured benefactress in a manner so base and unmanly. When, too, we find him soon after imitating all the atrocities, and surpassing the utmost arrogance, of the furious and vindictive Achilles, without displaying any of his generosity, pride, or energy, he becomes at once mean and odious, and only excites scorn and indignation; especially when, at the conclusion, he presents to Lavinia a hand stained with the blood of her favoured lover, whom he had stabbed while begging for quarter, and after being rendered incapable of resistance." Is not this, Seward, much too strong?

SEWARD.

I think, sir, it is not only much too strong, but outrageous; and that we are bound, in justice to Virgil, to have clearly before our mind his own Idea of his Hero.

TALBOYS.

To try that Æneas by the rules of poetry and of morality; and if we find his character such as neither our imagination nor our moral sense will suffer us to regard with favour—to admire either in Hero or Man—then to throw the Æneid aside.

BULLER.

And take up his Georgics.

TALBOYS.

To love Virgil we need not forget Homer—but to sympathise with Æneas, our imagination must not be filled with Achilles.

SEWARD

Troy is dust—the Son of Thetis dead. Let us go with the Fugitives and their Leader.

TALBOYS.

Let us believe from the first that they seek a Destined Seat—under One Man, who knows his mission, and is worthy to fulfil it. Has Virgil so sustained the character of that Man—of that Hero? Or has he, from ineptitude, and unequal to so great a subject—let him sink below our nobler sympathies—nay, unconscious of failure of his purpose, as Payne Knight says, accommodated him to our contempt?

SEWARD.

For seven years he has been that Man—that Hero. One Night's Tale has shown him—as he is—for I presume that Virgil—and not Payne Knight—was his Maker. If that Speech was all a lie—and the Son of Anchises, not a gallant and pious Prince, but a hypocrite and a coward—shut the Book or burn it.

TALBOYS.

Much gossip—of which any honest old woman, had she uttered the half of it, would have been ashamed before she had finished her tea—has been scribbled by divers male pens—stupid or spritely—on that magnificent Recital. Æneas, it has been said, by his own account, skulked during the Town Sack—and funked during the Sea Storm. And how, it has been asked, came he to lose Creusa? Pious indeed! A truly pious man, say they, does not speak of his piety—he takes care of his household gods without talking about Lares and Penates. Many critics—some not without name—have been such—unrepentant—old women. Come we to Dido.

NORTH.

Be cautious—for I fear I have been in fault myself towards Æneas for his part in that transaction.

TALBOYS.

I take the account of it from Virgil. Indeed I do not know of any scandalous chronicle of Carthage or Tyre. A Trojan Prince and a Tyrian Queen—say at once a Man and a Woman—on sudden temptation and unforeseen opportunity—Sin—and they continue to sin. As pious men as Æneas—and as kingly and heroic too, have so sinned far worse than that—yet have not been excommunicated from the fellowship of saints, kings, or heroes.

SEWARD.

To say that Æneas "seduces Dido," in the sense that Payne Knight uses the word, is a calumnious vulgarism.

TALBOYS.

And shows a sulky resolution to shut his eyes—and keep them shut.

SEWARD.

Had he said that in the Schools at Oxford, he would have been plucked at his Little-go. But I forget—there was no plucking in those days—and indeed I rather think he was not an University Man.

NORTH.

Nevertheless he was a Scholar.

SEWARD.

Not nevertheless, sir—notwithstanding, sir.

NORTH.

I sit corrected.

SEWARD.

Neither did Infelix Elissa seduce him—desperately in love as she was—'twas not the storm of her own will that drove her into that fatal cave.

TALBOYS.

Against Venus and Juno combined, alas! for poor Dido at last!

SEWARD.

Æneas was in her eyes what Othello was in Desdemona's. No Desdemona she—no "gentle Lady"—nor was Virgil a Shakspeare. Yet those remonstrances—and that raving—and that suicide!

TALBOYS.

Ay, Dan Virgil feared not to put the condemnation of his Hero into those lips of fire—to let her winged curses pursue the Pious Perfidious as he puts to sea. But what is truth—passion—nature from the reproachful and raving—the tender and the truculent—the repentant and the revengeful—the true and the false Dido—for she had forgot and she remembers Sychæus—when cut up into bits of bad law, and framed into an Indictment through which the Junior Jehu at the Scottish Bar might drive a Coach and Six!

SEWARD.

But he forsook her! He did—and in obedience to the will of heaven. Throughout the whole of his Tale of Troy, at that fatal banquet, he tells her whither, and to what fated region, the fleet is bound—he is not sailing under scaled orders—Dido hears the Hero's destiny from the lips of Mœstissimus Hector, from the lips of Creusa's Shade. But Dido is deaf to all those solemn enunciations—none so deaf as those who will not hear; the Likeness of Ascanius lying-by her on her Royal Couch fired her vital blood—and she already is so insane as to dream of lying ere long on that God-like breast. He had forgot—and he remembers his duty—yes—his duty; according to the Creed of his country—of the whole heathen world—in deserting Dido, he obeyed the Gods.

TALBOYS.

He sneaked away! says Knight. Go he must—would it have been more heroic to set fire to the Town, and embark in the General Illumination?

SEWARD.

Would Payne Knight have seriously advised Virgil to marry Æneas, in good earnest, to Dido, and make him King of Carthage?

BULLER.

Would they have been a happy Couple?

SEWARD.

Does not our sympathy go with Æneas to the Shades? Is he unworthy to look on the Campos Lugentes? On the Elysian Fields? To be shown by Anchises the Shades of the predestined Heroes of unexisting Rome?

TALBOYS.

Do we—because of Dido—despise him when first he kens, on a calm bright morning, that great Grove on the Latian shore near the mouth of the Tiber?

"Æneas, primique duces, et pulcher Iulus,Corpora sub ramis deponunt arboris altæ,Instituuntque dapes."

SEWARD.

But he was a robber—a pirate—an invader—an usurper—so say the Payne Knights. Virgil sanctifies the Landing with the spirit of peace—and a hundred olive-crowned Envoys are sent to Laurentum with such peace-offerings as had never been laid at the feet of an Ausonian King.

TALBOYS.

Nothing can exceed in simple grandeur the advent of Æneas—the reception of the Envoys by old Latinus. The right of the Prince to the region he has reached is established by grant human and divine. Surely a father, who is a king, may dispose of his daughter in marriage—and here he must; he knew, from omen and oracle, the Hour and the Man. Lavinia belonged to Æneas—not to Turnus—though we must not severely blame the fiery Rutulian because he would not give her up. Amata, in and out of her wits, was on his side; but their betrothment—if betrothed they were—was unhallowed—and might not bind in face of Fate.

BULLER.

Turnus was in the wrong from beginning to end. Virgil, however, has made him a hero—and idiots have said that he eclipses Æneas—the same idiots, who, at the same time, have told us that Virgil could not paint a hero at all.

TALBOYS.

That his genius has no martial fervour. Had the blockheads read the Rising—the Gathering—in the Seventh Æneid?

NORTH.

Sir Walter himself had much of it by heart—and I have seen the "repeated air" kindle the aspect, and uplift the Lion-Port of the greatest War-Poet that ever blew the trumpet.

SEWARD.

Æneas at the Court of Evander—that fine old Grecian! There he is a Hero to be loved—and Pallas loved him—and he loved Pallas—and all men with hearts love Virgil for their sakes.

TALBOYS.

And is he not a Hero, when relanding from sea at the mouth of his own Tiber, with his Etrurian Allies—some thousands strong? And does he not then act the Hero? Virgil was no War-Poet! Second only to Homer, I hold—

SEWARD.

An imitator of Homer! With fights of the Homeric age—how could he help it? But he is, in much, original on the battle-field—and is there in all the Iliad a Lausus, or a Pallas?—

BULLER.

Or a Camilla?

SEWARD.

Fighting is at the best a sad business—but Payne Knight is offensive on the cruelty—the ferocity of Æneas. I wish Virgil had not made him seize and sacrifice the Eight Young Men to appease the Manes of Pallas. Such sacrifice Virgil believed to be agreeable to the manners of the time—and, if usual to the most worthy, here assuredly due. In the final Great Battle,

"Away to heaven, respective Lenity,And fire-eyed Fury be my conduct now."

BULLER.

Knight is a ninny on the Single Combat. In all the previous circumstances regarding it, Turnus behaved ill—now that he must fight, he fights well: 'tis as fair a fight as ever was fought in the field of old Epic Poetry: tutelary interposition alternates in favour of either Prince: the bare notion of either outliving defeat never entered any mind but Payne Knight's: nor did any other fingers ever fumble such a charge against the hero of an Epic as "Stabbing while begging for quarter"—but a momentary weakness in Turnus which was not without its effect on Æneas, till at sight ofthat Belt, he sheathed the steel.

TALBOYS.

Payne works himself up, in the conclusion of the passage, into an absolute maniac.

NORTH.

Good manners, Talboys—no insult—remember Mr Knight has been long dead.

TALBOYS.

So has Æneas—so has Virgil.

NORTH.

True. Young gentlemen, I have listened with much pleasure to your animated and judicious dialogue. Shall I now give Judgment?

BULLER.

Lengthy?

NORTH.

Not more than an hour.

BULLER.

Then, if you please, my Lord, to-morrow.

NORTH.

You must all three be somewhat fatigued by the exercise of so much critical acumen. So do you, Talboys and Seward, unbend the bow at another gameof Chess; and you, Buller, reanimate the jaded Moral Sentiments by a sharp letter to Marmaduke, insinuating that if he don't return to the Tents within a week, or at least write to say that he and Hal, Volusene and Woodburn, are not going to return at all, but to join the Rajah of Sarawak, the Grand Lama, or Prester John—which I fear is but too probable from the general tone and tenor of their life and conversation for some days before their Secession from the Established Camp—there will be a general breaking of Mothers' hearts, and in his own particular case, a cutting off with a shilling, or disinheriting of the heir apparent of one of the finest Estates in Cornwall. But I forget—these Entails will be the ruin of England. What! Billy, is that you?

BILLY.

Measter, here's a Fish and a Ferocious.

TALBOYS.

Ha! what Whappers!

BULLER.

More like Fish before the Flood than after it.

SEWARD.

After it indeed! During it. What is Billy saying, Mr North? That Coomerlan' dialect's Hottentot to my Devonshire ears.

NORTH.

They have been spoiled by the Doric delicacies of the "Exmoor Courtship." He tells me that Archy M'Callum, the Cornwall Clipper, and himself, each in a cow-hide, having ventured down to the River Mouth to look after and bale Gutta Percha, foregathered with an involuntary invasion of divers gigantic Fishes, who had made bad their landing on our shores, and that after a desperate resistance they succeeded in securing the Two Leaders—a Salmo Salar and a Salmo Ferox—see on snout and shoulder tokens of the Oar. Thirty—and Twenty Pounders—Billy says; I should have thought they were respectively a third more. No mean Windfall. They will tell on the Spread. I retire to my Sanctum for my Siesta.

TALBOYS.

Let me invest you, my dear sir, with my Feathers.

BULLER.

Do—do take my Tarpaulin.

SEWARD.

Billy, your Cow-hide.

NORTH.

I need none of your gimcracks—for I seek the Sanctum by a subterranean—beg your pardon—a Subter-Awning Passage.

NORTH.

How little time or disposition for anything like serious Thinking, or Reading, out of people's own profession or trade, in this Railway World! The busy-bodies of these rattling times, even in their leisure hours, do not affect an interest in studies their fathers and their grandfathers, in the same rank of life, pursued, even systematically, on many an Evening sacred from the distraction that ceased with the day.

TALBOYS.

Not all busy-bodies, my good Sir—think of——

NORTH.

I have thought of them—and I know their worth—their liberality and their enlightenment. In all our cities and towns—and villages—and in all orders of the people—there is Mind—Intelligence, and Knowledge; and the more's the shame in that too general appetence for mere amusement in literature, perpetually craving for a change of diet—for something new in the light way—while anything of any substance, is, "with sputtering noise rejected" as tough to the teeth, and hard of digestion—however sweet and nutritious; would they but taste and try.

SEWARD.

I hope you don't mean to allude to Charles Dickens?

NORTH.

Assuredly not. Charles Dickens is a man of original and genial genius—his popularity is a proof of the goodness of the heart of the people;—and the love of him and his writings—though not so thoughtful as it might be—does honour to that strength in the English character which is indestructible by any influences, and survives in the midst of frivolity, and folly, and of mental depravations, worse than both.

SEWARD.

Don't look so savage, sir.

NORTH.

I am not savage—I am serene. Set the Literature of the day aside altogether—and tell me if you think our conversation since dinner would not have been thoughtdullby many not altogether uneducated persons, who pride themselves not a little on their intellectuality and on their full participation in the Spirit of the Age?

TALBOYS.

Our conversation since dinnerDULL!! No—no—no. Many poor creatures, indeed, there are among them—even among those of them who work the Press—pigmies with pap feeding a Giant who sneezes them away when sick of them into small offices in the Customs or Excise;—but not one of our privileged brethren of the Guild—with a true ticket to show—but would have been delighted with such dialogue—but would be delighted with its continuation—and thankful to know that he, "a wiser and a better man, will rise to-morrow morn."

SEWARD.

Do, my dear sir—resume your discoursing about those Greeks.

NORTH.

I was about to say, Seward, that those shrewd and just observers, and at the same time delicate thinkers, the ancient Greeks, did, as you well know, snatch from amongst the ordinary processes which Nature pursues, in respect of inferior animal life, a singularly beautiful Type or Emblem, expressively imaging to Fancy that bursting disclosure of Life from the bosom of Death, which is implied in the extrication of the soul from its corporeal prison, when this astonishing change is highly, ardently, and joyfully contemplated. Those old festal religionists—who carried into the solemnities of their worship the buoyant gladsomeness of their own sprightly and fervid secular life, and contrived to invest even the artful splendour and passionate human interest of their dramatic representations with the name and character of a sacred ceremony—found for that soaring and refulgent escape of a spirit from the dungeon and chains of the flesh, into its native celestial day, a fine and touching similitude in the liberation of a beautiful Insect, the gorgeously-winged, aérial Butterfly, from the living tomb in which Nature has, during a season, eased and urned its torpid and death-like repose.

SEWARD.

Nor, my dear sir, was this life-conscious penetration or intuition of a keen and kindling intelligence into the dreadful, the desolate, the cloud-covered Future, the casual thought of adventuring Genius, transmitted in some happierverse only, or in some gracious and visible poesy of a fine chisel; but the Symbol and the Thing symbolised were so bound together in the understanding of the nation, that in the Greek language the name borne by the Insect and the name designating the Soul is one and the same—ΨΥΧΗ.

NORTH.

Insects! They have come out, by their original egg-birth, into an active life. They have crept and eaten—and slept and eaten—creeping, and sleeping, and eating—still waxing in size, and travelling on from fitted pasture to pasture, they have in not many suns reached the utmost of the minute dimensions allotted them—the goal of their slow-footed wanderings, and the term, shall we say—of their life.

SEWARD.

No! But of thatfirst period, through which they have made some display of themselves as living agents. They have reachedthisterm. And look at them—now.

NORTH.

Ay—look at them—now. Wonder on wonder! For now a miraculous instinct guides and compels the creature—who has, as it were, completed one life—who has accomplished one stage of his existence—to entomb himself. And he accordingly builds or spins himself a tomb—or he buries himself in his grave. Shall I say, that she herself, his guardian, his directress, Great Nature,coffinshim? Enclosed in a firm shell—hidden from all eyes—torpid—in a death-like sleep—not dead—he waits the appointed hour, which the days and nights bring, and which having come—his renovation, his resuscitation is come. And now the sepulture no longer holds him! Now the prisoner of the tomb has right again to converse with embalmed air and with glittering sunbeams—now, the reptile thatwas—unrecognisably transformed from himself—a glad, bright, mounting creature, unfurls on either side the translucent or the richly-hued pinions that shall waft him at his liking from blossom to blossom, or lift him in a rapture of aimless joyancy to disport and rock himself on the soft-flowing undulating breeze.

SEWARD.

My dearest sir, the Greek in his darkness, or uncertain twilight of belief, has culled and perpetuated his beautiful emblem. Will the Christian look unmoved upon the singular imaging, which, amidst the manifold strangely-charactered secrets of nature, he finds of his own sealed and sure faith?

NORTH.

No, Seward. The philosophical Theologian claims in this likeness more than an apt simile, pleasing to the stirred fancy. He sees here anAnalogy—and this Analogy he proposes as one link in a chain of argumentation, by which he would show that Reason might dare to win from Nature, as a Hope, the truth which it holds from God as revealed knowledge.

SEWARD.

I presume, sir, you allude to Butler's Analogy. I have studied it.

NORTH.

I do—to the First Chapter of that Great Work. This parallelism, or apprehended resemblance between an event continually occurring and seen in nature, and one unseen but continually conceived as occurring upon the uttermost brink and edge of nature—this correspondency, which took such fast hold of the Imagination of the Greeks, has, as you know, my dear friends, in these latter days been acknowledged by calm and profound Reason, looking around on every side for evidences or intimations of the Immortality of the Soul.

BULLER.

Will you be so good, sir, as let me have the volume to study of an evening in my own Tent?

NORTH.

Certainly. And for many other evenings—in your own Library at home.

TALBOYS.

Please, sir, to state Butler's argument in your own words and way.

NORTH.

For Butler's style is hard and dry. A living Being undergoes a vicissitude bywhich on a sudden he passes from a state in which he has long, continued into a new state, and with it into a new scene of existence. The transition is from a narrow confinement into an ample liberty—and this change of circumstances is accompanied in the subject with a large and congruous increment of powers. They believe this who believe the Immortality of the Soul. But the fact is, that changes bearing this description do indeed happen in Nature, under our very eyes, at every moment; this method of progress being universal in her living kingdoms. Such a marvellous change is literally undergone by innumerable kinds, the human animal included, in the instant in which they pass out from the darkness and imprisonment of the womb into the light and open liberty of this breathing world. Birth has been the image of a death, which is itself nothing else than a birth from one straightened life into another ampler and freer. The ordering of Nature, then, is an ordering of Progression, whereby new and enlarged states are attained, and, simultaneously therewith, new and enlarged powers; and all this not slowly, gradually, and insensibly, but suddenly andper saltum.

TALBOYS.

This analogy, then, sir, or whatever there is that is in common tobirthas weknowit, and todeathas weconceiveit, is to be understood as an evidence set in the ordering of Nature, and justifying or tending to justify such our conception of Death?

NORTH.

Exactly so. And you say well, my good Talboys, "justifying or tending to justify." For we are all along fully sensible that a vast difference—a difference prodigious and utterly confounding to the imagination—holds, betwixt the casefromwhich we reason,birth—or that further expansion of life in some breathing kinds which might be held as asecond birth—betwixt these cases, I say, and the caseto, which we reason,Death!

TALBOYS.

Prodigious and utterly confounding to the imagination indeed! For in these physiological instances, either the same body, or a body changing by such slow and insensible degrees that it seems to us to be the same body, accompanies, encloses, and contains the same life—from the first moment in which that life comes under our observation to that in which it vanishes from our cognisance; whereas, sir, in the case to which we apply the Analogy—our own Death—the life is supposed to survive in complete separation from the body, in and by its union with which we have known it and seen it manifested.

NORTH.

Excellently well put, my friend. I see you have studied Butler.

TALBOYS.

I have—but not for some years. The Analogy is not a Book to be forgotten.

NORTH.

This difference between the case from which we reason, and the case to which we reason, there is no attempt whatever at concealing—quite the contrary—it stands written, you know, my friend, upon the very Front of the Argument. This difference itself is the very motive and occasion of the Whole Argument! Were there notthis differencebetween the cases which furnish the Analogy, and the case to which the Analogy is applied—had we certainly known and seen a Life continued, although suddenly passing out from the body where it had hitherto resided—or wereDeathnot the formidable disruption which it is of a hitherto subsisting union—the cases would be identical, and there would be nothing to reason about or to inquire. Thereisthis startling difference—and accordingly the Analogy described has been proposed by Butler merely as a first step in the Argument.

TALBOYS.

It remains to be seen, then, whether any further considerations can be proposed which will bring the cases nearer together, and diminish to our minds the difficulty presented by the sudden separation.

NORTH.

Just so. What ground, then, my dear young friends—for you seem andare young to me—what ground, my friends, is there for believing that the Death which wesee, can affect the living agent which we do not see? Butler makes his approaches cautiously, and his attack manfully—and this is the course of his Argument. I begin with examining my present condition of existence, and find myself to be a Being endowed with certain Powers and Capacities—for I act, I enjoy, I suffer.

TALBOYS.

Of this much there can be no doubt; for of all this an unerring consciousness assures me. Therefore, at the outset, I hold this one secure position—that I exist, the possessor of certain powers and capacities.

NORTH.

But that I do now before Death exist, endued with certain powers and capacities, affords a presumptive orprimâ facieprobability that I shall after death continue to exist, possessing these powers and capacities—

BULLER.

How is that, sir?

NORTH.

You do well to put that question, my dear Buller—aprimâ facieprobability, unless there be some positive reason to think that death is the "destruction" of Me, the living Being, and of these my living Faculties.

BULLER.

A presumptive orprimâ facieprobability, sir? Why does Butler say so?

NORTH.

"Because there is in every case a probability thatallthings will continue as we experience they are, inallrespects, except those in which we have some reason to think they will be altered."

BULLER.

You will pardon me, sir, I am sure, for having asked the question.

NORTH.

It was not only a proper question, but a necessary one. Butler wisely says—"This is that kind of Presumption or Probability from Analogy, expressed in the very wordContinuance, which seems our only natural reason for believing the course of the world will continue to-morrow, as it has done so far as our experience or knowledge of history can carry us back." I give you, here, the Bishop's very words—and I believe that in them is affirmed a truth that no scepticism can shake.

TALBOYS.

If I mistake not, sir, the Bishop here frankly admits, that were we not fortified against a natural impression, with some better instruction than unreflecting Nature's, the spontaneous disposition of our Mind would undoubtedly be to an expectation that in this great catastrophe of our mortal estate, We Ourselves must perish; but he contends—does he not, sir?—that it would be a blind fear, and without rational ground.

NORTH.

Yes—that it is an impression of the illusory faculty, Imagination, and not an inference of Reason. There would arise, he says, "a general confused suspicion, that in the great shock and alteration which we shall undergo by death, We,i.e.our living Powers, might be wholly destroyed;"—but he adds solemnly, "there is no particular distinct ground or reason for this apprehension, so far as I can find."

TALBOYS.

Such "general confused suspicion," then, is not justified?

NORTH.

Butler holds that any justifying ground of the apprehension that, in the shock of death, I, the living Being, or, which is the same thing, These my powers of acting, enjoying, and suffering, shall be extinguished and cease, must be found either in "the reason of the Thing" itself, or in "the Analogy of Nature." To say that a legitimate ground of attributing to the sensible mortal change a power of extinguishing the inward life is to be found in the Reason of the Thing, is as much as to say, that when considering the essential nature of this great and tremendous, or at least dreaded change, Death,and upon also consideringwhatthese powers of acting, of enjoying, of suffering, trulyare, andin what manner, absolutely, they subsist in us—there does appear to lie therein demonstration, or evidence, or likelihood, that the change, Death, will swallow up such living Powers—and thatWeshall no longerbe.

TALBOYS.

In short, sir, that from consideringwhatDeath is, andupon whatthese Powers and their exercise depend, there isreasonto think, that the Powers or their exercise will ormustcease with Death.

NORTH.

The very point. And the Bishop's answer is bold, short, and decisive. We cannotfromconsidering what Death is, draw this or any other conclusion,for we do not know what Death is! We know only certain effects of Death—the stopping of certain sensible actions—the dissolution of certain sensible parts. We can draw no conclusion, for we do not possess the premises.

SEWARD.

From your Exposition, sir, I feel that the meaning of the First Chapter of the Analogy is dawning into clearer and clearer light.

NORTH.

Inconsiderately, my dear sir, we seem indeed to ourselves to know what Death is; but this is from confounding the Thing and its Effects. For we see effects: at first, the stoppage of certain sensible actions—afterwards, the dissolution of certain sensible parts. Butwhatit is that has happened—whereforethe blood no longer flows—the limbs no longer move—thatwe do not see. We do not see it with our eyes—we do not discern it by any inference of our understanding. It is afactthat seems to lie shrouded for ever from our faculties in awful and impenetrable mystery. That fact—the produce of an instant—which has happenedwithin, and in the dark—that fact come to pass, in an indivisible point of time—that stern fact—ere the happening of which the Man was alive—an inhabitant of this breathing world—united to ourselves—our Father, Brother, Friend—at least our Fellow-Creature—by the happening,heis gone—is for ever irrecoverably sundered from this world, and from us its inhabitants—isDead—and that which lies outstretched before our saddened eyes is only his mortal remains—a breathless corpse—an inanimate, insensible clod of clay:—Upon that interiorsuddenfact—sudden, at last, how slowly and gradually soever prepared—since the utmost attenuation of a thread is a thing totally distinct from its ending, from its becoming no thread at all, and since, up to that moment, there was a possibility that some extraordinary, perhaps physical application might for an hour or a few minutes have rallied life, or might have reawakened consciousness, and eye, and voice—upon that elusiveEssenceandselfof Death no curious searching of ours has laid, or, it may be well assumed, will ever lay hold. When the organs of sense no longer minister to Perception, or the organs of motion to any change of posture—when the blood stopped in its flow thickens and grows cold—and the fair and stately form, the glory of the Almighty's Hand, the burning shrine of a Spirit that lately rejoiced in feeling, in thought, and in power, lies like a garment done with and thrown away—"a kneaded clod"—ready to lose feature and substance—and to yield back its atoms to the dominion of the blind elements from which they were gathered and compacted—What is Death? And what grounds have we for inferring that an event manifested to us as a phenomenon of the Body, which alone we touch, and hear, and see, has or has not reached into the Mind, which is for us Now just as it always was, a Thing utterly removed and exempt from the cognisance and apprehension of our bodily senses? The Mind, or Spirit, the unknown Substance, in which Feeling, and Thought, and Will, and the Spring of Life were—was united to this corporeal frame; and, being united to it, animated it, poured through it sensibility and motion, glowing and creative life—crimsoned the lips and cheeks—flashed in the eye—and murmured music from the tongue;—now, the two—Body and Soul—aredisunited—and we behold one-half the consequence—the Thing of dust relapses to the dust;—we dare to divine the other half of the consequence—the quickening Spark, the sentientIntelligence, the Being gifted with Life, the Image of the Maker, in Man, has, reascended, has returned thither whence it came, into the Hand of God.

SEWARD.

If, sir, we were without light from the revealed Word of God, if we were left, by the help of reason, standing upon the brink of Time, dimly guessing, and inquiringly exploring, to find for ourselves the grounds of Hope and Fear, would your description, my dear Master, of that which has happened, seem to our Natural Faculties impossible? Surely not.

NORTH.

My dear Seward, we have the means of rendering some answer to that question. The nations of the world have been, more or less, in the condition, supposed. Self-left, they have borne the burden of the dread secret, which for them only the grave could resolve; but they never were able to sit at rest in the darkness. Importunate and insuppressible desire, in their bosoms, knocked at the gate of the invisible world, and seemed to hear an answer from beyond. The belief in a long life of ages to follow this fleet dream—imaginary revelations of regions bright or dark—the mansions of bliss or of sorrow—an existence to come, and often of retribution to come—has been the religion of Mankind—here in the rudest elementary shape—here in elaborated systems.

SEWARD.

Ay, sir; methinks the Hell of Virgil—and his Elysian Fields are examples of a high, solemn, and beautiful Poetry. But they have a much deeper interest for a man studious, in earnest, of his fellow-men. Since they really express the notions under which men have with serious belief shadowed out for themselves the worlds to which the grave is a portal. The true moral spirit that breathes in his enumeration of the Crimes that are punished, of the Virtues that have earned and found their reward, and some scattered awful warnings—are impressive even to us Christians.

NORTH.

Yes, Seward, they are. Hearken to the attestation of the civilised and the barbarous. Universally there is a cry from the human heart, beseeching, as it were, of the Unknown Power which reigns in the Order and in the Mutations of Things, the prolongation of this vanishing breath—the renovation, in undiscovered spheres, of this too brief existence—an appeal from the tyranny of the tomb—a prayer against annihilation. Only at the top of Civilisation, sometimes a cold and barren philosophy, degenerate from nature, and bastard to reason, has limited its sullen view to the horizon of this Earth—has shut out and refused all ulterior, happy, or dreary anticipation.

SEWARD.

You may now, assured of our profound attention—return to Butler—if indeed you have left him——

NORTH.

I have, and I have not. A few minutes ago I was expounding—in my own words—and for the reason assigned, will continue to do so—his argument. If, not knowing what death is, we are not entitled to argue, from the nature of death, that this change must put an end to Ourselves, and those essential powers in our mind which we are conscious of exerting—just as little can we argue from the nature of these powers, and from their manner of subsisting in us, that they are liable to be affected and impaired, or destroyed by death. For what do we know of these powers, and of the conditions on which we hold them, and of the mind in which they dwell? Just as much as we do of the great change, Death itself—that is to say—Nothing.

TALBOYS.

We know the powers of our mind solely by their manifestations.

NORTH.

But people in general do not think so—and many metaphysicians have written as if they had forgot that it is only from the manifestation that we give name to the Power. We know the fact of Seeing, Hearing, Remembering, Reasoning—the feeling of Beauty—the actual pleasure of Moral Approbation, the pain of Moral Disapprobation—the state—pleasure or pain of loving—thestate—pleasure or pain of hating—the fire of anger—the frost of fear—the curiosity to know—the thirst for distinction—the exultation of conscious Power—all these, and a thousand more, we know abundantly: our conscious Life is nothing else but such knowledge endlessly diversified. But thePowersthemselves, which are thus exerted—whattheyare—howthey subsist in us ready for exertion—of this we know—Nothing.

TALBOYS.

We know something of the Conditions upon which the exercise of these Powers depends—or by which it is influenced. Thus we know, that for seeing, we must possess that wondrous piece of living mechanism, the eye, in its healthy condition. We know further, that a delicate and complicated system of nerves, which convey the visual impressions from the eye itself to the seeing power, must be healthy and unobstructed. We know that a sound and healthy state of the brain is necessary to these manifestations—that accidents befalling the Brain totally disorder the manifestations of these powers—turning the clear self-possessed mind into a wild anarchy—a Chaos—that other accidents befalling the same organ suspend all manifestations. We know that sleep stops the use of many powers—and that deep sleep—at least as far as any intimations that reach our waking state go—stops them all. We know that a nerve tied or cut stops the sensation—stops the motory volition which usually travels along it. We know how bodily lassitude—how abstinence—how excess—affects the ability of the mind to exert its powers. In short, the most untutored experience of every one amongst us all shows bodily conditions, upon which the activity of the faculties which are seated in the mind, depends. And within the mind itself we know how one manifestation aids or counteracts another—how Hope invigorates—how Fear disables—how Intrepidity keeps the understanding clear—

NORTH.

You are well illustrating Butler, Talboys. Then, again, we know thatfor Seeing, we must have that wonderful piece of living mechanism perfectly constructed, and in good order—that a certain delicate and complicated system of nerves extending from the eye inwards, is appointed to transmit the immediate impressions of light from this exterior organ of sight to the percipient Mind—that these nerves allotted to the function of seeing, must be free from any accidental pressure; knowledge admirable, curious, useful; but when all is done, all investigated, that our eyes, and fingers, and instruments, and thoughts, can reach—What, beyond all this marvellous Apparatus of seeing, isThat which sees—what the percipientMindis—that is a mystery into which no created Being ever had a glimpse. Or what is that immediate connexion between the Mind itself, and those delicate corporeal adjustments—whereby certaintremblings, or other momentary changes of state in a set of nerves, upon the sudden, turn into Colours—into Sight—into the Vision of a Universe.

SEWARD.

Does Butler say all that, sir?

NORTH.

In his own dry way perhaps he may. These, my friends, are Wonders into which Reason looks, astonished; or, more properly speaking, into which she looks not, nor, self-knowing, attempts to look. But, reverent and afraid, she repeats that attitude which the Great Poet has ascribed to "brightest cherubim" before the footstool of the Omnipotent Throne, who

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