Phil.—Your view of the causes of devastation really is a melancholy one. Nordo I see any remedy; the most important causes will always operate. Yet, supposing the constant existence of a highly civilised people, the ravages of time might be repaired, and by defending the finest works of art from the externalatmosphere, their changes would be scarcely perceptible.
Eub.—I doubt much whether it is for the interests of a people that its public works should be of a durable kind. One of the great causes of the decline of the Roman Empire was that the people of the Republic and of the first empire left nothing for their posterity to do; aqueducts, temples, forums, everything was supplied, and there were no objects to awaken activity, no necessity to stimulate their inventive faculties, and hardly any wants to call forth their industry.
The Unknown.—At least, you must allow the importance of preserving objects of the fine arts. Almost everything we have worthy of admiration is owing to what has been preserved from the Greek school, and the nations who have not possessed these works or models have made little or no progress towards perfection. Nor does it seem that a mere imitation of Nature is sufficient to produce the beautiful or perfect; but the climate, the manners, customs, and dress of the people, its genius and taste, all co-operate. Such principles of conservation as Philalethes has referred to are obvious. No works of excellence ought to be exposed to the atmosphere, and it is a great object to preserve them in apartments of equable temperature and extremely dry. The roofs of magnificent buildings should be of materials not likely to be dissolved by water or changed by air. Many electrical conductors should be placed so as to prevent the slow or the rapid effects of atmospheric electricity. In painting, lapis lazuli or coloured hard glasses, in which the oxides are not liable to change, should be used, and should be laid on marble or stucco encased in stone, and no animal orvegetable substances, except pure carbonaceous matter, should be used in the pigments, and none should be mixed with the varnishes.
Eub.—Yet, when all is done that can be done in the work of conservation, it is only producing a difference in the degree of duration. And from the statements that our friend has made it is evident that none of the works of a mortal being can be eternal, as none of the combinations of a limited intellect can be infinite. The operations of Nature, when slow, are no less sure; however man may for a time usurp dominion over her, she is certain of recovering her empire. He converts her rocks, her stones, her trees, into forms of palaces, houses, and ships; he employs the metals found in the bosom of the earth as instruments of power, and the sands and clays which constitute its surface as ornaments and resources of luxury; he imprisons air by water, and tortures water by fire to change or modify or destroy the natural forms of things. But, in some lustrums his works begin to change, and in a few centuries they decay and are in ruins; and his mighty temples, framed as it were for immortal and divine purposes, and his bridges formed of granite and ribbed with iron, and his walls for defence, and the splendid monuments by which he has endeavoured to give eternity even to his perishable remains, are gradually destroyed; and these structures, which have resisted the waves of the ocean, the tempests of the sky, and the stroke of the lightning, shall yield to the operation of the dews of heaven, of frost, rain, vapour, and imperceptible atmospheric influences; and, as the worm devours the lineaments of his mortal beauty, so the lichens and the moss and the most insignificant plantsshall feed upon his columns and his pyramids, and the most humble and insignificant insects shall undermine and sap the foundations of his colossal works, and make their habitations amongst the ruins of his palaces and the falling seats of his earthly glory.
Phil.—Your history of the laws of the inevitable destruction of material forms recalls to my memory our discussion at Adelsberg. The changes of the material universe are in harmony with those which belong to the human body, and which you suppose to be the frame or machinery of the sentient principle. May we not venture to imagine that the visible and tangible world, with which we are acquainted by our sensations, bears the same relation to the Divine and Infinite Intelligence that our organs bear to our mind, with this only difference, that in the changes of the divine system there is no decay, there being in the order of things a perfect unity, and all the powers springing from one will and being a consequence of that will, are perfectly and unalterably balanced. Newton seemed to apprehend, that in the laws of the planetary motions there was a principle which would ultimately be the cause of the destruction of the system. Laplace, by pursuing and refining the principles of our great philosopher, has proved that what appeared sources of disorder are, in fact, the perfecting machinery of the system, and that the principle of conservation is as eternal as that of motion.
The Unknown.—I dare not offer any speculations on this grand and awful subject. We can hardly comprehend the cause of a simple atmospheric phenomenon, such as the fall of a heavy body from a meteor; we cannot even embrace in one view the millionth part ofthe objects surrounding us, and yet we have the presumption to reason upon the infinite universe and the eternal mind by which it was created and is governed. On these subjects I have no confidence in reason, I trust only to faith; and, as far as we ought to inquire, we have no other guide but revelation.
Phil.—I agree with you that whenever we attempt metaphysical speculations, we must begin with a foundation of faith. And being sure from revelation that God is omnipotent and omnipresent, it appears to me no improper use of our faculties to trace even in the natural universe the acts of His power and the results of His wisdom, and to draw parallels from the infinite to the finite mind. Remember, we are taught that man was created in the image of God, and, I think, it cannot be doubted that in the progress of society man has been made a great instrument by his energies and labours for improving the moral universe. Compare the Greeks and Romans with the Assyrians and Babylonians, and the ancient Greeks and Romans with the nations of modern Christendom, and it cannot, I think, be questioned that there has been a great superiority in the latter nations, and that their improvements have been subservient to a more exalted state of intellectual and religious existence. If this little globe has been so modified by its powerful and active inhabitants, I cannot help thinking that in other systems beings of a superior nature, under the influence of a divine will, may act nobler parts. We know from the sacred writings that there are intelligences of a higher nature than man, and I cannot help sometimes referring to my vision in the Colosæum, and in supposing some acts of power of those genii or seraphs similar to thosewhich I have imagined in the higher planetary systems. There is much reason to infer from astronomical observations that great changes take place in the system of the fixed stars: Sir William Herschel, indeed, seems to have believed that he saw nebulous or luminous matter in the process of forming suns, and there are some astronomers who believe that stars have been extinct; but it is more probable that they have disappeared from peculiar motions. It is, perhaps, rather a poetical than a philosophical idea, yet I cannot help forming the opinion that genii or seraphic intelligences may inhabit these systems and may be the ministers of the eternal mind in producing changes in them similar to those which have taken place on the earth. Time is almost a human word and change entirely a human idea; in the system of Nature we should rather say progress than change. The sun appears to sink in the ocean in darkness, but it rises in another hemisphere; the ruins of a city fall, but they are often used to form more magnificent structures as at Rome; but, even when they are destroyed, so as to produce only dust, Nature asserts her empire over them, and the vegetable world rises in constant youth, and—in a period of annual successions, by the labours of man providing food—vitality, and beauty upon the wrecks of monuments, which were once raised for purposes of glory, but which are now applied to objects of utility.