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QUEEN MAB. 
 
 i. 
 
 How wonderful is Death, 
 Death and his brother Sleep ! 
 
 One, pale as yonder waning moon 
 With lips of lurid blue ; 
 
 The other, rosy as the morn 
 When throned on ocean's wave 
 It blushes o'er the world : 
 
 Yet both so passing wonderful ! 
 
 Hath then the gloomy Power 
 Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres 
 Seized on her sinless soul ? 
 Must then that peerless form 
 
QUEEN MAB. I. 
 
 Which love aud admiration cannot view 
 Without a beating heart, those azure veins 
 Which steal like streams along a field of snow, 
 That lovely outline, which is fair 
 As breathing marble, perish ? 
 Must putrefaction's breath 
 Leave nothing of this heavenly sight 
 
 But loathsomeness and ruin ? 
 Spare nothing but a gloomy theme, 
 On which the lightest heart might moralize ? 
 Or is it only a sweet slumber 
 
 Stealing o'er sensation, 
 Which the breath of roseate morning 
 Chaseth into darkness ? 
 Will Ianthe wake again, 
 And give that faithful bosom joy 
 Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch 
 Light, life and rapture from her smile ? 
 
 Yes ! she will wake again, 
 Although her glowing limbs are motionless, 
 And silent those sweet lips. 
 
QUEEN MAE. 
 
 Once breathing eloquence, 
 That might have soothed a tyger's rage, 
 Or thawed the cold heart of a conqueror. 
 
 Her dewy eyes are closed, 
 And on their lids, whose texture fine 
 Scarce hides the dark blue orbs beneath, 
 
 The baby Sleep is pillowed : 
 
 Her golden tresses shade 
 
 The bosom's stainless pride, 
 Curling like tendrils of the parasite 
 
 Around a marble column. 
 
 Hark ! whence that rushing sound ? 
 
 'Tis like the wondrous strain 
 That round a lonely ruin swells, 
 Which, wandering on the echoing shore, 
 
 The enthusiast hears at evening : 
 'Tis softer than the west wind's sigh j 
 'Tis wilder than the unmeasured notes 
 Of that strange lyre whose strings 
 The genii of the breezes sweep : 
 
 Those lines of rainbow light 
 b 2 
 
 SS4-5Q.M 
 
 , ATI 
 
QUEEN MAB. 1. 
 
 Are like the moonbeams when they fall 
 Through some cathedral window, but the teints 
 Are such as may not find 
 Comparison on earth. 
 
 Behold the chariot of the Fairy Queen ! 
 Celestial coursers paw the unyielding air ; 
 Their filmy pennons at her word they furl, 
 And stop obedient to the reins of light : 
 
 These the Queen of spells drew in, 
 
 She spread a charm around the spot, 
 And leaning graceful from the etherial car, 
 
 Long did she gaze, and silently, 
 Upon the slumbering maid. 
 
 Oh ! not the visioned poet in his dreams, 
 When silvery clouds float through the wildered brain, 
 When every sight of lovely, wild and grand 
 Astonishes, enraptures, elevates, 
 When fancy at a glance combines 
 The wondrous and the beautiful, — 
 So bright, so fair, so wild a shape 
 
QUEEN MAB. 
 
 Hath ever yet beheld, 
 As that which reined the coursers of the air, 
 And poured the magic of her gaze 
 Upon the maiden's sleep. 
 
 The broad and yellow moon 
 Shone dimly through her form — 
 
 That form of faultless symmetry ; 
 
 The pearly and pellucid car 
 
 Moved not the moonlight's line : 
 'Twas not an earthly pageant : 
 
 Those who had looked upon the sight, 
 Passing all human glory, 
 Saw not the yellow moon, 
 Saw not the mortal scene, 
 Heard not the night-wind's rush, 
 Heard not an earthly sound, 
 Saw but the fairy pageant, 
 Heard but the heavenly strains 
 That filled the lonely dwelling. 
 
QUEEN MAB. 
 
 The Fairy's frame was slight, yon fibrous cloud, 
 That catches but the palest tinge of even, 
 And which the straining eye can hardly seize 
 When melting into eastern twilight's shadow, 
 Were scarce so thin, so slight ; but the fair star 
 That gems the glittering coronet of morn, 
 Sheds not a light so mild, so powerful, 
 As that which, bursting from the Fairy's form, 
 Spread a purpureal halo round the scene, 
 
 Yet with an undulating motion, 
 
 Swayed to her outline gracefully. 
 
 From her celestial car 
 The Fairy Queen descended, 
 And thrice she waved her wand 
 Circled with wreaths of amaranth : 
 Her thin and misty form 
 Moved with the moving air, 
 And the clear silver tones, 
 As thus she spoke, were such 
 As are unheard by all but gifted ear. 
 
I. QUEEN MAB. 7 
 
 FAIRY. 
 
 Stars ! your balmiest influence shed ! 
 Elements ! your wrath suspend ! 
 Sleep, Ocean, in the rocky bounds 
 That circle thy domain ! 
 Let not a breath be seen to stir 
 Around yon grass-grown ruiu's height, 
 Let even the restless gossamer 
 Sleep on the moveless air ! 
 Soul of lanthe ! thou, 
 Judged alone worthy of the envied boon, 
 That waits the good and the sincere ; that waits 
 Those who have struggled, and with resolute will 
 Vanquished earth's pride and meanness, burst the chains, 
 The icy chains of custom, and have shone 
 The day-stars of their age ; — Soul of lanthe ! 
 Awake ! arise ! 
 
 Sudden arose 
 Ianthe's Soul ; it stood 
 All beautiful in naked purity, 
 The perfect semblance of its bodily frame. 
 
QUEEN MAB. 
 
 Instinct with inexpressible beauty and grace, 
 
 Each stain of earthliness 
 Had passed away, it reassumed 
 Its native dignity, and stood 
 
 Immortal amid ruin. 
 
 Upon the couch the body lay 
 Wrapt in the depth of slumber : 
 Its features were fixed and meaningless, 
 
 Yet animal life was there, 
 And every organ yet performed 
 Its natural functions : 'twas a sight 
 Of wonder to behold the body and soul. 
 The self-same lineaments, the same 
 Marks of identity were there : 
 Yet, oh, how different ! One aspires to Heaven, 
 Pants for its sempiternal heritage, 
 And ever changing, ever rising still, 
 
 Wantons in endless being. 
 The other, for a time the unwilling sport 
 Of circumstance and passion, struggles on ; 
 Fleets through its sad duration rapidly y 
 
QUEEN MAB. 
 
 Then like an useless and worn-out machine, 
 Rots, perishes, and passes. 
 
 FAIRY. 
 
 Spirit ! who hast dived so deep ; 
 Spirit ! who hast soared so high ; 
 Thou the fearless, thou the mild, 
 Accept the boon thy worth hath earned, 
 Ascend the car with me. 
 
 SPIRIT. 
 
 Do I dream ? is this new feeling 
 But a visioned ghost of slumber ? 
 
 If indeed I am a soul, 
 A free, a disembodied soul, 
 Speak again to me. 
 
 FAIRY. 
 
 I am the Fairy Mab : to me 'tis given 
 The wonders of the human world to keep : 
 The secrets of the immeasurable past, 
 In the unfailing consciences of men, 
 
10 QUEEN MAB, 
 
 Those stern, unflattering chroniclers, I find : 
 The future, from the causes which arise 
 In each event, I gather : not the sting 
 Which retributive memory implants 
 In the hard bosom of the selfish man ; 
 Nor that extatic and exulting throb 
 Which virtue's votary feels when he sums up 
 The thoughts and actions of a well-spent day, 
 Are unforeseen, unregistered by me : 
 And it is yet permitted me, to rend 
 The veil of mortal frailty, that the spirit 
 Clothed in its changeless purity, may know 
 How soonest to accomplish the great end 
 For which it hath its being, and may taste 
 That peace, which in the end all life will share. 
 This is the meed of virtue ; happy Soul, 
 Ascend the car with me ! 
 
 The chains of earth's immurement 
 Fell from Ianthe's spirit ; 
 They shrank and brake like bandages of straw 
 Beneath a wakened giant's strength. 
 
QUEEN MAB. 11 
 
 She knew her glorious change, 
 And felt in apprehension uncontrolled 
 
 New raptures opening round : 
 Each day-dream of her mortal life, 
 Each frenzied vision of the slumbers 
 
 That closed each well-spent day, 
 
 Seemed now to meet reality. 
 
 The Fairy and the Soul proceeded ; 
 The silver clouds disparted ; 
 And as the car of magic they ascended, 
 Again the speechless music swelled, 
 Again the coursers of the air 
 Unfurled their azure pennons, and the Queen 
 Shaking the beamy reins 
 Bade them pursue their way. 
 
 The magic car moved on. 
 The night was fair, and countless stars 
 Studded heaven's dark blue vault, — 
 
 Just o'er the eastern wave 
 Peeped the first faint smile of morn : — 
 
12 QUEEN* MAB. 
 
 The magic car moved on — 
 From the celestial hoofs 
 The atmosphere in flaming sparkles flew, 
 
 And where the burning wheels 
 Eddied above the mountain's loftiest peak. 
 Was traced a line of lightning. 
 Now it flew far above a rock, 
 The utmost verge of earth, 
 The rival of the Andes, whose dark brow 
 Lowered o'er the silver sea. 
 
 Far, far below the chariot's path, 
 
 Calm as a slumbering babe, 
 
 Tremendous Ocean lay. 
 The mirror of its stillness shewed 
 
 The pale and waning stars, 
 
 The chariot's fiery track, 
 
 And the grey light of morn 
 
 Tinging those fleecy clouds 
 
 That canopied the dawn. 
 Seemed it, that the chariot's way 
 Lay through the midst of an immense concave, 
 
QUEEN MAB. 13 
 
 Radiant with million constellations, tinged 
 "With shades of infinite colour, 
 And semicircled with a belt 
 Flashing incessant meteors. 
 
 The magic car moved on. 
 
 As they approached their goal 
 The coursers seemed to gather speed ; 
 The sea no longer was distinguished ; earth 
 Appeared a vast and shadowy sphere ; 
 
 The sun's unclouded orb 
 
 Rolled through the black concave ; 
 
 Its rays of rapid light 
 Parted around the chariot's swifter course, 
 And fell, like ocean's feathery spray 
 
 Dashed from the boiling surge 
 
 Before a vessel's prow. 
 
 The magic car moved on. 
 Earth's distant orb appeared 
 The smallest light that twinkles in the heaven ; 
 
14 QUEEN MAS. 
 
 Whilst round the chariot's way 
 
 Innumerable systems rolled, 
 
 And countless spheres diffused 
 
 An ever-varying glory. 
 It was a sight of wonder : some 
 Were horned like the crescent moon ; 
 Some shed a mild and silver beam 
 Like Hesperus o'er the western sea ; 
 Some dash'd athwart with trains of flame, 
 Like worlds to death and ruin driven ; 
 Some shone like suns, and as the chariot passed, 
 Eclipsed all other light. 
 
 Spirit of Nature ! here ! 
 In this interminable wilderness 
 Of worlds, at whose immensity 
 Even soaring fancy staggers, 
 Here is thy fitting temple. 
 Yet not the lightest leaf 
 That quivers to the passing breeze 
 Is less instinct with thee : 
 
I. QUEEN MAB. 15 
 
 Yet not the meanest worm 
 That lurks in graves and fattens on the dead 
 Less shares thy eternal breath. 
 
 Spirit of Nature ! thou ! 
 Imperishable as this scene, 
 
 Here is thy fitting temple. 
 
II. QUEEN MAB. 17 
 
 II. 
 
 If solitude hath ever led thy steps 
 To the wild ocean's echoing shore, 
 And thou hast lingered there, 
 Until the sun's broad orb 
 Seemed resting on the burnished wave, 
 
 Thou must have marked the lines 
 Of purple gold, that motionless 
 
 Hung o'er the sinking sphere : 
 Thou must have marked the billowy clouds 
 Edged with intolerable radiancy 
 Towering like rocks of jet 
 Crowned with a diamond wreath. 
 And yet there is a moment, 
 When the sun's highest point 
 Peeps like a star o'er ocean's western edge, 
 When those far clouds of feathery gold, 
 Shaded with deepest purple, gleam 
 Like islands on a dark blue sea ; 
 c 
 
IS QUEEN MAB. II. 
 
 Then has thy fancy soared above the earthy 
 And furled its wearied wing 
 Within the Fairy's fane. 
 
 m 
 
 Yet not the golden islands 
 
 Gleaming in yon flood of light, 
 
 Nor the feathery curtains 
 Stretching o'er the sun's bright couch, 
 Nor the burnished ocean waves 
 Paving that gorgeous dome, 
 So fair, so wonderful a sight 
 As Mab's etherial palace could afford. 
 Yet likest evening's vault, that faery Hall ! 
 As Heaven, low resting on the wave, it spread 
 Its floors of flashing light, 
 Its vast and azure dome, 
 Its fertile golden islands 
 Floating on a silver sea ; 
 Whilst suns their mingling beamings darted 
 Through clouds of circumambient darkness, 
 And pearly battlements around 
 Looked o'er the immense of Heaven. 
 
II. QUEEN MAB. 19 
 
 The magic car no longer moved. 
 The Fairy and the Spirit 
 Entered the Hall of Spells : 
 Those golden clouds 
 That rolled in glittering billows 
 Beneath the azure canopy 
 With the etherial footsteps, trembled not : 
 
 The light and crimson mists, 
 Floating to strains of thrilling melody 
 Through that unearthly dwelling, 
 Yielded to every movement of the will. 
 Upon their passive swell the Spirit leaned, 
 And, for the varied bliss that pressed around, 
 Used not the glorious privilege 
 Of virtue and of wisdom. 
 
 Spirit ! the Fairy said, 
 And pointed to the gorgeous dome. 
 This is a wondrous sight 
 And mocks all human grandeur ; 
 But, were it virtue's only meed, to dwell 
 
4 20 QUEEN MAi II. 
 
 In a celestial palace, all resigned 
 To pleasurable impulses, immured 
 Within the prison of itself, the will 
 Of changeless nature would be unfulfilled. 
 Learn to make others happy. Spirit, come ! 
 This is thine high reward : — the past shall rise; 
 Thou shalt behold the present ; I will teach 
 The secrets of the future. 
 
 The Fairy and the Spirit 
 Approached the overhanging battlement. — 
 Below lay stretched the universe ! 
 There, far as the remotest line 
 That bounds imagination's flight, 
 
 Countless and unending orbs 
 In mazy motion intermingled, 
 Yet still fulfilled immutably 
 Eternal nature's law. 
 Above, below, around 
 The circling systems formed 
 A wilderness of harmony ; 
 
II. QUEEN MAB. 21 
 
 Each with undeviating aim, 
 In eloquent silence, through the depths of space 
 Pursued its wondrous way. 
 
 There was a little light 
 That twinkled in the misty distance : 
 
 None but a spirit's eye 
 
 Might ken that rolling orb \ 
 
 None but a spirit's eye, 
 
 And in no other place 
 But that celestial dwelling, might behold 
 Each action of this earth's inhabitants. 
 
 But matter, space and time 
 In those aerial mansions cease to act ; 
 And all-prevailing wisdom, when it reaps 
 The harvest of its excellence, o'erbounds 
 Those obstacles, of which an earthly soul 
 Fears to attempt the conquest. 
 
 The Fairy pointed to the earth. 
 The Spirit's intellectual eye 
 Its kindred beings recognized. 
 
w 22 QUEEN MAB. II. 
 
 The thronging thousands, to a passing view ? 
 Seemed like an anthill's citizens. 
 How wonderful ! that even 
 The passions, prejudices, interests, 
 That sway the meanest being, the weak touch 
 That moves the finest nerve, 
 And in one human brain 
 Causes the faintest thought, becomes a link 
 In the great chain of nature. 
 
 Behold, the Fairy cried, 
 Palmyra's ruined palaces ! — 
 
 Behold ! where grandeur frowned ; 
 
 Behold ! where pleasure smiled ; 
 What now remains ? — the memory 
 
 Of senselessness and shame — 
 
 What is immortal there ? 
 
 Nothing — it stands to tell 
 
 A melancholy tale, to give 
 
 An awful warning : soon 
 Oblivion will steal silently 
 
 The remnant of its fame. 
 
II. QUEEN MAB. 23 
 
 Monarchs and conquerors there 
 Proud o'er prostrate millions trod — 
 The earthquakes of the human race ; 
 Like them, forgotten when the ruin 
 
 That marks their shock is past. 
 
 Beside the eternal Nile, 
 
 The Pyramids have risen. 
 Nile shall pursue his changeless way : 
 
 Those pyramids shall fall ; 
 Yea ! not a stone shall stand to tell 
 
 The spot whereon they stood ; 
 Their very scite shall be forgotten, 
 
 As is their builder's name ! 
 
 Behold yon sterile spot ; 
 Where now the wandering Arab's tent 
 
 Flaps in the desart-blast. 
 There once old Salem's haughty fane 
 Reared high to heaven its thousand golden domes, 
 And in the blushing face of day 
 Exposed its shameful glory. 
 
24 QUEEN MAB. II. 
 
 Oh ! many a widow, many an orphan cursed 
 The building of that fane ; and many a father, 
 Worn out with toil and slavery, implored 
 The poor man's God to sweep it from the earth, 
 And spare his children the detested task 
 Of piling stone on stone, and poisoning 
 
 The choicest days of life, 
 
 To soothe a dotard's vanity. 
 There an inhuman and uncultured race 
 Howled hideous praises to their Demon-God ; 
 They rushed to war, tore from the mother's womb 
 The unborn child, — -old age and infancy 
 Promiscuous perished; their victorious arms 
 Left not a soul to breathe. Oh ! they were fiends : 
 But what was he who taught them that the God 
 Of nature and benevolence had given 
 A special sanction to the trade of blood ? 
 His name and theirs are fading, and the tales 
 Of this barbarian nation, which imposture 
 Recites till terror credits, are pursuing 
 Itself into forgetfulness. 
 
II. QUEEN MAB. 25 
 
 Where Athens, Rome, and Sparta stood, 
 There is a moral desart now : 
 The mean and miserable huts, 
 The yet more wretched palaces, 
 Contrasted with those antient fanes, 
 Now crumbling to oblivion ; 
 The long and lonely colonuades, 
 Through which the ghost of Freedom stalks, 
 
 Seem like a well-known tune, 
 Which, in some dear scene we have loved to hear, 
 
 Remembered now in sadness. 
 
 But, oh ! how much more changed, 
 
 How gloomier is the contrast 
 
 Of human nature there ! 
 Where Socrates expired, a tyrant's slave, 
 A coward and a fool, spreads death around — 
 
 Then, shuddering, meets his own. 
 Where Cicero and Antoninus lived, 
 A cowled and hypocritical monk 
 
 Prays, curses and deceives. 
 
26 QUEEN MAB. II. 
 
 Spirit ! ten thousand years 
 Have scarcely past away, 
 Since, in the waste where now the savage drinks 
 His enemy's blood, and aping Europe's sons, 
 Wakes the unholy song of war, 
 Arose a stately city, 
 Metropolis of the western continent : 
 
 There, now, the mossy column-stone, 
 Indented by time's unrelaxing grasp, 
 Which once appeared to brave 
 All, save its country's ruin ; 
 There the wide forest scene, 
 Rude in the uncultivated loveliness 
 
 Of gardens long run wild, 
 Seems, to the unwilling sojourner, whose steps 
 
 Chance in that desart has delayed, 
 Thus to have stood since earth was what it is. 
 
 Yet once it was the busiest haunt, 
 Whither, as to a common centre, flocked 
 Strangers, and ships, and merchandize : 
 Once peace and freedom blest 
 The cultivated plain : 
 
II. QUEEN MAB. 27 
 
 But wealth, that curse of man, 
 Blighted the bud of its prosperity : 
 Virtue and wisdom, truth and liberty, 
 Fled, to return not, until man shall know 
 That they alone can give the bliss 
 
 Worthy a soul that claims 
 Its kindred with eternity. 
 
 There's not one atom of yon earth 
 
 But once was living man ; 
 Nor the minutest drop of rain, 
 That hangeth in its thinnest cloud, 
 
 But flowed in human veins : 
 
 And from the burning plains 
 
 Where Lybian monsters yell, 
 
 From the most gloomy glens 
 
 Of Greenland's sunless clime, 
 
 To where the golden fields 
 
 Of fertile England spread 
 
 Their harvest to the day, 
 
 Thou canst not find one spot 
 
 Whereon no city stood. 
 
28 QUEEN MAB. IL 
 
 How strange is human pride ! 
 I tell thee that those li?ing things, 
 To whom the fragile blade of grass, 
 That springeth in the morn 
 And perisheth ere noon, 
 Is an unbounded world ; 
 I tell thee that those viewless beings, 
 Whose mansion is the smallest particle 
 Of the impassive atmosphere, 
 Think, feel and live like man ; 
 That their affections and antipathies, 
 Like his, produce the laws 
 Ruling their moral state ; 
 And the minutest throb 
 That through their frame diffuses 
 The slightest, faintest motion, 
 Is fixed and indispensable 
 As the majestic laws 
 That rule yon rolling orbs. 
 
 The Fairy paused. The Spirit, 
 In extacy of admiration, felt 
 
II. QUEEN MAB. 29 
 
 All knowledge of the past revived ; the events 
 
 Of old and wondrous times, 
 Which dim tradition interruptedly 
 Teaches the credulous vulgar, were unfolded 
 In just perspective to the view ; 
 Yet dim from their infinitude. 
 The Spirit seemed to stand 
 High on an isolated pinnacle ; 
 The flood of ages combating below, 
 The depth of the unbounded universe 
 Above, and all around 
 Nature's unchanging harmony. 
 
III. QUEEN MAB. 31 
 
 III. 
 
 Fairy ! the Spirit said, 
 And on the Queen of spells 
 Fixed her etherial eyes, 
 I thank thee. Thou hast given 
 A boon which I will not resign, and taught 
 A lesson not to be unlearned. I know 
 The past, and thence I will essay to glean 
 A warning for the future, so that man 
 May profit by his errors, and derive 
 
 Experience from his folly : 
 For, when the power of imparting joy 
 Is equal to the will, the human soul 
 Requires no other heaven. 
 
 MAB. 
 
 Turn thee, surpassing Spirit ! 
 Much yet remains unscanned. 
 Thou knowest how great is man,. 
 
32 QUEEN MAS. III. 
 
 Thou knowest his imbecility : 
 Yet learn thou what he is ; 
 Yet learn the lofty destiny 
 Which restless time prepares 
 For every living soul. 
 
 Behold a gorgeous palace, that, amid 
 
 Yon populous city, rears its thousand towers 
 
 And seems itself a city. Gloomy troops 
 
 Of centinels, in stern and silent ranks, 
 
 Encompass it around : the dweller there 
 
 Cannot be free and happy ; hearest thou not 
 
 The curses of the fatherless, the groans 
 
 Of those who have no friend ? He passes on : 
 
 The King, the wearer of a gilded chain 
 
 That binds his soul to abjectness, the fool 
 
 Whom courtiers nickname monarch, whilst a slave 
 
 Even to the basest appetites — that man 
 
 Heeds not the shriek of penury ; he smiles 
 
 At the deep curses which the destitute 
 
 Mutter in secret, and a sullen joy 
 
 Pervades his bloodless heart when thousands groan 
 
III. QUEEN MAB. 33 
 
 But for those morsels which his wantonness 
 
 Wastes in unjoyous revelry, to save 
 
 All that they love from famine : when he hears 
 
 The tale of horror, to some ready-made face 
 
 Of hypocritical assent he turns, 
 
 Smothering the glow of shame, that, spite of him, 
 
 Flushes his bloated cheek* 
 
 Now to the meal 
 Of silence, grandeur, and excess, he drags 
 His palled unwilling appetite. If gold, 
 Gleaming around, and numerous viands culled 
 From every clime, could force the loathing sense 
 To overcome satiety, — if wealth 
 The spring it draws from poisons not, — or vice, 
 Unfeeling, stubborn vice, converteth not 
 Its food to deadliest venom ; then that king 
 Is happy ; and the peasant who fulfills 
 His unforced task, when he returns at even, 
 And by the blazing faggot meets agaiu 
 Her welcome for whom all his toil is sped, 
 Tastes not a sweeter meal. 
 x> 
 
34 QUEEN MAB. III. 
 
 Behold him now 
 Stretched on the gorgeous couch ; his fevered brain 
 Reels dizzily awhile : but ah ! too soon 
 The slumber of intemperance subsides, 
 And conscience, that undying serpent, calls 
 Her venomous brood to their nocturnal task. 
 Listen ! he speaks ! oh ! mark that frenzied eye — 
 Oh ! mark that deadly visage. 
 
 KING. 
 
 No cessation ! 
 Oh ! must this last for ever ! Awful death, 
 I wish, yet fear to clasp thee ! — Not one moment 
 Of dreamless sleep ! O dear and blessed peace ! 
 Why dost thou shroud thy vestal purity 
 In penury and dungeons ? wherefore lurkest 
 With danger, death, and solitude ; yet shun'st 
 The palace I have built thee ? Sacred peace ! 
 Oh visit me but once, but pitying shed 
 One drop of balm upon my withered soul. 
 
III. ^UEEN MAB. 35 
 
 Vain man ! that palace is the virtuous heart, 
 
 And peace defileth not her snowy robes 
 
 In such a shed as thine. Hark ! yet he mutters ; 
 
 His slumbers are but varied agonies, 
 
 They prey like scorpions on the springs of life. 
 
 There needeth not the hell that bigots frame 
 
 To punish those who err : earth in itself 
 
 Contains at once the evil and the cure ; 
 
 And all-sufficing nature can chastise 
 
 Those who transgress her law, — she only knows 
 
 How justly to proportion to the fault 
 
 The punishment it merits. 
 
 Is it strange 
 That this poor wretch should pride him in his woe ? 
 Take pleasure in his abjectness, and hug 
 The scorpion that consumes him ? Is it strange 
 That, placed on a conspicuous throne of thorns ? 
 Grasping an iron sceptre, and immured 
 Within a splendid prison, whose stern bounds 
 Shut him from all that's good or dear on earth, 
 His soul asserts not its humanity ? 
 
36 QUEEN MAE. III. 
 
 That man's mild nature rises not in war 
 Against a king's employ ? No — 'tis not strange. 
 He, like the vulgar, thinks, feels, acts and lives 
 Just as his father did ; the unconquered powers 
 Of precedent and custom interpose 
 Between a king and virtue. Stranger yet y 
 To those who know not nature, nor deduce 
 The future from the present, it may seem, 
 That not one slave, who suffers from the crimes 
 Of this unnatural being ; not one wretch, 
 Whose children famish, and whose nuptial bed 
 Is earth's unpitying bosom, rears an arm 
 To dash him from his throne ! 
 
 Those gilded flies 
 That, basking in the sunshine of a court, 
 Fatten on its corruption ! — what are they ? 
 — The drones of the community ; they feed 
 On the mechanic's labour : the starved hind 
 For them compels the stubborn glebe to yield 
 Its unshared harvests ; and yon squalid form, 
 Leaner than fleshless misery, that wastes 
 
HI. ' QUEEN MAB. 37 
 
 A sunless life in the unwholesome mine, 
 Drags out in labour a protracted death, 
 To glut their grandeur ; many faint with toil, 
 That few may know the cares and woe of sloth. 
 
 Whence, thinkest thou, kings and parasites arose ? 
 
 Whence that unnatural line of drones, who heap 
 
 Toil and unvanquishable penury 
 
 On those who build their palaces, and bring 
 
 Their daily bread ? — From vice, black loathsome vice ; 
 
 From rapine, madness, treachery, and wrong ; 
 
 From all that genders misery, and makes 
 
 Of earth this thorny wilderness ; from lust, 
 
 Revenge, and murder And when reason's voice, , 
 
 Loud as the voice of nature, shall have waked 
 The nations ; and mankind perceive that vice 
 Is discord, war, and misery ; that virtue 
 Is peace, and happiness and harmony ; 
 When man's maturer nature shall disdain 
 The playthings of its childhood ; — kingly glare 
 Will lose its power to dazzle ; its authority 
 Will silently pass by ; the gorgeous throne 
 
38 QUEEN MAB, III. 
 
 Shall stand unnoticed in the regal hall, 
 Fast falling to decay ; whilst falsehood's trade 
 Shall be as hateful and unprofitable 
 As that of truth is now. 
 
 Where is the fame 
 Which the vain-glorious mighty of the earth 
 Seek to eternize ? Oh ! the faintest sound 
 From time's light footfall, the minutest wave 
 That swells the flood of ages, whelms in nothing 
 The unsubstantial bubble. Aye ! to-day 
 Stern is the tyrant's mandate, red the gaze 
 That flashes desolation, strong the arm 
 That scatters multitudes. To-morrow comes ! 
 That mandate is a thunder-peal that died 
 In ages past ; that gaze, a transient flash 
 On which the midnight closed, and on that arm 
 The worm has made his meal. 
 
 The virtuous man, 
 Who, great in his humility, as kings 
 Are little in their grandeur ; he who leads 
 
111. QUEEN MAB. « 
 
 Invincibly a life of resolute good, 
 
 And stands amid the silent dungeon-depths 
 
 More free and fearless than the trembling judge, 
 
 Who, clothed in venal power, vainly strove 
 
 To bind the impassive spirit ; — when he falls, 
 
 His mild eye beams benevolence no more : 
 
 Withered the hand outstretched but to relieve ; 
 
 Sunk reason's simple eloquence, that rolled 
 
 But to appal the guilty. Yes ! the grave 
 
 Hath quenched that eye, and death's releutless frost 
 
 Withered that arm : but the unfading fame 
 
 Which virtue hangs upon its votary's tomb ; 
 
 The deathless memory of that man, whom kings 
 
 Call to their mind and tremble; the remembrance 
 
 With which the happy spirit contemplates 
 
 Its well-spent pilgrimage on earth, 
 
 Shall never pass away. 
 
 Nature rejects the monarch, not the man ; 
 The subject, not the citizen : for kings 
 And subjects, mutual foes, for ever play 
 A losing game into each other's hands, 
 
40 QUEEN MAB. III. 
 
 Whose stakes are vice and misery. The man 
 Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys. 
 Power, like a desolating pestilence, 
 Pollutes whate'er it touches ; and obedience, 
 Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, 
 Makes slaves of men, and, of the human frame, 
 A mechanized automaton. 
 
 When Nero, 
 High over flaming Rome, with savage joy 
 Lowered like a fiend, drank with enraptured ear 
 The shrieks of agonizing death, beheld 
 The frightful desolation spread, and felt 
 A new created sense within his soul 
 Thrill to the sight, and vibrate to the sound ; 
 Thinkest thou his grandeur had not overcome 
 The force of human kindness ? and, when Rome, 
 With one stern blow, hurled not the tyrant down, 
 Crushed not the arm red with her dearest blood, 
 Had not submissive abjectness destroyed 
 Nature's suggestions ? 
 
III. QUEEN MAB. 41 
 
 Look on yonder earth : 
 The golden harvests spring ; the unfailing sun 
 Sheds light and life ; the fruits, the flowers, the trees, 
 Arise in due succession ; all things speak 
 Peace, harmony, and love. The universe, 
 In nature's silent eloquence, declares 
 That all fulfil the works of love and joy, — 
 All but the outcast man. He fabricates 
 The sword which stabs his peace ; he cherisheth 
 The snakes that gnaw his heart ; he raiseth up 
 The tyrant, whose delight is in his woe, 
 Whose sport is in his agony. Yon sun, 
 Lights it the great alone ? Yon silver beams. 
 Sleep they less sweetly on the cottage thatch, 
 Than on the dome of kings ? Is mother earth 
 A step-dame to her numerous sons, who earn 
 Her unshared gifts with unremitting toil ; 
 A mother only to those puling babes 
 Who, nursed in ease and luxury, make men 
 The playthings of their babyhood, and mar, 
 In self-important childishness, that peace 
 Which men alone appreciate ? 
 
42 QUEEN MAB. III. 
 
 Spirit of Nature ! no. 
 The pure diffusion of thy essence throbs 
 Alike in every human heart. 
 
 Thou, aye, erectest there 
 Thy throne of power unappealable : 
 Thou art the judge beneath whose nod 
 Man's brief and frail authority 
 
 Is powerless as the wind 
 
 That passeth idly by. 
 Thine the tribunal which surpasseth 
 The shew of human justice, 
 
 As God surpasses man. 
 
 Spirit of Nature ! thou 
 Life of interminable multitudes ; 
 
 Soul of those mighty spheres 
 Whose changeless paths thro' Heaven's deep silence He ; 
 Soul of that smallest being, 
 
 The dwelling of whose life 
 Is one faint April sun-gleam ; — 
 Man, like these passive things, 
 
III. QUEEN MAB. 43 
 
 Thy will unconsciously fulfilleth : 
 Like theirs, his age of endless peace, 
 Which time is fast maturing, 
 Will swiftly, surely come; 
 And the unbounded frame, which thou pervadest, 
 Will be without a flaw 
 Marring its perfect symmetry. 
 
IV. QUEEN MAB. 45 
 
 IV. 
 
 xiow beautiful this night ! the balmiest sigh, 
 
 Which vernal zephyrs breathe in evening's ear. 
 
 Were discord to the speaking quietude 
 
 That wraps this moveless scene. Heaven's ebon vault, 
 
 Studded with stars unutterably bright, 
 
 Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls, 
 
 Seems like a canopy which love had spread 
 
 To curtain her sleeping world. Yon gentle hills, 
 
 Robed in a garment of untrodden snow ; 
 
 Yon darksome rocks, whence icicles depend, 
 
 So stainless, that their white and glittering spires 
 
 Tinge not the moon's pure beam ; yon castled steep. 
 
 Whose banner hangeth o'er the time-worn tower 
 
 So idly, that rapt fancy deemeth it 
 
 A metaphor. of peace; — all form a scene 
 
 Where musing solitude might love to lift 
 
 Her soul above this sphere of earth! iness ; 
 
46 QUEEN MAB. IV. 
 
 Where silence undisturbed might watch alone. 
 So cold, so bright, so still. 
 
 The orb of day, 
 In southern climes, o'er ocean's waveless field 
 Sinks sweetly smiling : not the faintest breath 
 Steals o'er the unruffled deep ; the clouds of eve 
 Reflect unmoved the lingering beam of day ; 
 And vesper's image on the western main 
 Is beautifully still. To-morrow comes : 
 Cloud upon cloud, in dark and deepening mass, 
 Roll o'er the blackened waters ; the deep roar 
 Of distant thunder mutters awfully ; 
 Tempest unfolds its pinion o'er the gloom 
 That shrouds the boiling surge ; the pityless fiend, 
 With all his winds and lightnings, tracks his prey; 
 The torn deep yawns, — the vessel finds a grave 
 Beneath its jagged gulf. 
 
 Ah ! whence yon glare 
 That fires the arch of heaven ? — that dark red smoke 
 Blotting the silver moon ? The stars are quenched 
 
IV. QUEEN MAB. 47 
 
 In darkness, and the pure and spangling snow 
 Gleams faintly through the gloom that gathers round ! 
 Hark to that roar, whose swift and deaf 'ning peals 
 In countless echoes through the mountains ring, 
 Startling pale midnight on her starry throne ! 
 Now swells the intermingling din ; the jar 
 Frequent and frightful of the bursting bomb ; 
 The falling beam, the shriek, the groan, the shout, 
 The ceaseless clangor, and the rush of men 
 Inebriate with rage : — loud, and more loud 
 The discord grows ; till pale death shuts the scene, 
 And o'er the conqueror and the conquered draws 
 His cold and bloody shroud. — Of all the men 
 Whom day's departing beam saw blooming there, 
 In proud and vigorous health ; of all the hearts 
 That beat with anxious life at sun-set there ; 
 How few survive, how few are beating now ! 
 All is deep silence, like the fearful calm 
 That slumbers in the storm's portentous pause ; 
 Save when the frantic wail of widowed love 
 Comes shuddering on the blast, or the faint moan 
 
48 QUEEN MAB. IV. 
 
 With which some soul bursts from the frame of clay- 
 Wrapt round its struggling powers. 
 
 The grey morn 
 Dawns on the mournful scene ; the sulphurous smoke 
 Before the icy wind slow rolls away, 
 And the bright beams of frosty morning dance 
 Along the spangling snow. There tracks of blood 
 Even to the forest's depth, and scattered arms, 
 And lifeless warriors, whose hard lineaments 
 Death's self could change not, mark the dreadful path 
 Of the outsallying victors : far behind, 
 Black ashes note where their proud city stood. 
 Within yon forest is a gloomy glen — 
 Each tree which guards its darkness from the dav, 
 Waves o'er a warrior's tomb. 
 
 I see thee shrink. 
 Surpassing Spirit ! — wert thou human else ? 
 I see a shade of doubt and horror fleet 
 Across thy stainless features :- yet fear not : 
 
IV. QUEEN MAB. 49 
 
 This is no unconnected misery, 
 
 Nor stands uncaused, and irretrievable. 
 
 Man's evil nature, that apology 
 
 Which kings who rule, and cowards who crouch, set up 
 
 For their unnumbered crimes, sheds not the blood 
 
 Which desolates the discord-wasted land. 
 
 From kings, and priests, and statesmen, war arose, 
 
 Whose safety is man's deep unbettered woe, 
 
 Whose grandeur his debasement* Let the axe 
 
 Strike at the root, the poison-tree will fall ; 
 
 And where its venomed exhalations spread 
 
 Ruin, and death, and woe, where millions lay 
 
 Quenching the serpent's famine, and their bones 
 
 Bleaching unburied in the putrid blast, 
 
 A garden shall arise, in loveliness 
 
 Surpassing fabled Eden. 
 
 Hath Nature's soul, 
 That formed this world so beautiful, that spread 
 Earth's lap with plenty, and life's smallest chord 
 Strung to unchanging unison, that gave 
 The happy birds their dwelling in the grove, 
 
50 QUEEN MAE. IV. 
 
 That yielded to the wanderers of the deep 
 The lovely silence of the unfathomed main, 
 And filled the meanest worm that crawls in dust 
 With spirit, thought, and love ; on Man alone, 
 Partial in causeless malice, wantonly 
 Heaped ruin, vice, and slavery ; his soul 
 Blasted with withering curses ; placed afar 
 The meteor-happiness, that shuns his grasp, 
 But serving on the frightful gulph to glare, 
 Rent wide beneath his footsteps ? 
 
 Nature ! — no ! 
 Kings, priests, and statesmen, blast the human flower 
 Even in its tender bud ; their influence darts 
 Like subtle poison through the bloodless veins 
 Of desolate society. The child, 
 Ere he can lisp his mother's sacred name, 
 Swells with the unnatural pride of crime, and lifts 
 His baby-sword even in a hero's mood. 
 This infant-arm becomes the bloodiest scourge 
 Of devastated earth ; whilst specious names, 
 Learnt in soft childhood's unsuspecting hour, 
 
IV. QUEEN MAE. 51 
 
 Serve as the sophisms with which manhood dims 
 Bright reason's ray, and sanctifies the sword 
 Upraised to shed a brother's innocent blood. 
 Let priest-led slaves cease to proclaim that man 
 Inherits vice and misery, when force 
 And falshood hang even o'er the cradled babe ? 
 Stifling with rudest grasp all natural good. 
 
 Ah ! to the stranger-soul, when first it peeps 
 From its new tenement, and looks abroad 
 For happiness and sympathy, how stern 
 And desolate a tract is this wide world ! 
 How withered all the buds of natural good ! 
 No shade, no shelter from the sweeping storms 
 Of pityless power ! On its wretched frame, 
 Poisoned, perchance, by the disease and woe 
 Heaped on the wretched parent whence it sprung 
 qf$y morals, law, and custom, the pure winds 
 Of heaven, that renovate the insect tribes, 
 May breathe not. The untainting light of day 
 May visit not its longings. It is bound 
 
52 QUEEN MAB. IV. 
 
 Ere it has life : yea, all the chains are forged 
 Long ere its being : all liberty and love 
 And peace is torn from its defencelessness ; 
 Cursed from its birth, even from its cradle doomed 
 To abjectness and bondage ! 
 
 Throughout this varied and eternal world 
 
 Soul is the only element, the block 
 
 That for uncounted ages has remained. 
 
 The moveless pillar of a mountain's weight 
 
 Is active, living spirit. Every grain 
 
 Is sentient both in unity and part, 
 
 And the minutest atom comprehends 
 
 A world of loves and hatreds ; these beget 
 
 Evil and good : hence truth and falsehood spring ; 
 
 Hence will and thought and action, all the germs 
 
 Of pain or pleasure, sympathy or hate, 
 
 That variegate the eternal universe. 
 
 Soul is not more polluted than the beams 
 
 Of heaven's pure orb, ere round their rapid lines 
 
 The taint of earth-born atmospheres arise. 
 
IV. QUEEN MAB. 5B 
 
 Man is of soul and body, formed for deeds 
 
 Of high resolve, on fancy's boldest wing 
 
 To soar unwearied, fearlessly to turn 
 
 The keenest pangs to peaceful ness, and taste 
 
 The joys which mingled sense and spirit yield. 
 
 Or he is formed for abjectness and woe, 
 
 To groyel on the dunghill of his fears, 
 
 To shrink at every sound, to quench the flame 
 
 Of natural love in sensualism, to know 
 
 That hour as blest when on his worthless days 
 
 The frozen hand of death shall set its seal, 
 
 Yet fear the cure, though hating the disease. 
 
 The one is man that shall hereafter be ; 
 
 The other, man as vice has made him now. 
 
 War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, 
 The lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade, 
 And, to those royal murderers, whose mean thrones 
 Are bought by crimes of treachery and gore, 
 The bread they eat, the staff on which they lean. 
 Guards, garbed in blood-red livery, surround 
 Their palaces, participate the crimes 
 
54 QUEEN MAB. IV 4 
 
 That force defends, and from a nation's rage 
 Secures the crown, which all the curses reach 
 That famine, frenzy, woe and penury breathe. 
 These are the hired bravos who defend 
 The tyrant's throne — the bullies of his fear : 
 These are the sinks and channels of worst vice, 
 The refuse of society, the dregs 
 Of all that is most vile : their cold hearts blend 
 Deceit with sternness, ignorance with pride, 
 All that is mean and villainous, with rage 
 Which hopelessness of good, and self-contempt, 
 Alone might kindle ; they are decked in wealth, 
 Honour and power, then are sent abroad 
 To do their work. The pestilence that stalks 
 In gloomy triumph through some eastern land 
 Is less destroying. They cajole with gold, 
 And promises of fame, the thoughtless youth 
 Already crushed with servitude : he knows 
 His wretchedness too late, and cherishes 
 Repentance for his ruin, when his doom 
 Is sealed in gold and blood ! 
 
IV. QUEEN MAB. 55 
 
 Those too the tyrant serve, who, skilled to snare 
 The feet of justice in the toils of law, 
 Stand, ready to oppress the weaker still ; 
 And, right or wrong, will vindicate for gold, 
 Sneering at public virtue, which beneath 
 Their pityless tread lies torn and trampled, where 
 Honour sits smiling at the sale of truth. 
 
 Then grave and hoary-headed hypocrites, 
 
 Without a hope, a passion, or a love, 
 
 Who, through a life of luxury and lies, 
 
 Have crept by flattery to the seats of power, 
 
 Support the system whence their honours flow.... 
 
 They have three words : — well tyrants know their use, 
 
 Well pay them for the loan, with usury 
 
 Torn from a bleeding world ! — God, Hell, and Heaven. 
 
 A vengeful, pityless, and almighty fiend, 
 
 Whose mercy is a nick-name for the rage 
 
 Of tameless tygers hungering for blood. 
 
 Hell, a red gulf of everlasting fire, 
 
 Where poisonous and undying worms prolong 
 
56 QUEEN MAB. IV. 
 
 Eternal misery to those hapless slaves 
 Whose life has been a penance for its crimes. 
 And Heaven, a meed for those who dare belie 
 Their human nature, quake, believe, and cringe 
 Before the mockeries of earthly power. 
 
 These tools the tyrant tempers to his work, 
 Wields in his wrath, and as he wills destroys, 
 Omnipotent in wickedness : the while 
 Youth springs, age moulders, manhood tamely does 
 His bidding, bribed by short-lived joys to lend 
 Force to the weakness of his trembling arm. 
 
 They rise, they fall ; one generation comes 
 Yielding its harvest to destruction's scythe. 
 It fades, another blossoms : yet behold ! 
 Red glows the tyrant's stamp-mark on its bloom, 
 Withering and cankering deep its passive prime. 
 He has invented lying words and modes, 
 Empty and vain as his own coreless heart ; 
 Evasive meanings, nothings of much sound, 
 
IV. QUEEN MAB. 57 
 
 To lure the heedless victim to the toils 
 Spread round the valley of its paradise. 
 
 Look to thyself, priest, conqueror, or prince ! 
 Whether thy trade is falsehood, and thy lusts 
 Deep wallow in the earnings of the poor, 
 With whom thy master was : — or thou delightst 
 In numbering o'er the myriads of thy slain, 
 All misery weighing nothing in the scale 
 Against thy short-lived fame : or thou dost load 
 With cowardice and crime the groaning land, 
 A pomp-fed king. Look to thy wretched self ! 
 Aye, art thou not the veriest slave that e'er 
 Crawled on the loathing earth ? Are not thy days 
 Days of unsatisfying listlessness? 
 Dost thou not cry, ere night's long rack is o'er, 
 When will the morning come ? Is not thy youth 
 A vain and feverish dream of sensualism ? 
 Thy manhood blighted with unripe disease? 
 Are not thy views of unregretted death 
 Drear, comfortless, and horrible ? Thy mind, 
 Is it not morbid as thy nerveless frame, 
 
58 QUEEN MAB. IV. 
 
 Incapable of judgment, hope, or love? 
 
 And dost thou wish the errors to survive 
 
 That bar thee from all sympathies of good, 
 
 After the miserable interest 
 
 Thou holdst in their protraction ? When the grave 
 
 Has swallowed up thy memory and thyself, 
 
 Dost thou desire the bane that poisons earth 
 
 To twine its roots around thy coffined clay, 
 
 Spring from thy bones, and blossom on thy tomb, 
 
 That of its fruit thy babes may eat and die ? 
 
QUEEN MAB. 59 
 
 V. 
 
 1 hus do the generations of the earth 
 Go to the grave, and issue from the womb, 
 Surviving still the imperishable change 
 That renovates the world ; even as the leaves 
 Which the keen frost-wind of the waning year 
 Has scattered on the forest soil, and heaped 
 For many seasons there, though long they choke, 
 Loading with loathsome rottenness the land, 
 All germs of promise. Yet when the tall trees 
 From which they fell, shorn of their lovely shapes, 
 Lie level with the earth to moulder there, 
 They fertilize the land they long deformed, 
 Till from the breathing lawn a forest springs 
 Of youth, integrity, and loveliness, 
 Like that which gave it life, to spring and die. 
 
60 QUEEN MAB. 
 
 Thus suicidal selfishness, that blights 
 The fairest feelings of the opening heart, 
 Is destined to decay, whilst from the soil 
 Shall spring all virtue, all delight, all love, 
 And judgment cease to wage unnatural war 
 With passion's unsubduable array. 
 
 Twin. sister of religion, selfishness! 
 Rival in crime and falshood, aping all 
 The wanton horrors of her bloody play ; 
 Yet frozen, unimpassioned, spiritless, 
 Shunning the light, and owning not its name 
 Compelled, by its deformity, to screen 
 With flimsy veil of justice and of right, 
 Its unattractive lineaments, that scare 
 All, save the brood of ignorance : at once 
 The cause and the effect of tyranny ; 
 Unblushing, hardened, sensual, and vile ; 
 Dead to all love but of its abjectness, 
 With heart impassive by more noble powers 
 Than unshared pleasure, sordid gain, or fame ; 
 
V. $UEEN MAB. 61 
 
 Despising its own miserable being, 
 
 Which still it longs, yet fears to disenthrall. 
 
 Hence commerce springs, the venal interchange 
 
 Of all that human art or nature yield ; 
 
 Which wealth should purchase not, but want demand, 
 
 And natural kindness hasten to supply 
 
 From the full fountain of its boundless love, 
 
 For ever stifled, drained, and tainted now. 
 
 Commerce ! beneath whose poison-breathing shade 
 
 No solitary virtue dares to spring, 
 
 But poverty and wealth with equal hand 
 
 Scatter their withering curses, and unfold 
 
 The doors of premature and violent death, 
 
 To pining famine and full-fed disease, • 
 
 To all that shares the lot of human life, 
 
 Which poisoned body and soul, scarce drags the chain. 
 
 That lengthens as it goes and clanks behind. 
 
 Commerce has set the mark of selfishness, 
 The signet of its all-enslaving p«wer 
 Upon a shining tre, and called it gtldl : 
 
62 QUEEN MAB. 
 
 Before whose image bow the vulgar great, 
 The vainly rich, the miserable proud, 
 The mob of peasants, nobles, priests, and kings. 
 And with blind feelings reverence the power 
 That grinds them to the dust of misery. 
 But in the temple of their hireling hearts 
 Gold is a living god, and rules in scorn 
 All earthly things but virtue. 
 
 Since tyrants, by the sale of human life, 
 Heap luxuries to their sensualism, and fame 
 To their wide-wasting and insatiate pride, 
 Success has sanctioned to a credulous world 
 The ruin, the disgrace, the woe of war. 
 His hosts of blind and unresisting dupes 
 The despot numbers ; from his cabinet 
 These puppets of his schemes he moves at will, 
 Even as the slaves by force or famine driven, 
 Beneath a vulgar master, to perform 
 A task of cold and brutal drudgery ; — 
 Hardened to hope, insensible to fear, 
 Scarce living pullies of a dead machine. 
 
V. QUEEN MAB. 63 
 
 Mere wheels of work and articles of trade, 
 That grace the proud and noisy pomp of wealth I 
 
 The harmony and happiness of man 
 
 Yields to the wealth of nations ; that which lifts 
 
 His nature to the heaven of its pride, 
 
 Is bartered for the poison of his soul ; 
 
 The weight that drags to earth his towering hopes, 
 
 Blighting all prospect but of selfish gain, 
 
 Withering all passion but of slavish fear, 
 
 Extinguishing all free and generous love 
 
 Of enterprize and daring, even the pulse 
 
 That fancy kindles in the beating heart 
 
 To mingle with sensation, it destroys, — 
 
 Leaves nothing but the sordid lust of self, 
 
 The groveling hope of interest and gold, 
 
 Unqualified, unmingled, unredeemed - 
 
 Even by hypocrisy. 
 
 And statesmen boast 
 Of wealth ! The wordy eloquence that lives 
 After the ruin of their hearts, can gild 
 
64 QUEEN MAB. 
 
 The bitter poison of a nation's woe, 
 
 Can turn the worship of the servile mob 
 
 To their corrupt and glaring idol fame, 
 
 From virtue, trampled by its iron tread, 
 
 Although its dazzling pedestal be raised 
 
 Amid the horrors of a limb-strewn field, 
 
 With desolated dwellings smoking round. 
 
 The man of ease, who, by his warm fire-side, 
 
 To deeds of charitable intercouf se 
 
 And bare fulfilment of the common laws 
 
 Of decency and prejudice, confines 
 
 The struggling nature of his human heart, 
 
 Is duped by their cold sophistry ; he sheds 
 
 A passing tear perchance upon the wreck 
 
 Of earthly peace, when near his dwelling's door 
 
 The frightful waves are driven, — when his son 
 
 Is murdered by the tyrant, or religion 
 
 Drives his wife raving mad. But the poor man, 
 
 Whose life is misery, and fear, and care ; 
 
 Whom the morn wakens but to fruitless toil ; 
 
 Who ever hears his famished offsprings scream, 
 
 Whom their pale mother's uncomplaining gaze 
 
V. QUEEN MAB. 65 
 
 For ever meets, and the proud rich man's eye 
 Flashing command, and the heart-breaking scene 
 Of thousands like himself; — he little heeds 
 The rhetoric of tyranny; his hate 
 Is quenchless as his wrongs ; he laughs to scorn 
 The vain and bitter mockery of words, 
 Feeling the horror of the tyrant's deeds, 
 And unrestrained but by the arm of power, 
 That knows and dreads *his enmity. 
 
 The iron rod of penury still compels 
 Her wretched slave to bow the knee to wealth, 
 And poison, with unprofitable toil, 
 A life too void of solace to confirm 
 The very chains that bind him to his doom. 
 Nature, impartial in munificence, 
 Has gifted man with all-subduing will. 
 Matter, with all its transitory shapes, 
 Lies subjected and plastic at his feet, 
 That, weak from bondage, tremble as they tread. 
 How many a rustic Milton has past by, { 
 
 Stifling the speechless longings of his heart, ,, 
 I 
 
66 QUEEN MAE. 
 
 In unremitting drudgery and care '. 
 How many a vulgar Cato has compelled 
 His energies, no longer tameless then, 
 To mould a pin, or fabricate a nail ! 
 How many a Newton, to whose passive ken 
 Those mighty spheres that gem infinity 
 Were only specks of tinsel, fixed in heaven 
 To light the midnights of his native town ! 
 
 Yet every heart contains perfection's germ : 
 
 The wisest of the sages of the earth. 
 
 That ever from the stores of reason drew 
 
 Science and truth, and virtue's dreadless tone, 
 
 Were but a weak and inexperienced boy, 
 
 Proud, sensual, unimpassioned, unimbued 
 
 With pure desire and universal love, 
 
 Compared to that high being, of cloudless brain, 
 
 Untainted passion, elevated will, 
 
 Which death (who even would linger long in awe 
 
 Within his noble presence, and beneath 
 
 His changeless eyebeam,) might alone subdue. 
 
 Him, every slave now dragging through the filth 
 
V. SUEEN MAB* ft 67 
 
 Of some corrupted city his sad life, 
 Pining with famine, swoln with luxury > 
 Bl anting the keenness of his spiritual sense 
 With narrow schemings and unworthy cares, 
 Or madly rushing through all violent crime, 
 To move the deep stagnation of his soul, — 
 Might imitate and equal. 
 
 But mean lust 
 Has bound its chains so tight around the earth, 
 That all within it but the virtuous man 
 Is venal : gold or fame will surely reach 
 The price prefixed by selfishness, to all 
 But him of resolute and unchanging will ; 
 Whom, nor the plaudits of a servile crowd, 
 Nor the vile joys of tainting luxury, 
 Can bribe to yield his elevated soul 
 To tyranny or falshood, though they wield 
 With blood-red hand the sceptre of the world. 
 
 All things are sold : the very light of heaven 
 I • venal ; earth's unsparing gifts of love, 
 
t$8 QUEEN M Am V. 
 
 The smallest and most 'despicable things 
 
 That lurk in the .abysses 'of the deep, 
 
 AH objects of our life, even life itself, 
 
 And the poor pittance which the laws allosy 
 
 Of liberty,. th^ fellowship of man, 
 
 Those duties which his heart of human love 
 
 Should urge him to perform instinctively, 
 
 Are bought and sold as in a public mart 
 
 Of undisguising selfishness, that sets 
 
 On each its price, the stamp-mark of her reign. 
 
 Even love is sold ; the solace of all woe 
 
 Is turned to deadliest agony, old age 
 
 Shivers in selfish beauty's loathing arms, 
 
 And youth's corrupted impulses prepare 
 
 A life of horror from the blighting bane 
 
 Of commerce ; whilst the pestilence that springs 
 
 From unenjoying sensualism, has filled 
 
 All human life with hydra-headed woes. 
 
 Falshood demands but gold to pay the pangs 
 Of outraged conscience; for the slavish priest 
 Sets no great value on his hireling faith : 
 
V. QUEEN M A B. §f 
 
 A little passing pomp, some servile souls, 
 
 Whom cowardice itself might safely chain, 
 
 Or the spare mite of avarice could bribe 
 
 To deck (he triumph of their languid zeal, - 
 
 Can make him minister to tyranny. 
 
 More daring crime requires a loftier meed : 
 
 Without a shudder, the slave-soldier lends 
 
 His arm to murderous deeds, and steels his heart. 
 
 When the dread eloquence of dying men, ' 
 
 Low mingling on the lonely field Of fame, 
 
 Assails that nature, whose applause he sells 
 
 For the gross blessings of a patriot mob, 
 
 For the vile gratitude of heartless kings, 
 
 And for a cold world's good word,- — viler still ! 
 
 There is a nobler glory, which survives 
 Until our being fades, and, solacing 
 All human care, accompanies its change • 
 Deserts not virtue in the dungeon's gloom, 
 And, in the precincts of the palace, guides 
 Its footsteps through that labyrinth of crime ; 
 ImbueS his lineaments with 4auntles*ness f 
 
 
70 QUEEN MAB. V. 
 
 Even when, from power's avenging hand, he takes 
 Its sweetest, last and noblest title — death ; 
 — The consciousness of good, which neither gold, 
 Nor sordid fame, nor hope of heavenly bliss, 
 Can purchase ; but a life of resolute good, 
 Unalterable will, quenchless desire 
 Of universal happiness, the heart 
 That beats with it in unison, the brain, 
 Whose ever wakeful wisdom toils to change 
 Reason's rich stores for its eternal weal. 
 
 This commerce of sincerest virtue needs 
 ]$o mediative signs of selfishness, 
 No jealous intercourse of wretched gain, 
 No balancings of prudence, cold and long ; 
 In just and equal measure all is weighed, 
 One scale contains the sum of human weal, 
 And one, the good man's heart. 
 
 How vainly seek 
 The selfish for that happiness denied 
 To aught but virtue ! Blind and hardened, they, 
 
 t--i*i*L 
 
V. QUEEN MAB. 71 
 
 Who hope for peace amid the storms of care, 
 Who covet power they know not how to use, 
 And sigh for pleasure they refuse to give,— 
 Madly they frustrate still their own designs ; 
 And, where they hope that quiet to enjoy 
 Which virtue pictures, bitterness of soul, 
 Pining regrets, and vain repentances, 
 Disease, disgust, and lassitude, pervade 
 Their valueless and miserable lives. 
 
 But hoary -headed selfishness has felt 
 
 Its death-blow, and is tottering to the grave : 
 
 A brighter morn awaits the human day, 
 
 When every transfer of earth's natural gifts 
 
 Shall be a commerce of good words and works ; 
 
 When poverty and wealth, the thirst of fame, 
 
 The fear of infamy, disease and woe, 
 
 War with its million horrors, and fierce hell 
 
 Shall live but in the memory of time, 
 
 Who, like a penitent libertine, shall start, 
 
 Look back, and shudder at his younger years. 
 

VI. QtTSEN MAB. 73 
 
 VI. 
 
 All touch, all eye, all ear, 
 The Spirit felt the Fairy's burning speech. 
 
 O'er the thin texture of its frame, 
 The varying periods painted changing glows, 
 
 As on a summer eTen, 
 When soul-enfolding music floats around, 
 The stainless mirror of the lake 
 Re-images the eastern gloom, 
 Mingling convulsively its purple hues 
 With sunset's burnished gold. 
 
 Then thus the Spirit spoke : 
 It is a wild and miserable world ! 
 
 Thorny, and full of care, 
 Which every fiend can make his prey at will. 
 O Fairy '. in the lapse of years, 
 
 Is there no hope in store ? 
 
 Will yon vast suns roll on 
 
74 QUEEN MAB. VI. 
 
 Interminably, still illuming 
 
 The night of so many wretched souls. 
 And see no hope for them ? 
 Will not the universal Spirit e'er 
 Revivify this withered limb of Heaven ? 
 
 The Fairy calmly smiled 
 In comfort, and a kindling gleam of hope 
 
 Suffused the Spirit's lineaments. 
 Oh! rest thee tranquil ; chase those fearful doubts, 
 Which ne'er could rack an everlasting soul, 
 That sees the chains which bind it to its doom. 
 Yes ! crime and misery are in yonder earth. 
 
 Falshood, mistake, and lust ; 
 
 But the eternal world 
 Contains at once the evil and the cure* 
 Some eminent in virtue shall start up, 
 
 Even in perversest time : 
 The truths of their pure lips, that never die, 
 Shall bind the scorpion falshood with a wreath 
 
 Of ever-living, flame, 
 Until the monster sting itself to death. 
 
VI. QUEEN MAB. f!) 
 
 How sweet a scene will earth become ! 
 Of purest spirits, a pure dwelling-place, 
 Symphonious with the planetary spheres ; 
 When man, with changeless nature coalescing, 
 Will undertake regeneration's work, 
 When its ungenial poles no longer point 
 
 To the red and baleful sun 
 
 That faintly twinkles there. 
 
 Spirit ! on yonder earth, 
 Falshood now triumphs ; deadly power 
 Has fixed its seal upon the lip of truth ! 
 
 Madness and misery are there ! 
 The happiest is most wretched ! Yet confide, 
 Until pure health-drops, from the cup of joy, 
 Fall like a dew of balm upon the world. 
 Now, to the scene I shew, in silence turn, 
 And read the blood-stained charter of all woe, 
 Which nature soon, with recreating hand, 
 Will blot in mercy from the book of earth. 
 How bold the flight of passion's wandering wing, 
 How swift the step of reason'* firmer tread, 
 
76 QUJSEN MAB. VI. 
 
 How calm and sweet the victories of life, 
 
 How terrorless the triumph of the grave ! 
 
 How powerless were the mightiest monarch's arm, 
 
 Vain his loud threat, and impotent his frown ! 
 
 How ludicrous the priest's dogmatic roar ! 
 
 The weight of his exterminating curse, 
 
 How light ! and his affected charity, 
 
 To suit the pressure of the changing times, 
 
 What palpable deceit ! — but for thy aid, 
 
 Religion ! but for thee, prolific fiend, 
 
 Who peoplest earth with demons, hell with men, 
 
 And heaven with slaves ! 
 
 , i 
 Thou taintest all thou lookest upon '.—the stars, 
 Which on thy cradle beamed so brightly sweet, 
 Were gods to the distempered playfulness 
 Of thy untutored infancy : the trees, 
 The grass, the Clouds, the mountains, and the sea, 
 All living things that walk, swim, creep, or fly, 
 Were gods : the sun had homage, and the moon 
 Her worshipper. Then thou becamest, a boy, 
 More daring in -thy frenzies : every shape, I - 
 
VI. QUEEN MAE. 77 
 
 Monstrous or vast, or beautifully wild, 
 Which, from sensation's relics, fancy culls ; 
 The spirits of the air, the shuddering ghost, ' 
 The genii of the elements, the powers 
 That give a'shape to nature's varied works, 
 Had life and place in the corrupt belief 
 Of thy blind heart : yet still thy youthful hands 
 Were pure of human blood. Then manhood gave 
 Its strength and ardour to thy frenzied brain ; 
 Thine eager gaze scanned the stupendous scene, 
 Whose wonders mocked the knowledge of thy pride : 
 Their everlasting and unchanging laws 
 Reproached thine ignorance. Awhile thou stoodst 
 Baffled and gloomy ; then thou didst sum up 
 The elements of all that thou didst know ; 
 The changing seasons, winter's leafless reign, 
 The budding of the heaven-breathing trees, 
 The eternal orbs that beautify the night, 
 The sun-rise, and the setting of the moon, 
 Earthquakes and wars, and poisons and disease, 
 And all their causes, to an abstract point, 
 Converging, thou didst bend, and called it God ! 
 
78 ^tJEEN MAB. VL 
 
 The self-sufficing, the omnipotent, 
 
 The merciful, and the avenging God ! 
 
 Who, prototype of human misrule, sits 
 
 High in heaven's realm, upon a golden throne, 
 
 Even like an earthly king ; and whose dread work, 
 
 Hell, gapes forever for the unhappy slaves 
 
 Of fate, whom he created in his sport, 
 
 To triumph in their torments when they fell I 
 
 fcarth heard the name ; earth trembled, as the smoke 
 
 Of his revenge ascended up to heaven, 
 
 Blotting the constellations ; and the cries 
 
 Of millions, butchered in sweet confidence 
 
 And unsuspecting peace, even when the bonds 
 
 Of safety were confirmed by wordy oaths 
 
 Sworn in his dreadful name, rung through the land ; 
 
 Whilst innocent babes writhed on thy stubborn spear, 
 
 And thou didst laugh to hear the mother's shriek 
 
 Of maniac gladness, as the sacred steel 
 
 Felt cold in her torn entrails ! 
 
 Religion ! thou wert then in manhood's prime : 
 But age crept on : one God would not suffice 
 
VI* QUEEN MAB. 79 
 
 For senile puerility ; thou framedst 
 
 A tale to suit thy dotage, and to glut 
 
 Thy misery-thirsting soul, that the mad fiend 
 
 Thy wickedness had pictured, might afford 
 
 A plea for sating the unnatural thirst 
 
 For murder, rapine, violence, and crime. 
 
 That still consumed thy being, even when 
 
 Thou heardst the step of fate ; — that flames might light 
 
 Thy funeral scene, and the shrill horrent shrieks 
 
 Of parents dying on the pile that burned 
 
 To light their children to thy paths, the roar 
 
 Of the encircling flames, the exulting cries 
 
 Of thine apostles, loud commingling there, 
 
 Might sate thine hungry ear 
 
 Even on the bed of death 1 
 
 But now contempt is mocking thy grey hairs ; 
 Thou art descending to the darksome grave, 
 Unhonored and unpitied, but by those 
 Whose pride is passing by like thine, and sheds, 
 Like thine, a glare that fades before the sun 
 
80 $UEEN MAB. VI. 
 
 Of truth, and shines but in the dreadful night 
 That long has lowered above the ruined world. 
 
 / 
 Throughout these infinite orbs of mingling light, 
 
 .Of which you earth is one, is wide diffused 
 
 A spirit of activity and life, 
 
 That knows no term, cessation, or decay ; 
 
 That fades not when the lamp of earthly life, 
 
 Extinguished in the dampness of the grave, 
 
 Awhile there slumbers, more than when the babe 
 
 In the dim newness of its being feels 
 
 The impulses of sublunary things, 
 
 And all is wonder to unpractised sense : 
 
 But, active, stedfast, and eternal, still 
 
 Guides the fierce whirlwind, in the tempest roars, 
 
 Cheers in the day, breathes in the balmy groves, 
 
 Strengthens in health, and poisons in disease ; 
 
 And in the storm of change, that ceaselessly 
 
 Rolls round the eternal universe, and shakes 
 
 Its undecaying battlement, presides, 
 
 Apportioning with irresistible law 
 
VI. QUEEN MAE. 81 
 
 The place each, spring of its machine shall fill ; 
 
 So that, when waves on waves tumultuous heap 
 
 Confusion to the clouds, and fiercely driven 
 
 Heaven's lightnings scorch the uprooted ocean-fords, 
 
 Whilst, to the eye of shipwrecked mariner, 
 
 Lone sitting on the bare and shuddering rock, 
 
 All seems unlinked contingency and chance : 
 
 No atom of this turbulence fulfils 
 
 A vague and unnecessitated task, 
 
 Or acts but as it must and ought to act. 
 
 Even the minutest molecule of light, 
 
 That in an April sunbeam's fleeting glow 
 
 Fulfills its destined, though invisible work, 
 
 The universal Spirit guides ; nor less, 
 
 When merciless ambition, or mad zeal, 
 
 Has led two hosts of dupes to battle-field, 
 
 That, blind, they there may dig each other's graves, 
 
 And call the sad work glory, does it rule 
 
 All passions : not a thought, a will, an act, 
 
 No working of the tyrant's moody mind, 
 
 Nor one misgiving of the slaves who boast 
 
 Their servitude, to hide the shame they feel, 
 
 G 
 
3$ QUEEN MAB. VL 
 
 Nor the events enchaining every will, 
 That from the depths of unrecorded time 
 Have drawn all-influencing virtue, pass 
 Unrecognised, or unforeseen by thee, 
 Soul of the Universe ! eternal spring 
 Of life and death, of happiness and woe, 
 Of all that chequers the phantasmal scene 
 That floats before our eyes in wavering light, 
 Which gleams but on the darkness of our prison, 
 
 "Whose chains and massy walls 
 
 We feel, but cannot see. 
 
 Spirit of Nature \ all-sufficing Power, 
 Necessity ! thou mother of the world ! 
 Unlike the God of human error, thou 
 Requirest no prayers or praises ; the caprice 
 Of man's weak will belongs no more to thee 
 Than do the changeful passions of his breast 
 To thy unvarying harmony : the slave, 
 Whose horrible lusts spread misery o'er the world, 
 And the good man, who lifts, with virtuous pride, 
 His being, ia the sight of happiness, 
 
VI. QUEEN MAS. 83 
 
 That springs from his own works ; the poison-tree, 
 
 Beneath whose shade all life is withered up, 
 
 And the fair oak, whose leafy dome affords 
 
 A temple where the vows of happy love 
 
 Are registered, are equal in thy sight : 
 
 No love, no hate thou cherishest ; revenge 
 
 And favoritism, and worst desire of fame 
 
 Thou knowest not : all that the wide world contains 
 
 Are but thy passive instruments, and thou 
 
 Regardst them all with an impartial eye, 
 
 Whose joy or pain thy nature cannot feel, 
 
 Because thou hast not human sense, 
 
 Because thou art not human mind. 
 
 Yes ! when the sweeping storm of time 
 Has sung its death-dirge o'er tjie ruined fanes 
 And broken altars of the almighty fiend, 
 Whose name usurps thy honors, and the blood 
 Through centuries clotted there, has floated dowa 
 The tainted flood of ages, shalt thou live 
 Unchangeable ! A shrine is raised to thee, 
 
 Which, nor the tempest breath of time, 
 
84 QUEEN MAB. VI. 
 
 Nor the interminable flood, 
 
 Over earth's slight pageant rolling, 
 Availeth to destroy, — 
 The sensitive extension of the world. 
 
 That wouderous and eternal fane, 
 Where pain and pleasure, good and evil join, 
 To do the will of strong necessity, 
 
 And life, in multitudinous shapes, 
 Still pressing forward where no term can be, 
 
 Like hungry and unresting flame 
 Curls round the eternal columns of its strength. 
 
VII. QUEEN MAB. 85 
 
 VII, 
 
 SPIRIT. 
 
 I was an infant when my mother went 
 
 To see an atheist burned. She took me there : 
 
 The dark-robed priests were met around the pile ; 
 
 The multitude was gazing silently ; 
 
 And as the culprit passed with dauntless mien, 
 
 Tempered disdain in his unaltering eye, 
 
 Mixed with a quiet smile, shone calmly forth : 
 
 The thirsty fire crept round his manly limbs ; 
 
 His resolute eyes were scorched to blindness soon ; 
 
 His death-pang rent my heart ! the insensate mob 
 
 Uttered a cry of triumph, and I wept. 
 
 Weep not, child ! cried my mother, for that man 
 
 Has said, There is no God. 
 
 FAIRY. 
 
 There is no God! 
 Nature confirms the faith his death-groan sealed : 
 
86 ^TJEfcN MAB. VII. 
 
 Let heaven and earth, let man's revolving race, 
 His ceaseless generations tell their tale ; 
 Let every part depending on the chain 
 That links it to the whole, point to the hand 
 That grasps its term ! let every seed that falls 
 In silent eloquence unfold its store 
 Of argument : infinity within, 
 Infinity without, belie creation ; 
 The exterminable spirit it contains 
 Is nature's only God ; but human pride 
 Is skilful to invent most serious names 
 To hide its ignorance. 
 
 The name of God 
 Has fenced about all crime with holiness, 
 Himself the creature ©f his worshippers, 
 Whose names and attributes and passions change, 
 Seeva, Buddh, Foh, Jehovah^ God, or Lord, 
 Even with the human dupes who build his shrines, 
 Still serving o'er the war-polluted world 
 For desolation's watch-word ; whether hosts 
 Stain Ms death-blushing chariot wheels, as on 
 
VII. SttEEff MA.fi. £ 
 
 Triumphantly they roll, whilst Brahmins raise 
 
 A sacred hymn to mingle with the groans ; 
 
 Or countless partners of his power divide 
 
 His tyranny to weakness ; or the smoke 
 
 Of burning towns, the cries of female helplessness, 
 
 Unarmed old age, and youth, and infancy, 
 
 Horribly massacred, ascend to heaven 
 
 In honor of his name ; or, last and worst, 
 
 Earth groans beneath religion's iron age, 
 
 And priests dare babble of a God of peace, 
 
 Even whilst their hands are red with guiltless blood, 
 
 Murdering the while, uprooting every germ 
 
 Of truth, exterminating, spoiling all, 
 
 Making the earth a slaughter-house ! 
 
 O Spirit ! through the sense 
 By which thy inner nature was apprised 
 
 Of outward shews, vague dreams have rolled, 
 And varied reminiscences have waked 
 
 Tablets that never fade ; 
 All things have been imprinted there, 
 The stars, the sea, the earth, the sky, 
 
88 QUEEN MAB. VII. 
 
 Even the unshapeliest lineaments 
 Of wild and fleeting visions 
 Have left a record there 
 To testify of earth. 
 
 These are my empire, for to me is given 
 The wonders of the human world to keep, 
 And fancy's thin creations to endow 
 With manner, being, and reality ; 
 Therefore a wondrous phantom, from the dreams 
 Of human error's dense and purblind faith, 
 I will evoke, to meet thy questioning. 
 Ahasuerus, rise ! 
 
 A strange and woe-worn wight 
 Arose beside the battlement, 
 
 And stood unmoving there. 
 His inessential figure cast no shade 
 
 Upon the golden floor ; 
 His port and mien bore mark of many years, 
 And chronicles of untold aneientness 
 Were legible within his beamless eye : 
 
VII. QUEEN MAB. I 
 
 Yet his cheek bore the mark of youth ; 
 Freshness and vigor knit his manly frame ; 
 The wisdom of old age was mingled there 
 
 With youth's primaeval dauntlessness ; 
 And inexpressible woe, 
 Chastened by fearless resignation, gave 
 An awful grace to his all-speaking brow. 
 
 SPIRIT. 
 
 Is there a God? 
 
 AHASUERUS. 
 
 Is there a God ! — aye, an almighty God, 
 And vengeful as almighty ! Once his voice 
 Was heard on earth : earth shuddered at the sound ; 
 The fiery-visaged firmament expressed 
 Abhorrence, and the grave of nature yawned 
 To swallow all the dauntless and the good 
 That dared to hurl defiance at his throne, 
 Girt as it was with power. None but slaves 
 Survived,— cold-blooded slaves, who did the work 
 Of tyrannous omnipotence ; whose souls 
 
90 QUEEN MAB. VII. 
 
 No honest indignation ever urged 
 To elevated daring, to one deed 
 Which gross and sensual self did not pollute. 
 These slaves built temples for the omnipotent fiend. 
 Gorgeous and vast : the costly altars smoked 
 With human blood, and hideous paeans rung 
 Through all the long-drawn aisles. A murderer heard 
 His voice in Egypt, one whose gifts and arts 
 Had raised him to his eminence in power, 
 Accomplice of omnipotence in crime, 
 And confidant of the all-knowing one. 
 These were Jehovah's words. 
 
 From an eternity of idleness 
 
 I, God, awoke ; in seven days' toil made earth 
 
 From nothing ; rested, and created man : 
 
 I placed him in a paradise, and there 
 
 Planted the tree of evil, so that he 
 
 Might eat and perish, and my soul procure 
 
 Wherewith to sate its malice, and to turn, 
 
 Even like a heartless conqueror of the earth, 
 
 All misery to my feme. The race of men 
 
VII. QUEEN MAB. 91 
 
 Chosen to my honor, with impunity 
 May sate the lusts I planted in their heart. 
 Here I command thee hence to lead them on, 
 Until, with hardened feet, their conquering troops 
 Wade on the promised soil through woman's blood, 
 And make my name be dreaded through the land. 
 Yet ever burning flame and ceaseless woe 
 Shall be the doom of their eternal souls, 
 With every soul on this ungrateful earth, 
 Virtuous or vicious, weak or strong, — even all 
 Shall perish, to fulfill the blind revenge 
 (Which you, to men, call justice) of their God. 
 
 The murderer's brow 
 Quivered with horror. 
 
 God omnipotent, 
 Is there no mercy ? must our punishment 
 Be endless ? will long ages roll away, 
 And see no term ? Oh ! wherefore hast thou mad? 
 In mockery and wrath this evil earth ? 
 
9*2 QUEEN MAB. VII. 
 
 Mercy becomes the powerful- — be but just : 
 
 God ! repent and save. 
 
 - • One way remains : 
 
 1 will beget a son, and he shall bear 
 The sins of all the world ; he shall arise 
 In an unnoticed corner of the earth, 
 
 And there shall die upon a cross, and purge 
 
 The universal crime : so that the few 
 
 On whom my grace descends^ those who are marked 
 
 As vessels to the honor of their God, 
 
 May credit this strange sacrifice, and save 
 
 Their souls alive : millions shall live and die, 
 
 Who ne'er shall call upon their Saviour's name, 
 
 But, unredeemed, go to the gaping grave. 
 
 Thousands shall deem it an old woman's tale, 
 
 Such as the nurses frighten babes withal: 
 
 These in a gulph of anguish and of flame 
 
 Shall curse their reprobation endlessly, 
 
 Yet tenfold pangs shall force them to avow, 
 
 Even on their beds of tprraent, where they howl. 
 
VII. QUEEN MAB. $•* 
 
 My honor, and the justice of their doom. 
 
 What then avail their virtuous deeds, their thoughts 
 
 Of purity, with radiant genius bright, 
 
 Or lit with human reason's earthly ray ? 
 
 Many are called, but few will I elect. 
 
 Do thou my bidding, Moses ! 
 
 Even the murderer's cheek 
 Was blanched with horror, and his quivering lips 
 Scarce faintly uttered — O almighty one, 
 
 I tremble and obey ! 
 
 t 
 
 O Spirit ! centuries have set their seal 
 
 On this heart of many wounds, and loaded brain, 
 
 Since the Incarnate came : humbly he came, 
 
 Veiling his horrible Godhead in the shape 
 
 Of man, scorned by the world, his name unheard, 
 
 Save by the rabble of his native town, 
 
 Even as a parish demagogue. He led 
 
 The crowd ; he taught them justice, truth, and peace. 
 
 In semblance ; but he lit within their souls 
 
 The quenchless flames of zeal, and blest the sword 
 
94 (frUEEN MAB. VII. 
 
 He brought on earth to satiate with the blood 
 Of truth and freedom his malignant soul. 
 At length his mortal frame was led to death. 
 I stood beside him : an the torturing cross 
 No pain assailed his unterrestrial sense § 
 And yet he groaned. Indignantly I summed 
 The massacres and miseries which his name 
 Had sanctioned in my country, and I cried, 
 Go 1 go ! in mockery. 
 A smile of godlike malice reillumined 
 His fading lineaments. — I go, he cried, 
 But thou shalt wander o'er the unquiet earth 
 
 Eternally. The dampness of the grave 
 
 Bathed my imperishable front. I fell, 
 And long lay tranced upon the charmed soil. 
 When I awoke hell burned within my brain, 
 Which staggered on its seat ; for all around 
 The mouldering relics of my kindred lay, 
 Even as the Almighty's ire arrested them, 
 And in their various attitudes of death 
 My murdered children's mute and eyeless sculls 
 Glared ghastily upon me. 
 
VII. QUEEN MAfi. Qo 
 
 But my soul, 
 From, sight and sense of the polluting woe 
 Of tyranny, had long learned to prefer 
 Hell's freedom to the servitude of heaven. 
 Therefore I rose, and dauntlessly began 
 My lonely and unending pilgrimage, 
 Resolved to wage unweariable war 
 With my almighty tyrant, and to hurl 
 Defiance at his impotence to harm 
 Beyond the curse I bore. The very hand 
 That barred my passage to the peaceful grave 
 Has crushed the earth to misery, and given 
 Its empire to the chosen of his slaves. 
 These have I seen, even from the earliest dawn 
 Of weak, unstable and precarious power ; 
 Then preaching peace, as now they practise war, 
 So, when they turned but from the massacre 
 Of unoffending infidels, to quench 
 Their thirst for ruin in the very blood 
 That flowed in their own veins, and pityless zeal 
 Froze every human feeling, as the wife 
 Sheathed in her husband's heart the sacred steel, 
 
96 QUEEN MA'B. VII. 
 
 Even whilst its hopes were dreaming of her love ; 
 And friends to friends, brothers to brothers stood 
 Opposed in bloodiest battle-field, and war, 
 Scarce satiable by fate's last death-draught waged, 
 Drunk from the winepress of the Almighty's wrath ; 
 Whilst the red cross, in mockery of peace, 
 Pointed to victory ! When the fray was done, 
 No remnant of the exterminated faith 
 Survived to tell its ruin, but the flesh, 
 With putrid smoke poisoning the atmosphere, 
 That rotted on the half-extinguished pile. 
 
 Yes ! I have seen God's worshippers unsheathe 
 The sword of his revenge, when grace descended, 
 Confirming all unnatural impulses, 
 To sauCtify their desolating deeds ; 
 And frantic priests waved the ill-omened cross 
 O'er the unhappy earth : then shone the sun 
 On showers of gore from the upfiashing steel 
 Of safe assassination, and all crime 
 Made stingless by the spirits of the Lord, 
 And blood-red rainbows canopied the land. 
 
VII. QUEEN MAB. 97 
 
 Spirit ! no year of my eventful being 
 
 Has passed unstained by crime and misery, 
 
 Which flows from God's own faith. I've marked his 
 
 slaves 
 With tongues whose lies are venomous, beguile 
 The insensate mob, and, whilst one hand was red 
 With murder, feign to stretch the other out 
 For brotherhood and peace ; and that they now 
 Babble of love and mercy, whilst their deeds 
 Are marked with all the narrowness and crime 
 That freedom's young arm dare not yet chastise, 
 Reason may claim our gratitude, who now 
 Establishing the imperishable throne 
 Of truth, and stubborn virtue, maketh vain 
 The unprevailing malice of my foe, 
 Whose bootless rage heaps torments for the brave, 
 Adds impotent eternities to pain, 
 Whilst keenest disappointment racks his breast 
 To see the smiles of peace around them play, 
 To frustrate or to sanctify their doom. 
 
 Thus have I stood, — through a wild waste of years 
 
 H 
 
98 QUEEN MAB. VII. 
 
 Struggling with whirlwinds of mad agony, 
 Yet peaceful, and serene, and self-enshrined, 
 Mocking my powerless tyrant's horrible curse 
 With stubborn and unalterable will, 
 Even as a giant oak, which heaven's fierce flame 
 Had scathed in the wilderness, to stand 
 A monument of fadeless ruin there ; 
 Yet peacefully and movelessly it braves 
 The midnight conflict of the wintry storm. 
 
 As in the sun-light's calm it spreads 
 
 Its worn and withered arms on high 
 To meet the quiet of a summer's noon. 
 
 The Fairy waved her wand : 
 Ahasuerus fled 
 Fast as the shapes of mingled shade and mist, 
 That lurk in the glens of a twilight grove, 
 Flee from the morning beam : 
 The matter of which dreams are made 
 Not more endowed with actual life 
 Than this phantasmal portraiture 
 Of •wandering human thought. 
 
VIII. QUEEN MA B, 99 
 
 VIII. 
 
 1 he present and the past thou hast beheld : 
 It was a desolate sight. Now, Spirit, learn 
 
 The secrets of the future. — Time ! 
 Unfold the brooding pinion of thy gloom, 
 Render thou up thy half-deToured babes, 
 And from the cradles of eternity, 
 Where millions lie lulled to their portioned sleep 
 By the deep murmuring stream of passing things, 
 Tear thou that gloomy shroud. — Spirit, behold 
 Thy glorious destiny ! 
 
 Joy to the Spirit came. 
 Through the wide rent in Time's eternal veil, 
 Hope was seen beaming through the mists of fear 
 
 Earth was nd longer hell ; 
 
 Love, freedom, health, had given 
 Their ripeness to the* manhood of its prime, 
 
100 QUEEN MAE. VIII. 
 
 And all its pulses beat 
 Symphonic us to the planetary spheres : 
 
 Then dulcet music swelled 
 Concordant with the life-strings "of the soul ; 
 It throbbed in sweet and languid beatings there, 
 Catching new life from transitory death, — 
 Like the vague sighings of a wind at even, 
 That wakes the wavelets of the slumbering sea 
 And dies on the creation of its breath, 
 And sinks and rises, fails and swells by fits : 
 Was the pure stream of feeling 
 That sprung from these sweet notes, 
 And o'er the Spirit's human sympathies 
 With mild and gentle motion calmly flowed. 
 
 Joy to the Spirit came, — 
 Such joy as when a lover sees 
 The chosen of his soul in happiness, 
 
 And witnesses her peace 
 Whose woe to him were bitterer than death. 
 
 Sees her unfaded cheek 
 Glow mantling in first luxury of health, 
 
VIII. QUEEN MAP. 101 
 
 Thrills with her lovely eyes, 
 
 Which like two stars amid the heaving main 
 
 Sparkle through liquid bliss. 
 
 Then in her triumph spoke the Fairy Queen : 
 
 I wiU not call the ghost of ages gone 
 
 To unfold the frightful secrets of its lore ; 
 
 The present now is past. 
 And those events that desolate the earth 
 Have faded from the memory of Time, 
 Who dares not give reality to that 
 Whose being I annul. To me is given 
 The wonders of the human world to keep, 
 Space, matter, time, and mind. Futurity 
 Exposes now its treasure ; let the sight 
 Renew and strengthen all thy failing hope. 
 O human Spirit ! spur thee to the goal 
 Where virtue fixes universal peace, 
 And midst the ebb and flow of human things, 
 Shew somewhat stable, somewhat certain still, 
 A lighthouse o'er the wild of dreary waves. 
 
102 QUfiEN MAB. VIII. 
 
 The habitable earth is full of bliss ; 
 
 Those wastes of frozen billows that were hurled 
 
 By everlasting snow-storms round the poles, 
 
 Where matter dared not vegetate or live, 
 
 But ceaseless frost round the vast solitude 
 
 Bound its broad zone of stillness, are unloosed ; 
 
 And fragrant zephyrs there from spicy isles 
 
 Ruffle the placid ocean-deep, that rolls 
 
 Its broad, bright surges to the sloping sand, 
 
 Whose roar is wakened into echoings sweet 
 
 To murmur through the heaven-breathing groves 
 
 And melodize with man's blest nature there. 
 
 Those deserts of immeasurable sand, 
 
 Whose age-collected fervors scarce allowed 
 
 A bird to live, a blade of grass to spring, 
 
 Where the shrill chirp of the green lizard's love 
 
 Broke on the sultry silentness alone, 
 
 Now teem with countless rills and shady woods, 
 
 Corn-fields and pastures and white cottages ; 
 
 And where the startled wilderness beheld 
 
 A savage conqueror stained in kindred blood, 
 
VIII. QUEEN MAB. 103 
 
 A tygress sating with the flesh of lambs, 
 
 The unnatural famine of her toothless cubs, 
 
 Whilst shouts and howlings through the desert rang, 
 
 Sloping and smooth the daisy-spangled lawn, 
 
 Offering sweet incense to the sun-rise, smiles 
 
 To see a babe before his mother's door, 
 
 Sharing his morning's meal 
 With the green and golden basilisk 
 
 That comes to lick his feet. 
 
 Those trackless deeps, where many a weapy sail 
 Has seen aboye the illimitable plain, 
 Morning on night, and night on morning rise, 
 Whilst still no land to greet the wanderer spread 
 Its shadowy mountains on the sun-bright sea, 
 Where the loud roarings of the tempest- waves 
 So long have mingled with the gusty wind 
 In melancholy loneliness, and swept 
 The desert of those ocean solitudes, 
 But vocal to the sea-bird's harrowing shriek, 
 The bellowing monster, and the rushing storm, 
 Now to the sweet and many mingling sounds 
 Of kindliest human impulses respond. 
 
104 QUEEN MAB. VIII. 
 
 Those lonely realms bright garden-isles begem, 
 With lightsome clouds and shining seas between. 
 And fertile vallies, resonant with bliss, 
 Whilst green woods overcanopy the wave, 
 Which like a toil-worn labourer leaps to shore ? 
 To meet the kisses of the flowrets there. 
 
 All things are recreated, and the flame 
 Of consentaneous love inspires all life : 
 The fertile bosom of the earth gives suck 
 To myriads, who still grow beneath her care, 
 Rewarding her with their pure perfectness i 
 The balmy breathings of the wind inhale 
 Her virtues, and diffuse them all abroad : 
 Health floats amid the gentle atmosphere, 
 Glows in the fruits, and mantles on the stream : 
 No storms deform the beaming brow of heaven •> 
 Nor scatter in the freshness of its pride 
 The foliage of the ever verdant trees ; 
 But fruits are ever ripe, flowers ever fair, 
 And autumn proudly bears her matron grace, 
 Kindling a flush on the fair cheek of spring. 
 
VIII. QUEEN MAB. 103 
 
 Whose virgin bloom beneath the ruddy fruit 
 Reflects its tint and blushes into love. 
 
 The lion now forgets to thirst for blood : 
 
 There might you see him sporting in the sun 
 
 Beside the dreadless kid ; his claws are sheathed. 
 
 His teeth are harmless, custom's force has made 
 
 His nature as the nature of a lamb. 
 
 Like passion's fruit, the nightshade's tempting bane 
 
 Poisons no more the pleasure it bestows : 
 
 All bitterness is past ; the cup of joy 
 
 Unmingled mantles to the goblet's brim, 
 
 And courts the thirsty lips it fled before. 
 
 But chief, ambiguous man, he that can know 
 More misery, and dream more joy than all ; 
 Whose keen sensations thrill within his breast 
 To mingle with a loftier instinct there, 
 Lending their power to pleasure and to pain, 
 Yet raising, sharpening, and refining each ; 
 Who stands amid the ever-varying world, 
 The burthen or the glory of the earth ; 
 
106 QUEEN MAB. VIII. 
 
 He chief perceives the change, his being notes 
 
 The gradual renovation, and defines 
 
 Each movement of its progress on his mind. 
 
 Man, where the gloom of the long polar night 
 
 Lowers o'er the snow-clad rocks and frozen soil. 
 
 Where scarce the hardiest herb that braves the frost 
 
 Basks in the moonlight's ineffectual glow, 
 
 Shrank with the plants, and darkened with the night ; 
 
 His chilled and narrow energies, his heart, 
 
 Insensible to courage, truth, or love, j & 
 
 His stunted stature and imbecile frame, 
 
 Marked him for some abortion of the earth, 
 
 Fit compeer of the bears that roamed around, 
 
 Whose habits and enjoyments were his own : 
 
 His life a feverish dream of stagnant woe, 
 
 Whose meagre wants, but scantily fulfilled, 
 
 Apprised him ever of the joyless length 
 
 Which his short being's wretchedness had reached ; 
 
 His death a pang which famine, cold and toil 
 
 Long on the mind, whilst yet the vital spark 
 
 Clung to the body stubbornly, had brought : 
 
VIII. QUEEN MAB. 107 
 
 All was inflicted here that earth's revenge 
 Could wreak on the infringers of her law ; 
 One curse alone was spared — the name of God. 
 
 Nor where the tropics bound the realms of day 
 
 With a broad belt of mingling cloud and flame, 
 
 Where blue mists through the unmoving atmosphere 
 
 Scattered the seeds of pestilence, and fed 
 
 Unnatural vegetation, where the land 
 
 Teemed with all earthquake, tempest and disease, 
 
 Was man a nobler being ; slavery 
 
 Had crushed him to his country's bloodstained dust; 
 
 Or he was bartered for the fame of power, 
 
 Which all internal impulses destroying, 
 
 Makes human will an article of trade ; 
 
 Or he was changed with Christians for their gold, 
 
 And dragged to distant isles, where to the sound 
 
 Of the flesh-mangling scourge, he does the work 
 
 Of all-polluting luxury and wealth, 
 
 Which doubly visits on the tyrants' heads 
 
 The long-protracted fulness of their woe ; 
 
 Or he was led to legal butchery, 
 
108 QUEEN MAB. VIII. 
 
 To turn to worms beneath that burning sun, 
 Where kings first leagued against the rights of men. 
 And priests first traded with the name of God. 
 
 Even where the milder zone afforded man 
 
 A seeming shelter, yet contagion there, 
 
 Blighting his being with unnumbered ills, 
 
 Spread like a quenchless fire ; nor truth till late 
 
 Availed to arrest its progress, or create 
 
 That peace which first in bloodless victory waved 
 
 Her snowy standard o'er this favoured clime: 
 
 There man was long the train-bearer of slaves, 
 
 The mimic of surrounding misery, 
 
 The jackal of ambition's lion-rage, 
 
 The bloodhound of religion's hungry zeal. 
 
 Here now the human being stands adorning 
 This loveliest earth with taintless body and mind ; 
 Blest from his birth with all bland impulses, 
 Which gently in his noble bosom wake 
 All kindly passions and all pure desires. 
 Him, still from hope to hope the bliss pursuing, 
 
VIII. QUEEN MAB. 109 
 
 Which from the exhaustless lore of human weal 
 
 Draws on the virtuous mind, the thoughts that rise 
 
 In time-destroying infiniteness, gift 
 
 With self-enshrined eternity, that mocks 
 
 The unprevailing hoariness of age, 
 
 And man, once fleeting o'er the transient scene 
 
 Swift as an unremembered vision, stands 
 
 Immortal upon earth : no longer now 
 
 He slays the lamb that looks him in the face, 
 
 And horribly devours his mangled flesh, 
 
 Which still avenging nature's broken law, 
 
 Kindled all putrid humours in his frame, 
 
 All evil passions, and all vain belief, 
 
 Hatred, despair, and loathing in his mind, 
 
 The germs of misery, death, disease, and crime. 
 
 No longer now the winged habitants, 
 
 That in the woods their sweet lives sing away, 
 
 Flee from the form of man ; but gather round, 
 
 And prune their sunny feathers on the hands 
 
 W T hich little children stretch in friendly sport 
 
 Towards these dreadless partners of their play. 
 
 All things are void of terror : man has lost 
 
 .,, 
 
110 QUEEN MAS. VIII. 
 
 His terrible prerogative, and stands 
 
 An equal amidst equals : happiness 
 
 And science dawn though late upon the earth ; 
 
 Peace cheers the mind, health renovates the frame; 
 
 Disease and pleasure cease to mingle here, 
 
 Reason and passion cease to combat there ; 
 
 Whilst each unfettered o'er the earth extend 
 
 Their all-subduing energies, and wield 
 
 The sceptre of a vast dominion there ; 
 
 Whilst every shape and mode of matter lends 
 
 Its force to the omnipotence of mind, 
 
 Which from its dark mine drags the gem of truth 
 
 To decorate its paradise of peace. 
 
IX. QUEEN MAB. Ill 
 
 IX. 
 
 O happy Earth ! reality of Heaven ! 
 To which those restless souls that ceaselessly 
 Throng through the human universe, aspire; 
 Thou consummation of all mortal hope ! 
 Thou glorious prize of blindly-working will ! 
 Whose rays, diffused throughout all space and time, 
 Verge to one point and blend forever there : 
 Of purest spirits thou pure dwelling-place ! 
 Where care and sorrow, impotence and crime. 
 Languor, disease, and ignorance dare not come : 
 O happy Earth, reality of Heaven ! 
 
 Genius has seen thee in her passionate dreams, 
 And dim forebodings of thy loveliness 
 Haunting the human heart, have there entwined 
 Those rooted hopes of some sweet place of bliss 
 Where friends and lovers meet to part no more. 
 
112 QUEEN MAB. IX. 
 
 Thou art the end of all desire and will, 
 The product of all action ; and the souls 
 That by the paths of an aspiring change 
 Have reached thy haven of perpetual peace, 
 There rest from the eternity of toil 
 That framed the fabric of thy perfectness. 
 
 Even Time, the conqueror, fled thee in his fear y 
 
 That hoary giant, who, in lonely pride, 
 
 So long had ruled the world, that nations fell 
 
 Beneath his silent footstep. Pyramids, 
 
 That for milleniums had withstood the tide 
 
 Of human things, his storm-breath drove in sand 
 
 Across that desert where their stones survived 
 
 The name of him whose pride had heaped them there. 
 
 Yon monarch, in his solitary pomp, 
 
 Was but the mushroom of a summer day, 
 
 That his light-winged footstep pressed to dust : 
 
 Time was the king of earth : all things gave way 
 
 Before him, but the fixed and virtuous will, 
 
 The sacred sympathies of soul and sense, 
 
 That mocked his fury and prepared his fall. 
 
IX. QUEEN MAB. 113 
 
 Yet slow and gradual dawned the morn of loTe ; 
 Long lay the clouds of darkness o'er the scene, 
 Till from its native heaven they rolled away : 
 First, crime triumphant o'er all hope careered 
 Unblushing, undisguising, bold and strong ; 
 Whilst falshood, tricked in virtue's attributes, 
 Long sanctified all deeds of vice and woe, 
 Till done by her own venomous sting to death, 
 She left the moral world without a law, 
 No longer fettering passion's fearless wing, 
 Nor searing reason with the brand of God. 
 Then steadily the happy ferment worked ; 
 Reason was free ; and wild though passion went 
 Through tangled glens and wood-embosomed meads, 
 Gathering a garland of the strangest flowers^ 
 Yet like the bee returning to her queen, 
 She bound the sweetest on her sister's brow, 
 Who meek and sober kissed the sportive child, 
 No longer trembling at the broken rod. 
 
 Mild was the slow necessity of death : . 
 The tranquil Spirit failed beneath its grasp, 
 
114 QUEEN MAB, IX. 
 
 Without a groan, almost without a fear, 
 
 Calm as a voyager to some distant land, 
 
 And full of wonder, full of hope as he. 
 
 The deadly germs of languor and disease 
 
 Died in the human frame, and purity 
 
 Blest with all gifts her earthly worshippers. 
 
 How vigorous then the athletic form of age ! 
 
 How clear its open and unwrinkled brow ! 
 
 Where neither avarice, cunning, pride, or care, 
 
 Had stamped the seal of grey deformity 
 
 On all the mingling lineaments of time. 
 
 How lovely the intrepid front of youth ! 
 
 Which meek-eyed courage decked with freshest grace ; 
 
 Courage of soul, that dreaded not a name, 
 
 And elevated will, that journeyed on 
 
 Through life's phantasmal scene in fearlessness, 
 
 With virtue, love, and pleasure, hand in hand. 
 
 Then, that sweet bondage which is freedom's self, 
 And rivets with sensation's softest tie 
 The kindred sympathies of human souls, 
 Needed no fetters of tyrannic law : 
 
JX. QUEEN MAB. 11 
 
 Those delicate and timid impulses 
 
 In nature's primal modesty arose, 
 
 And with undoubting confidence disclosed 
 
 The growing longings of its dawning love, 
 
 Unchecked by dull and selfish chastity, 
 
 That virtue of the cheaply virtuous, 
 
 Who pride themselves in senselessness and frost. 
 
 No longer prostitution's venomed bane 
 
 Poisoned the springs of happiness and life ; 
 
 Woman and man, in confidence and love, 
 
 Equal and free and pure together trod 
 
 The mountain-paths of virtue, which no more 
 
 Were stained with blood from many a pilgrim's feet. 
 
 Then, where, through distant ages, long in pride 
 The palace of the monarch-slave had mocked 
 Famine's faint groan, and penury's silent tear, 
 A heap of crumbling ruins stood, and threw 
 Year after year their stones upon the field, 
 Wakening a lonely echo ; and the leaves 
 Of the old thorn, that on the topmost tower 
 Usurped the royal ensign's grandeur, shook 
 
116 QUEEN MAB. IX. 
 
 In the stern storm that swayed the topmost tower 
 And whispered strange tales in the whirlwind's ear. 
 
 Low through the lone cathedral's roofless aisles 
 The melancholy winds a death-dirge sung : 
 It were a sight of awfulness to see 
 The works of faith and slavery, so vast, 
 So sumptuous, yet so perishing withal ! 
 Even as the corpse that rests beneath its wall. 
 A thousand mourners deck the pomp of death 
 To-day, the breathing marble glows above 
 To decorate its memory, and tongues 
 Are busy of its life : to-morrow, worms 
 In silence and in darkness seize their prey. 
 
 Within the massy prison's mouldering courts, 
 Fearless and free the ruddy children played, 
 Weaving gay chaplets for their innocent brows 
 With the green ivy and the red wall-flower, 
 That mock the dungeon's unavailing gloom; 
 The ponderous chains, and gratings of strong iron, 
 There rusted amid heaps of broken stone 
 
IX. QUEEN MAB. 117 
 
 That mingled slowly with their native earth : 
 
 There the broad beam of day, which feebly once 
 
 Lighted the cheek of lean captivity 
 
 With a pale and sickly glare, then freely shone 
 
 On the pure smiles of infant playfulness : 
 
 No more the shuddering voice of hoarse despair 
 
 Pealed through the echoing vaults, but soothing notes 
 
 Of ivy-fingered winds and gladsome birds 
 
 And merriment were resonant around.^ 
 
 These ruins soon left not a wreck behind : 
 Their elements, wide scattered o'er the globe, 
 To happier shapes were moulded, and became 
 Ministrant to all blissful impulses : 
 Thus human things were perfected, and earth, 
 Even as a child beneath its mother's love, 
 Was strengthened in all excellence, aritt grew 
 Fairer and nobler with e*ch passing year. 
 
 Now Time his dusky pennons o'er the scene 
 
 Closes in stedfast darkness, and the past 
 
 Fades from our charmed sight. My task is done : 
 
118 QUEEN MAS, IX. 
 
 Thy lore is learned. Earth's wonders are thine own, 
 With all the fear and all the hope they bring. 
 My spells are past : the present now recurs. 
 Ah me ! a pathless wilderness remains 
 Yet unsubdued by man's reclaiming hand. 
 
 Yet, human Spirit, bravely hold thy course, 
 
 Let virtue teacMhee firmly |o pursue 
 
 The gradual paV of an aspiring change : 
 
 For birth and life and death, and that strange state 
 
 Before the naked soul has found its home, 
 
 All tend to perfect happiness, and urge 
 
 The restless wheels of being on their way, 
 
 Whose flashing spokes, instinct with infinite life, 
 
 Bicker and burn to gain their destined goal : 
 
 For birth but wakes the spirit to the sense 
 
 Of outward shews, whose unexperienced shape 
 
 New modes of passion to its fimme may lend ; 
 
 Life is its state of action, and the store 
 
 Of all events is aggregated there 
 
 That variegate the eternal universe ; 
 
 Death is a gate of dreariness and gloom, 
 
IX. QUEEN MAB. 119 
 
 That leads to azure isles and beaming skies 
 And happy regions of eternal hope. 
 Therefore, O Spirit ! fearlessly bear on : 
 Though storms may break the primrose on its stalk, 
 Though frosts may blight the freshness of its bloom, 
 Yet spring's awakening breath will woo the earth, 
 To feed with kindliest dews its favorite flower, 
 That blooms in mossy banks and darksome glens, 
 Lighting the green wood with its sunny smile. 
 
 Fear not then, Spirit, death's disrobing hand, 
 
 So welcome when the tyrant is awake, 
 
 So welcome when the bigot's hell-torch burns ; 
 
 'Tis but the voyage of a darksome hour, 
 
 The transient gulph-dream of a startling sleep. 
 
 Death is no foe to virtue : earth has seen 
 
 Love's brightest roses on the scaffold bloom, 
 
 Mingling with freedom's fadeless laurels there, 
 
 And presaging the truth of visioned bliss. 
 
 Are there not hopes within thee, which this scene 
 
 Of linked and gradual being has confirmed ? 
 
 Whose stingings bade thy heart look further still. 
 
120 QUEEN MAB. IX. 
 
 When to the moonlight walk by Henry led, 
 Sweetly and sadly thou didst talk of death ? 
 And wilt thou rudely tear them from thy breast, 
 Listening supinely to a bigot's creed. 
 Or tamely crouching to the tyrant's rod, 
 Whose iron thongs are red with human gore ? 
 Never : but bravely bearing on, thy will 
 Is destined an eternal war to wage 
 With tyranny and falshood, and uproot 
 The germs of misery from the human heart. 
 Thine is the hand whose piety would soothe 
 The thorny pillow of unhappy crime, 
 Whose impotence an easy pardon gains, 
 Watching its wanderings as a friend's disease : 
 Thine is the brow whose mildness would defy 
 Its fiercest rage, and brave its sternest will, 
 When fenced by power and master of the world. 
 Thou art sincere and good ; of resolute mind, 
 Free from heart-withering custom's cold control, 
 Of passion lofty, pure and unsubdued. 
 Earth's pride and meanness could not vanquish thee. 
 And therefore art thou worthy of the boon 
 
IX. QUEEN MAB. 121 
 
 Which thou hast now received : virtue shall keep 
 Thy footsteps in the path that thou hast trod, 
 And many days of beaming hope shall bless 
 Thy spotless life of sweet and sacred love. 
 Go, happy one, and give that bosom joy 
 
 Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch 
 
 Light, life and rapture from thy smile. 
 
 The fairy waves her wand of charm* 
 Speechless with bliss the Spirit mounts the car. 
 
 That rolled beside the battlement, 
 Bending her beamy eyes in thankfulness. 
 
 Again the enchanted steeds were yoked, 
 
 Again the burning wheels inflame 
 Th^teep descent of heaven's untrodden way. 
 
 Fast and far the chariot flew : 
 
 The vast and fiery globes that rolled 
 
 Around the Fairy's palace-gate 
 Lessened by slow degrees, and soon appeared 
 Such tiny twinklers as the planet orbs 
 That there attendant on the solar power 
 With borrowed light pursued their narrower way. 
 
122 QUEEN MAB. IX. 
 
 Earth floated then below : 
 The chariot paused a moment there ; 
 
 The Spirit then descended : 
 The restless coursers pawed the ungenial soil, 
 Snuffed the gross air, and then, their errand done. 
 Unfurled their pinions to the winds of heaven. 
 
 The Body and the Soul united then, 
 A gentle start convulsed Ianthe's frame : 
 Her veiny eyelids quietly unclosed ; 
 Moveless awhile the dark blue orbs remained : 
 She looked around in wonder and beheld 
 Henry, who kneeled in silence by her couch, 
 Watching her sleep with looks of speechless love. 
 
 And the bright beaming stars 
 
 That through the casement shone. 
 

 NOTES. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 I. Page 13. 
 
 The sun's unclouded orb 
 
 Rolled through the black concave. 
 
 Beyond our atmosphere the sun would appear a 
 rayless orb of fire in the midst of a black concaye. 
 The equal diffusion of its light on earth is owing to the 
 refraction of the rays by the atmosphere, and their 
 reflection from other bodies. Light consists either of 
 vibrations propagated through a subtle medium, or of 
 numerous minute particles repelled in all directions 
 from the luminous body. Its Velocity greatly exceeds 
 that of any substance with which we are acquainted : 
 observations on the eclipses of Jupiter's satellites have 
 demonstrated that light takes up no more than 8' 7" in 
 passing from the sun to the earth, a distance of 
 95,000,000 miles.*— -Some idea may be gained of the 
 
12G NOTES. 
 
 immense distance of the fixed stars, when it is computed 
 that many years would elapse before light could reach 
 this earth from the nearest of them ; yet in one year 
 light travels 5,422,400,000,000 miles, which is-a dis- 
 tance 5,707,600 times greater than that of the sun from 
 the earth. 
 
 I. Page 14. 
 
 Whilst round the chariot's way 
 Innumerable systems rolled. 
 
 The plurality of worlds, — the indefinite immensity of 
 the universe is a most awful subject of contemplation. 
 He who rightly feels its mystery and grandeur, is in no 
 danger of seduction from the falshoods of religious sys- 
 tems, or of deifying the principle of the universe. It is 
 impossible to believe that the Spirit that pervades this 
 infinite machine, begat a son upon the body of a Jewish 
 woman ; or is angered at the consequences of that ne- 
 cessity, which is a synonime of itself. All that miser- 
 able tale of the Devil, and Eve, and an Intercessor, 
 
NOTES. 127 
 
 with the childish mummeries of the God of the Jews, is 
 irreconcileable with the knowledge of the stars. The 
 works of his fingers have borne witness against him. 
 
 The nearest of the fixed stars is inconceivably distant 
 from the earth, and they are probably proportionably 
 distant from each other. By a calculation of the 
 velocity of light, Syrius is supposed to be at least 
 54,224,000,000,000 miles from the earth*. That 
 which appears only like a thin and silvery cloud streak- 
 ing the heaven, is in effect composed of innumerable 
 clusters of suns, each shining with its own light, and 
 illuminating numbers of planets that revolve around 
 them. Millions and millions of suns are ranged around 
 us, all attended by innumerable worlds, yet calm, regu- 
 lar, and harmonious, all keeping the paths of immutable 
 necessity. 
 
 See Nicholson's Encyclopedia, art. Light. 
 
12$ NOTES. 
 
 IV. Page 54. 
 
 These are the hired bravos who defend 
 The tyrant's throne. 
 
 To employ murder as a means of justice, is an ides 
 which a man of an enlightened mind will not dwell 
 upon with pleasure. To march forth in rank and file^ 
 and all the pomp of streamers and trumpets, for the 
 purpose of shooting at our fellow-men as a mark ; to 
 inflict upon them all the variety of wound and anguish ; 
 to leave them weltering in their blood ; to wander over 
 the field of desolation, arid count the number of the 
 dying and the dead, — are employments which in thesis 
 we may maintain to be necessary, but which no good 
 man will contemplate with gratulation and delight. A 
 battle we suppose is won : — thus truth is established, 
 thus the cause of justice is_ confirmed ! It surely re- 
 quires no common sagacity to discern the connection 
 between this immense heap of calamities and the asser- 
 tion of truth or the maintenance of justice. 
 
 Kings, and ministers of state, the real authors of the 
 
NOTES. 129 
 
 calamity, sit unmolested in their cabinet, while those 
 against whom the fury of the storm is directed are, for 
 the most part, persons who have been trepanned into 
 the service, or who are dragged unwillingly from their 
 peaceful homes into the field of battle. A soldier is a 
 man whose business it is to kill those who never of- 
 fended him, and who are the innocent martyrs of other 
 men's iniquities. Whatever may become of the ab- 
 stract question of the justifiableness of war, it seems 
 impossible that the soldier should not be a depraved 
 and unnatural being. 
 
 To these more serious and momentous considerations 
 it may be proper to add a recollection of the ridicu- 
 lousness of the military character. Its first constituent 
 is obedience : a soldier is, of all descriptions of men, 
 the most completely a machine • yet his profession 
 inevitably teaches him something of dogmatism, swag- 
 gering, and self-consequence : he is like the puppet of 
 a showman, who, at the very time he is made to strut 
 and swell and display the most farcical airs, we per- 
 fectly know cannot assume the most insignificant ges. 
 
 K 
 
130 NOTES. 
 
 ture, advance either to the right or the left, but as he is 
 moved by his exhibitor. — Godwin's Enquirer , Essay v. 
 I will here subjoin a little poem, so strongly expres- 
 sive of my abhorrence of despotism and falshood, that 
 I fear lest it never again may be depictured so vi- 
 vidly. This opportunity is perhaps the only one that 
 ever will occur of rescuing it from oblivion* 
 
 FALSHOOD AND VICE: 
 
 A DIALOGUE. 
 
 Whilst monarchs laughed upon their thrones 
 To hear a famished nation's groans, 
 And hugged the wealth wrung from the woe 
 That makes its eyes and veins o'erflow,-— 
 Those thrones, high built upon the heaps 
 Of bones where frenzied famine sleeps, 
 Where slavery wields her scourge of iron, 
 Red with mankind's unheeded gore, 
 And war's mad fiends the scene environ, 
 Mingling with shrieks a drunken roar, 
 
NOTES. 131 
 
 There Vice and Falshood took their stand, 
 High raised above the unhappy land. 
 
 FALSHOOD. 
 
 Brother ! arise from the dainty fare, 
 
 Which thousands have toiled and bled to bestow^ 
 
 A finer feast for thy hungry ear 
 
 Is the news that I bring of human woe. 
 
 VICE. 
 
 And, secret one, what hast thou done, 
 To compare, in thy tumid pride, with me c 
 I, whose career, through the blasted year, 
 Has been tracked by despair and agony. 
 
 FALSHOOD* 
 
 What have I done ! 1 have torn the robe 
 
 From baby truth's unsheltered form, 
 And round the desolated globe 
 Borne safely the bewildering charm : 
 My tyrant-slaves to a dungeon-floor 
 Have bound the fearless innocent, 
 
132 NOTfifi 
 
 And streams of fertilizing gore 
 Flow from her bosom's hideous rent. 
 Which this unfailing dagger gave....* 
 I dread that blood ! — no more — this day* 
 Is ours, though her eternal ray 
 Must shine upon our grave. 
 Yet know, proud Vice, had I not given' 
 To thee the robe I stole from heaven, 
 Thy shape of ugliness and fear 
 Had never gained admission here. 'Z 
 
 VICE. 
 
 And know, that had I disdained to toil, 
 But sate in my loathsome cave the while, 
 And ne*er to these hateful sons of heaven, 
 GOLD, MONARCHY, and MURDER, given 
 Hadst thou with all thine art essayed 
 One of thy games then to have played, 
 With all thine overweening boast, 
 Falshood ! I tell thee thou hadst lost ! — 
 Yet wherefore this dispute ? — we tend, 
 Fraternal, to one common end ; 
 
..VOTES. 133 
 
 In this cold grave beneath my feet, 
 
 Will our hopes ; our fears, and our labours, meet. 
 
 FALSHOOD. 
 
 I brought my daughter, RELIGION, on earth : 
 
 She smothered Reason's babes in their birth ; 
 
 But dreaded their mother's eye severe, — 
 
 So the crocodile slunk off slily in fear, 
 
 And loosed her bloodhounds from the den.... 
 
 They started from dreams of slaughtered men, 
 
 And, by the light of her poison eye, 
 
 Did her work o'er the wide earth frightfully : 
 
 The dreadful stench of her torches' flare, 
 
 Fed with human fat, polluted the air : 
 
 The curses, the shrieks, the ceaseless cries 
 
 Of the many-mingling miseries, 
 
 As on she trod, ascended high 
 
 And trumpeted my victory ! — 
 
 Brother, tell what thou hast done. 1 
 
 vice. -__, 
 
 I have extinguished the noon-day fun, 
 In the carnage-smoke of battles won : 
 
134 NOTES. 
 
 Famine, murder, hell and power 
 
 Were glutted in that glorious hour 
 
 Which searchless fate had stamped for me 
 
 With the seal of her security.;... 
 
 For the bloated wretch on yonder throne 
 
 Commanded the bloody fray to rise. 
 
 Like me he joyed at the stifled moan 
 
 Wrung from a nation's miseries ; 
 
 While the snakes, whose slime even him defiled^ 
 
 In ecstacies of malice smiled : 
 
 They thought 'twas theirs, — but mine the deed ! 
 
 Theirs is the toil, but mine the meed — 
 
 Ten thousand victims madly bleed. 
 
 They dream that tyrants goad them there 
 
 With poisonous war to taint the air : 
 
 These tyrants, on their beds of thorn, 
 
 Swell with the thoughts of murderous fame, 
 
 And with their gains to lift my name. 
 
 Restless they plan from night to morn : 
 
 I — I do all ; without my aid 
 
 Thy daughter, that relentless maid, 
 
 Could never o'er a death-bed urge 
 
 The fury of her venomed scourge. 
 
NOTES. 13* 
 
 FALSHOOD. 
 
 Brother, well : — the world is ours ; 
 
 And whether thou or I have won. 
 
 The pestilence expectant lowers 
 
 On all beneath yon blasted sun. 
 
 Our joys, our toils, our honors meet 
 
 In the milk-white and wormy winding-sheet : 
 
 A short-lived hope, unceasing care, 
 
 Some heartless scraps of godly prayer, 
 
 A moody curse, and a frenzied sleep 
 
 Ere gapes the grave's unclosing deep, 
 
 A tyrant's dream, a coward's start, 
 
 The ice that clings to a priestly heart, 
 
 A judge's frown, a courtier's smile, 
 
 Make the great whole for which we toil ; 
 
 And, brother, whether thou or I 
 
 Have done the work of misery, 
 
 It little boots : thy toil and pain, 
 
 Without my aid, were more than vain ; 
 
 And but for thee I ne'er had sate 
 
 The guardian of heaven's palace gate. 
 
136 NOTES. 
 
 T.— Page 59. 
 
 Thus do the generations of the earth 
 
 Go to the grave and issue from the womb. 
 
 One generation passeth away and another generation 
 cometh, but the earth abideth for ever. The sun also 
 ariseth and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his 
 place where he arose. The wind goeth toward the 
 south and turneth about unto the north, it whirleth 
 about continually, and the wind returneth again accor. 
 ding to his circuits. All the rivers run into the set, 
 yet the sea is not full ; unto the place whence the 
 rivers come, thither shall they return again. 
 
 JZcclesiastes, chap, i, 
 
 V.— Page 59. 
 
 Even as the leaves 
 Which the keen frost-wind of the waning year 
 Has scattered on the forest soil. 
 
 Ol'u mf$vXhuv ym«, Toiq^s xai «»fy«?c 
 
NOTES. 137 
 
 Qvfocc. rot, piv ruvefAQq xccpeths %"*} «?^a os 6 vM 
 
 IAIAA. Z\ 1. 146. 
 
 V.— Page 6% 
 
 The mob of peasants, nobles, priests, and kings. 
 
 Suave mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis 
 E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem ; 
 Non quia vexari quemquam 'st jucunda voluptas, 
 Sed quibus ipse malis careas quia cernere suave'st. 
 Suave etiam belli certamina magna tueri, 
 Per campos instructa, tua sine parte pericli; 
 Sed nil dulcius est bene quam munita tenere 
 Edita doctrina sapientum temp] a serena ; 
 Despicere unde queas alios, passim que videre 
 Errare atque viam palanteis quaerere vitae ; 
 jCertare ingenio ; contendere nobilitate ; 
 Nocteis atque dies niti praestante labpre 
 
138 NOTES. 
 
 Ad summas emergere opes, rerum que potiri. 
 miseras hominum menteis ! O pectora caeca ! 
 
 Luc. lib. ii, 
 
 V.— -Page 63. 
 
 And statesmen boast 
 Of wealth ! 
 
 There is no real wealth but the labour of man. Were 
 the mountains of gold and the vallies of silver, the* 
 world would not be one grain of corn the richer ; no 
 one comfort would be added to the human race. In 
 consequence of our consideration for the precious me- 
 tals, one man is enabled to heap to himself luxuries at 
 the expence of the necessaries of his neighbour ; a sys- 
 tem admirably fitted to produce all the varieties of dis- 
 ease and crime, which never fail to characterise the two 
 extremes of opulence and penury. A speculator takes 
 pride to himself as the promoter of his country's pros- 
 perity, who employs a number of hands in the manu- 
 facture of articles avowedly destitute of use, or subser- 
 vient only to the unhallowed cravings of luxury an$ 
 
NOTES. 139 
 
 ostentation. The nobleman, who employs the peasants 
 of his neighbourhood in building his palaces, until u jam 
 pauca aratro jugera, regies moles relinquuntf' flatters 
 himself that he has gained the title of a patriot by 
 yielding to the impulses of vanity. The shew and 
 pomp of courts adduces the same apology for its conti- 
 nuance ; and many a fe*te has been given, many a wo- 
 man has eclipsed her beauty by her dress, to benefit 
 the labouring poor and to encourage trade. Who does 
 not see that this is a remedy which aggravates, whilst it 
 palliates the countless diseases of society ? The poor 
 are set to labour, — -for what ? Not the food for which 
 they famish : not the blankets for want of which their 
 babes are frozen by the cold of their miserable hovels : 
 not those comforts of civilization without which civil- 
 ized man is far more miserable than the meanest savage ; 
 oppressed as he is by all its insidious evils, within the 
 daily and taunting prospect of its innumerable benefits 
 assiduously exhibited before him : — no ; for the pride 
 of power, for the miserable isolation of pride, for the 
 false pleasures of the hundredth part of society. No 
 greater evidence is afforded of the wide extended and 
 
140 NOTE?. 
 
 radical mistakes of civilized man than this fact : those 
 arts which are essential to his very being are held in the 
 greatest contempt; employments are lucrative in an 
 inverse ratio to their usefulness*: the jeweller, the 
 toyman, the actor gains fame and wealth by the exercise 
 of his useless and ridiculous art ; whilst the cultivator 
 of the earth, he without whom society must cease to 
 subsist, struggles through contempt and penury, and 
 perishes by that famine which, but for his unceasing 
 exertions, would annihilate the rest of mankind. 
 
 I will not insult common sense by insisting on the 
 doctrine of the natural equality of man. The question 
 is not concerning its desirableness, but its practicabi- 
 lity : so far as it is practicable, it is desirable. That 
 state of human society which approaches nearer to an 
 equal partition of its benefits and evils should, cceteris 
 paribus ) be preferred : but so long as we conceive that 
 a wanton expenditure of human labour, not for the ne- 
 cessities, not even for the luxuries of the mass of soci- 
 ety, but for the egotism and ostentation of a few of its 
 
 * See Rousseau, «f De l'Inegalite parmi les Hommes," note % 
 
NOTES. 341 
 
 members, is defensible on the ground of public justice, 
 so long we neglect to approximate to the redemption of 
 the human race. 
 
 Labour is required for physical, and leisure for mo- 
 ral improvement : from the former of these advantages 
 the rich, and from the latter the poor, by the inevitable 
 conditions of their respective situations, are precluded. 
 A state which should combine the advantages of both, 
 would be subjected to the evils of neither. He that is 
 deficient in firm health, or rigorous intellect, is but half 
 a man : hence it follows, that, to subject the labouring 
 classes to unnecessary labour, is wantouly depriving 
 them of any opportunities of intellectual improvement £ 
 and that the rich are heaping up for their own mischief 
 the disease, lassitude and ennui by which their existence 
 is rendered an intolerable burthen. 
 
 English reformers exclaim against sinecures,- — but 
 the true pension list is the rent-roll of the landed pro- 
 prietors : wealth is a power usurped by the few, to 
 compel the many to labour for their benefit. The laws 
 which support this system derive their force from the 
 ignorance and credulity of its victims : they are the 
 
142 NOTES. 
 
 result of a conspiracy of the few against the many, who 
 are themselves obliged to purchase this pre-eminence by 
 the loss of all real comfort. £f" 
 
 The commodities that substantially contribute to the 
 subsistence of the human species form a very short cata- 
 logue : they demand from us but a slender portion of 
 industry. If these only were produced, and sufficiently 
 produced, the species of man would be continued. If 
 the labour necessarily required to produce them were 
 equitably divided among the poor, and, still more, if it 
 were equitably divided among all, each man's share of 
 labour would be light, and his portion of leisure would 
 be ample. There was a time when this leisure would 
 have been of small comparative value : it is to be hoped 
 that the time will come, when it will be applied to the 
 most important purposes. Those hours which are not 
 required for the production of the necessaries of life, 
 may be devoted to the cultivation of the understanding, 
 the enlarging our stock of knowledge, the refining our 
 taste, and thus opening to us new and more exquisite 
 sourqes of enjoyment. 
 
NOTES. 143 
 
 It was perhaps necessary that a period of monopoly 
 and oppression should subsist, before a period of culti- 
 vated equality could subsist. Savages perhaps would 
 never have been excited to the discovery of truth and 
 the invention of art, but by the narrow motives which 
 such a period affords. But surely, after the savage 
 state has ceased, and men have set out in the glorious 
 career of discovery and invention, monopoly and op- 
 pression cannot be necessary to prevent them from 
 returning to a state of barbarism. — Godwin's Enquirer , 
 Essay II. See also Pol. Jus., book VIII. chap. 11. 
 
 It is a calculation of this admirable author, that all 
 the conveniences of civilized life might be produced, if 
 society would divide the labour equally among its mem- 
 bers, by each individual being employed in labour two 
 hours during the day. 
 
144 NOTES. 
 
 V.— Page 64. 
 
 or religion 
 t)rives his wife raving mad. 
 
 I am acquainted with a lady of considerable accom- 
 plishments, and the mother of a numerous family, whom 
 the Christian religion has goaded to incurable insanity. 
 A parallel case is, I believe, within the experience of 
 every physician. 
 
 Nam jam saepe homines patriam, carosque parentes 
 Prodiderunt, vitare Acherusia templa petentes. 
 
 Lucretius. 
 
 V.— Page 68. 
 
 Even love is sold. 
 
 Not even the intercourse of the sexes is exempt from 
 the despotism of positive institution. Law pretends 
 even to govern the indisciplinable wanderings of pas- 
 sion, to put fetters on the clearest deductions of reason, 
 and, by appeals to the will, to subdue the involuntary 
 affections of our nature. Love is inevitably conse- 
 
NOTES. 145 
 
 quent upon the perception of loveliness. Love withers 
 under constraint : its very essence is liberty : it is com- 
 patible neither with obedience, jealousy, nor fear : it 
 is there most pure, perfect, and unlimited, where its 
 votaries live in confidence, equality, and unreserve. 
 
 How long then ought the sexual connection to last ? 
 what law ought to specify the extent of the grievances 
 which should limit its duration ? A husband and wife 
 ought to continue so long united as they love each 
 other : any law which should bind them to cohabitation 
 for one moment after the decay of their affection, would 
 be a most intolerable tyranny, and the most unworthy 
 of toleration. How odious an usurpation of the right 
 of private judgment should that law be considered, 
 which should make the ties of friendship indissoluble, 
 in spite of the caprices, the inconstancy, the fallibility, 
 and capacity for improvement of the human mind. 
 And by so much would the fetters of love be heavier 
 and more unendurable than those of friendship, as love 
 is more vehement and capricious, more dependent on 
 those delicate peculiarities of imagination, and less 
 
146 NOTES. 
 
 capable of reduction to the ostensible merits of the 
 object. 
 
 The state of society in which we exist is a mixture 
 of feudal savageness and imperfect civilization. The 
 narrow and unenlightened morality of the Christian 
 religion is an aggravation of these evils. It is not even 
 until lately that mankind have admitted that happiness 
 is the sole end of the science of ethics, as of all other 
 sciences ; and that the fanatical idea of mortifying the 
 flesh for the love of God has been discarded. I have 
 heard, indeed, an ignorant collegian adduce, in favour 
 of Christianity, its hostility to every worldly feeling !* 
 
 * The first Christian emperor made a law by which seduction 
 was punished with death : if the female pleaded her own consent, 
 she also was punished with death ; if the parents endeavoured to 
 screen the criminals, they were banished and their estates were 
 confiscated ; the slaves who might be accessary were burned alive, 
 or forced to swallow melted lead. The very offspring of an illegal 
 love were involved in the consequences of the sentence. — Gibbon's 
 Decline and Fall, &?c. vol. ii. page 210. See also, for the hatred 
 of the primitive Christians to love and even marriage, page 269. 
 
NOTES. 147 
 
 But if happiness be the object of morality, of all hu- 
 man unions and disunions ; if the worthiness of every 
 action is to be estimated by the quantity of pleasurable 
 sensation it is calculated to produce, then the connec- 
 tion of the sexes is so long sacred as it contributes to 
 the comfort of the parties, and is naturally dissolved 
 when its evils are greater than its benefits. There is 
 nothing immoral in this separation. Constancy has 
 nothing virtuous in itself, independently of the pleasure 
 it confers, and partakes of the temporizing spirit of 
 vice in proportion as it endures tamely moral defects of 
 magnitude in the object of its indiscreet choice. Love 
 is free : to promise for ever to love the same woman, 
 is not less absurd than to promise to believe the same 
 creed : such a vow, in both cases, excludes us from all 
 enquiry. The language of the votarist is this : The 
 woman I now love may be infinitely inferior to many 
 others ; the creed I now profess may be a mass of er- 
 rors and absurdities ; but I exclude myself from all 
 future information as to the amiability of the one and 
 the truth of the other, resolving blindly, and in spite of 
 conviction, to adhere to them. Is this the language of 
 
148 NOTES. 
 
 delicacy and reason ? Is the love of such a frigid 
 heart of more worth than its belief ? 
 
 The present system of constraint does no more, in 
 the majority of instances, than make hypocrites or open 
 enemies. Persons of delicacy and virtue, unhappily 
 united to one whom they find it impossible to love, 
 spend the loveliest season of their life in unproductive 
 efforts to appear otherwise than they are, for the sake 
 of the feelings of their partner or the welfare of their 
 mutual offspring : those of less generosity and refine- 
 ment openly avow their disappointment, and linger out 
 the remnant of that union, which only death can dis- 
 solve, in a state of incurable bickering and hostility. 
 The early education of their children takes its colour 
 from the squabbles of the parents ; they are nursed in 
 a systematic school of ill humour, violence, and fals- 
 hood. Had they been suffered to part at the moment 
 when indifference rendered their union irksome, they 
 would have been spared many years of misery : they 
 would have connected themselves more suitably, and 
 would have found that happiness in the society of more 
 congenial partners which is for ever denied them by the 
 
NOTES. 149 
 
 despotism of marriage. They would have been sepa- 
 rately useful and happy members of society, who, 
 whilst united, were miserable, and rendered misanthro- 
 pical by misery. The conviction that wedlock is indis- 
 soluble holds out the strongest of all temptations to the 
 perverse : they indulge without restraint in acrimony, 
 and all the little tyrannies of domestic life, when they 
 know that their victim is without appeal. If this con- 
 nection were put on a rational basis, each would be 
 assured that habitual ill temper would terminate in 
 separation, and would check this vicious and dangerous 
 propensity. 
 
 Prostitution is the legitimate offspring of marriage 
 and its accompanying errors. Women, for no other 
 crime than having followed the dictates of a natural 
 appetite, are driven with fury from the comforts and 
 sympathies of society. It is less venial than murder ; 
 and the punishment which is inflicted' on her who des- 
 troys her child to escape reproach, is lighter than the 
 life of agony and disease to which the prostitute is 
 irrecoverably doomed. Has a woman obeyed the im- 
 pulse of unerring nature ; — society declares war against 
 
150 NOTES. 
 
 her, pity less and eternal war : she must be the tame slave, 
 she must make no reprisals ; theirs is the right of per- 
 secution, hers the duty of endurance. She lives a life 
 of infamy : the loud and bitter laugh of scorn scares 
 her from all return. She dies of lorig and lingering 
 disease : yet she is in fault, she is the criminal, she the 
 froward and untameable child, — and society, forsooth, 
 the pure and virtuous matron, who casts her as an 
 abortion from her undefiled bosom ! Society avenges 
 herself on the criminals of her own creation ; she is 
 employed in anathematizing the vice to-day, which yes- 
 terday she was the most zealous to teach. Thus is 
 formed one tenth of the population of London : mean- 
 while the evil is twofold. Young men, excluded by the 
 fanatical idea of chastity from the society of modest 
 and accomplished women, associate with these vicious 
 and miserable beings, destroying thereby all those ex- 
 quisite and delicate sensibilities whose existence cold- 
 hearted worldlings have denied ; annihilating all genu- 
 ine passion, and debasing that to a selfish feeling which 
 is the excess of generosity and devotedness; Their 
 body and mind alike crumble into a hideous wreck of 
 
NOTES. 151 
 
 humanity \ idiotcy and disease become perpetuated in 
 their miserable offspring, and distant generations suffer 
 for the bigotted morality of their forefathers. Chastity 
 is a monkish and evangelical superstition, a greater foe 
 to natural temperance even than unintellectual sensu- 
 ality ; it strikes at the root of all domestic happiness, 
 and consigns more than half of the human race to mi- 
 sery, that some few may monopolize according to law. 
 A system could not well have been devised more studi- 
 ously hostile to human happiness than marriage. 
 
 I conceive that, from the abolition of marriage, the 
 fit and natural arrangement of sexual connection would 
 result. I by no means assert that the intercourse 
 would be promiscuous : on the contrary ; it appears, 
 from the relation of parent to child, that this union is 
 generally of long duration, and marked above all others 
 with generosity and self-devotion. But this is a subject 
 which it is perhaps premature to discuss. That which 
 will result from the abolition of marriage, will be natu. 
 ral and right, because choice and change will be ex. 
 empted from restraint. 
 
 Jn fact, religion and morality, as they now stand, 
 
152 NOTES. 
 
 compose a practical code of misery arid servitude : the 
 genius of human happiness must tear every leaf from 
 the accursed book of God, ere man can read the in- 
 scription on his heart. How would morality, dressed 
 up in stiff stays and finery, start from her own disgust- 
 ing image, should she look in the mirror of nature ! 
 
 W 
 
 VI.— Page 75. 
 
 To the red and baleful sun 
 That faintly twinkles there. 
 
 The north polar star, to which the axis of the earth, 
 in its present state of obliquity, points. It is exceed- 
 ingly probable, from many considerations, that this 
 obliquity will gradually diminish, until the equator 
 coincides with the ecliptic : the nights and days will 
 then become equal on the earth throughout the year, 
 and probably the seasons also. There is no great ex- 
 travagance in presuming that the progress of the per- 
 pendicularity of the poles may be as rapid as the pro- 
 gress of intellect ; or that there should be a perfect 
 
NOTES. 153 
 
 identity between the moral and physical improvement 
 of the human species. It is certain that wisdom is not 
 compatible with disease, and that, in the present state 
 of the climates of the earth, health, in the true and 
 comprehensive sense of the word, is out of the reach of 
 civilized man. Astronomy teaches us that the earth is 
 now in its progress, and that the poles are every year 
 becoming more and more perpendicular to the ecliptic. 
 The strong evidence afforded by the history of mytho- 
 logy, and geological researches, that some event of this 
 nature has taken place already, affords a strong pre- 
 sumption that this progress is not merely an occillation, 
 as has been surmised by some late astronomers *. 
 Bones of animals peculiar to the torrid zone have been 
 found in the north of Siberia, and on the banks of the 
 river Ohio. Plants have been found in the fossil state 
 in the interior of Germany, which demand the present 
 climate of Hindostan for their production +. The re- 
 
 * Laplace, Systeme du Monde. 
 
 f Cabanis, Rapports du Physique et du Moral de l'Homme, 
 vol. ii. page 406. 
 
154 NOTES. 
 
 searches of M. Bailly* establish the existence of a peo- 
 ple who inhabited a tract inTartary 49° north latitude, 
 of greater antiquity than either the Indians, the Chi, 
 nese, or the Chaldeans, from whom these nations de- 
 rived their sciences and theology. We find, from the 
 testimony of antient writers, that Britain, Germany 
 and France were much colder than at present, and that 
 their great rivers were annually frozen over. Astro- 
 nomy teaches us also, that since this period the obli- 
 quity of the earth's position has been considerably di- 
 minished. #3" 
 
 VI.— Page 81. 
 
 No atom of this turbulence fulfils 
 A vague and unnecessitated task, 
 Or acts but as it must and ought to act. 
 
 Deux exemples serviront a nous rendre plus sensible 
 le principe qui vient d'etre pose; nous emprunterons 
 
 * Lettres sur les Sciences, a Voltaire. Bailly. 
 
NOTES. 155 
 
 l'une du physique et l'autre du moral. Dans un tour- 
 billou depoussiere qu'eleveun vent impetueux, quelque 
 confus qu'il paroisse a nos yeux ; dans la plus affreuse 
 tempete excite par des vents opposes qui soulevent les 
 flots, il n'y a pas une seule molecule de poussiere ou 
 d'eau qui soit place au hazard, qui n'ait sa cause suffi- 
 sante pour occuper le lieu ou elle se trouve, et qui n'a- 
 gisse rigoureusement de la maniere dont elle doit agir. 
 Une geometre qui connoitroit exactement les diflerentes 
 forces qui agissent dans ces deux cas, et les proprietes 
 des molecules qui sont mues, demontreroit que d'apres 
 des causes donnes, chaque molecule agit precisement 
 comme elle doit agir, et ne peut agir autrement qu'elle 
 ne fait. 
 
 Dans les convulsions terribles qui agitent quelque. 
 fois les societes politiques, et qui produisent souvent le 
 renversement d'un empire, il n'y a pas une seule action, 
 une seule parole, une seule pensee, une seule volonte, 
 une seule passion dans les agens qui concourent a la 
 revolution comme destructeurs ou comme victimes, qui 
 ne soit necessaire, qui n'agisse comme elle doit agir, 
 qui n'opere infalliblement les effets qu'elle doit operer, 
 
156 NOTES. 
 
 suivant la place qu'occupent ces agens dans ce tourbil- 
 lon moral. Cela paroitroit evident pour une intelli- 
 gence qui sera en etat de saisir et d'apprecier toutes les 
 actions et reactions des esprits et des corps de ceux qui 
 contribuent a cette revolution. 
 
 Syst&me de la Nature, vol. i. page 44. 
 
 VI.— Page 82. 
 
 Necessity, thou mother of the world ! 
 
 He who asserts the doctrine of Necessity, means that, 
 contemplating the events which compose the moral and 
 material universe, he beholds only an immense and unin- 
 terrupted chain of causes and effects, no one of which 
 could occupy any other place than it does occupy, or 
 acts in any other place than it does act. The idea of 
 necessity is obtained by our experience of the connec- 
 tion between objects, the uniformity of the operations 
 of nature, the constant conjunction of similar events, 
 and the consequent inference of one from the other. 
 
NOTES. 157 
 
 Mankind are therefore agreed in the admission of ne- 
 cessity, if they admit that these two circumstances take 
 place in voluntary action. Motive is, to voluntary 
 action in the human mind, what cause is to effect in the 
 material universe. The word liberty, as applied to 
 mind, is analogous to the word chance, as applied to 
 matter : they spring from an ignorance of the certainty 
 of the conjunction of antecedents and consequents. 
 
 Every human being is irresistibly impelled to act pre- 
 cisely as he does act : in the eternity which preceded 
 his birth a chain of causes was generated, which, ope- 
 rating under the name of motives, make it impossible 
 that any thought of his mind, or any action of his life, 
 should be otherwise than it is. Were the doctrine of 
 Necessity false, the human mind would no longer be a 
 legitimate object of science ; from like causes it would 
 be in vain that we should expect like effects; the 
 strongest motive would no longer be paramount over 
 the conduct ; all knowledge would be vague and unde- 
 terminate; we could not predict with any certainty 
 that we might not meet as an enemy tomorrow him with 
 whom we have parted in friendship tonight ; the most 
 
158 NOTES. 
 
 probable inducements and the clearest reasonings would 
 lose the invariable influence they possess. The con- 
 trary of this is demonstrably the fact. Similar circum- 
 stances produce the same unvariable effects. The pre- 
 cise character and motives of any man on any occasion 
 being given, the moral philosopher could predict his 
 actions with as much certainty as the natural philoso- 
 pher could predict the effects of the mixture of any 
 particular chemical substances. Why is the aged hus- 
 bandman more experienced than the young beginner ? 
 Because there is a uniform, undeniable necessity in the 
 operations of the material universe. Why is the old 
 statesman more skilful than the raw politician ? Be- 
 cause, relying on the necessary conjunction of motive 
 and action, he proceeds to produce moral effects, by 
 the application of those moral causes which experience 
 has shewn to be effectual. Some actions may be found 
 to which we can attach no motives, but these are the 
 effects of causes with which we are unacquainted. 
 Hence the relation which motive bears to voluntary 
 action is that of cause to effect ; nor, placed in this 
 point of view, is it, or ever has it been the subject of po- 
 
NOTES. 159 
 
 pular or philosophical dispute. Nonebut the few fanatics 
 who are engaged in the herculean task of reconciling the 
 justice of their God with the misery of man, will longer 
 outrage common sense by the supposition of an event 
 without a cause, a voluntary action without a motive. 
 History, politics, morals, criticism, all grounds of rea- 
 soning, all principles of science, alike assume the truth 
 of the doctrine of Necessity. No farmer carrying his 
 corn to market doubts the sale of it at the market price. 
 The master of a manufactory no more doubts that he 
 can purchase the human labour necessary for his pur- 
 poses, than that his machinery will act as they have 
 been accustomed to aet. 
 
 But, whilst none have scrupled to admit necessity as 
 influencing matter, many have disputed its dominion 
 over mind. Independently of its militating with the 
 received ideas of the justice of God, it is by no means 
 obvious to a superficial enquiry. When the mind ob- 
 serves its own operations, it feels no connection of 
 motive and action : but as we know " nothing more of 
 causation than the constant conjunction of objects and 
 the consequent inference of one from the other, as we 
 
160 NOTES. 
 
 find that these two circumstances are universally al- 
 lowed to have place in voluntary action, we may be 
 easily led to own that they are subjected to the neces- 
 sity common to all causes.'* The actions of the will 
 have a regular conjunction with circumstances and cha- 
 racters ; motive is, to voluntary action, what cause is 
 to effect. But the only idea we can form of causation 
 is a constant conjunction of similar objects, and the 
 consequent inference of one from the other : wherever 
 this is the case necessity is clearly established. 
 
 The idea of liberty, applied metaphorically to the 
 will, has sprung from a misconception of the meaning 
 of the word power. What is power? — id quod potest, 
 that which can produce any given effect. To deny 
 power, is to say that nothing can or has the power to 
 be or act. In the only true sense of the word power, 
 it applies with equal force to the loadstone as to the 
 human will. Do you think these motives, which I shall 
 present, are powerful enough to rouse him ? is a ques- 
 tion just as common as, Do you think this lever has 
 the power of raising this weight ? The advocates of 
 free-will assert that the will has the power of refusing 
 
NOTES. 161 
 
 to be determined by the strongest motive : but the 
 strongest motive is that which, overcoming all others, 
 ultimately prevails ; this assertion therefore amounts to 
 a denial of the will being ultimately determined by that 
 motive which does determine it, which is absurd. But 
 it is equally certain that a man cannot resist the strong- 
 est motive, as that he cannot overcome a physical im- 
 possibility. 
 
 The doctrine of Necessity tends to introduce a great 
 change into the established notions of morality, and 
 utterly to destroy religion. Reward and punishment 
 must be considered, by the Necessarian, merely as mo- 
 tives which he would employ in order to procure the 
 adoption or abandonment of any given line of conduct. 
 Desert, in the present sense of the word, would no 
 longer have any meaning ; and he, who should inflict 
 pain upon another for no better reason than that he 
 deserved it, would only gratify his revenge under pre- 
 tence of satisfying justice. It is not enough, says the 
 advocate of free-will, that a criminal should be pre- 
 vented from a repetition of his crime : he should feel 
 pain, and his torments, when justly inflicted, ought 
 
162- NOTES. 
 
 precisely to be proportioned to his fault. But utility- 
 is morality; that which is incapable of producing happi- 
 ness is useless; and though the crime of Damiens must be 
 condemned, yet the frightful torments which revenge, 
 under the name of justice, inflicted on this unhappy- 
 man, cannot be supposed to have augmented, even at 
 the long run, the stock of pleasurable sensation in the 
 world. At the same time, the doctrine of Necessity 
 does not in the least diminish our disapprobation of 
 vice. The conviction which all feel, that a viper is 
 a poisonous animal, and that a tyger is constrained, by 
 the inevitable condition of his existence, to devour 
 men, does not induce us to avoid them less sedulously, 
 or, even more, to hesitate in destroying them : but he 
 would surely be of a hard heart, who, meeting with a 
 serpent on a desart island, or in a situation where it was 
 incapable of injury, should wantonly deprive it of exist- 
 ence. A Necessarian is inconsequent to his own prin- 
 ciples, if he indulges in hatred or contempt; the compas- 
 sion which he feels for the criminal is unmixed with a 
 desire of injuring him : he looks with an elevated and 
 dreadless composure upon the links of the universal chain 
 
NOTES. 163 
 
 as they pass before his eyes ; whilst cowardice, curiosity 
 and inconsistency only assail him in proportion to the 
 feebleness and indistinctness with which he has perceived 
 and rejected the delusions of free-will. 
 
 Religion is the perception of the relation in which 
 we stand to the principle of the universe. But if the 
 principle of the universe be not an organic being, the 
 model and prototype of man, the relation between it 
 and human beings are absolutely none. Without some 
 insight into its will respecting our actions, religion is 
 nugatory and vain. But will is only a mode of animal 
 mind ; moral qualities also are such as only a human 
 being can possess ; to attribute them to the principle of the 
 universe, is to annex to it properties incompatible with 
 any possible definition of its nature. It is probable 
 that the word God was originally only an expression de- 
 noting the unknown cause of the known events which 
 men perceived in the universe. By the vulgar mistake 
 of a metaphor for a real being, of a word for a thing, 
 it became a man, endowed with human qualities and 
 governing the universe as an earthly monarch governs 
 his kingdom. Their addresses to this imaginary being. 
 
164 :notes. 
 
 indeed, are much in the same style as those of subjects 
 to a king. They acknowledge his benevolence, depre- 
 cate his anger, and supplicate his favour. 
 
 But the doctrine of Necessity teaches us, that in 
 no case could any event have happened otherwise than 
 it did happen, and that, if God is the author of good, 
 he is also the author of evil ; that, if he is entitled to 
 our gratitude for the one, he is entitled to our hatred 
 for the other ; that, admitting the existence of this 
 hypothetic being, he is also subjected to the dominion 
 of an immutable necessity. It is plain that the same 
 arguments which prove that God is the author of food, 
 light, and life, prove him also to be the author of 
 poison, darkness, aud death. The wide-wasting 
 earthquake, the storm, the battle, and the tyranny, are 
 attributable to this hypothetic being in the same degree 
 as the fairest forms of nature, sunshine, liberty, and 
 peace. 
 
 But we are taught, by the doctrine of Necessity, 
 that there is neither good nor evil in the universe, other- 
 wise than as the events to which we apply these epithets 
 have relation to our own peculiar mode of being. Still 
 
NOTES. 165 
 
 less than with the hypothesis of a God, will the doctrine 
 of Necessity accord with the belief of a future state of 
 punishment. God made man such as he is, and then 
 damned him for being so : for to say that God was 
 the author of all good, and man the author of all evil, 
 is to say that one man made a straight line and a 
 crooked one, and another man made the incongruity. 
 
 pr 
 
 A Mahometan story, much to the present purpose, is 
 recorded, wherein Adam and Moses are introduced 
 disputing before God in the following manner. Thou, 
 says Moses, art Adam, whom God created, and animated 
 with the breath of life, and caused to be worshipped by 
 the angels, and placed in Paradise, from whence man. 
 kind have been expelled for thy fault. Whereto Adam 
 answered, Thou art Moses, whom God chose for his 
 apostle, and entrusted with his word, by giving thee the 
 tables of the law, and whom he vouchsafed to admit 
 to discourse with himself. How many years dost thou 
 find the law was written before I was created ? Says 
 Moses, Forty. And dost thou not find, replied Adam, 
 
166 NOTES. 
 
 these words therein, And Adam rebelled against his Lord 
 and transgressed ? Which Moses confessing. Dost thou 
 therefore blame me, continued he, for doing that which 
 God wrote of me that I should do, forty years before 
 I was created, nay, for what was decreed concerning me 
 fifty thousand years before the creation of heaven and 
 earth? — Sale's Prelim. Disc, to the Koran, page 164, 
 
 VII.— Page 85. 
 There is no God ! 
 
 This negation must be understood solely to affect a 
 creative Deity. The hypothesis of a pervading Spirit 
 coeternal with the universe, remains unshaken. 
 
 A close examination of the validity of the proofs 
 adduced to support any proposition, is the only secure 
 way of attaining truth, on the advantages of which it is 
 unnecessary to descant : our knowledge of the exist, 
 ence of a Deity is a subject of such importance, that it 
 cannot be too minutely investigated ; in consequence 
 
NOTES. 167 
 
 of this conviction we proceed briefly and impartially to 
 examine the proofs which have been adduced. It is 
 necessary first to consider the nature of belief. 
 
 When a proposition is offered to the mind, it per- 
 ceives the agreement or disagreement of the ideas of 
 which it is composed. A perception of their agree- 
 ment is termed belief. Many obstacles frequently 
 prevent this perception from being immediate; these 
 the mind attempts to remove, in order that the percep- 
 tion may be distinct. The mind is active in the inves- 
 tigation, in order to perfect the state of perception of 
 the relation which the component ideas of the proposi- 
 tion bear to each, which is passive : the investigation 
 being confused with the perception, has induced many 
 falsely to imagine that the mind is active in belief,-— 
 that belief is an act of volition, — in consequence of 
 which it may be regulated by the mind. Pursuing, 
 continuing this mistake, they have attached a degree of 
 criminality to disbelief; of which, in its nature, it is 
 incapable : it is equally incapable of merit. 
 
 Belief, then, is a passion, the strength of which, lik© 
 
 % 
 
108 NOTES. 
 
 every other passion, is in precise proportion to the 
 degrees of excitement. 
 
 The degrees of excitement are three. 
 
 The senses are the sources of all knowledge to the 
 mind ; consequently their evidence claims the strongest 
 assent. 
 
 The decision of the mind, founded upon our own 
 experience, derived from these sources, claims the next 
 degree. 
 
 The experience of others, which addresses itself to 
 the former one, occupies the lowest degree. 
 
 ( A graduated scale, on which should be marked the 
 capabilities of propositions to approach to the test of 
 the senses, would be a just barometer of the belief which 
 ought to be attached to them.) 
 
 Consequently no testimony can be admitted which is 
 contrary to reason ; reason is founded on the evidence 
 of our senses. 
 
 Every proof may be referred to one of these three 
 divisions : it is to be considered what arguments we 
 receive from each of them, which should convince us of 
 the existence of a Deity. 
 
NOTES. 169 
 
 1st. The evidence of the senses. If the Deity should 
 appear to us, if he should convince our senses of his 
 existence, this revelation would necessarily command 
 belief. Those to whom the Deity has thus appeared 
 have the strongest possible conviction of his existence. 
 But the God of Theologians is incapable of local visi- 
 bility. 
 
 2d. Reason. It is urged that man knows that what- 
 ever is, must either have had a beginning, or have 
 existed from all eternity : he also knows, that whatever 
 is not eternal must have had a cause. When this rea- 
 soning is applied to the universe, it is necessary to 
 prove that it was created : until that is clearly demon- 
 strated, we may reasonably suppose that it has endured 
 from all eternity. We must prove design before we can 
 infer a designer. The only idea which we can form of 
 causation is derivable from the constant conjunction of 
 objects, and the consequent inference of one from the 
 other. In a case where two propositions are diametrically 
 opposite, the mind believes that which is least incompre- 
 hensible ; — it is easier to suppose that the universe has 
 existed from all eternity, than to conceive a being be- 
 
170 NOTES. 
 
 yond its limits capable of creating it : if the mind sinks 
 beneath the weight of one, is it an alleviation to in- 
 crease the intolerability of the burthen ? 
 
 The other argument, which is founded on a man's 
 knowledge of his own existence, stands thus. A man 
 knows not only that he now is, but that once he was 
 not ; consequently there must haYe been a cause. But 
 our idea of causation is alone derivable from the con- 
 stant conjunction of objects and the consequent infer- 
 ence of one from the other ; and, reasoning experimen- 
 tally, we can only infer from effects, causes exactly 
 adequate to those effects. But there certainly is a 
 generative power which is effected by certain instru- 
 ments : we cannot prove that it is inherent in these 
 instruments; nor. is. the contrary hypothesis capable of 
 demonstration : we admit that the ; generative power is 
 incomprehensible ; but to suppose that the same effect 
 is produced by an eternal, omniscient, omnipotent 
 being, leaves the cause in the same obscurity, but ren- 
 ders it more incomprehensible. 
 
 3d. Testimony. It is required that testimony should 
 not be contrary *to reason. The testimony that the 
 
NOTES, 171 
 
 Deity convinces the senses of men of his existence can 
 only be admitted by us, if our mind considers it less 
 probable that these men should have been deceived, 
 than that the Deity should have appeared to them. 
 Our reason can never admit the testimony of men, who 
 not only declare that they were eye-witnesses of mi- 
 racles, but that the Deity was irrational ; for he com- 
 manded that he should be believed, he proposed the 
 highest rewards for faith, eternal punishments for dis- 
 belief. We can only command voluntary actions ; 
 belief is not an act of volition ; the mind is even pas- 
 sive, or involuntarily active : from this it is evident that 
 we have no sufficient testimony, or rather that testi- 
 mony is insufficient to prove the being of a God. It 
 has been before shewn that it cannot be deduced from 
 reason. They alone, then, who have been convinced 
 by the evidence of the senses, can believe it. 
 
 Hence it is evident that, having no proofs from either 
 of the three sources of conviction, the mind cannot 
 believe the existence of a creative God : it is also evi- 
 dent, that, as belief is a passion of the mind, no degree 
 £>f criminalit^s attachable to disbelief ; and that they 
 
172 JfOTES. 
 
 only are reprehensible who neglect to remove the false 
 medium through which their mind views any subject of 
 discussion. Every reflecting mind must acknowledge 
 that there is no proof of the existence of a Deity. 
 
 God is an hypothesis, and, as such, stands in need 
 of proof: the onus probandi rests on the theist. Sir 
 Isaac Newton says : Hypotheses non Jingo, quicquid 
 enim ex phcenomenis non dedicator, hypothesis vocan* 
 da est, et hypothesis vel metaphysicae, vel physicce,- vel 
 qualitatum occultarum, sen mechanics, in philosophia 
 locum non hahent. To all proofs of the existence of a 
 creative God apply this valuable rule. We see a vari- 
 ety of bodies possessing a variety of powers : we merely 
 know their effects ; we are in a state of ignorance with 
 respect to their essences and causes. These Newton 
 calls the phenomena of things ; but the pride of philo- 
 sophy is unwilling to admit its ignorance of their causes. 
 From the phenomena, which are the objects of our 
 senses, we attempt to infer a cause, which we call God, 
 and gratuitously endow it with all negative and con- 
 tradictory qualities. From this hypothesis we invent 
 this general name, to conceal our ignonmce of causes 
 
NOTES. 173 
 
 and essences. The being called God by no means 
 answers with the conditions prescribed by Newton ; it 
 bears every mark of a veil woven by philosophical con- 
 ceit, to hide the ignorance of philosophers even from 
 themselves. They borrow the threads of its texture 
 from the anthropomorphism of the vulgar. Words 
 have been used by sophists for the same purposes, from 
 the occult qualities of the peripatetics to the effluvium 
 of Boyle and the crinities or nebulas of Herschel. God 
 is represented as infinite, eternal, incomprehensible ; 
 he is contained under every predicate in non that the 
 logic of ignorance could fabricate. Even his worship- 
 pers allow that it is impossible to form any idea of 
 him : they exclaim with the French poet, 
 
 Pour dire ce quHl est, il faut Hre lui.mime. 
 
 pr 
 
 Lord Bacon says, that ^ atheism leaves to man rea- 
 son, philosophy, natural piety, laws, reputation, and 
 every thing that can serve to conduct him to virtue; 
 but superstition destroys all these, and erects itself into 
 a tyranny over the understandings of men : hence 
 
174 NOTES. 
 
 atheism never disturbs the government, but renders 
 man more clear-sighted, since he sees nothing beyond 
 the boundaries of the present life." 
 
 Bacon's Moral Essays. 
 
 La premiere theologie de Phomme lui fit d'abord 
 craindre et adorer les elemens meme, des objets mate- 
 riels et grossiers ; il rendit ensuite ses hommages a des 
 agens presidens aux elemens, a des genies inferieurs, a 
 des heros, ou a des hommes doues de grands qualites. 
 A force de reflechir il crut simplifier les choses en sou- 
 mettant la nature entiere a un seul agent, a un esprit^ 
 a une ame universelle, qui mettoit cette nature et ses 
 parties en mouyement. En remontant des causes en 
 causes, les mortels ont fini par ne rien voir ; et c'est 
 dans cette obscurite qu'ils ont place leur Dieu ; c'est 
 dans cette abime tenebreux que leur imagination in- 
 quiete travaille toujours a se fabriquer des chimeres, 
 que les affligeront jusqu'a ce que la connoissance de la 
 nature les detrompe des phantomes qu'ils ont toujours 
 si vainement adores. 
 
 Si nous voulons nous rendre compte de nos idees sur 
 
NOTES. 175 
 
 la Divinity nous serons obliges de convenir que, par 
 le mot Dieu, les hommes n'ont jamais pu designer que 
 la cause la plus cachee, la plus eloignee, la plus incon- 
 nue des effets qu'ils voyoient : ils ne font usage de ce 
 mot, que lorsque le jeu des causes naturelles et con* 
 nues cesse d'etre visible pour eux ; d&s qu'ils perdent 
 le fit de ces causes, ou d&s que leur esprit ne peut plus 
 en suivre la chaine, ils tranchent leur difficulty, et ter- 
 minent leur recherches en appellant Dieu la derniere 
 des causes, c'est-a-dire celle qui est au-dela de toutes 
 les causes qu'ils connoissent ; ainsi ils ne font qu'assi- 
 gner une denomination vague a une cause ignoree, a 
 laquelle leur paresse ou les bornes de leurs connois- 
 sances les forcent de s'arreter. Toutes les fois qu'on 
 nous dit que Dieu est l'auteur de quelque phenomene, 
 cela signifie qu'on ignore comment un tel phenomene 
 a pu s'operer par le secours des forces ou des causes que 
 nous connoissons dans la nature. C'est ainsi que le 
 commun des hommes, dont l'ignorance est la partage, 
 attribue a la Divinite non seulement les eife^ inusites 
 que les frappent, mais encore les evenemens les plus 
 simples, dont les causes sont les plus faciles a connoitre 
 
 m 
 
176 NOTES. 
 
 pour quiconque a pu les mediter. En un mot, l'homme 
 a toujours respecte les causes inconnues des effets sur- 
 prenans, que son ignorance l'empechoit de demeler* 
 Ce fut sur les debus de la nature que les hommes ele- 
 verent le colosse imaginaire de la Divinite. 
 
 Si l'ignorance de la nature donna la naissance aux 
 dieux, la connoissance de la nature est faite pour les 
 detruire. A mesure que l'homme s'instruit, ses forces 
 et ses ressources augmentent avec ses lumieres ; les sci- 
 ences, les arts conservateurs, P Industrie, lui fournissent 
 des secours ; l'experience le rassure ou lui procure des 
 moyens de resister aux efforts de biens des causes qui 
 cessent de Palarmer des qu'il les a connues. En un 
 mot, ses terreurs se dissipent dans la m^me proportion 
 que son esprit s'eclaire. L'homme instruit cesse d'etre 
 superstitieux. 
 
 Ce n'est jamais que sur parole que des peuples en- 
 tiers adorent le Dieu de leurs peres et de leurs pretres : 
 Fautorite, la confiance, la soumission, et l'habitude, 
 leur tiennent lieu de conviction et de preuves ; ils se 
 prosternent etjment, parce que leurs peres leur ontap- 
 pris a se prosterner et prier : mais pourquoi ceux-ci se 
 
NOfES. 177 
 
 sont-ils mis a genoux ? C'est que dans les temps eloi- 
 gned leurslegislateurs etleurs guides leur en ont fait un 
 deyoir. " Adorez et croyez," ont-ils dit, a des dieux 
 que vous ne pouvez comprendre ; rapportez-vous en a 
 notre sagesse profonde ; nous en savons plus que vous 
 sur la Divinite." Mais pourquoi m'en rapporterois-je 
 a, vous ? C'est que Dieu le veut ainsi, c'est que Dieu 
 vous punira si vous osez resister. Mais ce Dieu n'est- 
 il done pas la chose en question ? Cependant les hom- 
 ines se sont toujours payes de ce cercle vicieux; la 
 paresse de leur esprit leur fit trouver plus court de s'en 
 rapporter au jugement des autres. Toutes les notions 
 religieuses sont fondees uniquement sur l'autorite ; 
 toutes les religions du monde defendent l'examen et ne 
 veulent pas quel'on raisonne; c'est l'autorite qui veut 
 qu'on crire en Dieu ; ce Dieu n'est lui-merae fonde que 
 sur l'autorite de quelques hommes qui pretendent le 
 connoitre, et venir de sa part pour l'annoncer a la terre. 
 Un Dieu fait par les hommes, a sans doute besoin des 
 hommes pour se faire connoitre aux hommes. 
 
 Ne seroit-ce done que pour des pr^|^s des inspires,' 
 des metaphysiciens que seroit reserve* la conviction 
 x 
 
178 NOTES. 
 
 de l'existence d'un Dieu, que Ton dit neanmoins st- 
 necessaire a, tout le genre-humain ? Mais trouvons- 
 nous de l'harmonie entre les opinions theologiques des 
 (Rfferens inspires, ou des penseurs repandus sur la terre ? 
 Ceux meme que font profession d'adorer le meme Dieu, 
 sont-ils d'accord suf son compte ? Sont-ils contents 
 des preuves que leurs collegues apportent de son exis- 
 tence ? SouscriTent-ils unanimement aux idees qu'ils 
 presentent sur sa nature, sur sa conduite, sur la fa^on 
 d'entendre ses pretendus oracles ? Est-il une contree 
 sur la terre, ou la science de Dieu se soit reellement 
 perfectionne ? A-t-elle pris quelque part la consistence 
 et Puniformite que nous xoyons prendre aux connois- 
 sances humaines, aux arts les plus futiles r aux metiers 
 les plus meprises ? des mots d'esprits, dHmmatkrialitky 
 de creation, de predestination, de grace ; cette foule 
 de distinctions subtiles dont la theologie s'est partout 
 remplie dans quelques pays, ces inrentions si ingeni- 
 euses, iraaginees par des penseurs que se sont succedes 
 depuis tant de siecles, n'ont fait, helas 1 qu'embrouilles 
 les choses, et jamais le science le plus necessaire aux 
 hommes n'a jusqu'ici pu acquerir la moindre fixite. 
 
NOTES. 179 
 
 Depuis des milliers d'annees, ces reveurs olsifs se sont 
 perpetuellement relay es pour mediter la Divinite, pour 
 deviner ses voies cachees, pour inyenter des hypotheses 
 propres a developper cette enigrae importante. Leur 
 peu de succes n'a point decouragela yanite theologique; 
 toujours on a parle de Dieu : on s'est egorge pour lui, 
 et cet etre sublime demeure toujours le plus ignore et le 
 plus discute. 
 
 Les homraes auroient ete tropheureux, si, se bornant 
 aux objets visibles qui les interessent, ils eussent em- 
 ploye a perfectioner leurs sciences reelles, leurs loix, 
 leur morale, leur education, la moitie des efforts qu'ils 
 ont mis dans leurs recherches sur la Divinite. Ils 
 auroient ete bien plus sages encore, et plus fortunes, 
 s'ils eussent pu consentir a laisser leurs guides desoeu- 
 vres se quereller entre eux, et sonder des profondeurs 
 capables de les etourdir, sans se meler de leurs disputes 
 msensees. Mais il est de Pessence de l'ignorance d'at- 
 tacher de Pimportance a ce qu'elle ne comprend pas. 
 Lavanite humaine fait que l'esprit se roidit contre les 
 difncultes. Plus un objet se derobe a nos yeux, plus 
 nous faisons d'efforts pour le saisir, parce que des-Iors 
 
180 NOTES. 
 
 il aiguillone notre orgueil, il excite notre curiosite, il 
 nous parent interessant. En combattant pour son Dieu 
 chacun ne combattit en efFet que pour les interets desa 
 propre vanite, qui de toutes les passions produits par la 
 mal organization de la societe, est la plus prompte a 
 s'allarmer, et la plus propre a produire des tres grands 
 folies. 
 
 Si ecartant pour un moment les idees facheuses que la 
 theologie nous donne d'un Dieu capricieux, dont les 
 decrets partraux et despotiques decident du sort des 
 humains, nous ne voulons fixer nos yeux que sur la 
 bonte pretendue, que tous les hommes, meme en trem- 
 blant devant ce Dieu, s'accordent a, lui donner ; si nous 
 lui supposons le projet qu'on lui prete, de n'avoir tra- 
 vaille que pour sa propre gloire, d'exiger les hommages 
 des etres intelligens ; de ne chercher dans ses ceuvres 
 que le bien-etre du genre-humain ; comment concilier 
 ses Tues et ses dispositions avec l'ignorance viraiment 
 invincible dans lequelle ce Dieu, si glorieux et si bon, 
 laisse la plupart des hommes sur son compte ? Si Dieu 
 veut etre connu, cheri, remercie, que ne se montre-t-il 
 sous des traits farorables a tousces etres intelligens dont 
 
NOTES. 181 
 
 il veut etre aime et adore ? Pourquoi ne point se mani- 
 fester a toute la terre d'une facon non equivoque, bien 
 plus capable de nous convaincre, que ces revelations 
 particuliers qui semblent accuser la Divinite d'une par- 
 tialite facheuse pour quelqu'uns de ses creatures ? Le 
 tout-puissant n'auroit-il done pas des moyens plus con- 
 vinquans de se montrer ceux hommes que ces metamor- 
 phoses ridicules, ces incarnations pretendues, qui nous 
 sont attestees par des ecrivains si peu d'accord entre eux 
 dans les recits qu'ils en font ? Au lieu de tant de mira- 
 cles, inventes pour prouver la mission divine de tant de 
 legislateurs, reveres par les difierens peuples du monde, 
 le souverain des esprits ne pouvoit-il pas convaincre tout 
 d'un coup l'esprit humain des choses qu'il a voulu lui 
 faire connoitre ? Au lieu de suspendre un soleil dans la 
 voute du firmament ; au lieu de repandre sans ordre les 
 etoiles, et les constellations qui remplissent l'espace, 
 n'eut-il pas ete plus conforme aux vues d'un Dieu si 
 jaloux de sa gloire et si bien intentionne pour l'homme; 
 d'ecrire d'une fa9on non sujette a dispute, son nom, ses 
 attributs, ses volontes permanentes en caracteres inef- 
 fa9ables, et lisibles egalementpourtous les habitants de 
 
182 NOTES. 
 
 la terre ? Personne alors n'auroit pu douter de l'exis- 
 tence d'un Dieu, de ses volontes claires, de ses intentions 
 visibles. Sous les yeux de ce Dieu si terrible personne 
 n'auroit eu l'audace de violer ses ordonnances ; nul 
 mortel n'eut ose se mettre dans le cas d'attirer sa colere : 
 enfin nul homrae n'eut eu le front d'en imposer en son 
 nom 5 ou d'interpreter ses Yolontes suivant ses propres 
 phantasies. 
 
 En effet, quand meme on admetteroit l'existence du 
 Dieu theologique, et la realite des attributs si discordans 
 qu'on lui donne, Ton ne peut en rien conclure, pour 
 autorizer la conduite ou les cultes qu'on present de lui 
 rendre. La theologie est vraiment le tonneau des Da. 
 nciides. A force de qualites contradictoires et d'asser- 
 tions hazardees, elle a, pour ainsi dire, tenement garote 
 son Dieu qu'elle a mis dans l'impossibilite d'agir. S'il 
 est infiniment bon qu'elle raison aurions-nous de le 
 craindre ? S'il est infiniment sage, de quoi nous inquie- 
 ter sur notre sort ? S'il sait tout, pourquoi l'avertirde 
 nos besoins, et le fatiguer de nos prieres ? S'il est par- 
 tout, pourquoi lui elever des temples ? S'il est maitre 
 de tout, pourquoi lui faire des sacrifices et des offiandes ? 
 
NOTES. 183 
 
 S'il est juste, comment erorrequ'il punisse des creatures 
 qu'il a rempli de foiblesses ? Si la grace fait tout en 
 elles, quelle raison auroit-il de les recompenser? 
 S'il est tout-puissant, comment 1'ofFenser, comment lui 
 resister ? S'il est raisonnable, comment se mettroit-ii 
 en colere contre des avengles, a qui il a laisse la liberte 
 de deraisonner ? S'il est immuable, de quel droit pre- 
 tendrions-nous faire changer ses decrets? S'il est 
 inconceyable, pourquoi nous en occuper? S'IL A 
 PARLE 7 , POURQUOI L' UNI VERS N'EST.IL 
 PAS CONVAINCU ? Si la connoissance d'un Dieu 
 est la plus necessaire, pourquoi n'est-elle pas la plus 
 evidente, et la plus claire. 
 
 Systeme de la Nature y London, 1781. 
 
 The enlightened and benevolent Pliny thus publicly 
 professes himself an atheist : — Quapropter effigiem Dei, 
 formamque quaerere, imbecillitatis humanse reor. Quis. 
 quis est Deus (si modo est alius) et quacunque in parte, 
 totus est sensus, totus est visus, totus auditus, totus 
 animae, totus animi, totus sui. ***** 
 Imperfects yero in homine naturae prascipua solatia 
 
184 NOTES. 
 
 ne deum quidem posse omnia. Namque nee sibi potest 
 mortem consciscere, si velit, quod hominidedit optimum 
 in tantis vita pcenis : nee mortales aeternitate donare, 
 aut revocare defunctos ; nee facere ut qui vixit non 
 vixerit,qui honores gessit non gesserit, nullumque habere 
 in praeteritum jus, praeterquam oblivionis, atque ut 
 facetis quoque argumentis societas haec cum deo copule- 
 tur) ut bis dena viginta non sint, et multa similiter 
 efficere non posse.- — Per quae, declaratur haud dubie, 
 naturae potentiam id'quoque esse, quod Deum vocamus. 
 Plin. Nat. His. cap. de Deo. 
 
 The consistent Newtonian is necessarily an atheist. 
 See Sir W. Drummond's Academical Questions, chap. 
 iii. — Sir W. seems to consider the atheism to which it 
 Jeads, as a sufficient presumption of the falshood of the 
 system of gravitation : but surely it is more consistent with 
 the good faith of philosophy to admit a deduction from 
 facts than an hypothesis incapable of proof, although it 
 might militate with the obstinate preconceptions of the 
 mob. Had this author, instead of inveighing against the 
 gu|lt and absurdity of atheism, demonstrated its falshood. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 18a 
 
 his conduct would have been more suited to the modesty 
 of the sceptic and the toleration of the philosopher. 
 
 Omnia enim per Dei potentiam facta sunt : imo, quia 
 natura potentia nulla est nisi ipsa Dei potentia, artem 
 est nos catemus Dei potentiam non intelligere, quatemus 
 causas naturales ignoramus ; adeoque stulte ad eandem 
 Dei potentiam recurritur, quando rei alicujus, causam 
 naturalem, sive est, ipsam Dei potentiam ignoramus. 
 Spinosa, Tract, Theologico-Pol, chap, l.page 14. 
 
 VII.— Page 88. 
 
 Ahasuerus, rise ! 
 
 Ahasuerus the Jew crept forth from the dark cave of 
 Mount Carmel. Near two thousand years have elapsed 
 since he was first goaded by never-ending restless- 
 ness to rove the globe from pole to pole. When our 
 Lord was wearied with the burthen of his ponderous 
 tross ; and wanted to rest before the door of Ahasuerus, 
 
186 utotes. 
 
 the unfeeling wretch drove him away with brutality. 
 The Saviour of mankind staggered, sinking under the 
 heavy load, but uttered no complaint. An angel of 
 death appeared before Ahasuerus, and exclaimed indig- 
 nantly, u Barbarian I thou hast denied rest to the Son 
 of Man : be it denied thee also, until he comes to judge 
 the world.' * 
 
 A black demon, let loose from hell upon Ahasuerus, 
 goads him now from country to country : he is denied 
 the consolation which death affords, and precluded from 
 the rest of the peaceful grave. 
 
 Ahasuerus crept forth from the dark cave of Mount 
 Carmel — he shook the dust from his beard — and taking 
 up one of the sculls heaped there, hurled it down the 
 eminence : it rebounded from the earth in shivered 
 atoms. This was my father ! roared Ahasuerus. 
 Seven more sculls rolled down from rock to rock ; 
 while the infuriate Jew, following them with ghastly 
 looks, exclaimed — And these were my wives ! He 
 still continued to hurl down scull after scull, roaring 
 in dreadful accents — And these, and these, and 
 these were my children ! They could die ; but I ! re- 
 
NOTES. 18? 
 
 probate wretch, alas ! I cannot die ! Dreadful beyond 
 conception is the judgment that hangs over me. Jeru- 
 salem fell — I crushed the sucking babe, and precipi- 
 tated myself into the destructive flames. I cursed the 
 Romans — but, alas ! alas ! the restless curse held me by 
 the hair, — and I could not die * 
 
 Rome the giantess fell — I placed myself before the 
 falling statue — she fell, and did not crush me. Nations 
 sprung up and disappeared before me ; — but I remained 
 and did not die. From cloud-encircled cliffs did I 
 precipitate myself into the ocean; but the foaming 
 billows cast me upon the shore, and the burning arrow 
 of existence pierced my cold heart again. I leaped into 
 Etna's flaming abyss, and roared with the giants for ten 
 long months, polluting with my groans the Mount's 
 sulphureous mouth — ah ! ten long months. The volcano 
 fermented, and in a fiery stream of lava cast me up. I 
 lay torn by the torture-snakes of hell amid the glowing 
 cinders, and yet continued to exist. — A forest was on 
 fire : I darted on wings of fury and despair into the 
 crackling wood. Fire dropped upon me from the trees, 
 fcut the flames only singed my limbs ; alas ! it could not 
 
188 NOTES. 
 
 consume them. — I now mixed with the butchers of 
 mankind, and plunged in the tempest of the raging 
 battle. I roared defiance to the infuriate Gaul, defiance 
 to the victorious German ; but arrows and spears re- 
 bounded in shivers from my body. The Saracen's 
 flaming sword broke upon my scull : balls in Tain 
 hissed upon me : the lightnings of battle glared harmless 
 around my loins ; in vain did the elephant trample on 
 me, in vain the iron hoof of the wrathful steed! The 
 mine, big with destructive power, burst upon me, and 
 hurled me high in the air • — I fell on heaps of smoking 
 limbs, but was only singed. The giant's steel club 
 rebounded from my body ; the executioner's hand could 
 not strangle me, the tyger's tooth could not pierce me, 
 nor would the hungry lion in the circus devour me. I 
 cohabited with poisonous snakes, and pinched the red 
 crest of the dragon. The serpent stung, but could not 
 destroy me. — The dragon tormented, but dared not to 
 devour me. — I now provoked the fury of tyrants : I 
 said to Nero, Thou art a bloodhound ! I said to Chris- 
 tiern, Thou art a bloodhound ! I said to Muley Ismail, 
 Thou art a bloodhound ! — I The tyrants invented cruel 
 
NOTES. 189 
 
 torments, but did not kill me. Ha ! not to 
 
 be able to die — not to be able to die — not to be per- 
 mitted to rest after the toils of life — to be doomed to 
 be imprisoned for ever in the clay-formed dungeon — to 
 be for ever clogged with this worthless body, its load of 
 diseases and infirmities — to be condemned to hold for 
 milleniums that yawning monster Sameness, and Time, 
 that hungry hyena, ever bearing children, and ever de- 
 vouring again her offspring ! — Ha ! not to be permitted 
 to die ! Awful avenger in heaven, hast thou in thine 
 armoury of wrath a punishment more dreadful ? then 
 let it thunder upon me, command a hurricane to sweep 
 me down to the foot of Carmel, that I there may lie 
 extended ; may pant, and writhe, and die ! 
 
 This fragment is the translation of part of some Ger- 
 man work, whose title I have vainly endeavoured to 
 discover. I picked it up, dirty and torn, some years 
 ago, in Lincoln's-Inn Fields 
 
100 NOTES. 
 
 VII.— Page 92. 
 
 I will beget a Son, and lie shall bear 
 The sins of all the world. 
 
 A book is put into our hands when children, called 
 the Bible, the purport of whose history is briefly this : 
 That God made the earth in six days, and there planted 
 a delightful garden, in which he placed the first pair of 
 human beings. In the midst of the garden he planted 
 a tree, whose fruit, although within their reach, they 
 were forbidden to touch. That the Devil, in the shape 
 of a snake, persuaded them to eat of this fruit ; in con- 
 sequence of which God condemned both them and their 
 posterity yet unborn, to satisfy his justice by their 
 eternal misery. That, four thousand years after these 
 events, (the human race in the mean while having gone 
 unredeemed to perdition,) God engendered with the 
 betrothed wife of a carpenter in Judea (whose virginity 
 was nevertheless uninjured), and begat a Son, whose 
 same was Jesus Christ ; and who was crucified and 
 
NOTES. 191 
 
 died, in order that no more men might be devoted to 
 hell-fire, he bearing the burthen of his Father's dis- 
 pleasure by proxy. The book states, in addition, that 
 the soul of whoever disbelieves this sacrifice will be 
 burned with everlasting fire. 
 
 During many ages of misery and darkness this story 
 gained implicit belief ; but at length men arose who 
 suspected that it was a fable and imposture, and that 
 Jesus Christ, so far from being a God, was only a man 
 like themselves. But a numerous set of men, who de- 
 rived and still derive immense emoluments from this 
 opinion, in the shape of a popular belief, told the vul- 
 gar, that, if they did not believe in the Bible, they would 
 be damned to all eternity ; and burned, imprisoned^ 
 and poisoned all the unbiassed and unconnected enqui- 
 rers who occasionally arose. They still oppress them, 
 so far as the people, now become more enlightened, 
 will allow. 
 
 The belief in all that the Bible contains, is called 
 Christianity. A Roman governor of Judea, at the in* 
 stances of a priest-led mob, crucified a man called 
 
102 NOTES. 
 
 Jesus eighteen centuries ago. He was a man of pure 
 life, who desired to rescue his countrymen from the 
 tyranny of their barbarous and degrading superstitions. 
 The common fate of all who desire to benefit mankind 
 awaited him. The rabble, at the instigation of the 
 priests, demanded his death, although his very judge 
 made public acknowledgment of his innocence. Jesus 
 was sacrificed to the honour of that God with whom he 
 was afterwards confounded. It is of importance, 
 therefore, to distinguish between the pretended charac- 
 ter of this being as the Son of God and the Saviour of 
 the world, and his real character as a man, who, for a 
 vain attempt to reform the world, paid the forfeit of 
 his life to that overbearing tyranny which has since so 
 long desolated the universe in his name. Whilst the 
 one is a hypocritical demon, who announces himself as 
 the God of compassion and peace, even whilst he 
 stretches forth his blood-red hand with the sword of 
 discord to waste the earth, having confessedly devised 
 this scheme of desolation from eternity ; the other 
 stands in the foremost list of those true heroes, who 
 
NOTES. 193 
 
 have died in the glorious martyrdom of liberty, and 
 hare braved torture, contempt, and poverty, in the 
 cause of suffering humanity.* 
 
 The vulgar, ever in extremes, became persuaded that 
 the crucifixion of Jesus was a supernatural event. 
 Testimonies of miracles, so frequent in unenlightened 
 ages, were not wanting to prove that he was something 
 divine. This belief, rolling through the lapse of ages, 
 met with the reveries of Plato and the reasonings of 
 Aristotle, and acquired force and extent, until the 
 divinity of Jesus became a dogma, which to dispute 
 was death, which to doubt was infamy. 
 
 Christianity is now the established religion : he who 
 attempts to impugn it, must be contented to behold 
 murderers and traitors take precedence of him in pub- 
 lic opinion ; though, if his genius be equal to his cou- 
 rage, and assisted by a peculiar coalition of circum- 
 stances, future ages may exalt him to a divinity, and 
 persecute others in his name, as he was persecuted 
 
 * Since writing this note I have seen reason to suspect, that 
 Jesus was an ambitious man, who aspired to the throne of Judea. 
 O 
 
194 NOTES. 
 
 in the name of his predecessor in the homage of the 
 world. 
 
 The same means that have supported every other 
 popular belief, have supported Christianity. War, 
 imprisonment, assassination, and falshood ; deeds of 
 unexampled and incomparable atrocity have made it 
 ■what it is. The blood shed by the votaries of the God 
 of mercy and peace, since the establishment of his reli- 
 gion, would probably suffice to drown all other secta- 
 ries now on the habitable globe. We derive from our 
 ancestors a faith thus fostered and supported : we 
 quarrel, persecute, and hate for its maintenance. Even 
 under a government which, whilst it infringes the very 
 right of thought and speech, boasts of permitting the 
 liberty of the press, a man is pilloried and imprisoned 
 because he is a deist, and no one raises his voice in the 
 indignation of outraged humanity. But it is ever a 
 proof that the falshood of a proposition is felt by those 
 who use coercion, not reasoning, to procure its admis- 
 sion ; and a dispassionate observer would feel himself 
 mOre powerfully interested in favour of a man, who, 
 depending on the truth of his opinions, simply stated 
 
NOTES. 195 
 
 his reasons for entertaining them, than in that of his 
 aggressor, who, daringly avowing his unwillingness or 
 incapacity to answer them by argument, proceeded to 
 repress the energies and break the spirit of their pro- 
 mulgator by that torture and imprisonment whose 
 infliction he could command. 
 
 Analogy seems to favour the opinion, that as, like 
 other systems, Christianity has arisen and augmented, 
 so like them it will decay and perish ; that, as violence, 
 darkness and deceit, not reasoning and persuasion, have 
 procured its admission among mankind, so, when en- 
 thusiasm has subsided, and time, that infallible contro- 
 verter of false opinions, has involved its pretended evi- 
 dences in the darkness of antiquity, it will become 
 obsolete; that Milton's poem alone will give perma- 
 nency to the remembrance of its absurdities ; and that 
 men will laugh as heartily at grace, faith, redemption, 
 and original sin, as they now do at the metamorphoses 
 of Jupiter, the miracles of Romish saints, the efficacy 
 of witchcraft, and the appearance of departed spirits. 
 
 Had the Christian religion commenced and continued 
 by the mere force of reasoning and persuasion, the pre- 
 
196 NOTES. 
 
 ceding analogy would be inadmissible. We should 
 never speculate on the future obsoleteness of a system 
 perfectly conformable to nature and reason : it would 
 endure so long as they endured : it would be a truth as 
 indisputable as the light of the sun, the criminality of 
 murder, and other facts, whose evidence, depending 
 on our organization and relative situations, must remain 
 acknowledged as satisfactory so long as man is man. 
 It is an incontrovertible fact, the consideration of which 
 ought to repress the hasty conclusions of credulity, or 
 moderate its obstinacy in maintaining them, that, had 
 the Jews not been a fanatical race of men, had even the 
 resolution of Pontius Pilate been equal to his candour, 
 the Christian religion never could have prevailed, it 
 could not even have existed : on so feeble a thread hangs 
 the most cherished opinion of a sixth of the human race ! 
 When will the vulgar learn humility ? When will the 
 pride of ignorance blush at having believed before it 
 could comprehend ? 
 
 Either the Christian religion is true, or it is false : 
 if true, it comes from God, and its authenticity can 
 admit of doubt and dispute no further than its omni- 
 
NOTES. 197 
 
 potent author is willing to allow. Either the power or 
 the goodness of God is called in question, if he leaves 
 those doctrines most essential to the well being of man 
 in doubt and dispute ; the only ones which, since their 
 promulgation, have been the subject of unceasing cavil, 
 the cause of irreconcileable hatred. Jf God has spoken, 
 why is the universe not convinced? 
 
 There is this passage in the Christian Scriptures : 
 * £ Those who obey not God, and believe not the Gospel 
 of hisSon,shall be punished with everlastingdestruction." 
 This is the pivot upon which all religions turn : they all 
 assume that it is in our power to believe or not to 
 believe; whereas the mind can only believe that which 
 it thinks true. A human being can only be supposed 
 accountable for those actions which are influenced by 
 his will. But belief is utterly distinct from and uncon- 
 nected with volition ; it is the apprehension of the 
 agreement or disagreement of the ideas that compose 
 any proposition. Belief is a passion, or involuntary 
 operation of the mind,- and, like other passions, its 
 intensity is precisely proportionate to the degree! of 
 excitement. Volition is essential to merit or demerit. 
 
198 NOTES. 
 
 But the Christian religion attaches the highest possible 
 degrees of merit and demerit to that which is worthy of 
 neither, and which is totally unconnected with the pecu- 
 liar faculty of the mind, whose presence is essential to 
 their being. 
 
 Christianity was intended to reform the world: had 
 an all-wise Being planned it, nothing is more improbable 
 than that it should have failed : omniscience would infal- 
 libly have foreseen the inutility of a scheme which 
 experience demonstrates, to this age, to have been 
 utterly unsuccessful. 
 
 Christianity inculcates the necessity of supplicating 
 the Deity. Prayer may be considered under two points 
 of view ; — as an endeavour to change the intentions of 
 God, or as a formal testimony of our obedience. But the 
 former case supposes that the caprices of a limited intel- 
 ligence can occasionally instruct the Creator of the 
 world how to regulate the universe ; and the latter, a 
 certain degree of servility analogous to the loyalty 
 demanded by earthly tyrants. Obedience indeed is 
 only the pitiful and cowardly egotism of him who 
 thinks that he can do something better than reason. 
 
NOTES. 199 
 
 Christianity, like all other religions, rests upon mira- 
 cles, prophesies, and martyrdoms. No religion ever 
 existed, which had not its prophets, its attested mira- 
 cles, and, above all, crowds of devotees who would 
 bear patiently the most horrible tortures to prove 
 its authenticity. It should appear that in no case can 
 a discriminating mind subscribe to the genuineness of a 
 miracle. A miracle is an infraction of nature's law, 
 by a supernatural cause; by a cause acting beyond 
 that eternal circle within which all things are included. 
 God breaks through the law of nature, that he may 
 convince mankind of the truth of that revelation which, 
 in spite of his precautions, has been, since its introduc- 
 tion, the subject of unceasing schism and cavil. 
 
 Miracles resolve themselves into the following ques- 
 tion :* — Whether it is more probable the laws of na- 
 ture, hitherto so immutably harmonious, should have 
 undergone violation, or that a man should have told a 
 lie ? Whether it is more probable that we are ignorant 
 of the natural cause of an event, or that we know the 
 
 • See Hume's Essay, vol. ii, page 121; 
 
200 NOTES. 
 
 supernatural one ? That, in old times, when the powers 
 of nature were less known than at present, a certain 
 set of men were themselves deceived, or had some 
 hidden motive for deceiving others; or that God begat 
 a son, who, in his legislation, measuring merit by- 
 belief, evidenced himself to be totally ignorant of the 
 powers of the human mind — of what is voluntary, and 
 what is the contrary ? 
 
 We have many instances of men telling lies;— none 
 of an infraction of nature's laws, those laws of whose 
 government alone we have any knowledge or experi- 
 ence. The records of all nations afford innumerable 
 instances of men deceiving others either from vanity or 
 interest, or themselves being deceived by the limitedness 
 of their views and their ignorance of natural causes : 
 but where is the accredited case of God having come 
 upon earth, to give the lie to his own creations ? There 
 would be something truly wonderful in the appearance 
 of a ghost ; but the assertion of a child that he saw one 
 as he passed through the church-yard is universally 
 admitted to be less miraculous. 
 
 But even supposing that a man should raise a deaji 
 
NOTES. 201 
 
 body to life before our eyes, and on this fact rest his 
 claim to being considered the son of God ; — the 
 Humane Society restores drowned persons, and because 
 it makes no mystery of the method it employs, its mem- 
 bers are not mistaken for the sons of God. All that we 
 have a right to infer from our ignorance of the cause 
 of any event is that we do not know it : had the Mexi- 
 cans attended to this simple rule when they heard the 
 cannon of the Spaniards, they would not have consi- 
 dered them as gods : the experiments of modern chemis- 
 try would have defied the wisest philosophers of an- 
 cient Greece and Rome to have accounted for them on 
 natural principles. An author of strong common 
 sense has observed, that u a miracle is no miracle at 
 second-hand ;" he might have added, that a miracle is 
 no miracle in any case ; for until we are acquainted 
 with all natural causes, we have no reason to imagine 
 others. 
 
 There remains to be considered another proof of 
 Christianity — Prophecy. A book is written before a 
 certain event, in which this event is foretold ; how 
 could the prophet have foreknown it without inspira- 
 
202 NOTES. 
 
 tion ? how could he have been inspired without God ? 
 The greatest stress is laid on the prophecies of Moses 
 and Hosea on the dispersion of the Jews, and that of 
 Isaiah concerning the coming of the Messiah. The 
 prophecy of Moses is a collection of every possible 
 cursing and blessing ; and it is so far from being mar- 
 vellous that the one of dispersion should have been fiiL 
 filled, that it would have been more surprising if, out 
 of all these, none should have taken effect. In Deuter- 
 onomy, chap, xxviii, ver. 64, where Moses explicitly 
 foretells the dispersion, he states that they shall there 
 serve gods of wood and stone : "And the Lord shall 
 scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the 
 earth even to the other, and there thou shalt serve 
 other gods^ which neither thou nor thy fathers have 
 known y even gods of wood and stone." The Jews are 
 at this day remarkably tenacious of their religion. 
 Moses also declares that they shall be subjected to 
 these causes for disobedience to his ritual : u And it 
 shall come to pass, if thou will not hearken unto the 
 voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to do all the 
 commandments and statutes which I command you this 
 
NOTES. 203 
 
 day, that all these curses shall come upon thee and 
 overtake thee." Is this the real reason ? The third 5 
 fourth and fifth chapters of Hosea are a piece of immo- 
 dest confession. The indelicate type might apply in 
 a hundred senses to a hundred things. The fifty-third 
 chapter of Isaiah is more explicit, yet it does not 
 exceed in clearness the oracles of Delphos. The histo- 
 rical proof, that Moses, Isaiah and Hosea did write 
 when they are said to have written, is far from being 
 clear and circumstantial. 
 
 But prophecy requires proof in its character as a 
 miracle ; we have no right to suppose that a man fore- 
 knew future events from God, until it is demonstrated 
 that he neither could know them by his own exertions, 
 nor that the writings which contain the prediction could 
 possibly have been fabricated after the event pretended 
 to be foretold. It is more probable that writings, 
 pretending to divine inspiration, should have been fabri- 
 cated after the fulfilment of their pretended prediction, 
 than that they should have really been divinely inspired; 
 when we consider that the latter supposition makes 
 God at once the creator of the human mind and igno- 
 
204 NOTES. 
 
 rant of its primary powers, particularly as we have 
 numberless instances of false religions, and forged pro- 
 phesies of things long past, and no accredited case of 
 God having conversed with men directly or indirectly. 
 It is also possible that the description of an event 
 might have foregone its occurrence ; but this is far 
 from being a legitimate proof of a divine revelation, as 
 many men, not pretending to the character of a prophet, 
 have nevertheless, in this sense, prophesied. 
 
 Lord Chesterfield was never yet taken for a prophet, 
 even by a bishop, yet he uttered this remarkable predic- 
 tion : a The despotic government of France is screwed 
 up to the highest pitch ; a revolution is fast approaching ; 
 that revolution, I am convinced, will be radical and 
 sanguinary." This appeared in the letters of the pro- 
 phet long before the accomplishment of this wonderful 
 prediction. Now, have these particulars come to pass, 
 or have they not ? If they have, how could the Earl 
 have foreknown them without inspiration ? If we 
 admit the truth of the Christian religion on testimony 
 such as this, we must admit, on the same strength of 
 evidence, that God has affixed the highest rewards to 
 
NOTES. 205 
 
 belief, and the eternal tortures of the never-dying worm 
 to disbelief ; both of which have been demonstrated to 
 be involuntary. 
 
 The last proof of the Christian religion depends on 
 the influence of the Holy Ghost. Theologians divide 
 the influence of the Holy Ghost into its ordinary and 
 extraordinary modes of operation. The latter is sup- 
 posed to be that which inspired the Prophets and 
 Apostles ; and the former to be the grace of God, which 
 summarily makes known the truth of his revelation, to 
 those whose mind is fitted for its reception by a submis- 
 sive perusal of his word. Persons convinced in this 
 manner, can do any thing but account for their convic- 
 tion, describe the time at which it happened, or the 
 manner in which it came upon them. It is supposed to 
 enter the mind by other channels than those of the 
 senses, and therefore professes to be superior to reason 
 founded on their experience. 
 
 Admitting, however, the usefulness or possibility of 
 a divine revelation, unless we demolish the foundations 
 of all human knowledge, it is requisite that our reason 
 should previously demonstrate its genuineness ; for, 
 
205 NOTES. 
 
 before we extinguish the steady ray of reason and com- 
 mon sense, it is fit that we should discover whether we 
 cannot do without their assistance, whether or no there 
 be any other which may suffice to guide us through the 
 labyrinth of life* : for, if a man is to be inspired upon 
 all occasions, if he is to be sure of a thing because he is 
 Sure, if the ordinary operations of the spirit are not to 
 be considered very extraordinary modes of demonstra- 
 tion, if enthusiasm is to usurp the place of proof, and 
 madness that of sanity, all reasoning is superfluous. 
 The Mahometan dies fighting for his prophet, the Indian 
 immolates himself at the chariot- wheels of Brahma, the 
 Hottentot worships an insect, the Negro a bunch of 
 feathers, the Mexican sacrifices human victims ! Their 
 degree of conviction must certainly be very strong : it 
 cannot arise from conviction, it must from feelings, the 
 reward of their prayers. If each of these should affirm, 
 in opposition to the strongest possible arguments, that 
 inspiration carried internal evidence, I fear their inspired 
 
 * See Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding, book iv. 
 chap xix., on Enthusiasm. 
 
NOTES. 207 
 
 brethren, the orthodox Missionaries, would be so 
 uncharitable as to pronounce them obstinate. 
 
 Miracles cannot be received as testimonies of a dis- 
 puted fact, because all human testimony has ever been 
 insufficient to establish the possibility of miracles. That 
 which is incapable of proof itself, is no proof of any 
 thing else. Prophecy has also been rejected by the 
 test of reason. Those, then, who have been actually 
 inspired, are the only true believers in the Christian 
 religion. 
 
 Mox numine viso 
 Virginei tumuere sinus, innuptaque mater 
 Arcano stupuit compleri viscera partu 
 Auctorem peritura suum. Mortalia corda 
 Artificem texere poli, latuitque sub uno 
 Pectore, qui totum late complectitur orbem. 
 
 Claudiam, Carmen Paschali. 
 
 Does not so monstrous and disgusting an absurdity 
 •any its own infamy and refutation with itself? (J^fT 
 
208 NOTES. 
 
 VIII.— Page 109. 
 
 Him, (still from hope to hope the bliss pursuing,- 
 Which, from the exhaustless lore of human weal 
 Dawns on the virtuous mind,) the thoughts that rise 
 In time-destroying infiniteness, gift 
 With self-enshrined eternity, &c. 
 
 Time is our consciousness of the succession of 
 ideas in our mind. Vivid sensation, of either pain or 
 pleasure, makes the time seem long, as the common 
 phrase is, because it renders us more acutely con- 
 scious of our ideas. If a mind be conscious of an 
 hundred ideas during one minute, by the clock, and 
 of two hundred during another, the latter of these 
 spaces would actually occupy so much greater extent in 
 the mind as two exceed one in quantity. If, therefore, 
 the human mind, by any future improvement of its 
 sensibility, should become conscious of an infinite num- 
 ber of ideas in a minute, that minute Mould be eternity. 
 
NOTES. 209 
 
 I do not hence infer that the actual space between the 
 birth and death of a man will ever be prolonged ; but 
 that his sensibility is perfectible, and that the number of 
 ideas which his mind is capable of receiving is indefinite. 
 One man is stretched on the rack during twelve hours ; 
 another sleeps soundly in his bed : the difference of time 
 perceived by these two persons is immense; one hardly 
 will believe that half an hour has elapsed^ the other 
 could credit that centuries had flown during his agony. 
 Thus, the life of a man of virtue and talent, who should 
 die in his thirtieth year, is, with regard to his own 
 feelings, longer than that of a miserable priest-ridden 
 slave, who dreams out a century of dulness. The one 
 has perpetually cultivated his mental faculties, has ren- 
 dered himself master of his thoughts, can abstract and 
 generalize amid the lethargy of every-day business ; — 
 the other can slumber over the brightest moments of his 
 being, and is unable to remember the happiest hour 
 of his life. Perhaps the perishing ephemeron enjoys a 
 longer life than the tortoise. 
 
210 NOTES. 
 
 Dark flood of time ! 
 Roll as it listeth thee — I measure not 
 By months or moments thy ambiguous course. 
 Another may stand by me on the brink 
 And watch the bubble whirled beyond his ken 
 That pauses at my feet. The sense of love, 
 The thirst for action, and the impassioned thought 
 Prolong my being : if I wake no more, 
 My life more actual living will contain 
 Than some grey veterans' of the world's cold school, 
 Whose listless hours unprofitably roll, 
 By one enthusiast feeling unredeemed. 
 
 See Godwin* s Pol. Jus. vol. \. page 411 ; — 
 and Condorcet, Esquisse d y un Tableau 
 Historique des Pr ogres de V Esprit Hu~ 
 main, Epoqueix. 
 
ttOTES. 211 
 
 VIII.— Page 109. 
 
 No longer now 
 He slays the lamb that looks him in the face. 
 
 I hold that the depravity of the physical and moral 
 nature of man originated in his unnatural habits of life. 
 The origin of man, like that of the universe of which 
 he is a part, is enveloped in impenetrable mystery. His 
 generations either had a beginning, or they had not. 
 The weight of evidence in favour of each of these sup- 
 positions seems tolerably equal ; and it is perfectly 
 unimportant to the present argument which is assumed. 
 The language spoken however by the mythology of 
 nearly all religions seems to prove, that at some distant 
 period man forsook the path of nature, and sacrificed 
 the purity and happiness of his being to unnatural 
 appetites. The date of this event seems to have also 
 been that of some great change in the climates of the 
 earth, with which it has an obvious correspondence. 
 The allegory of Adam and Eve eating of the tree of 
 
SilfS KOTfS. 
 
 evil, and entailing upon their posterity the wrath of 
 God, and the loss of everlasting life, admits of no other 
 explanation than the disease and crime that have flowed 
 from unnatural diet. Milton was so well aware of this, 
 that he makes Raphael thus exhibit to Adam the conse- 
 quence of his disobedience. 
 
 Immediately a place 
 
 Before his eyes appeared : sad, noisome, dark i 
 A lazar-house it seem'd; wherein were laid 
 Numbers of all diseased : all maladies 
 Of ghastly spasm, or racking torture, qualms 
 Of heart-sick agony, all feverous kinds, 
 Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs^ 
 Intestine stone and ulcer, cholic pangs, 
 Demoniac frenzy, moping melancholy, 
 And moon-struck madness, pining atrophy, 
 Marasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence, 
 Dropsies, and asthmas, and joint-racking rheums, 
 
 And how many thousands more might not be added t(? 
 fehis frightful catalogue ! 
 
NOTES. 213 
 
 . The story of Prometheus is one likewise which, al- 
 though universally admitted to be allegorical, has neve r 
 been satisfactorily explained. Prometheus stole fire 
 from heaven, and was chained for this crime to mount 
 Caucasus, where a vulture continually devoured his 
 liver, that grew to meet its hunger. Hesiod says, that, 
 before the time of Prometheus, mankind were exempt 
 from suffering ; that they enjoyed a vigorous youth, and 
 that death, when at length it came, approached like 
 sleep, and gently closed their eyes. Again, so general 
 was this opinion, that Horace, a poet of the Augustan 
 9ge, writes— 
 
 Audax omnia perpeti. 
 Gens humana ruit per vetitum nefas ; 
 
 Audax Iapeti genus 
 Ignem fraude mala gentibus intulit: 
 
 Post ignem setheria domo 
 Subductum, macieset nova febrium 
 
 Terris incubuit cohors, 
 Semotique prius tarda necessity 
 
 Lethi corripuit gradum, 
 
214 NOTES. 
 
 flow plain a language is spoken by all this. Prome- 
 theus (who represents the human race) effected some 
 great change in the condition of his nature, and applied 
 fire to culinary purposes ; thus inventing an expedient 
 for screening from his disgust the horrors of the sham- 
 bles. From this moment his vitals were devoured by 
 the vulture of disease. It consumed his being in every 
 shape of its loathsome and infinite variety, inducing the 
 soul-quelling sinkings of premature and violent death. 
 All vice arose from the ruin of healthful innocence. 
 Tyranny, superstition, commerce, and inequality, were 
 then first known, -when reason vainly attempted to 
 guide the wanderings of exacerbated passion. I conclude 
 this part of the subject with an extract from Mr. New- 
 ton's Defence of Vegetable Regimen, from whom I 
 have borrowed this interpretation of the fable of Pro- 
 metheus. 
 
 ■" Making allowance for such transposition of the 
 events of the allegory as time might produce after the 
 important truths were forgotten, which this portion of 
 the ancient mythology was intended to transmit, the 
 drift of the fable seems to be this : — Man at his creatiojt 
 
NOTES. 215 
 
 was endowed with the gift of perpetual youth ; that is, 
 he was not formed to be a sickly suffering creature as 
 we now see him, but to enjoy health, and to sink by slow 
 degrees into the bosom of his parent earth without dis- 
 ease or pain. Prometheus first taught the use of ani- 
 mal food (primus bovem occidit Prometheus*) and of 
 fire, with which to render it more digestible and pleas- 
 ing to tjie taste. Jupiter, and the rest of the gods^ 
 foreseeing the consequences of these inventions, were 
 amused or irritated at the short-sighted devices of the 
 newly-formed creature, and left him to experience the 
 sad effects of them. Thirst, the necessary concomitant 
 of a flesh diet," (perhaps of all diet vitiated by culinary 
 preparation,) "ensued; water was resorted to, and 
 man forfeited the inestimable gift of health which he 
 had received from heaven : he became diseased, the 
 partaker of a precarious existence, and no longer 
 descended slowly to his grave."+ 
 
 But just disease to luxury succeeds, 
 And every death its own avenger breeds; 
 
 * Plin. Nat. Hist. lib. vii. sect. 57. 
 f Return to Nature. Cadell, 1811. 
 
21(5 NOTES. 
 
 The fury passions from that blood began. 
 And turned on man a fiercer savage — man. 
 
 Man, and the animals whom he has infected with his 
 society, or depraved by his dominion, are alone diseased. 
 The wild hog, the mouflon, the bison, and the wolf, are 
 perfectly exempt from malady, and invariably die either 
 from external violence, or natural old age. But the 
 domestic hog, the sheep, the cow, and the dog, are sub- 
 ject to an incredible variety of distempers ; and, like 
 the corrupters of their nature, have physicians who 
 thrive upon their miseries. The supereminence of man 
 is like Satan's, a supereminence of painf and the 
 majority of his species, doomed to penury, disease and 
 crime, have reason to curse the untoward event, that by 
 enabling him to communicate his sensations, raised him 
 above the level of his fellow animals. But the steps that 
 have been taken are irrevocable. The whole of human 
 science is comprised in one question :— How can the 
 advantages of intellect and civilization be reconciled 
 with the liberty and pure pleasures of natural life ? 
 How can we take the benefits, and reject the evils of 
 
NOTES. £17 
 
 the system, which is now interwoven with all the fibres 
 of our being? — I believe that abstinence from animal 
 food and spirituous liquors would in a great measure 
 capacitate us for the solution of this important question. 
 
 It is true, that mental and bodily derangement is 
 attributable in part to other deviations from rectitude 
 and nature than those which concern diet. The mis- 
 takes cherished by society respecting the connection of 
 the sexes, whence the misery and diseases of unsatisfied 
 celibacy, unenjoying prostitution, and the premature 
 arrival of puberty necessarily spring ; the putrid atmo- 
 sphere of crowded cities ; the exhalations of chemical 
 processes ; the muffling of our bodies in superfluous 
 apparel ; the absurd treatment of infants : — all these, 
 and innumerable other causes, contribute their mite to 
 the mass of human evil. 
 
 Comparative anatomy teaches us that man resemble* 
 frugivorous animals in every thing, and carnivorous in 
 nothing ; he has neither claws wherewith to seize his 
 prey, nor distinct and pointed teeth to tear the living 
 fibre. A Mandarin of the first class, with nails two 
 inches long, would probably find them alone inefficient 
 
,218 NOTES. 
 
 to hold even a hare. After every subterfuge of glut- 
 tony, the bull must be degraded into the ox, and the 
 ram into the wether, by an unnatural and inhuman 
 operation, that the flaccid fibre may oifer a fainter 
 resistance to rebellious nature. It is only by softening 
 and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparation, that 
 it is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion ; 
 and that the sight of its bloody juices and raw horror 
 does not excite intolerable loathing and disgust. Let 
 the advocate of animal food force himself to a decisive 
 experiment on its fitness, and, as Plutarch recommends^ 
 tear a living lamb with his teeth, and plunging his head 
 into its vitals, slake his thirst with the steaming blood ; 
 when fresh from the deed of horror, let him revert to 
 the irresistible instincts of nature that would rise in 
 judgment against it, and say, Nature formed me for 
 such work as this. Then, and then only, would he be 
 consistent. 
 
 Man resembles no carnivorous animal. There is no 
 exception, unless man be one, to the rule of herbivorous 
 animals having cellulated colons. 
 
 The orang-outang perfectly resembles man both in 
 
NOTES. 219 
 
 4he order and number of his teeth. The orang-outang 
 is the most anthropomorphous of the ape tribe, all of 
 which are strictly frugivorous. There is no other 
 species of animals, which live on different food, in 
 which this analogy exists.* In many frugivorous 
 animals, the canine teeth are more pointed and distinct 
 than those of man. The resemblance also of the human 
 stomach to that of the orang-outang, is greater than to 
 that of any other animal. 
 
 The intestines are also identical with those of herbi- 
 vorous animals, which present a larger surface for 
 absorption and have ample and cellulated colons. The 
 ccecum also, though short, is larger than that of carnivo- 
 rous animals -, and even here the orang-outang retains 
 its accustomed similarity. 
 
 The structure of the human frame then is that of one 
 fitted to a pure vegetable diet, in every essential parti- 
 cular. It is true, that the reluctance to abstain from 
 animal food, in those who have been long accustomed 
 
 * Cuvier, Lesons d'Anat. Comp. torn. iii. pages 169, 373, 448, 
 465, 480. Rees's Cyclopoedia, article Man. 
 
220 HOTES. 
 
 to its stimulus, is so great in some persons of weak 
 minds, as to be scarcely overcome ; but this is far from 
 bringing any argument in its favour. A lamb, which 
 was fed for some time on flesh by a ship's crew, refused 
 its natural diet at the end of the voyage. There are 
 numerous instances of horses, sheep, oxen, and even 
 wood*.pigeons, having been taught to live upon flesh, 
 until they have loathed their natural aliment. Young 
 children evidently prefer pastry, oranges, apples, and 
 other fruit, to the flesh of animals ; until, by the gra- 
 dual depravation of the digestive organs, the free use 
 of vegetables has for a time produced serious inconve T 
 niences ; for a lime, I say, since there never was an 
 instance wherein a change from spirituous liquors and 
 animal food to vegetables and pure water, has failed 
 ultimately to invigorate the body, by rendering its 
 juices bland and consentaneous, and to restore to the 
 mind that cheerfulness and elasticity, which not one in 
 fifty possesses on the present system. A love of strong 
 liquors is also with difficulty taught to infants. Al- 
 most every one remembers the wry faces which the 
 first glass of port produced. Unsophisticated instinct 
 
NOTES- 2*21 
 
 Is invariably unerring ; but to decide on the fitness of 
 animal food, from the perverted appetites which its 
 constrained adoption produces, is to make the criminal 
 a j udge in his own cause : it is even worse, it is appeal- 
 ing to the infatuated drunkard in a question of the 
 salubrity of brandy. 
 
 What is the cause of morbid action in the animal 
 system ? Not the air we breathe, for our fellow deni- 
 zens of nature breathe the same uninjured ; not the 
 water we drink, (if remote from the pollutions of man 
 and his inventions,*) for the animals drink it too ; not 
 the earth we tread upon ; not the unobscured sight of 
 glorious nature, in the wood, the field, or the expanse 
 of sky and ocean ; nothing that we are or do in com- 
 mon with the undiseased inhabitants of the forest. 
 Something then wherein we differ from them : our habit 
 
 * The necessity of resorting to some means of purifying water, 
 and the disease which arises from its adulteration in civilized 
 countries, is sufficiently apparent— See Dr. Lambe's Reports on 
 Cancer. I do not assert that the use of water is in itself unnatural, 
 but that the unperverted palate would swallow no liquid capable 
 •f occasioning disease. 
 
222 NOTES. 
 
 of altering our food by fire, so that our appetite is no 
 longer a just criterion for the fitness of its gratification. 
 Except in children, there remain no traces of that 
 instinct which determines, in all other animals, what 
 aliment is natural or otherwise; and so perfectly oblite- 
 rated are they in the reasoning adults of our species, that 
 it has become necessary to urge considerations drawn 
 from comparative anatomy to prove that we are natu- 
 rally frugivoroias. 
 
 Crime is madness. Madness is disease. Whenever 
 the cause of disease shall be discovered, the root, from 
 which all vice and misery have so long overshadowed 
 the globe, will lie bare to the axe. All the exertions 
 of man, from that moment, may be considered as tend- 
 ing to the clear profit of his species. No sane mind in 
 a sane body resolves upon a real crime. It is a man 
 of violent passions, blood-shot eyes, and swollen reins, 
 that alone can grasp the knife of murder. The system 
 of a simple diet promises no Utopian advantages. It 
 is no mere reform of legislation, whilst the- furious 
 passions and evil propensities of the human heart, in 
 which it had its origin, are still unassuagod. It strikes 
 
NOTES. 22ft 
 
 at the root of all evil, and is an experiment which may 
 be tried with success, not alone by nations, but by 
 small societies, families, aud even individuals. In no 
 cases has a return to vegetable diet produced the slight- 
 est injury ; in most it has been attended with changes 
 undeniably beneficial. Should ever a physician be 
 born with the genius of Locke, I am persuaded that 
 he might trace all bodily and mental derangements to 
 our unnatural habits, as clearly as that philosopher has 
 traced all knowledge to sensation. What prolific 
 sources of disease are not those mineral and vegetable 
 poisons that have been introduced for its extirpation ! 
 How many thousands have become murderers and 
 robbers, bigots and domestic tyrants, dissolute 
 and abandoned adventurers, from the use of fer- 
 mented liquors ; who, had they slaked their thirst only 
 with pure water, would have lived but to diffuse the 
 happiness of their own unperverted feelings. How 
 many groundless opinions and absurd institutions 
 have not received a general sanction from the sottish- 
 ness and intemperance of individuals ! Who will assert 
 that, had the populate of Paris satisfied their hunger 
 
224 NOTES. 
 
 at the ever-furnished table of vegetable nature, they 
 would have lent their brutal suffrage to the proscription- 
 list of Robespierre ? Could a set of men, whose pas- 
 sions were nor perverted by unnatural stimuli, look with 
 coolness on an auto da fe ? Is it to be believed that a 
 being of gentle feelings, rising from his meal of roots, 
 would take delight in sports of blood ? Was Nero a 
 man of temperate life ? could you read calm health in 
 his cheek, flushed with ungovernable propensities of 
 hatred for the human race ? Did Muley Ismael's pulse 
 beat evenly, was his *kin transparent, did his eyes beam 
 with healthfulness, and its invariable concomitants, 
 cheerfulness and benignity ? Though history has de- 
 cided none of these questions, a child could not hesitate 
 to answer in the negative. Surely the bile-suffused cheek 
 of Buonaparte, his wrinkled brow, and yellow eye, the 
 ceaseless inquietude of his nervous system, speak no less 
 plainly the character of his unresting ambition than his 
 murders and his victories. It is imposible, had Buona- 
 parte descended from a race of vegetable feeders, that 
 he could have had either the inclination or the power id 
 ascend the throne of the Bourbons. The desire of 
 
NOTES. 225 
 
 tyranny could scarcely be excited in the individual, the 
 power to tyrannize would certainly not be delegated by a 
 society neither frenzied by inebriation nor rendered im- 
 potent and irrational by disease. Pregnant indeed with 
 inexhaustible calamity is the renunciation of instinct, as 
 it concerns our physical nature; arithmetic cannot enu- 
 merate, nor reason perhaps suspect, the multitudinous 
 sources of disease in civilized life. Even common 
 water, that apparently innoxious pabulum, when cor- 
 rupted by the filth of populous cities, is a deadly and 
 insidious destroyer.* Who can wonder that all the 
 inducements held out by God himself in the Bible to 
 virtue should have been vainer than a nurse's tale ; and 
 that those dogmas, by which he has there excited and jus- 
 tified the most ferocious propensities, should have alone 
 been deemed essential ; whilst Christians are in the daily 
 practice of all those habits, which have infected with dis- 
 ease and crime, not only the reprobate sons, but these 
 favoured children of the common Father's love. Omni- 
 
 * Lambe's Reports on Cancer. 
 9 
 
226 NOTES. 
 
 potence itself could not save them from the consequences 
 of this original and universal sin. 
 
 There is no disease, bodily or mental, which adop- 
 tion of vegetable diet and pure water has not infallibly 
 mitigated, wherever the experiment has been fairly tried. 
 Debility is gradually converted into strength, disease 
 into healthfulness ; madness, in all its hideous variety, 
 from the ravings of the fettered maniac, to the unaccount- 
 able irrationalities of ill temper, that make a hell of 
 domestic life, into a calm and considerate evenness of 
 temper, that alone might offer a certain pledge of the 
 future moral reformation of society. On a natural sys- 
 tem of diet, old age would be our last and our only 
 malady ; the term of our existence would be pro- 
 tracted ; we should enjoy life, and no longer preclude 
 others from the enjoyment of it • all sensational de- 
 lights would be infinitely more exquisite and perfect ; 
 the very sense of being would then be a continued 
 pleasure, such as we now feel it in some few and 
 favoured moments of our youth. By all that is sacred 
 in our hopes for the human race, I conjure those who 
 love happiness and truth, to give a fair trial to the 
 
NOTES. 227 
 
 vegetable system. Reasoning is surely superfluous on 
 a subject whose merits an experience of six months 
 would set for ever at rest. But it is only among the 
 enlightened and benevolent that so great a sacrifice of 
 appetite and prejudice can be expected, even though its 
 ultimate excellence should not admit of dispute. It is 
 found easier, by the short-sighted victims of disease, to 
 palliate their torments by medicine, than to prevent 
 them by regimen. The vulgar of all ranks are invariably 
 sensual and indocile; yet I cannot but feel myself per- 
 suaded, that when the benefits of vegetable diet are 
 mathematically proved ; when it is as clear, that those 
 who live naturally are exempt from premature death, as 
 that nine is not one, the most sottish of mankind will feel 
 a preference towards a long and tranquil, contrasted with 
 a short and painful life. On the average, out of sixty per- 
 sons, four die in three years. Hopes are entertained that, 
 in April 1814, a statement will be given, that sixty per- 
 sons, all having lived more than three years on vegetables 
 and pure water, are then in perfect health. More than two 
 years have now elapsed; not one of them has died; no 
 such example will be found in any sixty persons taken at 
 
228 NOTES. 
 
 random. Seventeen persons of all ages (the families of 
 Dr. Lambe and Mr. Newton) have lived for seven years 
 on this diet without a death, and almost without the 
 slightest illness. Surely, when we consider that some 
 of these were infants, and one a martyr to asthma now 
 nearly subdued, we may challenge any seventeen per- 
 sons taken at random in this city to exhibit a parallel 
 case. Those who may have been excited to question the 
 rectitude of established habits of diet, by these loose 
 remarks, should consult Mr. Newton's luminous and 
 eloquent essay*. 
 
 When these proofs come fairly before the world, and 
 are clearly seen by all who understand arithmetic, it 
 is scarcely possible that abstinence from aliments de- 
 monstrably pernicious should not become universal. 
 In proportion to the number of proselytes, so will be 
 the weight of evidence ; and when a thousand persons 
 can be produced, living on vegetables and distilled water, 
 •who have to dread no disease but old age, the world will 
 
 * Return to Nature, or Defence of Vegetable Regimen. 
 Cadell, 1811. 
 
NOTES. 229 
 
 be compelled to regard animal flesh and fermented 
 liquors as slow but certain poisons. The change 
 which would be produced by simpler habits on political 
 economy is sufficiently remarkable. The monopolizing 
 eater of animal flesh would no longer destroy his con- 
 stitution by devouring an acre at a meal, and many 
 loaves of bread would cease to contribute to gout, mad- 
 ness and apoplexy, in the shape of a pint of porter, or a 
 dram of gin, when appeasing the long-protracted famine 
 of the hard-working peasant's hungry babes. The 
 quantity of nutritious vegetable matter, consumed in 
 fattening the carcase of an ox, would afford ten times 
 the sustenance, undepraving indeed, and incapable of 
 generating disease, if gathered immediately from the 
 bosom of the earth. The most fertile districts of the 
 habitable globe are now actually cultivated by men 
 for animals, at a delay and waste of aliment absolutely 
 incapable of calculation. It is only the wealthy that can, 
 to any great degree, even now, indulge the unnatural 
 craving for dead flesh, and they pay for the greater 
 licence of the privilege by subjection to supernumerary 
 diseases. Again, the spirit of the nation that should take 
 
230 NOTES. 
 
 the lead in this great reform, would insensibly become 
 agricultural ; commerce, with all its vice, selfishness 
 and corruption, would gradually decline ; more natural 
 habits would produce gentler manners, and the 
 excessive complication of political relations would be 
 so far simplified, that every individual might feel and 
 understand why he loved his country, and took a 
 personal interest in its welfare. How would England, 
 for example, depend on the caprices of foreign rulers, 
 if she contained within herself all the necessaries, 
 and despised whatever they possessed of the luxuries 
 of life ? How could they starve her into compliance 
 with their views ? Of what consequence would it be 
 that they refused to take her woollen manufactures, 
 when large and fertile tracts of the island ceased to 
 be allotted to the waste of pasturage ? On a natural 
 system of diet, we should require no spices from 
 India; no wines from Portugal, Spain, France, or 
 Madeira ; none of those multitudinous articles of 
 luxury, for which every corner of the globe is rifled, 
 and which are the causes of so much individual 
 rivahhip, such calamitous and sanguinary national 
 
NOTES. 231 
 
 disputes. In the history of modern times, the avarice 
 of commercial monopoly, no less than the ambition 
 of weak and wicked chiefs, seems to have fomented 
 the universal discord, to have added stubbornness to 
 the mistakes of cabinets, and indocility to the infa- 
 tuation of the people. Let it ever be remembered, 
 that it is the direct influence of commerce to make 
 the interval between the richest and the poorest man 
 wider and more unconquerable. Let it be remem- 
 bered, that it is a foe to every thing of real worth 
 £nd excellence in the human character. The odious 
 and disgusting aristocracy of wealth is built upon 
 the ruins of all that is good in chivalry or repub- 
 licanism ; and luxury is the forerunner of a barbarism 
 scarce capable of cure. Is it impossible to realize a state 
 of society, where all the energies of man shall be directed 
 to the production of his solid happiness ? Certainly, if 
 this advantage (the object of all political speculation) 
 be in any degree attainable, it is attainable only by a 
 community, which holds out no factitious incentives to 
 the avarice and ambition of the few, and which is inter- 
 nally organized for the liberty, security and comfort 
 
232 NO*£s. 
 
 of the many. None must be entrusted with power 
 (and money is the completest species of power) who 
 do not stand pledged to Use it exclusively for the 
 general benefit. But the use of animal flesh and fer- 
 mented liquors, directly militates with this equality of 
 the rights of man. The peasant cannot gratify these 
 fashionable cravings without leaving his family to 
 starve. Without disease and war, those sweeping cur- 
 tailers of population, pasturage would include a waste 
 too great to be afforded. The labour requisite to sup* 
 port a family is far lighter * than is usually supposed. 
 The peasantry work, not only for themselves, but for 
 the aristocracy, the army, and the manufacturers. 
 The advantage of a reform in diet is obviously 
 
 * It has come under the authors experience, that some of the 
 workmen on an embankment in North Wales, who, in consequence 
 of the inability of the proprietor to pay them, seldom received their 
 wages, have supported large families by cultivating small spots of 
 sterile ground by moonlight. In the notes to Pratt's Poem, 
 ''Bread, or the Poor," is an account of an industrious labourer, 
 who, by working in a small garden, before and after his day's task, 
 attained to an enviable state of independence. 
 
NOTES. $33 
 
 greater than that of any other. It strikes at the root 
 of the evil. To remedy the abuses of legislation, before 
 we annihilate the propensities by which they are 
 produced, is to suppose, that by taking away the effect, 
 the cause will cease to operate. But the efficacy of 
 this system depends entirely on the proselytism of 
 individuals, and grounds its merits, as a benefit to the 
 community, upon the total change of the dietetic habits 
 in its members. It proceeds securely from a number 
 of particular cases to one that is universal, and has this 
 advantage over the contrary mode, that one error does 
 not invalidate all that has gone before. 
 
 Let not too much however be expected from this 
 system. The healthiest among us is not exempt from 
 hereditary disease. The most symmetrical, athletic, and 
 long-lived, is a being inexpressibly inferior to what 
 he would have been, had not the unnatural habits of his 
 ancestors accumulated for him a certain portion of 
 malady and deformity. In the most perfect specimen 
 of civilized man, something is still found wanting by 
 the physiological critic. Can a return to nature, then, 
 instantaneously eradicate predispositions that have been 
 
234 NOTES. 
 
 slowly taking root in the silence of innumerable ages h*? 
 Indubitably not. All that I contend for is, that from 
 the moment of the relinquishing all unnatural habits, 
 no new disease is generated ; and that the predisposition 
 to hereditary maladies gradually perishes, for want of 
 its accustomed supply. In cases of consumption, can- 
 cer, gout, asthma, and scrofula, such is the invariable 
 tendency of a diet of vegetables and pure water. 
 
 Those who may be induced by these remarks to give 
 the vegetable system a faif trial, should, in the first 
 place, date the commencement of their practice from the 
 moment of their conviction. All depends upon break- 
 ing through a pernicious habit resolutely and at once. 
 Dr. Trotter* asserts, that no drunkard was ever reformed 
 by gradually relinquishing his dram. Animal flesh, in 
 its effects on the human stomach, is analogous to a 
 dram. It is similar to the kind, though differing in the 
 degree, of its operation. The proselyte to a pure diet 
 must be warned to expect a temporary diminution of 
 muscular strength. The subtraction of a powerful sti- 
 
 * See Trotter on the Nervous Temperament. 
 
NOTES. 235 
 
 mulus will suffice to account for this event. But it is 
 only temporary, and is succeeded by an equable capa- 
 bility for exertion, far surpassing his former various 
 and fluctuating strength. Above all, he will acquire 
 an easiness of breathing, by which such exertion is 
 performed, with a remarkable exemption from that 
 painful and difficult panting now felt by almost every 
 one, after hastily climbing an ordinary mountain. He 
 will be equally capable of bodily exertion, or mental 
 application, after as before his simple meal. He will 
 feel none of the narcotic effects of ordinary diet; 
 Irritability, the direct consequence of exhausting stimu- 
 li, would yield to the power of natural and tranquil 
 impulses. He will no longer pine under the lethargy of 
 ennui, that unconquerable weariness of life, more to be 
 dreaded than death itself. He will escape the epidemic 
 madness, which broods over its own injurious notions of 
 the Deity, and " realizes the hell that priests and beldams 
 feign." Every man forms as it were his god from his 
 own character ; to the divinity of one of simple habits 
 no offering would be more acceptable than the happi* 
 ness of his creatures. He would be incapable of hating 
 
236 NOTES* 
 
 or persecuting others for the love of God. He will 
 find, moreover, a system of simple diet to be a system 
 of perfect epicurism. He will no longer be incessantly 
 occupied in blunting and destroying those organs from 
 which he expects his gratification. The pleasures of 
 taste to be derived from a dinner of potatoes, beans, 
 peas, turnips, lettuces, with a dessert of apples, goose- 
 berries, strawberries, currants, raspberries, and, in 
 winter, oranges, apples and pears, is far greater than is 
 supposed. Those who wait until they can eat this 
 plain fare with the sauce of appetite will scarcely join 
 with the hypocritical sensualist at a lord-mayor's feast, 
 who declaims against the pleasures of the table. Solo- 
 mon kept a thousand concubines, and owned in despair 
 that all was vanity. The man whose happiness is con- 
 stituted by the society of one amiable woman, would 
 find some difficulty in sympathizing with the disap- 
 pointment of this venerable debauchee. 
 
 I address myself not only to the young enthusiast, 
 the ardent devotee of truth and "virtue, the pure and 
 passionate moralist, yet unvitiated by the contagion of 
 the world. He will embrace a pure system, from its 
 
NOTES. 237 
 
 abstract truth, its beauty, its simplicity, and its promise 
 of wide-extended benefit; unless custom has turned 
 poison into food, he will hate the brutal pleasures of 
 the chaceby instinct ; it will be a contemplation full of 
 horror and disappointment to his mind, that beings ca- 
 pable of the gentlest and most admirable sympathies, 
 should take delight in the death-pangs and last convul- 
 sions of dying animals. The elderly man, whose youth 
 hasbeen poisoned by intemperance, or who has lived 
 with appai^|t moderation, and is afflicted with a variety 
 of painful maladies, would find, his account in a benefi- 
 cial change produced without the risk of poisonous 
 medicines. The mother, to whom the perpetual rest- 
 lessness of disease, and unaccountable deaths incident 
 to her children, are the causes of incurable unhappiness, 
 would on this diet experience the satisfaction of behold- 
 ing their perpetual healths and natural playfulness.* 
 
 • See Mr. Newton's book. His children are the most beautiful 
 and healthy creatures it is possible to conceive j the girls are per- 
 fect models for a sculptor ; their dispositions are also the most 
 gentle and conciliating ; the judicious treatment, which they 
 
238 NOTES. 
 
 The most valuable lives are daily destroyed by diseases, 
 that it is dangerous to palliate and impossible to cure by 
 medicine. How much longer will man continue to 
 pimp for the gluttony of death, his most insidious, 
 implacable, and eternal foe ? 
 
 avTolbe (Anxiponne tig u^aryTa xa.TO,Xi7FQPTs<; lyJtvon; io^sv. 
 iKsivon; ph 5 (pivot; r^otyy, ri(juv os o^ov luriv. 
 ************* 
 
 "On yoc,% ova t<rrw a.^^utta hoctoc (pv&w to <TCcpHo<pa,y£?» f 
 Tcn&vui piv oltcq rav aa^,a.rcov dVjAarat t>?<j xot.Ta,<T)ttVYi<;. Ovhv 
 
 experience in other points, may be a correlative cause of this. In 
 the first five years of their life, of 18,000 children that are born, 
 7,500 die of various diseases j and how many more of those that 
 survive are not rendered miserable by maladies not immediately 
 mortal? The quality and quantity of a woman's milk are 
 materially injured by the use of dead flesh. In an island near 
 Iceland, where no vegetables are to be got, the children invariably 
 die of tetanus, before they are three weeks old, and the population 
 is supplied from the main land.— Sir G. Mackenzie's Hist, of Ice^ 
 land. See also Emile, chap. i. pages 53, 54, 56. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 yocp eojxe to «k0pw7ra au^x ruv ett* acc^Kotyocyiec ytyovotuv y a, 
 
 p^pWTTOTJ?? p^ElAtff, O^X of 1/TtJ? OVVypq « T^a^TJ)? OO^OVTWI/ 9r^OO"£C7T»V, 
 
 » xoiAtaj svrovia, xa» vrvivpxroq §sp[AOTV)<; t rel-^/ah, xal x«.te§- 
 
 yi<jaaSat o^vaTT) to /3<5^y xa* xpsuhq ; »^' auTo$Ev »? (pi^K 
 
 T»J Aejottjt* twv o^ovt&jv. x«» txi fiT|U,jx£OT>jTi tS croparoq, y.a) 
 
 TV ^aAaxoT^Tt rriq yhwaainq, xea Ty irpoq tteaJ/iv a/x/3/.yT^Tt ts 
 
 7rvsvy.ocroq, s^o^rorui rr,v aupy.oQa.yia.v. Et oe Ae^e!? itstyvv.i- 
 
 vcci (Texvrov mt roiocurv^v louariVy o $uXsi tpuyiiv, ttpvtov ctlrvq 
 
 aTToxTstvov* «AA awTo?, m crsavtH //.»? ygnaaixsvaq xo7nc»j, ^tj^e 
 
 Tf/ATravw jw-vj^fe tteAexei. aAAa. w? A:;xo» 7 xa* ocgxTOi, net) teovsq 
 
 uvroi loq la$kti(7i (poi/svucrw, uvihi oyypotri @iiV) h cupxri avv, 
 
 fietpvet r) hayouov ha.gf>Y)%ov, kou (pays tvpaitsauv sn %uvToq wq 
 
 ■ tasTvcc. 
 
 ************* 
 
 HfteTq $1 'aruq h top ftwttQiaveJ TgvtyvfAsv, wars o-^/ov to xetag 
 vpoaccyopsv»iA,sv 9 slrot, o-^/uv ireoq ocvro to y^socq o^o^E^a, a,vcc- 
 piyvvvrsq shoaov, ofvov, jueAi, yupov, o|o?, »j ^vcrfxetcrt S&tfaxOjfj 
 Afpoc^tKoTq^ uaitsQ ovruq vsxpov, tvroctyla^ovrsq . Kat yap oruq- 
 avruv $ux.\v§tvrav not,) ^otKoc^ivruv xa* t^ottov t»v« xetvaa.- 
 ttswtvv t'pyov sat) rw it's\w y.pa,rri<T<x.i xa* o\ax£aT>j$Ek7T}s $ 
 
 9HVO,q @(X.PV.T*TaC SUTTOisT VSU VOrrvbtir r>rr>tA.<~' 
 
240 NOTES. 
 
 Oi>'to/ to vrgwrov ayqiov t; fwov I/S^w&j xat xowtSgyov slra 
 •£v»? T»{ 5j l^vq eiXxvo-ro' y.ou yevofABnv, «to ksu ir%oyi.i)\iTnaa,v s> 
 IxtlvoK to nx,Sv \ir\ /35y Igyurw ^A$e, xoti to xoo-jaov tt^cirov 
 v.cu tov a\x.Hfov ciKiKT^vovoe,* not) xaTapxgov sto tijv awX»j<7Tia» 
 T©iweram$, lirlo-lpciyus uvbguituv, not) <f>Qva<; act) 7roAe//.«? 
 «*goij?$ei>. 
 
 IIAovt. Jregt t»J5 c»|j40^«yta?» 
 
 is supplied from the main land.— Sir u. Mackenzie's Hisi. uVil-c^' 
 land. See also Emile, chap. i. pages 53, 54, 56,