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aUEEN MAB; 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL POEM. 
 
 BY 
 
 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 PRINTED BY WILLIAM BALDWIN AND CO. CORNER OF 
 CHATHAM STREET. 
 
 1821. 
 
Tr.'R. 
 
 B£,\.VT 
 
 S545QA 
 
 / 
 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 The Editor of this edition of " Queen Mab," was in 
 England in the Spring of 1815, and received a copy of 
 the Poem from the Author, who was then in his twenty- 
 second year. It was written during his minority, and a 
 small number were printed, and circulated privately, 
 without a title-page, or printer's name. 
 
 The press of England was never free, even in her 
 best days, but now that she is rapidly declining in the 
 scale of empire and prosperity, and bending her neck to 
 the yoke of despotism, it is completely enslaved. No 
 one who valued his liberty could think of publishing 
 such a work, and it remained in obscurity until a book- 
 seller, of the name of Clarke, had the temerity to print 
 and sell publicly in London, an elegant octavo edition, 
 early in the present year. A prosecution was speedily 
 commenced against him, by an infamous junta of canting 
 hypocrites, assuming the title of " A Society for the 
 Suppression of Vice," and he has, most probably, ere 
 this been tried, condemned, and consigned to a dungeon. 
 
 304052 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The American public knew nothing of this book ; but 
 the report brought by the British papers of the prose- 
 cution, soon excited in them an ardent curiosity to be- 
 come acquainted with it. 
 
 The American booksellers being determined to re 
 print it, the Editor, out of respect to Mr. Shelley, was in- 
 duced to superintend the present edition, which he 
 trusts will not disgrace the Author by the manner in 
 which it is executed. 
 
 The object of the projectors of this edition, was 
 cheapness and portability, in order that it might come 
 into the hands of all classes of society ; consequently 
 it was thought that translations of those passages in the 
 notes, quoted from Greek, Latin, and French authors, 
 would be acceptable. This has been done with the 
 greatest fidelity; and the Editor pledges himself that 
 there is no variation throughout this volume from the 
 original, except four places in the notes, where the 
 translation is substituted for the French and Greek, with 
 a view to render the book less expensive. 
 
 Those gentlemen who may be in possession of " The 
 Revolt of Islam;" the tragedy of the " Cenci ;" the 
 lyrical drama of " Prometheus," and the various other 
 poems of the same author, which are printed in the 
 octavo shape, will find the English edition, before al- 
 luded to, more suitable to bind for their libraries, the 
 present one being got up merely with a view to give ex- 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 tensive circulation to the principles contained both in 
 the poem and the notes. 
 
 An Ode is printed at the end of the preface, written 
 by a friend of the Editor, early in the year 1815, in- 
 scribed " to the Author of Queen Mab," predicting his 
 future fame, though at that period he was unknown to 
 the world, and had not written or published any of those 
 poems which have since established his character as a 
 man of genius, in spite of the extensive influence of 
 religious prejudice. 
 
 By a file of " The Examiner," (one of the best Lon- 
 don Sunday newspapers) just received, it appears that 
 Mr. Shelley is residing at Pisa, in Italy, and is in no re- 
 spect party to the publication of his Poem in England. 
 It is but justice to him to subjoin the letter he ad- 
 dressed to the Editor of that paper. 
 
 Should the present Edition meet the approbation of 
 the Public, it will be stereotyped for the benefit of the 
 rising generation. 
 
 A PANTHEIST. * 
 
 New York, 
 27th Oct. 1821. 
 
 to the editor of the examiner. 
 Sir, 
 Having heard that a poem, entitled Queen Mab, has 
 been surreptitiously published in London, and that legal 
 proceedings have been instituted against the publisher, 
 
 3G4052 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 I request the favour of your insertion of the following 
 explanation of the affair as it relates to me. 
 
 A poem, entitled Queen Mab, was written by me at 
 the age of eighteen, I dare say in a sufficiently intempe- 
 rate spirit— but even then was not intended for publica- 
 tion, and a few copies only were struck off, to be distri- 
 buted among my personal friends. I have not seen this 
 production for several years ; I doubt not but that it is 
 perfectly worthless in point of literary composition ; and 
 that in all that concerns moral and political speculation, 
 as well as in the subtler discriminations of metaphysical 
 and religious doctrine, it is still more crude and imma- 
 ture. I am a devoted enemy to religious, political, and 
 domestic oppression; and I regret this publication, not 
 so much from literary vanity, as because I fear it is bet- 
 ter fitted to injure than to serve the sacred cause of free- 
 dom. I have directed my Solicitor to apply to Chancery 
 for an injunction to restrain the sale ; but after the pre- 
 cedent of Mr. Southey's Wat Tyler, (a poem written, I 
 believe, at the same age, and with the same unreflecting- 
 enthusiasm) with little hopes of success. 
 
 Whilst I exonerate myself from all share in having di- 
 vulged opinions hostile to existing sanctions, under the 
 form, whatever it may be, which they assume in this po- 
 em ; it is scarcely necessary for me to protest against 
 the system of inculcating the truth of Christianity and 
 the excellence of Monarchy, however true, or however 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 excellent they may be, by such equivocal arguments as 
 confiscation, and imprisonment, and invective, and slan- 
 der, and the insolent violation of the most sacred ties of 
 nature and society. 
 
 Sir, 
 
 I am, your obliged and obedient Servant, 
 
 Percy B. Shelley. 
 
 Pisa, June 22, 1821. 
 
ODE 
 
 THE AUTHOR OF " QUEEN MAB." 
 
 1. 
 
 Oh ! thou who hast dispelled the shame 
 
 That hung about the poet's name ; 
 The Poet ! rarely seen on that rough shore, 
 Where the bleak winds of independence roar, 
 
 And brace the nerves of him who loves, 
 
 Beyond the orient's spicy groves 
 To roam with Liberty (in proud disdain 
 Of Grandeur's palaces) her wild domain. 
 
 But, ah! too oft recumbent found 
 
 On the odour-sprinkled ground, 
 
 Trod by the tyrant's footstep base, 
 
 Kindling the liar's incense vase j 
 Oh ! thou, who hast redeemed this load of shame I 
 A bard obscure invokes thy future fame; 
 
ODE. 
 
 2. 
 
 Though now defrauded of the praise 
 Due to thy truth-supporting lays ; 
 Though noxious Prejudice and chilling Sloth 
 Retard thy blooming chaplet's flowery growth 
 Though now a shackled press refuse 
 To aid thy nobly-daring muse ; 
 Yet is that time in progress, when thy theme 
 Shall universal spread as day's bright beam. 
 Then shall the bloody brand of ire 
 Quenched in love and peace expire : 
 Their mitres, cowls, and crosiered staves 
 Be torn from man-deluding knaves ; 
 The gorgeous canopies of tyrant might 
 Sink and o'erwhelra him in eternal night. 
 
 O ! how thy rich poetic page 
 My growing wonder did engage : 
 Methought with Fairy Mab I soar'd, to trace 
 The vast immense of universal space 
 While with the pure unspotted soul 
 That from Ianthe's bosom stole, 
 I shed the sacred drops of Feeling's birth, 
 To view the moral desert of the earth, 
 
ODE. 
 
 And oft I curs'd " the Almighty Fiend," 
 
 Who from his empyreal lean'd, 
 
 And poured the venomed vial of strife 
 
 To damp the hope of human life. 
 These truths the voice of nations shall proclaim 
 In coming times, and bless thy name : 
 Hail ! then, immortal bard ; hail to thy future fame. 
 
 B. C F. 
 
As the Author has fixed no Argument to his Poem, the 
 following short Sketch of it, extracted from a Po- 
 lemical Magazine, published in London, 1815, 
 may not be an improper introduction, 
 
 "The author has made fiction and suitable poetical 
 imagery the vehicles of his moral and philosophical 
 opinions. The attributes of Queen Mab form the ma- 
 chinery of a work, in which the delightful creations of 
 fancy, and the realities of truth, unite to produce an in- 
 delible impression on the mind. 
 
 "The Fairy descends in her chariot, and, hovering over 
 this earth, confers on the soul of a beautiful female 
 (lanthe) the glorious boon of a complete knowledge of 
 the past, the present, and the future. The body is 
 lulled to sleep ; the soul ascends the car of the Fairy, 
 and then take their flight through the unmeasurable ex- 
 panse of the universe. Arrived at the palace of the 
 " Queen of Spells," the Spirit is led by her to the 
 "overhanging battlement,'' and thence beholds the in- 
 expressible grandeur of that multitude of worlds, 
 among which, this earth (to which her attention is es- 
 pecially directed) is but an insignificant speck. 
 
 " The Fairy then proceeds to point out the ruined ci- 
 ties of ancient time ; and her sublime descriptions, with 
 the reflections naturally suggested by the pomp and 
 
ARGUMENT. 
 
 decay of grandeur, and the rise and fall of empires, 
 will be found particularly attractive. 
 
 " Having reviewed the deeds of ages past, the Fairy 
 next expatiates on the systems at present in existence ; 
 and here the Author's opinions, conveyed through the 
 lips of his visionary instrument, are bold to the highest 
 pitch of daring. 
 
 "The doctrine of necessity, abstruse and dark as its 
 subject is generally believed, forms a leading consider- 
 ation in this poem, and is treated with a precision of 
 demonstration, and illumined with a radiance of genius, 
 far beyond expectation itself: — 
 
 " The present and the past thou hast beheld ; 
 It was a desolate sight." 
 
 " And the Fairy then lifts the veil of an imaginary 
 futurity, and presents to the delighted Spirit the pros- 
 pect of a state of human perfection, which affords illi' 
 mitable range for the erratic wanderings of poetic ar- 
 dour. Here the Fairy and the Spirit revel in all the 
 luxury of hope and joy; and having contemplated 
 awhile, with virtuous satisfaction, the happy scene thus 
 opened to mortal conception, the former declares her 
 task completed, and conveys the latter to her earthly 
 tenement, which her anxious lover is watching with im- 
 patient ardour for its resuscitation." 
 
 Theological Enquirer, by Erasmus Perkins. 
 
QUEEN MAB. 
 
 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 
 Which love and 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 1 
 Must putrefaction's breath 
 Leave nothing of this heavenly sight 
 But loathsomeness and ruin 1 
 A 
 
4 QUEEN MAB. 
 
 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 th& 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, 
 
 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 
 
I. QUEEN MAB, » 
 
 *Tis wilder than the unmeasured notes 
 Of that strange lyre whose strings 
 The genii of the breezes sweep : 
 
 Those lines of rainbow light 
 Are like the moon-beams, 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 ethereal 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 wilder^ 
 
 brain, 
 When every sight of lovely, wild, and grand, 
 Astonishes, enraptures, elevates — 
 When fancy, at a glance, combines 
 The wond'rous and the beautiful, — 
 So bright, so fair, so wild a shape 
 Hath ever yet beheld, 
 As that which reined the coursers of the air, 
 And poured the magic of her gaze 
 Upon the sleeping maid. 
 A2 
 
6 QUEEN MAB. I, 
 
 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. 
 
 The Fairy's frame was slight, yon fibrous cloud, 
 That catches but the palest tinge of even, 
 And which the stTaining 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 : 
 
QUEEN MAB. 
 
 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. 
 
 Stars ! your balmiest influence shedl 
 Elements ! your wrath suspend ! 
 Sleep, Ocean, in the rocky bounds 
 That circle thy domain I 
 Let not a breath be seen to stir 
 Around yon grass-grown ruin's height, 
 Let even the restless gossamer 
 
 Sleep on the moveless airi 
 Soul of Iiinthe ! 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 Iunthe ! 
 Awake ! arise] 
 
 Sudden arose 
 Iitnthe's Soul ; it stood 
 All beautiful in naked purity, 
 The perfect semblance of its bodily frame. 
 Instinct with inexpressible beauty and grace, 
 Each stain of earthliness 
 
8 QUEEN MAB. I. 
 
 Had passed away, it re-assumed 
 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 : 
 Then like a 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 
 
I. QUEEN MAB. 9 
 
 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, 
 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 Iiinthe's spirit ; 
 Thej shrank and break like bandages of straw 
 Beneath a wakened giant's strength. 
 
10 QUEEN MAB. 
 
 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 : — 
 
 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 aline of lightning. 
 
 Now it flew far above a rock, 
 
 The utmost verge of earth, 
 The rival of the Andes, whose dark brow 
 
 Lowere'd o'er the silver sea. 
 
I. QUEEN MAB. U 
 
 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, 
 Radiant with million constellations, tinged 
 
 With shades of infinite colour, 
 
 And semi-circled 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 ; 
 
18 QUEEN MAB. I. 
 
 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. 
 
 K 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 : 
 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. 
 
 en 
 
II. QUEEN MAB. IS 
 
 II. 
 
 If solitude hath ever led thy steps 
 To the wild ocean's echoing shore, 
 And theu 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 roeks 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 ; 
 Then has thy fancy soared above the earth, 
 And furled its wearied wing 
 Within the Fairy's fane. 
 
 Yet not the golden islands 
 Gleaming in yon flood of light, 
 
14 QUEEN MAB. II. 
 
 Nor the feathery curtains 
 Stretching o'er the sun's bright couch, 
 Nor the burnished ocean's waves, 
 
 Paving that gorgeous dome, 
 So fair, so wonderful a sight 
 As Mab's ethereal palace could afford. 
 Yet likest eTening's vault, that fairy 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. 
 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 ethereal 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. 
 
II. QUEEN MAB. 15 
 
 Spirit ! the Fairy said, 
 Aad pointed to the gorgeous dome, 
 
 This is a wondrous sight, 
 And mocks all human grandeur ; 
 But, were it virtue's only meed, to dwell 
 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 ; 
 Each with undeviating aim, 
 In eloquent silence, through the depth* of space 
 Pursued its wondrous way. 
 
 There was a little light 
 That twinkled in the misty distance: 
 B 
 
16 QUEEN MAB. II. 
 
 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. 
 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 — 
 
II. QUEEN MAB. 17 
 
 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. 
 
 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 desert 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. 
 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, 
 B 2 
 
18 QUEEN MAB. II. 
 
 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 1 
 His name and theirs are fading, and the tales 
 Of this barbarian nation, which imposture , 
 Recites till terror credits, are pursuing 
 Itself into forgetfulness. 
 
 Where Athens, Rome, and Sparta stood, 
 There is a moral desartnow : 
 The mean and miserable huts, 
 The yet more wretched palaces, 
 Contrasted with those ancient fanes, 
 Now crumbling to oblivion ; 
 The long and lonely colonades, 
 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 I how much more changed, 
 
 How gloomier is the contrast 
 
 Of human nature there ! 
 
II. QUEEN MAB. 19 
 
 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 hypocritical and cowled monk 
 Prays, curses, and deceives. 
 
 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 
 AH, 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: 
 But wealth, that curse of man, 
 Blighted the bud of its prosperity: 
 
 B 3 
 
20 QUEEN MAB. II. 
 
 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. 
 
 How strange is human pride ! 
 I tell thee that those living 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, 
 
II, QUEEN MAB. 21 
 
 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 ecstacy of admiration, felt 
 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. 
 
22 QUEEN MAB. HI. 
 
 III. 
 
 Fairy ! the Spirit said, 
 And on the Queen of Spells 
 Fixed her ethereal eyes, 
 I thank thee. Thou has 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. 
 
 Turn thee, surpassing Spirit I 
 Much yet remains unscanned. 
 Thou knowest how great is man, 
 Thouknowest his imbecility : 
 Yet learn thou what he is ; 
 Yet learn the lofty destiny 
 Which restless time prepares 
 For every living soul. 
 
III. QUEEN MAB. 23 
 
 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 
 
 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, 
 
4 QUEEN MAB. III. 
 
 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 again 
 Her welcome for whom all his toil is sped, 
 Tastes not a sweeter meal. 
 
 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 shunn'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." 
 
 Vain man ! that palace is the virtuous heart, 
 And peace defileth not her snowy robes 
 
III. QUEEN MAB. 25 
 
 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 ? 
 That man's mild nature rises not in war 
 Against a king's employ 1 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, 
 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 
 
26 QUEEN MAB. 111. 
 
 In 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 
 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 woes of sldth. 
 
 Whence, thinkestthou, kings and parasites arose? 
 Whence that unnatural line of drones, who heap 
 Toil and un vanquish able 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 ; 
 
///. QUEEN MAB. 27 
 
 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 
 
 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 I 
 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 
 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 j — when he falls, 
 C 
 
28 QUEEN MAB. III. 
 
 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 relentless 
 
 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, 
 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 
 
III. QUEEN MAB. 29 
 
 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 1 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? 
 
 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 1 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 1 
 c 2 
 
30 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 lie ; 
 Soul of that smallest being, 
 
 The dwelling of whose life 
 Is one faint April sun-gleam ; — 
 Man, like these passive things, 
 Thy, will unconsciously fulfilleth : 
 Like their's, his age of endless peace, 
 Which time is fast maturing, 
 Will swiftly, surely come ; 
 And the unbounded frame, which thou per- 
 vadest, 
 Will be without a flaw 
 Marring its perfect symmetry. 
 
IV. QUERN MAB. 31 
 
 IV. 
 
 How 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 has spread 
 To curtain her sleeping world. Yon gentle hills, 
 Robed in a garment of untrodden snow ; 
 You 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 earthliness ; 
 Where silence undisturbed might watch alone, 
 So cold, so bright, so still. 
 3 c 
 
32 QUEEN MAB. IV. 
 
 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 findsla grave 
 Beneath its jagged gulf. 
 
 Ah ! whence yon glare 
 That fires the arch of heaven? — that dark red 
 
 smoke 
 Blotting the silver moon? The starsjare quenched 
 In darkness, and the pure and spangling snow 
 Oleams faintly through the gloom that gathers 
 
 round ! 
 Hark to that roar, whose swift and deafening 
 
 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 clangour, and the rush of men 
 Inebriate with rage :— loud, and more loud 
 
f F. QUEEN MAB, 33 
 
 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, iike the fearful calm 
 That slumbers in the storms portentous pause ; 
 Save when the frantic wail of widowed love 
 Comes shuddering on the blast, or the faint moan 
 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 day, 
 Waves o'er a warrior's tomb. 
 
34, QUEEN MAB. IV. 
 
 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 ; 
 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 is 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 fabl.ed.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, 
 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 
 
IV. -QUEEN MAB. 35 
 
 Heaped min, 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 1 
 
 Nature ! — no ! 
 Kings, priests, and statesmen, blast the humaa 
 
 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, 
 "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 falsehood 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 ! 
 
36 QUEEN MAB. IV. 
 
 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 
 By 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 
 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 aud 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 
 
IV. QUEEN MAB. 37 
 
 The taint of earth-born atmospheres arise. 
 
 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 peacefulness, and taste 
 
 The joys which mingled sense and spirit yield. 
 
 Or he is formed for abjectness and "woe, 
 
 To grovel 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 
 That force defends, and from a nation's rage 
 Secures the crown, which all the curses re^ch 
 That famine, frenzy, woe, and penury breathe. 
 These are the hired bravos who defend 
 The tyrant's throne — the bullies of his fear ; 
 These arc the sinks and channels of worst vice, 
 The refuse of society, the dregs 
 
38 QUEEN MAB. IV. 
 
 Of all that is most rile : their cold hearts blend 
 Deceit with sternness, ignorance with pride, 
 All that is mean and villainous, with rage 
 Which hopelessness of good, and self-eontempt, 
 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 
 Repentence for his ruin, when his doom 
 Is sealed in gold and blood ! 
 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 ussry 
 Torn from a bleeding world I God, Hell, and 
 
 Heaven. 
 
IV. QUEEN MAB. 39 
 
 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 
 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 ofmnch sound, - 
 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 
 D 
 
40 QUEEN MAB. IV. 
 
 Deep wallow in the earnings of the poor, 
 With whom thy master was : — or thou delight'st 
 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 1 Thy mind 
 Is it not morbid as thy nerveless frame, 
 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 hold'st 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 1 
 
V. QUEEN MAB, 41 
 
 Thus 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. 
 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 falsehood, aping all 
 D2 
 
42 QUEEN MAB. V. 
 
 The wanton horrors of her bloody play ; 
 Yetfrozen, 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 ; 
 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 de- 
 mand, 
 And natural kindness hasten to supply 
 From the full fountain of ils 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. 
 
V. QUEEN MAB. 43 
 
 That lengthens as it goes, and clanks behind. 
 Commerce has set the mark of selfishness, 
 The signet of its all-enslaving power 
 Upon a shining ore, and called it gold : 
 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, 
 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 
 D3 
 
44 QUEEN MAB. V. 
 
 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 beart 
 
 To mingle with sensation, it destroys — 
 
 Leaves nothing but the sordid lust of self, 
 
 The grovelling 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 
 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 intercourse 
 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 she is 
 A passing tear perchance upon the wreck 
 
V. QUEEN MAB. 45 
 
 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 offspring's scream, 
 Whom their pale mother's uncomplaining gaze 
 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, 
 
 In unremitting drudgery and care ! 
 
46 QUEEN MAB. V. 
 
 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 species 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, 
 Froud, 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 
 Of some corrupted city his sad life, 
 Pining with famine, swoln with luxury, 
 Blunting 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, 
 
V. QUEEN MAB. 47 
 
 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 falsehood, though they wield 
 With blood-red hand the sceptre of the world. 
 
 All things are sold : the very light of heaven 
 
 Is venal: earth's unsparing gifts of love, 
 
 The smallest and most despicable things 
 
 That lurk in the abysses of the deep, 
 
 All objects of our life, even life itself, 
 
 And the poor pittance which the laws allow 
 
 Of liberty, the 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 priee, 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. 
 
48 QUEEN MAB. V. 
 
 Falsehood demands but gold to pay the pangs 
 Of outraged conscience ; for the slavish priest 
 Sets no great value on his hireling faith : 
 A little passingsjpomp, some servile souls, 
 Whom cowardice itself might safely chain, 
 Or the spare mite of avarice could bribe 
 To deck the 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 1 
 
 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 dauntlessness, 
 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 goed, 
 
V. QUEEN MAB. 49 
 
 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 
 No 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, 
 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 
 
50 QUEEN MAB. V. 
 
 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. 
 
QUEEN MAB. 51 
 
 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 even, 
 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 
 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? 
 E 
 
&2 QUEEN MAB. VI. 
 
 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, 
 
 Falsehood, 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 falsehood with a wreath 
 
 Of ever-living flame, 
 Until the monster sting itself to death. 
 
 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, 
 Falsehood 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, 
 
VI. QUEEN MAB. 53 
 
 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's firmer tread, 
 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 dogmatie 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 ! 
 
 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, 
 E2 
 
54 QUEEN MAB. VI. 
 
 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 stood'st 
 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 ! 
 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 for ever for the unhappy slaves 
 Of fate, whom he created, in his sport, 
 To triumph in their torments when they fell ! 
 
VI. QUEEN MAB. 65 
 
 Eartk heard the name; earth trembled, as the 
 
 smoke 
 Of his revenge ascended tip 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 madness, as the sacred steel 
 Felt cold in he r torn entrails ! 
 
 Religion! thou wert then in manhood's prime : 
 But age crept on : one God would not suffice 
 For senile puerility ; thou framed'st 
 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 heardest 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, 
 E3 
 
5Q QUEEN MAB. VI. 
 
 Might sate thine hungry ear 
 
 Even on the bed of death ! 
 But now contempt is mocking thy grey hairs ; 
 Thou arjt descending to the darksome grave, 
 Unhonoured and unpitied, but by those 
 Whose pride is passing by like thine, and sheds, 
 Like thine, a glare that fades before the sun 
 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 yon 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; 
 
 AncLin the storm of change, that ceaselessly 
 
 Rolls round the eternal universe, and shakes 
 
 Its undecaying battlement, presides, 
 
 Apportioning with irresistible law 
 
 The place each spring of its machine shall fill ; 
 
 So that when waves on waves tumultuous heap 
 
 Confusion to the clouds, and fiercely driven 
 
VI. QUEEN MAB, 57 
 
 Heaven's lightnings scorch the uprooted ocean- 
 fords, 
 Whilst, to the eye of shipwrecked mariner, 
 Lone sitting en 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 sun-beam's fleeting glow 
 Fulfils 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, 
 Nor the events enchaining every will, 
 That from the depths of unrecorded time 
 Have drawn all-influencing virtue, pass 
 Unrecognized, 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. 
 
58 QUEEN MAB. ' VI. 
 
 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 to 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, in the sight of happiness, 
 That springs from his own works ; the poison 
 
 tree, 
 Beneath whose shade all life is withered up, 
 And the fair oak, whose leafy dome afi'ords 
 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 
 Regard'st them all with an impartial eye, 
 Whose joy or pain thy nature can-sot 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 the ruined fanes 
 And broken altars of the Almighty Fiend, 
 Whose name usurps thy honours, and the blood 
 
VI. QUEEN MAB. 50 
 
 Through centuries clotted there, has floated 
 
 down 
 The tainted flood of ages, shalt thou live 
 Unchangeable? A shrine is raised to thee, 
 
 Which, nor the tempest-breath of time, 
 
 Nor the interminable flood, 
 
 Over earth's slight pageant rolling, 
 Availeth to destroy — 
 The sensitive extension of the world. 
 
 That wondrous 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 unresisting flame 
 Curls round the eternal columns of its strength.. 
 
60 QUEEN MAB. VII. 
 
 VII. 
 
 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. 
 
 There is no God ! 
 Nature confirms the faith his death-groan sealed: 
 Let heaven and earth, let man's revolving race, 
 His ceaseless generations tell their tale ; 
 
VII. QUEEN MAB. 61 
 
 Let every part depending on the chain 
 
 That links it to the whole, point to the hand 
 
 That grasps its terra ! let every seed that falls 
 
 In silent eloquence unfold its store 
 
 Of argument: infinity within, 
 
 Infinity without, belie creation ; 
 
 The exterrainable 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 ail crime with holiness, 
 Himself the creature of 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 his death-blushing chariot-wheels, as on 
 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 honour of his name ; or, last and worst, 
 Earth groans beneath religion's iron age, 
 And priests dare babble of a God of peace, 
 
62 QUEEN MAB, VII. 
 
 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, 
 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 ; 
 
VII. QUEEN MAB. 63 
 
 His port and mien bore mark of many years, 
 And chronicles of unfold ancientness 
 Were legible within his beamless eye r 
 
 Yet his cheek bore the mark of youth ; 
 Freshness and vigour 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 
 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, 
 
64 QUEEN MAB. VII. 
 
 Gorgeous and vast : the costly altars smoked 
 With human blood, and hideous pceans 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 to the earth, 
 All misery to my fame. The race of men 
 Chosen to my honour, 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 
 
VII. QUEEN MAB. 65 
 
 Shall perish, to fulfil 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 made 
 In mockery and wrath this evil earth? 
 Mercy becomes the powerful — be 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 honour 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, 
 
68 QUEEN MAB. VII, 
 
 Even on their beds of torment, where they how!, 
 My honour, and the justice of their doom. 
 What then avail their virtuous deeds, their 
 ■Of purity, with radiant genius bright, [thoughts 
 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 I 
 
 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 
 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. 
 
 1 stood beside him : on the torturing cross 
 No pain assailed his unterrestrial sense ; 
 And yet he groaned. Indignantly, I summed 
 
VII. QUEEN MAB. G7 
 
 The massacres and 'miseries which his name 
 
 Had sanctioned in my country, and I cried, 
 
 Go ! go ! in mockery. 
 
 A smile of godlike malice re-illumed 
 
 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 ail 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 ghastly upon me. 
 
 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 pilgrim ge, 
 Resolved to wage unweariablo 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 eaiiiest dawn 
 Of weak, unstable, and precarious power ; 
 1 3 
 
68 QUEEN MAB. VII. 
 
 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, 
 Even whilst his 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 wine-press 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 sane ify 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 upflashing steel 
 Of safe assassination, and all crime 
 Made stingless by the spirits of the Lord, 
 
VII. QUEEN MAB. G9 
 
 And blood-red rainbows canopied the land. 
 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 o 
 
 years 
 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 
 
70 QUEEN MAB„ VII. 
 
 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 MAB. 71 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The present and the past thou hast beheld : 
 It was a desolate sight. Now, Spirit, learn 
 
 The secrets of the fat are. — Time ! 
 Unfold the brooding pinion of thy gloom, 
 Render thou up thy half-devoured 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 v\ide rent in Time's eternal veil, 
 Hope was seen beaming through the mists of 
 fear : 
 
 Earth was no longer hell ; 
 
 Love, freedom, health, had given 
 Their ripeness to the manhood of its prime, 
 
 And all its pulses beat 
 Symphonious to the planetary spheres ; 
 
 Then dulcet music swelled 
 Concordant with the life-strings of the soul ; 
 It throbbed in sweet and languid beatings there. 
 
72 QUEEN MAB. VIII. 
 
 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, 
 A nd 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 un faded cheek 
 Glow mantling in first luxury of health, 
 
 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 will 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 
 
VIII. QUEEN MAB. 73 
 
 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. 
 
 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 fervours 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, 
 A tigress sating with the flesh of lambs, 
 
74 QUEEN MAB. VIII. 
 
 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 weary sail 
 Has seen above 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. 
 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 flow'rets there. 
 
 All things are recreated, and the flame 
 
VIIT. QUEEN MAB. 75 
 
 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: 
 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 storm deforms the beaming brow of heaven, 
 Nor scatters 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, 
 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 ; 
 G 
 
76 QUEEN MAB. VJII. 
 
 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 ; 
 
 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, 
 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 hisshortbeing'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 : 
 All was inflicted here that earth's revenge 
 
VIII. QUEEN MAE. 77 
 
 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 atmos- 
 phere 
 Scattered the seeds of pestilence, and fed 
 Unnatural vegetation, where the land 
 Teemed with all earthquake, tempest, and dis- 
 ease, 
 Was man a nobler being ; slavery- 
 Had crushed him to his country's blood-stained 
 
 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 tyrant's heads 
 The long-protracted fulness of their woe ; 
 Or he was led to legal butchery, 
 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, 
 G2 
 
iS QUEEN MAE. VIII. 
 
 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, 
 
 Thejackall of Ambition's lion-rage, 
 
 The blood-hound 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, 
 "Which from the exhaustless store 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, 
 
VIII. QUEEN MAR 79 
 
 The germs of misery, death, disease, and crime. 
 No longer now the winged inhabitants, 
 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 hand3 
 Which little children stretch in friendly sport 
 Towards these dreadless partners of their play. 
 All things are void of terror : man has lost 
 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. 
 
 G 3 
 
80 QUEEN MAB. IX. 
 
 IX. 
 
 O happy Earth ! reality of Heaven I 
 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 for ever 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. 
 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. 
 
IX. QUEEN MAB. 81 
 
 Even Time, the conqueror, fled thee in his fear ; 
 That hoary giant, who, in lonely pride, 
 So long had ruled the world, that nations fell 
 Beneath his silent footstep. Pyramids, 
 That for millenniums 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. 
 Yet slow and gradual dawned the morn of love ; 
 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 falsehood, 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, 
 
88 QUEEN MAB. IX. 
 
 Gathering 1 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 trembfing at the broken rod. 
 
 Mild was the slow necessity of death ; 
 The tranquil Spirit failed beneath its grasp, 
 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 I 
 Where neither avarice, cunning, pride, nor care, 
 Had stamped the seal of grey deformity 
 On all the mingling lineaments of time . 
 How lovely the intrepid front of youth I 
 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, iove, 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, 
 
IX. QUEEN MAB. ~ $3 
 
 Needed no fetters of tyrannic law : 
 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 
 In the stern storm that swayed the topmost tower 
 And whisper'd 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, 
 
-84 QUEEN MAS. IX. 
 
 So sumptuous, yet so perishing withal J 
 Even as the corpse that rests beneath its wall. 
 A thousand mourners deck the pomp of death 
 To-day 5 the breathing marble glows above 
 To decorate its memory, and tongues 
 Are busy of its life : to-morrow worms 
 In sil-jnce 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 wallflower, 
 That mock the dungeon's unavailing gloom; 
 The ponderous chains, and gratings of strong iron, 
 There rusted amid heaps of broken stone 
 That mingled slowly with their native earth : 
 There the broad beam of day, which feebly once 
 Lighted the «heek 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 
 Ministrantto all blissful impulses : 
 Thus human things were perfected, and earth, 
 
IX. QUEEN MAB. 85 
 
 Even as a chHd beneath its mother's love, 
 Was strengthened in all excellence, and grew 
 Fairer and nobler with each 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 : 
 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 teach thee firmly to pursue 
 The gradual paths 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 frame 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, 
 That leads to azure isles and beaming skies 
 
86 QUEEN MAB f IX. 
 
 And liappy 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 favourite flower, 
 That blooms in mossy banks and darksome glens, 
 Lighting the greenwood with its sunny smile. 
 
 Fear not then, Spiiit, death's disrobing hand, 
 So welcome when the tyrant is awake, 
 So welcome when the bigot's helh torch burns ; 
 'Tis but the voyage of a darksome hour, 
 The transient gulf-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, 
 "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 wasre 
 
IX. QUEEN MAB. S7 
 
 With tyranny and falsehood, 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 controul, 
 Of passion lofty, pure and unsubdued. 
 Earth's pride and meanness could not vanquish 
 
 thee, 
 And therefore art thou worthy of the boon 
 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 
 The steep descent of heaven's untrodden way. 
 
 Fast and far the chariot flew ; 
 H 
 
«a QUEEN MAB. IX. 
 
 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. 
 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 Iiinthe'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 lov«j 
 And the bright beaming stars 
 That through the casement shone. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 I. Page 11. 
 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 concave. 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 pro- 
 pagated 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 : observa- 
 tions on the eclipses of Jupiter's satellites have demon- 
 strated 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 immense dis- 
 tance of the fixed stars, when it is computed that many 
 years would elapse before light could reach this earth 
 H2 
 
90 NOTES. 
 
 from the nearest of them ; yet in one year light travels 
 5,482,400,000,000 miles, which is a distance 5,707,600 
 times greater than that of the sun from the earth. 
 
 I. Page 12. 
 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 falsehoods of religious 
 systems, or of deifying the principle of the universe. 
 It is impossible to believe that the Spirit that pervades 
 this infinite machine, is angered at the consequences of 
 that necessity, which is a synonyme of itself. All that 
 miserable tale of the Devil, and Eve, is irreconcileable 
 with the knowledge of the stars. 
 
 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 streaking 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 
 
 * See Nicholson's Encyclopedia, art. Light. 
 
NOTES. 91 
 
 and millions of suns are ranged around \is, all attended 
 by innumerable worlds, yet calm, regular, and harmo- 
 nious, all keeping the paths of immutable necessity. 
 
 •IV. Page 37. 
 
 These are the hired bravoes who defend 
 The Tyrant's throne. 
 
 To employ murder as a means of justice, is an idea 
 which a man of an enlightened mind will not dwell 
 upon with pleasure. To march forth in rank and file, 
 with 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, and 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 as- 
 sertion of truth, or the maintenance of justice. 
 
 Kings and ministers of state, the real authors of the 
 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 
 H3 
 
m NOTES. 
 
 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 abstract 
 question of the justifiableness of war, it seems impossi- 
 ble that the soldier should not be a depraved and un- 
 natural being. 
 
 To these more serious and momentous considera- 
 tions it may be proper to add a recollection of the 
 ridiculousness of the military character. Its first con- 
 stituent is obedience : a soldier is, of all descriptions of 
 men, the most completely a machine; yet his profession 
 inevitably teaches hirn 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 
 gesture, 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 falsehood, 
 that I fear lest it may never again be depictured so 
 vividly. This opportunity is perhaps the only one that 
 ever will occur of rescuing it from oblivion. 
 
NOTES. 
 FALSEHOOD 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, 
 There Vice and Falsehood took their stand, 
 High raised above the unhappy land. 
 
 FALSEHOOD. 
 
 Brother ! arise from the dainty fare, 
 
 Which thousands have toiled and bled to bestow ; 
 
 A finer feast for thine 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 I 
 I, whose career, through the blasted year, 
 Has been tracked by despair and agony. 
 
9* NOTES. 
 
 FALSEHOOD- 
 
 What have I done ! — I 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, 
 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. 
 
 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, 
 Falsehood I I tell thee thou hadst lost ! — 
 
NOTES. 95 
 
 Yet wherefore this dispute ? — we tend, 
 Fraternal, to one common end ; 
 In this cold grave beneath my feet, 
 Will our hopes, our fears, and our labours meet. 
 
 FALSEHOOD. 
 
 1 brought my daughter, Religion, on earth r 
 
 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. 
 
 VICE. 
 
 I have extinguished the noon-day sun* 
 In the carnage-smoke of battles won : 
 Famine, murder, hell, and power, 
 Were glutted in that glorious hour 
 
9$ NOTES. 
 
 Whiclrsearchless 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 I 
 
 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. 
 
 FALSEHOOD. 
 
 Brother, well : — the world is ours ; 
 And whether thou or I have won r 
 The pestilence expectant lowers 
 On all beneath yon blasted sun. 
 
NOTES. 97 
 
 Our joys, our toils, our honours 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 graves 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 : the 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. {£§p 
 
 V. Page 41. 
 Thus do the generations of the earth 
 Go to the grave, and issue from the womb. 
 One generation passeth away and another genera- 
 tion 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, ac- 
 cording to his circuits. All the rivers run into the sea, 
 
98 NOTES. 
 
 yet the sea is not full ; unto the place whence the rivers 
 come, thither shall they return again. 
 
 Ecclesiastes, chap. i. 
 
 V. Page 41. 
 Even as the leaves 
 Which the keen frost-wind of the waning year 
 Has scattered on the forest soil. 
 For, as the leaves, so springs the race of man. 
 Chill blasts shake down the leaves, and warn'd anew 
 By vernal airs, the grove puts forth again : 
 Age after age, so man is born and dies.* 
 
 Cowper's Homer, book vi^ 
 
 V. Page 43. 
 The mob of peasants, nobles, priests, and kings. 
 Suave rcari magno turbantibus sequora ventis, 
 E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem; 
 Non, quia vexari quemquam est jucunda voluptas, 
 Sed, quibus ipse malis careas, quia cernere suave est. 
 . Suave etiam belli certamina magna tueri, 
 Per campos instructa, tua sine parte pericli; 
 
 * In this edition, the four lines of Greek, quoted by 
 the author from Iliad, Z'. 1. 146, are omitted, and the 
 translation substituted, as being more acceptible to the 
 generality of readers. That of Cowper is chosen as 
 more correct, though not so agreeable as Pope's. 
 
NOTES. 9? 
 
 Sed nil dulcius est, bene quam munita tenere, 
 Edita doctrina sapientum, terapla serena ; 
 Despicere unde queas alios, passim que videre 
 Errare, atque viara palanteis quaerere vitae ; 
 Certare ingenio, contendere nobilitate ; 
 Nocteis atque dies niti praestante labore 
 Ad summas emergere opes, rerumque potiri. 
 P miseras hominum menteis ! O pectora caeca I* 
 
 Luc. lib. ii. 
 
 V. Page 44. 
 
 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. 
 
 * How sweet to stand, when tempests tear the main, 
 On the firm cliff, and mark the seaman's toil! 
 Not that another's danger soothes the soul, 
 But from such toil how sweet to feel secure ! 
 How sweet, at distance from the strife, to view 
 Contending hosts, and hear the clash of war ! 
 But sweeter far on Wisdom's heights serene, 
 Upheld by Truth, to fix our firm abode, 
 To watch the giddy crowd, that, deep below, 
 For ever wander in pursuit of bliss ; 
 To mark the strife for honors and renown, 
 For wit and wealth, insatiate, ceaseless urg'd, 
 Day after day, with labour unrestrained. 
 O wretched mortals ! — race perverse and blind ! 
 
 Good's Lucretius. 
 
100 NOTES. 
 
 In consequence of eur consideration for the . preclows 
 metals^ne man is enabled to heap to himself luxuries at 
 the expence of the necessaries of his neighbour ; a 
 system admirably fitted to produce all the varieties of 
 disease 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 
 prosperity, who employs a number of hands in the 
 manufacture of articles avowedly destitute of use, or 
 subservient only to the unhallowed cravings of luxury 
 and ostentation. The nobleman, who employs the 
 peasants of his neighbourhood in building his palaces, 
 until " jam pauca aratro jugera, regies moles relin- 
 qmintS'* 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 continuance ; and many a fete has been given, many 
 a woman 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 aggra- 
 vates, whilst it palliates the countless diseases of so- 
 ciety? 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 civiliza* 
 
 * These royal piles will soon leave but few acres for 
 the plough. 
 
NOTES. 10 1 
 
 tion without which civilized 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 assidiously exhibited before 
 him: — no; for the pride of power, for the miserable 
 isolation of pride, for the false pleasures of the hun- 
 dredth part of society. No greater evidence is afforded 
 of the wide extended and radical mistakes of civilized 
 man than this fact : those arts which are essential to- 
 his very .being are held in the greatest contempt; em- 
 ployments 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 
 
 * See Rousseau, " Del'Inegalite p&rmi lesHommes,'* 
 note 7, 
 
 I 2 
 
102 NOTES. 
 
 paribus* be preferred : but so long as we conceive 
 that a wantorl expenditure of human labour, not fof 
 the necessities, not even for the luxuries of the mass of 
 society, but for the egotism and ostentation of a few, 
 6f its members, is defensible on the ground of public 
 justice, so long we neglect to approximate to the re- 
 demption 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 
 condition 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 vigorous . intellect is but half 
 a man : hence it follows, that, to subject the labouring 
 cUsses to unnecessary labour, is wantonly 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 exist- 
 ence 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 
 
 * Making allowances on both sides,. 
 
NOTES. 103 
 
 which support this system derive their force from the 
 ignorance and credulity of its victims : they are the 
 result of a conspiracy of the few against the many, 
 who are themselves obliged to purchase this pre-emi- 
 nence by the loss of all real comfort. ##* 
 
 The commodities that substantially contribute to the 
 subsistence of the human species form a very short 
 catalogue : they demand from us but a slender portion 
 of industry. If these only were produced, and suffi" 
 ciently produced, the species of man would be conti- 
 nued. 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 compara- 
 tive value : it is to be hoped that the time will come? 
 when it will be applied to the most important pur- 
 poses. 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 sources of 
 
 enjoyment. 
 
 * ******* 
 
 It was perhaps necessary that a period of monopoly 
 13 
 
im NOTES. 
 
 and oppression should subsist, before. a period; of cul- 
 tivated 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 En- 
 quirer, Essay II. See also Pol. Jus. Book VIII, . 
 chap. II, 
 
 It is a calculation of thi3 admirable author, that all : 
 the conveniences of civilized life might be produced, 
 if society would divide the labour equally among its 
 members, by each individual being employed in labour 
 two hours during the day. 
 
 V. Page 4ft. 
 Or religion 
 Drives 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 ex- 
 perience of every physician. 
 
NOTES. K)5 
 
 Nam jam saepe homines patriam, carosque parentes 
 Prodiderunt, vitare Acherusia templa petentes.* 
 
 Lucretius. 
 
 V. Page 47. 
 Even love is sold. 
 
 Not even the intercourse of the sexes is exempt 
 from the despotism of positive institution. Law pre- 
 tends even to govern the indisciplinable wanderings of 
 passion, to put fetters on the clearest deductions of 
 reason, and by appeals to the will, to subdue the in- 
 voluntary affections of our nature. Love is inevitably 
 consequent upon the perception of loveliness. Love 
 withers under constraint r its very essence is liberty : 
 it is compatible neither with obedience, jealousy, nor 
 fear : it is there most pure, perfect, and unlimited, 
 where its votaries live in confidence, equality,, and un- 
 reserve. 
 
 How long then ought the sexual connection to last 1 
 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 cohabita- 
 tion for one moment after the decay of their affection, 
 
 * For now, men, desiring to avoid the infernal re- 
 gions, will frequently betray their country and dearest 
 parents. 
 
106 NOTES. 
 
 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 ima- 
 gination, and less capable of reduction to the ostensi- 
 ble 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 crimi- 
 nals, they were banished, and their estates were confis- 
 cated ; the slaves who might be accessary were burne»I 
 
NOTES, 107 
 
 But if happiness be the object of morality, of all hu- 
 man unions and disunion's ; 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 
 errors 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 
 
 alive, or forced to swallow melted lead. The very 
 offspring of an illegal love were involved in the conse- 
 quences of the sentence. — Gibbon's Decline and Fall. 
 &c. vol. ii. page 210. See also, the hatred of the pri- 
 mitive Christians to love, and even marriage, page 269. 
 
10$ NOTES. 
 
 delicacy and reason I 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 ht 
 a, systematic school of ill-humour, violence, and false- 
 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 mor# 
 congenial partners which is for ever denied them by the* 
 despotism of marriage. They would have been sepa- 
 rately useful and happy members of society, who, 
 whilst united, were miserable, and rendered misanthro- 
 phical by misery. The conviction that wedlock is in^ 
 dissoluble holds out the strongest of alltemptations to the 
 
NOTES. 10d 
 
 perverse : they indulge without restraint in acrimony, 
 aftd 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 ; 
 find the punishment which is inflicted on her who de- 
 stroys her child to escape reproach, is lighter than the 
 life of agony and disease to which the prostitute it 
 irrecoverably doomed. Has a woman obeyed the im- 
 pulse of unerring nature ; — society declares war against 
 her, pityless and eternal war : she must be the tame 
 slave, she must make no reprisals ; theirs is the right 
 of persecution, 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 long and lin- 
 gering disease : yet she is in fault, she is the criminal, 
 she the froward and untameable child^nnd 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-daj& 
 
HO NOTES. 
 
 which yesterday she was the most zealous to teach. 
 Thus is formed one-tenth of the population of London: 
 meanwhile 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 exquisite and delicate sensibilities whose exist- 
 ence, cold-hearted worldlings have denied ; annihilat- 
 ing all genuine passion, and debasing that to a selfish 
 feeling which is the excess of generosity and devoted- 
 ness. Their body and mind alike crumble into a 
 hideous wreck of humanity ; idiotcy and disease be- 
 come perpetuated in their miserable offspring, and 
 distant generations suffer for the bigotted morality of 
 their forefathers. Chastity is a monkish and evangeli- 
 cal superstition, a greater foe to natural temperance 
 even than unintellectual sensuality ; it strikes at the 
 root of all domestic happiness, and consigns more than 
 half of the human race to misery, that some few may 
 monopolize according to law. A system could not 
 well have been devised more studiously hostile tp 
 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 
 
NOTES. Ill 
 
 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 natural and right, because choice and change 
 will be exempted from restraint. 
 
 In fact, religion and morality, as they now stand, com- 
 pose a practical code of misery and servitude : the ge- 
 nius of human happiness must tear every leaf from the 
 accursed book of God, ere man can read the inscription 
 on his heart. How would morality, dressed up in stiif 
 stays and finery, start from her own disgusting image, 
 should she look in the mirror of nature ! (J^* 
 
 VI. Page 52. 
 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 
 identity between the moral and physical improvement 
 of the human species. It is certain that wisdom is not 
 K 
 
1-13 NOTES. 
 
 eompatible 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 oscillation, 
 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.t The researches of 
 M. Bailly + establish the existence of a people who in- 
 habit a tract of land in Tartary, 49». north latitude, of 
 greater antiquity than either the Indians, the Chinese, 
 or the Chaldeans, from whom these nations derived their 
 sciences and theology. We find, from the testimony of 
 ancient writers, that Britain, Germany, and France, 
 
 Laplace, Systeme du Monde. 
 
 Cabanis, Rapports du Physii 
 )ffime, vol ii. p. 406. 
 
 X Lettres sur les Sciences, a Voltaire. Bailly. 
 
 + Cabanis, Rapports du Physique et du Moral de 
 1'Homme, vol ii. p. 406. 
 
NOTES. 113 
 
 were much colder than at present, and that their great • 
 rivers were annually frozen over. Astronomy teaches 
 us also, that since this period, the obliquity of the earth's 
 position has been considerably diminished. (£§* 
 
 VI. Page 57. 
 No atom of this turbulence fulfils 
 A vague and unnecessitated task, 
 Or acts but as it must and ought to act. 
 Two examples will serve to render the position here 
 asserted, more intelligible to us : we will borrow the 
 one from physical, the other from moral effects. In a 
 whirlwind of dust, raised by a boisterous wind, how- 
 ever disordered it may appear to our eyes — in the most 
 frightful tempests, excited by conflicting winds, which 
 convulse the waves, there is not a single atom of dust, 
 or of water, that is placed by chance, which has not its 
 sufficient cause for occupying the space where it is 
 found, and which does not act precisely in the manner 
 it ought to act. A geometrician, who knew perfectly 
 the different powers which act in both these cases, and 
 the properties of the atoms which are moved, will de- 
 monstrate, that after the causes given, each atom acts 
 exactly as it should act, and could not act otherwise 
 than it dots. 
 
 In the terrible convulsions which sometimes agitate 
 political societies, and which often bring about the sub- 
 version of an empire, there is not a single action, a sin- 
 K 2 
 
114 NOT.ES. 
 
 gle word, a single thought, a single volition, or a single 
 passion in the agents which concur in the revolution, 
 either as destroyers or as victims, which are not ne- 
 cessary, and which act not as they must act, and which 
 do not infallibly produce the effects which they ought 
 to produce according to the situation which they occu- 
 pied in this moral whirlwind. This would appear evi- 
 dent to an intelligence capable of discerning and ap- 
 preciating all the actions and re-actions of the minds 
 and of the bodies of those who contribute to this revo- 
 lution.* 
 
 Systeme dc la Nature. Premiere Partie, chap. 4. 
 
 VI. Page 58. 
 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 un- 
 interrupted chain of causes and effects, no one of which 
 could occupy any other place than it does occupy, or 
 act 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. — 
 
 * Here also, a translation is substituted for the origi- 
 nal, quoted by the author. 
 
NOTES. 115 
 
 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 ac- 
 tion 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 
 precisely 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, makes 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 
 undeterminate ; we could not predict with any cer- 
 tainty, that we might not meet as an enemy to-morrow, 
 him with whom we have parted in friendship to-night ; 
 the most probable inducements, and the clearest rea- 
 sonings, would lose the invariable influence they pos- 
 sess. The contrary of this is demonstrably the fact. — 
 Similar circumstances produce the same unvariable ef- 
 fects. The precise character and motives of any man 
 on any occasion being given, the moral philosopher 
 K3 
 
116 NOTES, 
 
 could predict his actions "with as much certainty as the 
 natural philosopher could predict the effects of the mix- . 
 ture of any particular chemical substances. Why is 
 the aged husbandman more experienced than the young 
 beginner ? Because there is an uniform, undeniable ne- 
 cessity in the operations of the material universe. — 
 Why is the old statesman more skilful than the raw po- 
 litician? Because, relying on the necessary conjunc- 
 tion 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 ef- 
 fect ; nor, placed in this point of view, is it, or ever 
 has it been the subject of popular or philosophical dis- 
 pute. None but the few fanatics who are engaged in 
 the Herculean task of reconciling the justice of theii ? 
 God with the misery of man, will longer outrage com- 
 mon sense by the supposition of an event without a 
 cause, a voluntary action without a motive. History, 
 politics, morals, criticism, all grounds of reasoning, all 
 principles of seience, 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 
 
NOTES. 117 
 
 purposes, than that his machinery will act as it has 
 been accustomed to act. 
 
 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 mo- 
 tive 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 
 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 con- 
 sequent 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 
 
JIS NOTES. 
 
 human will. Do you think these motives, which I 
 shall present, are powerful enough to rouse him? is a 
 question 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 re- 
 fusing 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 
 strongest motive, as that he cannot overcome a physical 
 impossibility. 
 
 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 
 motives which he would employ in order to procure 
 the adoption or abandonment of any given line of con- 
 duct. Desert, in the present sense of the word, would 
 no longer have any meaning ; and he, who should in- 
 flict pain upon another for no better reason than that 
 he deserved it, would only gratify his revenge under 
 pretence of satisfying justice. It is not enough, says 
 the advocate of free-will, that a criminal should be 
 prevented from a repetition of his crime: he should 
 feel pain, and his torments, when justly inflicted, ought 
 precisely to be proportioned to his fault. But utility 
 
NOTES. 119 
 
 is morality ; that which is incapable of producing hap- 
 piness 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 neces- 
 sity 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 
 existence. A Necessarian is inconsequent to his own 
 principles, if he indulges in hatred or contempt ; the 
 compassion which he feels for the criminal is unmixed 
 with a desire of injuring him: he looks with an eleva- 
 ted and dreadless composure upon the links of the uni- 
 versal chain as they pass before his eyes ; whilst cow- 
 ardice, 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 
 
120 NOTES. 
 
 principle of the universe be not an organic being, the 
 model and prototype of man, the relation between it 
 and human beings is 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 
 denoting 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 go- 
 verning the universe as an earthly monarch governs his 
 kingdom. Their addresses to this imaginary being, in- 
 deed, are much in the same style as those of subjects to 
 a king. They acknowledge his benevolence, deprecate 
 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 immut- 
 able necessity. It is plain that the same arguments 
 which prove that God is the author of food, light, and 
 
NOTES. 121 
 
 life, prove him also to be the author of poison, darkness, 
 and death. The wide-wasting earthquake, the storm, 
 the battle, and tyranny, are attributable to this hy- 
 pothetic 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, otherwise 
 than as the events to which we apply these epithets 
 have relation to our own peculiar mode of being. Still 
 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. 
 
 A Mahometan story, much to the present purpose, is 
 recorded, wherein Adam and Moses are introduced dis- 
 puting 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 
 
122 NOTES. 
 
 Moses, " Forty." " And dost thou not find," replied 
 Adam, " these words therein, And Adam rebelled against 
 his Lord, and transgressed ?" Which, Moses confess- 
 ing, "Dost thou, therefore, blame me," continued he, 
 " fordoing that which God wrote of me that I should do, 
 forty years before I was created, nay, for what was de- 
 creed concerning me fifty thousand years before the 
 creation of heaven and earth ?" 
 
 Sale's Prelim. Dis. to the Koran, p. 164. 
 
 VIT. Page 60. 
 There is no God! 
 
 This negation must be understood solely to affect a 
 creative Deity. The hypothesis of a pervading Spirit 
 co-eternal with the universe, remains unshaken. 
 
 A close examination of the validity of the proofs ad- 
 duced 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 of 
 this conviction we proceed briefly and impartially to 
 examine the proofs which have been adduced. It is ne- 
 cessary first to consider the nature of belief. 
 
 When a proposition is offered to the mind, it perceives 
 the agreement or disagreement of the ideas of which it is 
 composed. A perception of their agreement is termed 
 belief. Many obstacles frequently prevent this percep- 
 
NOTES. J2S 
 
 tion from being immediate ; these the mind attempts to 
 remove, in order that the perception may be distinct. 
 The mind is active in the investigation, in order to per- 
 fect the state of perception of the relation which the 
 component ideas of the proposition 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 vo- 
 lition — in consequence of which it may be regulated by 
 the mind. Pursuing, continuing this mistake, they have 
 attached a degree of criminality to disbelieve ; of 
 which, in its nature, it is incapable: it is equally inca- 
 pable of merit. 
 
 Belief, then, is a passion, the strength of which, like 
 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 ex- 
 perience, 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.) 
 L 
 
184 NOTES. 
 
 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. 
 
 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 ex- 
 isted 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 t® 
 prove that it was created : until that is clearly demon- 
 strated, we may reasonably suppose that it has endur- 
 ed 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 con- 
 junction 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 incomprehensible ;— it is easier to suppose that 
 
notes. m 
 
 the universe has existed from all eternity, than to con- 
 ceive a being beyond its limits capable of creating it : 
 if the mind sinks beneath the weight of one, is it an 
 alleviation to increase the intolerability of the bur- 
 then 7 
 
 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 have 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 experiment- 
 ally, 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 hyhothesis 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. 
 
 3rd. Testimony. It is required that testimony should 
 not be contrary to reason. The testimony that the 
 Deity convinces the senses of men of his existence, ean 
 ©i>ly 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 th-era* 
 L 2 
 
120 NOTES. 
 
 Our reason can never admit the testimony of men, who 
 not only declare that they were eye-witnesses of mira- 
 cles, 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 
 of criminality is attachable to disbelief ; and that they 
 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 fmgo, quicquid 
 enim ex phoenomenis non deducitur, hypothesis voean 
 
 ^ The burthen of proving. 
 
NOTES. 127 
 
 da est, et hypothesis vel metaphysics, vel physicce,vel 
 qualitatum occultarum, seu mcchanicce, in philosophies 
 locum non habent* 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 ignorance of causes 
 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 crinitics or nebulae of Herschel. God 
 
 * I do not raise an hypothesis ; for whatever is not de- 
 rived from phoenomena, is to be called an hypothesis ; 
 and hypotheses, either metaphysical or physical, or 
 grounded on hidden qualities, or mechanics, are not ac- 
 knowledged in philosophy. 
 
 L3 
 
128 NOTES. 
 
 is represented as infinite, eternal, incomprehensible; 
 he is contained under every pr dedicate 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, 
 
 Poure dire ce quHl est, ilfaut etre lut-meme* 
 
 Lord Bacon says, that " Atheism leaves a man to 
 sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to repu- 
 tation ; all which may be guides to an outward moral 
 virtue, though religion were not ; but superstition dis- 
 mounts all these, and erecteth an absolute monarchy 
 in the minds of men ; therefore atheism did never 
 perturb states ; for it makes men wary of themselves, 
 as looking no farther, and we see the times inclined to 
 atheism (as the time of Augustus Caesar) were civil 
 times: but superstition hath been the confusion of 
 many states, and bringeth in a new primum mobile, 
 that ravisheth all the spheres of government." 
 
 Bacon's Moral Essay on Superstition. 
 
 " The primitive theology of man soon induced him to 
 fear and adore even the elements — gross and material 
 objects : he next offered his homage to the agents pre- 
 siding over those elements, to inferior genii, to heroes, 
 or to men embued with superior qualities. By dint of 
 .reflection, he began to simplify things, by submitting 
 
 * To tell what he is, you must be himself. 
 
NOTES'. J29 
 
 flie whole of nature to a single agent, to an Intelligence, 
 to a universal soul, which set this nature, and its parts, 
 in motion. In ascending from cause to cause, mortals 
 have finished by seeing nothing; and it is in this ob- 
 scurity that they have placed their God, it is in this dark 
 abyss that their restless imaginations are continually 
 labouring to fashion for themselves chimeras, which 
 will perplex them until a knowledge of nature shall un- 
 deceive them, regarding the phantoms which they have 
 always so vainly adored. 
 
 If we are desirous of accounting to ourselves for our 
 ideas respecting a Divinity, we shall be obliged to ac- 
 knowledge, that, by the word God, men could only de- 
 note the most latent, the most distant, and the most un- 
 known cause of the effects which they beheld. They do not 
 employ this word until the springs of natural and definite 
 causes cease to be visible to them ; as soon as they loose 
 the thread, or when their minds can no longer follow 
 the chain of these eauses, they solve their difficulty, 
 and terminate their researches by calling God the last 
 of these causes ; that is to say, that which is beyond 
 all the causes they know: — thus they only assign a 
 vague denomination to an unknown cause, at which 
 their indolence, or the bounds of their information 
 forces them to stop. 
 
 Whenever it is said that God is the author of any 
 phenomenon, it signifies that we are ignorant how such 
 a phenomenon could be produced by the aid of such 
 
130 NOTES. 
 
 powers or causes a$ we are acquainted with in nature. 
 It is for this reason that the majority of mankind, of 
 whom ignorance is the inheritance, attribute to the Di- 
 vinity, not merely the unusual effects which strike them, 
 but even the most simple events, the causes of which 
 are easily discovered by every one capable of examining 
 them. In short, man has always respected the unknown 
 causes of surprising effects, which his ignorance pre- 
 vented him from unravelling. It was upon the wreck of 
 nature that men raised the imaginary Colossus of the 
 Divinity. 
 
 If ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, the know- 
 ledge of nature is calculated to destroy them. In pro- 
 portion as man improves in knowledge, his energies and 
 his resources augment: the sciences, the useful arts, 
 and industry, furnish him with assistance; experience 
 emboldens him, or procures him the means of resisting 
 the effects of many causes, which cease to alarm him as 
 soon as he is acquainted with them. In a word, his ter- 
 rors are dissipated in the same proportion as his mind 
 is enlightened. The enlightened man ceases to be su- 
 perstitious. 
 
 It is only upon hearsay that whole nations adore the 
 God of their fathers, and their priests ; authority, con- 
 fidence, submission, and custom, serve them in the place 
 of conviction and proofs ; they kneel and pray because 
 their fathers have taught them to kneel and to pray: 
 but why did the latter prostrate themselves !— Because, 
 
NOTES. 131 
 
 in remote ages, their legislators and leaders made it a 
 duty for them to do so. " Adore and believe,'' said 
 they, "in the gods you cannot comprehend; trust to 
 our profound wisdom, we know more of God than you 
 do." "But why should I trust in you?" "Because 
 God commands it, and he will punish you if you dare 
 oppose his will." " But is not this God the subject in 
 question?" Nevertheless, men have always been gulled 
 with this juggling circle; and the indolence of their 
 minds induced them to think the shortest way was to 
 rely upon the judgments of others. 
 
 All religious notions are founded solely upon autho- 
 rity ; all the religions in the world prohibit investi- 
 gation, and forbid reasoning ; it is authority that re- 
 quires belief in God, and this God is only founded on 
 the authority of some men who pretend to know him, 
 and to come in his behalf to proclaim him upon earth. 
 A God created by men, has doubtless occasion for hu- 
 man agency to make himself known to mankind. 
 
 Should, then, the conviction of the existence of a 
 God be reserved only for the priests of the fanatics, for 
 metaphysicians, while it is said to be so necessary for 
 the whole human race ? But do we discover any har- 
 mony between the theological opinions of the different 
 inspired, or contemplative persons, scattered upon the 
 earth? Do those who make profession of adoring the 
 same God agree respecting him? Are they satisfied 
 with the proofs given them by their colleagues of hU 
 
132 NOTES. 
 
 existence 1 Do they subscribe unanimously to the ideas 
 they offer upon his nature, upon Ms conduct, upon the 
 manner of interpreting his pretended oracles? Is there 
 a country upon earth, where the science of God is really 
 brought to perfection ? Has it received, in any degree, 
 the consistency and uniformity that we perceive to have 
 been acquired by other parts of human knowledge, by the 
 most useless arts, by the most despised trades ? The words 
 spirits, immateriality, creation, predestination, and 
 grace ; those numerous subtle distinctions with which the- 
 ology, in some countries, is entirely filled, those ingeni- 
 ous inventions conceived by successive generations of 
 tinkers have tended, alas ! only to perplex things, andthe 
 science the most necessary to man, has not hitherto ac- 
 quired the least stability. During thousands of years, 
 idle dreamers have been continually relieved by others 
 to contemplate the Deity — to divine his hidden ways — 
 to invent hypothesises adapted to develope this impor- 
 tant enigma. The want of success has not discouraged 
 theological vanity ; God has always been the subject of 
 conversation : murders have been continually perpe- 
 trated on his account, and yet this sublime being still 
 remains most unknown, and the most disputed. 
 
 Men would have been too happy, if, confining them- 
 selves to the visible objects, which interest them, 
 they had employed half the efforts they have used in 
 their researches upon the Divinity, to perfect their real 
 sciences, their laws, their morals, and their education. 
 
NOTES. 133 
 
 They would have been yet more wise and more fortu- 
 nate, if they had agreed to leave their unemployed pas- 
 tors to quarrel with each other, and examine their pro- 
 found labyrinths, so capable of causing- dissentions, 
 without joining in their senseless broils. But it is the 
 essence of ignorance to attach importance to what it 
 does not comprehend. Human vanity strengthens the 
 mind against difficulties. The more an object is con- 
 cealed from our view, the greater efforts 'we make to 
 attain it, because it goads our pride, it excites our 
 curiosity, and it appears to us more interesting. In 
 fighting for his God, each man fights, in fact, but for the 
 interests of his own vanity, which, of all the passions 
 produced by the evil organization of society, is the- 
 most prompt to be alarmed, and the most apt to produce- 
 very great follies. 
 
 If, discarding for a moment the dismal ideas given us 
 by theology of a capricious God, whose partial and 
 despotic decrees decide the fate of human beings, we 
 wished to observe only that pretended goodness which 
 all men, even trembling before this God, agree to assign 
 him; if we allow him the project they have ascribed to 
 him of having worked only for his own glory, to require 
 the adoration of intelligent beings ; to design nothing in 
 his works but the welfare of the human race, how can 
 we conciliate his views and his dispositions with the ig- 
 norance so truly invincible, in which this God, so glo- 
 
131 NOTES. 
 
 rious, and so good, leaves the majority of mankind con- 
 cerning himself? If God wishes to be known, loved, 
 and thanked, why does he not appear under favourable 
 colours to all those intelligent beings by whom he 
 wishes to be loved and adored ? Why does he not make 
 himself manifest to all the earth in an unequivocal 
 manner — in a method much more capable of convincing 
 us, than those private revelations which seem to ac- 
 cuse the Divinity of a shameful partiality for some of 
 his creatures ? Would not the Almighty then have 
 more convincing means of discovering himself to men, 
 than those metaphorphoses, those pretended incarna- 
 tions, attested by writers of so little concordance with 
 each other, in their recitals of these events. Instead 
 of so many miracles, contrived to prove the mission of 
 so many legislators, reverenced by different nations of 
 the world, could not the sovereign of spirits convince 
 the human mind, of those things he wished to make 
 Icnown, by a single action. Instead of suspending the 
 sun in the vault of the firmament ; instead of scattering 
 the stars without order, and the constellations which 
 fill space, would it not have been more conformable to 
 the views of a God so jealous of his glory, and so be- 
 neficent toman, toinscribein amannernot subjeetto dis- 
 pute, his name, his attributes, and his permanent wishes, 
 in indelible characters, equally legible to all the inha- 
 bitants of the earth. No person could then doubt the 
 
NOTES. 135 
 
 existence of a God, his clear will, his visible intentions. 
 Under the observation of a God so terrible, no one 
 would have had the audacity to break his command- 
 ments ; no mortal would have dared to incur his anger : 
 in fine, no man would have had the effrontery to impose 
 on others, in his name, or to interpret his ordinances 
 according to his own fancy. 
 
 In fact, if even the existence of the theologic God, 
 and the reality of the attributes so discordantly assigned 
 to him should be admitted ; no conclusion can be drawn 
 from such admission, to authorize the different forms of 
 worship, prescribed to be rendered him. Theology is 
 truly the Tub of the Danaides. By contradictory quali- 
 ties, and hazarded assertions, it has, as it were, so ma- 
 nacled its Deity, as to prevent him from acting. If he 
 be infinitely good, what reason have we to fear him ? — 
 If he be infinitely wise, why do we trouble ourselves 
 about futurity. If he be omniscient, why do we ap- 
 prize him of our wants, and fatigue him with our 
 prayers ? If he be omnipresent, why build temples for 
 him? If he be omnipotent, why present to him sacri- 
 fices and offerings? If he be just, how can we believe, 
 that he will punish the creatures he has made so feeble ? 
 If he be omnipotent, how can he be offended, or how 
 resisted ? If he be reasonable, why is he displeased with 
 blind mortals, to whom he has left the liberty of acting 
 contrary to his wishes ? If he be immutable, by what 
 
 right do we pretend to induce him to change his decrees? 
 
 M 
 
136 NOTES. 
 
 If he be inconceivable, why do we trouble ourselves 
 about him? If he has spoken, why is not the uni- 
 verse convinced ? If the knowledge of a God is the 
 most necessary, why is it not the most evident and the 
 most clear.* 
 
 Systeme de la Nature. Seconde Partie. 
 
 The enlightened and benevolent Pliny thus publicly 
 professes himself an atheist : — Quapropter effigiem Dei, 
 formamque quaerere, imbecillitatis humanae reor. Quis- 
 quis est Deus (si modo est alius) et quacunque in parte, 
 totus est sensus, totus est visus, totus auditus, totus 
 animse, totus animi, totus sui. — — — — — — 
 
 Imperfecta^ vero in homine naturae praecipua solatia 
 ne deum quidem posse omnia. Namque nee sibi po- 
 test mortem consciscere, si velit, quod homini dedit 
 optimum in tantis vitas 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 
 copuletur) ut bis dena viginta non sint, et multa simi- 
 liter efficere non posse. — Per quae, declaratur haud 
 
 * A literal translation is here substituted for the 
 French, quoted by the author. The passages brought 
 together in this extract do not follow each other in the 
 original, but are selected from different parts of the se- 
 cond volume. 
 
NOTES. 137 
 
 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 
 leads, as a sufficient presumption of the falsehood of 
 the system of gravitation : but surely it is more con- 
 sistent 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 guilt and absurdity of atheism, 
 
 * Wherefore, I think, to enquire concerning the mode 
 of being and likeness of God is to be ascribed to human 
 folly. For whatever God is, (if he has any existence) 
 and in whatever place, he must be all perception, all 
 sight, all hearing, all mind, all life, and self-existent. 
 — — — — But it is a peculiar satisfaction to man, 
 in all the imperfections of his nature, that God cannot 
 do every thing. He cannot commit suicide even should 
 he wish to die, the power to do which, gives to man the 
 greatest comfort amidst the numerous evils of life : 
 neither can God render human beings eternal ; nor call 
 the dead into existence ; nor make those who lived here- 
 tofore, not to have lived ; nor those who have borne 
 honours in their day, not to have borne them ; he has 
 no power over the past, except that of oblivion ; and 
 (if they will allow us to joke while discoursing about 
 God) he cannot prevent twice ten from being twenty, 
 and many other things of the same kind: by which it 
 is proved, without doubt, that what we call God is the 
 power of Nature. 
 
 M 2 
 
!S8 NOTES. 
 
 demonstrated its falsehood, his conduct would have 
 been more suited to the modesty of the sceptic, and 
 the toleration of the philosopher. dd 3 " 
 
 Omnia enim per Dei potentiam facta sunt : irao, quia 
 natura potentia nulla est nisi ipsa Dei potentia, autem 
 est nos eatenus Dei potentiam non intelligere, quatenus 
 causas naturales ignoramus ; adeoque stulte ad eandem 
 Dei potentiam recurritur, quando rei alicujus, causams 
 naturalem, sive est, ipsam Dei potentiam ignoramus.* — 
 Spinosa, Tract. Theologico-Pol. chap. i. p. 14v 
 
 VII. Page 62. 
 
 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 restlessness, 
 to rove the globe from pole to pole. When our Lord 
 was wearied with the burthen of his ponderous cross, 
 and wanted to rest before the door of Ahasuerus, the 
 unfeeling wretch drove him away with brutality. The 
 Saviour of mankind staggered, sinking under the heavy 
 
 * All things are effected by the power of God ; yet it is 
 because the power of nature is no other than the power 
 of God; we are moreover unable to comprehend the 
 power of God as far as we are ignorant of natural 
 causes ; therefore the power of God is foolishly re- 
 ferred to, when we are ignorant of the natural cause 
 of any thing, or which is the same thing, with the power 
 of God. 
 
NOTES. 139 
 
 load, but uttered no complaint. An angel of death ap- 
 peared before Ahasuerus, and exclaimed indignantly, 
 'Barbarian! 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, ex- 
 claimed — And these were my wives; He still continued 
 to hurl down scull after scull, roaring in dreadful ac- 
 cents — And these, and these, and these were my chil- 
 dren ! They could die ; but I ! reprobate wretch, alas ! 
 I cannot die! Dreadful beyond conception is the judg- 
 ment that hangs over me. Jerusalem fell — I crushed 
 the sucking babe, and precipitated 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 
 M3 
 
140 NOTES. 
 
 sprung up and disappeared before me — hut I remained, 
 and did not die. From cloud-encircled cliffs did I pre- 
 cipitate myself into the ocean — but the foaming billows 
 cast me upon the shore, and the burning arrow of exist- 
 ence 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 sul- 
 phureous 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 glow- 
 ing 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, 
 but the flames only singed my limbs — alas ! it could not 
 consume them. I now mixed with the butchers of man- 
 kind, 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 rebounded 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 de- 
 structive 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 
 
XOTES. 141 
 
 hungry Hon in the circus devour me. I cohabited with 
 poisonous snakes, and pinched the red crest of the dra- 
 gon. 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 Christiern, Thou art a 
 bloodhound I I said to Muley Ismail, Thou art a blood- 
 hound I The tyrants invented cruel torments, but did 
 
 not kill me. Ha 1 not to be able to die — not 
 
 to be able to die — not to be permitted to rest after the 
 toils of life — to be doomed to be imprisoned for ever in 
 the clay-formed dungeon — to be for ever dogged with 
 this worthless body, its load of diseases and infirmities 
 — to be condemned to hold for millenniums that yawning 
 monster Sameness and Time, that hungry hyena, ever 
 bearing children, and ever devouring again her off- 
 spring! — Hal not to be permitted to die I Awful avenger 
 in heaven, hast thou in thine armoury of wrath a pu- 
 nishment 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 G er- 
 mau work, whose title I have vainly endeavoured to dis- 
 cover. I picked it up, dirty and torn, some years ago, 
 in Lincoin's-Inn Fields. 
 
142 NOTES. 
 
 VII. Page 65. 
 J will beget a Son, and he shall bear 
 7 J he 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 be- 
 trothed wife of a carpenter in Judea, (whose virginity 
 was nevertheless uninjured) and begat a Son, whose 
 name was Jesus Christ ; and who was crucified and died, 
 in order that no more men might be devoted to hell-fire, 
 he bearing the burden of his Father's displeasure by 
 proxy. The book states, in addition, that the soul of 
 whoever disbelieves his 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 
 
NOTES. 143 
 
 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, impri- 
 soned, and poisoned all the unbiassed and unconnected 
 enquirers who occasionally arose. They still oppress 
 them, so far as the people, now become more enlight- 
 ened, will allow. 
 
 The belief in all that the Bible contains, is called 
 Christianity. A Roman Governor of Judea, at the in- 
 stance of a priest -led mob, crucified a man called 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 a- 
 waited him. The rabble, at the instigation of the priests, 
 demanded his death, although his very judge made pub- 
 lic acknowledgment of his innocence, Jesus was sa- 
 crificed to the honour of that God with whom he was 
 afterwards confounded. It is of importance, therefore, 
 to distinguish between the pretended character 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 desolate 
 the universe in his name. Whilst the one is a hypocriti- 
 cal daemon, who announces himself as the God of com- 
 
144 NOTES. 
 
 passion 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 deso- 
 lation from eternity ; the other stands in the foremost list 
 of those true heroes, who have died in the glorious mar- 
 tyrdom of liberty, and have 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. Tes- 
 timonies of miracles, so frequent in unenlightened ages, 
 were not wanting, to prove that he was something di- 
 vine. 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 di- 
 vinity 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 in 
 the name of his predecessor in th» homage of the 
 world. 
 
 * Since writing this note, I have seen reason to sus- 
 pect, that Jesus was an ambitious man, who aspired to 
 the throne of Judea, 
 
NOTES. 145 
 
 The same means tha* have supported every other po- 
 pular belief, have supported Christianity. War, im- 
 prisonment, assassination, and falsehood; deeds of un- 
 exampled and incomparable atrocity have made it what 
 it is. The blood shed by the votai'ies of the God of 
 mercy and peace, since the establishment of his reli- 
 gion, would probably suffice to drown all other sectaries 
 now on the habitable globe, We derive from our an- 
 cestors 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 
 falsehood of a proposition is felt by those who use 
 coercion, not reasoning, to procure its admission ; and 
 a dispassionate observer would feel himself more pow- 
 erfully interested in favour of a man, who, depending on 
 the truth of his opinions, simply stated his reasons for 
 entertaining them, than in that of his aggressor, who, 
 daringly avowing his unwillingness or incapacity to an- 
 swer them by argument, proceeded to repress the ener- 
 gies, and break the spirit of their promulgator, by that 
 torture and imprisonment whose infliction he could 
 command. 
 
 * Alluding to the case of Daniel Isaac Eaton. 
 
146 NOTES. 
 
 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 vio- 
 lence, darkness, and deceit, not reasoning and persua- 
 sion, have procured its admission among mankind, so, 
 when enthusiasm has subsided, and time, that infallible 
 controverter of false opinions, has involved its pre- 
 tended evidences in the darkness of antiquity, it will be- 
 come obsolete ; that Milton's poem alone will give per- 
 manency to the remembrance of its absurdities ; and 
 that men will laugh as heartily at grace, faith, redemp- 
 tion, and original sin, as they now do at the metamor- 
 phoses 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- 
 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 
 
NOTES. 147 
 
 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- 
 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 irreconcilable hatred. If God has 
 spoken, ivhy is the universe not convinced ? 
 
 There is this passage in the Christian Scriptures: — 
 " Those who obey not God, and believe not the Gos- 
 pel of his Son, shall be punished with everlasting 
 destruction.'' This is the pivot upon which all reli- 
 gions 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 unconnected with volition: it is the 
 
148 NOTES. 
 
 apprehension of the agreement or disagreement of the 
 ideas that compose any proposition. Belief is a pas- 
 sion, or involuntary operation of the mind, and, like 
 other passions, its intensity is precisely proportionate 
 to the degrees of excitement. Volition is essential to 
 merit or demerit. 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 peculiar 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 impro- 
 bable than that it should have failed: omniscience 
 would infallibly 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 
 intelligence 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. 
 
 Christianity, like all other religions, rests uponmira- 
 
NOTES. 140 
 
 cles, prophecies, 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. Jt 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 intro- 
 duction, 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 
 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 be- 
 lief, evidenced himself to be totally ignorant of the 
 powers of the human mind — of what is voluntary, and 
 what is the contrary ? 
 
 * See Hume's Essav, vol. ii. page 121. 
 N i 
 
no NOTES. 
 
 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 limited- 
 ness oftheir 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 1 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 ad- 
 mitted to be less miraculous. 
 
 Eut even supposing that a man should raise a dead 
 body to life before our eyes, and on this fact rests his 
 claim to being considered the Son of God ; — the Hu~ 
 mane 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 sens* 
 has observed, that " a miracle is no miracle at second- 
 hand;" he m'ght have added, that a miracle is no mi* 
 
NOTES. 151 
 
 racle 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- 
 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 ful- 
 filled, that it would have been more surprising if, out of 
 all these, none should have taken effect. In Deutero- 
 nomy, chap, xxviii. ver. 64, where Moses explicitly 
 foretels 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 shall serve other 
 gods, which neither thou nor thy fathers have known, 
 even gods of wood and stone." The Jews are at this 
 day remarkably tenacious of their leligion. Moses al- 
 so declares that they shall be subjected to these causes 
 for disobedience to his ritual: " And it shall come to 
 pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the 
 Lord thy God, to observe to do all the commandments 
 
 and statutes which I command you this day, that all 
 N 3 
 
152 NOTES. 
 
 these curses shall come upon thee and overtake thee." 
 Is this the real reason? The third, fourth, and fifth 
 chapters of Hosea are a piece of immodest 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 historical 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 mi- 
 racle ; we have no right to suppose that a man foreknew 
 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 fabricated 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 ignorant of its 
 primary powers, particularly as we have numberless in- 
 stances of false religions, and forged prophecies 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 
 ^gitimate proof of a divine revelation, as many men, 
 
NOTES. 153 
 
 not pretending to the character of a prophet, have ne- 
 vertheless, in this sense, prophecied. 
 
 Lord Chesterfield was never yet taken for a prophet, 
 even by a bishop, yet he uttered this remarkable pre- 
 diction : " The despotic government of France is screw- 
 ed up to the highest pitch ; a revolution is fast ap- 
 proaching ; that revolution, I am convinced, will be ra- 
 dical and sanguinary." This appeared in the letters of 
 the prophet 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 inspira- 
 tion ? 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 belief, and the eternal tortures of the never- 
 dying worm to disbelief; both of which have been de- 
 monstrated 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 Apos- 
 tles ; 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 sub- 
 missive perusal of his word. Persons convinced in this 
 manner, can do any thing but account for their convic- 
 
151. NOTES. 
 
 tion, describe the time at which it happened, or the man- 
 ner 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 found- 
 ed 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, be- 
 fore 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 demonstration, 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 .cer- 
 tainly be very strong : it cannot arise from conviction, 
 it must from feelings, the reward of their prayers. If 
 
 * See Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding, 
 book iv. chap. xix. on Enthusiasm. 
 
NOTES. J 53 
 
 each of these should affirm, in opposition to the strong- 
 est possible arguments, that inspiration carried internal 
 evidence, I fear their inspired 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 parituva suum. Mortalia corda 
 Artificem texere poli, latuitque sub uno 
 Fectore, qui totumlate complectitur orbem. 
 
 Claudian, Carmen Paschale* 
 
 Does not so monstrous and disgusting an absurdity 
 carry its own infamy and refutation with itself ? 
 
 * The Deity revealed — with mystic charge, 
 The Virgin felt her teeming womb enlarge — 
 Ker Maker's future mother, ne'er consigned 
 To human arms. — Deep wonder fill'd her mind, 
 As in her breast the ripening burden lay, 
 An embrio god-head springing into day. 
 Heaven's architect one bosom did enfold, 
 And he, whom earth, nor seas, nor skies can hold, 
 Hid his vast essence in a human mould. 
 
im notes. 
 
 VIII. Page 78. 
 Him, (still from hope to hope the bliss pursuing, 
 Which, from the exhaistless 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 plea- 
 sure, makes the time seem long, as the common phrase 
 is, because it renders us more acutely conscious 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 actu- 
 ally 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 number of ideas in a 
 minute, that minute would be eternity. I do not hence 
 infer that the actual space between the birth and death 
 of a man will ever be prolonged ; but that his sensi- 
 bility 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* 
 
NOTES. 157 
 
 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. 
 
 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 m^ 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. i. page 41 1 ; and Con- 
 dor cet, Esquisse d'un Tableau Historique des 
 Progress de V Esprit Humain, Epoque ix. 
 
15S NOTES. 
 
 VIII. Page 78. 
 
 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 
 suppositions 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 
 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 awarefof this, 
 that he makes Raphael thus exhibit to Adam the con- 
 sequence of his disobedience. 
 
 -Immediately a place 
 
 Before his eyes appeared : sad, noisome, dark: 
 
NOTES. I5P 
 
 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, 
 Daemoniac 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 
 to this frightful catalogue ! 
 
 The story of Prometheus is one likewise which, al- 
 though universally admitted to be allegorical, has never 
 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, markind 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 
 asfe, writes — 
 
 Audax omnia perpeti, 
 
 Genshumana ruit per vetitum nefas 
 O 
 
160 NOTES. 
 
 Audax Iapeti genus 
 Ignem fraude mala gentibus intulit ! 
 
 Post ignem setheria dorno 
 Subductum, raacies et nova febrium 
 
 Terris incubuit cohors, 
 Semotique pvius tarda necessitas 
 
 Lethi corripuit gradura.* 
 
 How 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 
 
 Thus from the sun's etherial beam 
 When bold Prometheus stole th' enlivening flame, 
 
 Of fevers dire a ghastly brood, 
 Till then unknown, the unhappy fraud pursu'd ; 
 
 On earth their horrors baleful spread, 
 And the pale monarch of the dead, 
 
 Till then slow-moving to his prey, 
 Precipitately rapid swept his way. 
 
 Francis's Horace, Book i. Ode 3. 
 
NOTES. 161 
 
 guide the wanderings of exacerbated passion. I con- 
 clude this part of the subject with an extract from Mr. 
 Newton's Defence of Vegetable Regimen, from whom 
 I have borrowed this interpretation of the fable of 
 Prometheus. 
 
 " 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 creation 
 was endowed with the gift of perpetual youth; that is T 
 he was not formed to be a sickly suffering creature as 
 we now see him, bat to enjoy health, and to sink by 
 slow degrees into the bosom of his parent earth with- 
 out disease or pain. Prometheus first taught the use 
 of animal food, (primus bovem occidit Prometheus*) 
 and of fire, with which to render it more digestible and 
 pleasing to the 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 culi- 
 nary preparation) ensued; water was resorted to, and 
 man forfeited the inestimable gift of health which he 
 
 * Prometheus first killed an ox. Plin. Nat. Hist. lib. 
 vii. sect 57. 
 
 2 
 
162 NOTES. 
 
 had received from heaven ; he became diseased, the 
 partaker of a precarious existence, and no longer de- 
 scended slowly to his grave."* 
 
 But just disease to luxury succeeds, 
 And every death its own avenger breeds ; 
 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 dis- 
 eased. 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 subject 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 pain, and the ma- 
 jority 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 re- 
 
 * Return to Nature. Cadell, 1811. 
 
NOTES. 1G3 
 
 conciled with the liberty and pure pleasures of a natural 
 life 1 How can we take the benefits, and reject the evils 
 of 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 at- 
 tributable in part to other deviations from rectitude and 
 nature than those which concern diet. The mistakes 
 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 resembles 
 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, ineffi- 
 cient to hold even a hare. After every subterfuge of 
 gluttony, the bull must be degraded into the ox, and 
 
 Hie ram into the wether, by an unnatural and inhuman 
 O 3 
 
164 NOTES. 
 
 operation, that the flaccid fibre may offer 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 irresisiible 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 herbivo- 
 rous animals having cellulated colons. 
 
 The orang-outang perfectly resembles man both in 
 the 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 
 
 * Cuvier, Lemons d'Artat. Comp. torn. iii. pages 160, 
 373, 448, 465,. 480. Rees's Cyclopoedia, article Man. 
 
NOTES. 165 
 
 than those of man. The resemblance also of the hu- 
 man 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 coecum also, though short, is larger than that of 
 carnivorous 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 
 particular. It is true, that the reluctance to abstain 
 from animal food, in those who have been long accus- 
 tomed 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, ap- 
 ples, and other fruit, to the flesh of animals, until, by 
 the gradual depravation of the digestive organs, the 
 free use of vegetable has, fur a time, produced serious 
 inconveniences ; for a tivie, I say, since there never 
 was an instance wherein a change from spirituous li- 
 quors and animal food to vegetables and pure water, 
 has failed ultimately to invigorate the body, by ren- 
 
166 NOTES. 
 
 dering its juices bland and consentaneous, and to re- 
 store 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. Almost every one remembers the wry faces 
 which the first glass of port produced. Unsophisti- 
 cated instinct 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 judge in his own cause; it is even 
 worse, it is appealing 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 breath, 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 undeceased inhabitants of the forest. 
 Something then wherein we differ from them: our 
 habit of altering our food by fire, so that our appetite 
 
 * The necessity of resorting to some means of puri- 
 fying water, and the disease which arises from its adul- 
 teration in civilized countries, is sufficiently apparent. — 
 See Dr. La tribe'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 
 Qf occasioning disease. 
 
NOTES. 167 
 
 is no longer a just criterion for the fitness of its grati- 
 fication. 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 
 obliterated are they in the reasoning- adults of our 
 species, that it has become necessary to urge considera- 
 tions drawn from comparative anatomy, to prove that 
 we are naturally frugivorous. 
 
 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 
 tending 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 veins, that alone can grasp the knife of mur- 
 der. The system of a simple diet promises no Uto- 
 pian advantages. It is no mere reform of legislation, 
 whilst the furious passions and evil propensities of 1he 
 human heart, in whichithad its origin, are still unassua- 
 ged. It strikes at the root of all evil, and is an experi- 
 ment which may be tried with success, not alone by na- 
 tions, but by small socieiies, families, and even indivi- 
 duals. In no cases has a return to vegetable diet pro- 
 duced the slightest injury ; in most it has been attended 
 with changes undeniably beneficial. Should ever a 
 physician be born with the genius of Locke, I am per- 
 
im NOTES. 
 
 snaded that he might trace all hodily and mental derange 
 ments to our unnatural habits, as clearly as that philo- 
 sopher has traced all knowledge to sensation. What 
 prolific sources of disease are not those mineral and ve- 
 getable poisons that have been introduced for its ex- 
 tirpation! How many thousauds have become murder- 
 ers and robbers, bigots, and domestic tyrants, dissolute 
 and abandoned adventurers, from the use of fermented 
 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 ground- 
 less opinions and absurd institutions have not received a 
 general sanction from the sottishness and intemperance 
 of individuals! Who will assert that, had the populace 
 of Paris satisfied their hunger 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 passions were not 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 skin ti'ansparent, did his eyes, beam with healthful- 
 ness, and its invai'iable concomitants, cheerfulness and 
 benignity ? Though history has decided none of these 
 questions, a child could not hesitate to answer in the 
 
notes. im 
 
 negative. Surely the bile-suffused cheek of Buona- 
 parte, his wrinkled brow, and yellow eye, the cease- 
 less inquietude of his nervous system, speak no less 
 plainly the character of his unresting ambition than his 
 murders and his victories. It is impossible had Buo- 
 naparte descended from a race of vegetable feeders, 
 that he could have had either the inclination or the 
 power to ascend the throne of the Bourbons. The 
 desire of tyranny could scarcely be excited in the indi- 
 vidual, the power to tyrannize would certainly not be 
 delegated by a society neither frenzied by inebriation, 
 nor rendered impotent and irrational by disease. 
 Pregnant indeed with inexhaustible calamity is the 
 renunciation of inslinet, as it concerns our physical 
 nature ; arithmetic cannot enumerate, nor reason per- 
 haps suspect, the multitudinous sources of disease in 
 civilized life. Even common water, that apparently 
 innoxious pabulum, when corrupted 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 justified the most feroci- 
 ous propensities, should have alone been deemed es- 
 sential ; whilst Christians are in the daily practice 
 of ail those habits which have infected with disease 
 and crime, not only the reprobate sons^ but these fa- 
 
 * Lambe's Reports on Cancer. 
 
170 NOTES. 
 
 voured children of the common Father's love. Omni- 
 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 hideoas 
 variety, from the ravings of the fettered maniac, to the 
 unaccountable 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 system of diet, old age would be our last 
 and our only malady ; the term of our existence would 
 be protracted ; we should enjoy life, and no longer 
 preclude others from the enjoyment of it ; all sensa- 
 tional delights would be infinitely more exquisite and 
 perfect ; the very sense of being would then be a con- 
 tinued 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 vegetable system. Reasoning is surely super- 
 fluous on a subject whose merits and 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, 
 
NOTES. 17! 
 
 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 medi- 
 cine, than to prevent them by regimen. The vulgar 
 of all ranks are invariably sensual and indocile ; yet 
 I cannot but feel myself persuaded, that when the be- 
 nefits 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 to- 
 wards a long and tranquil, contrasted with a short and 
 painful life. On the average, out of sixty persons, 
 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 vege- 
 tables 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 random. Seventeen persons of 
 all ages (the families of Dr. Lamte and Mr. Newton) 
 have lived for seven years on this diet without a death, 
 aud 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 persons taken at random in 
 this city to exhibit a parallel case. Those who may 
 have been excited to question the rectitude of estab- 
 
 P 
 
m NOTES. 
 
 lished 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 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 constitution by devouring an acre at a 
 meal, and many loaves of bread would cease to con- 
 tribute to gout, madness, and apoplexy, in the shape 
 of a pint of porter, or a dram of gin, when appeasing 
 the long-pro Iracted famine of the hard working pea- 
 sant's hungry babes. The quantity of nutritious vege- 
 table matter, consumed in fattening the carcase of an 
 ox, would afford ten times the sustenance, undepravittg 
 indeed, and incapable of generating digease, if gather- 
 ed immediately from the bosom of the earth. The 
 
 * Return to Nature, or Defence of Vegetable Regi- 
 men. Cadell, 1811. 
 
NOTES. 173 
 
 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 privi- 
 lege, by subjection to supernumerary diseases. Again, 
 the spirit of the nation that should take the lead in this 
 great reform, would insensibly become agricultural ; 
 commerce, with all its vice, selfishness, and corrup- 
 tion, 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 under- 
 stand why he loved his country, and took a personal 
 interest in its welfare. How would England, for ex- 
 ample, depend on the caprices of foreign rulers, if she 
 contained within herself all the necessaries, and des- 
 pised 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 
 P2 
 
174 NOTES. 
 
 of so much individual rivalship, such calamitous and 
 sanguinary national disputes. In the history of mo- 
 dern 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 infatuation of the people. Let it ever 
 be remembered, that it is the direct influence of com- 
 merce to make the interval between the richest and 
 the poorest man, wider and more unconquerable. Let 
 it be remembered, that it is a foe to every thing of real 
 worth and 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 j and luxury is the forerunner of a barbarism 
 scarce capable of cure. Is it impossible to realize a 
 state of soeiety, 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 attain- 
 able only by a community, which holds out no facti- 
 tious incentives to the avarice and ambition of the few, 
 and which is internally organized for the liberty, 
 security and comfort of the many. None must be 
 entrusted with power (and money is the completes! 
 species of power) who do not stand pledged to use it 
 exclusively for the general benefit. But the use of 
 animal flesh and fermented liquors, directly militates 
 
NOTES. 175 
 
 with this equality of the rights of man. The peasant 
 cannot gratify these fashionable cravings without leav- 
 ing his family to starve. Without disease and war, 
 those sweeping curtailers of population, pasturage 
 would include a waste too great to be afforded. The 
 labour requisite to support 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 greater 
 than that of any other. It strikes at the root of the evil. 
 To remedy the abuses of legislation, before we an- 
 nihilate 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 
 
 * It has come under the author's 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. 
 
 P 3 
 
lv'8 NOTES. 
 
 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 ma- 
 lady 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, in- 
 stantaneously eradicate predispositions that have been 
 slowly taking root in the silence of innumerable ages? — 
 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, cancer, 
 gout, asthma, and scrofula, such is the inv triable ten- 
 dency of a diet of vegetables and pure water. 
 
 Those who may be induced by these remarks to give 
 the vegetable system a fair trial, should in the first 
 place, date the commencement of their practice, from 
 the moment of their conviction. All depends upon 
 breaking through a pernicious habit resolutely, and at 
 once. Dr. Trotter* asserts, that no drunkard was ever 
 
 * See Trotter on the Nervous Temperament. 
 
NOTES. 177 
 
 reformed by gradually relinquishing his dram. Animal 
 flesh, in its effects on the human stomach, is analagous 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 
 stimulus will suffice to account for this event. But it is 
 only temporary, and is succeeded by an equable capabi- 
 lity for exertion, far surpassing his former various and 
 fluctuating strength. Above all, he will acquire an 
 easiness of breathing, by which such exertion is per- 
 formed, 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 applica- 
 tion, after as before his simple meal. He will feel none 
 of the narcotic effects of ordinary diet. Irritability, the 
 direct consequence of exhausting stimuli, would yield to 
 the power of natural aud tranquil impulses. He will no 
 longer pine under the lethargy of ennui, that unconquer- 
 able weariness of life, more to be dreaded than death it- 
 self. 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 cha- 
 racter; to the divinity of one of simple habits, no offer- 
 ing would be more acceptable than the happiness of his 
 creatures. He would be incapable of hating or perse- 
 
173 NOTES. 
 
 cuting others for the love of God. He will find, more- 
 over, 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 desert of apples, gooseberries, straw- 
 berries, 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 hypo- 
 critical sensualist at a lord-mayor's feast, who dis- 
 claims against the pleasures of the table. Soloinan 
 kept a thousand concubines, and owned in despair that 
 all was vanity. The man whose happiness is consti- 
 tuted by the society of one amiable woman, would find 
 some difficulty in sympathizing with the disappointment 
 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 imviliated by the contagion of 
 the world. He will embrace a pure system, from its 
 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 chaste by instinct; it will be a contemplation full 
 of horror and disappointment to his mind, that beings 
 capable of the gentlest and most admirable sympathies, 
 
NOTE?. 179 
 
 should take delight in the death-pangs and last con- 
 vulsions of dying animals. The elderly man, whose 
 youth has heen poisoned by intemperance, or who has 
 lived with apparent moderation, and is afflicted with a 
 variety of painful maladies, would find his account in 
 a beneficial change, produced without the risk of poi- 
 sonous medicines. The mother, to whom the perpetual 
 restlessness of disease, and unaccountable deaths inci- 
 dent to her children, are the causes of incurable un- 
 happiness, would on this diet experience the satisfac- 
 tion of beholding their perpetual health and natural 
 playfulness.* 
 
 The most valuable lives are daily destroyed by dis- 
 eases, that it is dangerous to palliate, and impossible 
 to cure by medicine. How much longer will man con- 
 
 * See Mr. Newton's book. His children are the most 
 beautiful and healthy creatures it is possible to con- 
 ceive; the girls are perfect models for a sculptor ; their 
 dispositions are also the most gentle and conciliating: 
 the judicious treatment which they 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 ; and how many more of 
 those that survive are 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 ve- 
 getables are to be got, the children invariably die of 
 tetanus, before they are three weeks old, and the popu- 
 lation is supplied from the main land. Sir G. Macken- 
 zie's Hist, of Iceland. See also Emilc, chap. i. p. 53, 
 54,56. X 
 
180 NOTES, 
 
 tinue to pimp for the gluttony of death, his most insi- 
 dious, implacable, and eternal foe ? 
 
 " You apply the denomination of beasts of prey to ser- 
 pents, panthers, and lions, but you, in your wanton and 
 cruel effusion of blood, prove yourselves entitled with 
 equal justice, to the application of the term. The prac- 
 tice with themis the dictate of Nature for their subsis- 
 tence, in you luxurious indulgence stimulates the crime. 
 
 " It is evident from the construction of his body, that 
 man is not destined by Nature to consume animal food, 
 for there subsists no kind of analogy between his frame 
 and that of animals, to whom she has given this propen- 
 sity. He has no sharp and crooked beak, no claw or 
 tusk to tear and lacerate his victims ; the muscular 
 action of his stomach is weak, and in him the animal 
 spirits are not sufficiently active to facilitate the concoc- 
 tion and digestion of solid and fleshy substances. On 
 the contrary, we perceive in his smooth and even teeth, 
 the contracted size of his mouth, the softness of his 
 tongue, the comparative inactivity of his animal spirits, 
 how widely remote from any, is the contemplation of 
 nature. 
 
 " If you are disposed to maintain that such is her inten- 
 tion, why do you not yourselves slaughter what you de- 
 vour? Why do you not decline the use of axe, ham- 
 mer, or hatchet, and like wolves, bears, and lions, assi- 
 milate the mode to the deed, substitute your teeth for 
 the instrument in slaying the ox, grapple by dipt of 
 
NOTES. l&l 
 
 bodily strength with the boar, tear and mangle the limb* 
 of the lamb or the hare, and to be in character, fall upon 
 them and devour them while life yet palpitates in their 
 veins. 
 
 " We combine luxury with cruelty, and must have sauces 
 with that flesh which we so highly extol, swallowing in- 
 discriminately oil, wine, honey, pickles, vinegar, Syrian 
 and Arabian spices, as if we would embalm the carcases 
 we eat. The digestive powers cannot without difficulty, 
 reduce to a soft and fluid state, such masses of matter, 
 which may be even said to putrify in the stomach — 
 hence a fruitful source of painful diseases and dangerous 
 maladies. 
 
 "Wild and mischievous animals first became the prey 
 of man, then birds and fishes in all their varieties. His 
 vitiated taste having been exercised on these, and having 
 acquired a relish for blood, the laborious ox, the fleecy 
 sheep, and thai faithful domestic sentinel, the cock, fell 
 successive victims. The insatiate appetite thus edged, 
 the transition was quick to human slaughters, massacres, 
 and wars."* — Plutarch. 
 
 * A translation is substituted here for the original 
 quoted from Plutarch. 
 
 Jim*, coc^/lv /< '. ^c^ts 
 
 . ~ finis, y ' twftt&W/kr+U 
 
THE FOLLOWING WORKS MAY BE HAD OF 
 MESSRS. BALDWIN:— 
 
 The Age of Reason, and other Theological Writings 
 of the late Thomas Paine: neatly printed in a pocket 
 volume, for the use of schools, and sold at a very low 
 price to those who circulate them for the ben e fit of the 
 rising generation. 
 
 ALSO, 
 
 A Miniature edition of all the fascinating Melodies 
 of the Irish Poet, Thomas Moore, price half a dollar, 
 but which are now selling in England for six guineas. 
 
 ALSO, 
 
 That ancient and curious book, " The Three Ii^pos- 
 tors;" translated into English, and printed uniform 
 with the stereotype edition of Watts's Hymns. 
 
 1 
 
M