HUGH MILLER. 1802-1856. (Manual, p. 467.) FROM "THE OLD RED SANDSTONE." 343. THE FUTURE HISTORY Of Man upon the Globe. We pursue our history no further. Its after course is comparatively well known. The huge sauroid fish was succeeded by the equally huge reptile-the reptile by the bird - the bird by the marsupial quadruped; and at length, after races higher in the scale of instinct had taken precedence in succession, the one of the other, the sagacious elephant appeared, as the lord of that latest creation which immediately preceded our own. How natural does the thought seem which suggested itself to the profound mind of Cuvier, when indulging in a similar review! Has the last scene in the series arisen, or has Deity expended his infinitude of resource, and reached the ultimate stage of progression at which perfection can arrive? The philosopher hesitated, and then decided in the negative, for he was too intimately acquainted with the works of the Omnipotent Creator to think of limiting his power; and he could, therefore, anticipate a coming period in which man would have to resign his post of honor to some nobler and wiser creature - the monarch of a better and happier world. How well it is to be permitted to indulge in the expansion of Cuvier's thought, without sharing in the melancholy of Cuvier's feelings to be enabled to look forward to the coming of a new heaven and a new earth, not in terror, but in hope- to be encouraged to believe in the system of unending progression, but to entertain no fear of the degradation or despotism of man! The adorable Monarch of the future, with all its unsummed perfection, has already passed into the heavens, flesh of our flesh, and bone of our bone, and Enoch and Elias are there with him, - fit representatives of that dominant race, which no other race shall ever supplant or succeed, and to whose onward and upward march the deep echoes of eternity shall never cease to respond. PLEASURES OF A LIFE OF LABOR. I was as light of heart the next morning as any of my brother workmen. There had been a smart frost during the night, and the rime lay white on the grass as we passed onwards through the fields; but the sun rose in a clear atmosphere, and the day mellowed, as it advanced, into one of those delightful days of early spring, which give so pleasing an earnest of whatever is mild and genial in the better half of the year. All the workmen rested at midday, and I went to enjoy my half hour alone on a mossy knoll in the neighboring wood, which commands through the trees a wide prospect of the bay and the opposite shore. There was not a wrinkle on the water nor a cloud in the sky, and the branches were as moveless in the calm as if they had been traced on canvas. From a wooded promontory that stretched half way across the frith, there ascended a thin column of smoke. It rose straight as the line of a plummet for more than a thousand yards, and then, on reaching a thinner stratum of air, spread out equally on every side like the foliage of a stately tree. Ben Wyvis rose to the west, white with the yet unwasted snow of winter, and as sharply defined in the clear atmosphere as if all its sunny slopes and blue retiring hollows had been chiselled in marble. A line of snow ran along the opposite hills; all above was white, and all below was purple. They reminded me of the pretty French story, in which an old artist is described as tasking the ingenuity of his future son-inlaw, by giving him as a subject for his pencil a flower-piece composed of only white flowers, of which the one half were to bear their proper color, the other half a deep purple hue, and yet all be perfectly natural; and how the young man resolved the riddle and gained his mistress, by introducing a transparent purple vase into the picture, and making the light pass through it on the flowers that were drooping over the edge. I returned to the quarry, convinced that a very exquisite pleasure may be a very cheap one, and that the busiest employments may afford leisure enough to enjoy it. JEREMY BENTHAM. 1748-1832. (Manual, p. 473.) FROM "THE RATIONALE OF EVIDENCE." Works, Vol. VII. Every sham science, of which there are so many, makes to itself a jargon, to serve for a cover to its nothingness, and, if wicked, to its wickedness: alchemy, palmistry, magic, judicial astrology, technical jurisprudence. To unlicensed depredators, their own technical language, the cant or flash language, is of use, not only as a cover, but as a bond of union. Lawyers' cant, besides serving them as a cover and as a bond of union, serves them as an instrument, an iron crow or a pick-lock key, for collecting plunder in cases in which otherwise it could not be collected: for applying the principle of nullification, in many a case in which it could not otherwise have been applied. The best of all good old times, was when the fate of Englishmen was disposed of in French, and in a something that was called Latin. For having been once in use, language, however, is not much the worse, so it be of use no longer. The antiquated notation of time suffices of itself to throw a veil of mystery over the system of procedure. Martin and Hilary, saints forgotten by devotees, are still of use to lawyers. How many a man has been ruined, because his lawyer made a mistake, designed or undesigned, in reckoning by the almanac! First of January, second of January, and so forth, - where is the science there? Not a child of four years old that does not under stand it. Octaves, quindecims, and morrows of All Souls, St. Martin, St. Hilary, the Purification, Easter day, the Ascension, and the Holy Trinity; Essoign day, day of Exception, Retorna Brevium day, day of Appearance-alias Quarto die post — alias Dies amoris; there you have a science. Terms - Michaelmas, Hilary, Easter, and Trinity,1 each of them about thirty days, no one of them more than one day; there you have not only a science, but a mystery: do as the devils do, believe and tremble. FROM "LAW AS IT IS," &c. Works, Vol. V. 345. IMPOSSIBILITY OF A Knowledge of tHE COMMON LAW BY THE PEOPLE. Scarce any man has the means of knowing a twentieth part of the laws he is bound by. Both sorts of law are kept most happily and carefully from the knowledge of the people: statute law by its shape and bulk; common law by its very essence. It is the Judges (as we have seen) that make the common law. Do you know how they make it? Just as a man makes laws for his dog. When your dog does anything you want to break him of, you wait till he does it, and then beat him for it. This is the way you make laws for your dog: and this is the way the Judges make laws for you and me. They won't tell a man beforehand what it is he should not do — they won't so much as allow of his being told: they lie by till he has done something which they say he should not have done, and then they hang him for it. What way, then, has any man of coming at this dog-law? Only by watching their proceedings: by observing in what cases they have hanged a man, in what cases they have sent him to jail, in what cases they have seized his goods, and so forth. These proceedings they won't publish themselves; and if anybody else publishes them, it is what they call a contempt of court, and a man may be sent to jail for it. RICHARD WHATELEY. 1787-1856. (Manual, p. 466.) FROM "THE LECTURES ON POLITICAL ECONOMY." 346. CIVILIZATION FAVORABLE TO MORALITY. On the whole, then, there seems every reason to believe, that, as a general rule, that advancement in National Prosperity which mankind are, by the Governor of the universe adapted, and impelled to 1 These barbarous names, in bad Latin or old French, were the legal titles of certain days on which important steps were to be taken in prosecuting a suit; the latter four designated the terms, of three or four weeks each, during which the English courts were wont to sit, at different seasons, for the administration of justice. promote, must be favorable to moral improvement. Still more does it appear evident, that such a conclusion must be acceptable to a pious and philanthropic mind. It is not probable, still less is it desirable, that the Deity should have fitted and destined society to make a continual progress, impeded only by slothful and negligent habits, by war, rapine, and oppression (in short, by violation of divine commands), which progress inevitably tends towards a greater and greater moral corruption. And yet there are some who appear not only to think, but to wish to think, that a condition but little removed from the savage state, one of ignorance, grossness, and poverty, — unenlightened, semibarbarous, and stationary, is the most favorable to virtue. You will meet with persons who will be even offended if you attempt to awaken them from their dreams about primitive rural simplicity, and to convince them that the spread of civilization, which they must see has a tendency to spread, does not tend to increase depravity. Supposing their notion true, it must at least, one would think, be a melancholy truth. It may be said as a reason, not for wishing, but for believing this, that the moral dangers which beset a wealthy community are designed as a trial. Undoubtedly they are; since no state in which man is placed is exempt from trials. And let it be admitted, also, if you will, that the temptations to evil, to which civilized man is exposed, are absolutely stronger than those which exist in a ruder state of society; still, if they are also relatively stronger - stronger in proportion to the counteracting forces, and stronger than the augmented motives to good conduct- and are such, consequently, that, as society advances in civilization, there is less and less virtue, and a continually decreasing prospect of its being attained - this amounts to something more than a state of trial; it is a distinct provision made by the Deity for the moral degradation of his rational creatures. This can hardly be a desirable conclusion; but if it be, nevertheless, a true one (and our wishes should not be allowed to bias our judgment), those who hold it, ought at least to follow it up in practice, by diminishing, as far as is possible, the severity of the trial. *** Let us put away from us "the accursed thing." If national wealth be, in a moral point of view, an evil, let us, in the name of all that is good, set about to diminish it. Let us, as he advises, burn our fleets, block up our ports, destroy our manufactories, break up our roads, and betake ourselves to a life of frugal and rustic simplicity; like Mandeville's bees, who "flew into a hollow tree, Blest with content and honesty." CHAPTER XXIII. ORATORS. 347. WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM. 1708–1778. The character of Lord Chatham's eloquence is thus described by Mr. Charles Butler (1750-1832) in his "Reminiscences" : Of those by whom Lord North was preceded, none, probably, except Lord Chatham, will be remembered by posterity; but the nature of the eloquence of this extraordinary man it is extremely difficult to describe. No person in his external appearance was ever more bountifully gifted by nature for an orator. In his look and his gesture, grace and dignity were combined, but dignity presided; the "terrors of his beak, the lightnings of his eye," were insufferable. His voice was both full and clear; his lowest whisper was distinctly heard; his middle tones were sweet, rich, and beautifully varied. When he elevated his voice to its highest pitch, the house was completely filled with the volume of the sound. The effect was awful, except when he wished to cheer or animate; he then had spirit-stirring notes, which were perfectly irresistible. He frequently rose, on a sudden, from a very low to a very high key, but it seemed to be without effort. His diction was remarkably simple; but words were never chosen with greater care. He mentioned to a friend that he had read Bailey's Dictionary twice, from beginning to end, and that he had perused some of Dr. Barrow's Sermons so often as to know them by heart. His sentiments, too, were apparently simple; but sentiments were never adopted or uttered with greater skill. He was often familiar, and even playful; but it was the familiarity and playfulness of condescension the lion that dandled with the kid. The terrible, however, was his peculiar power. Then the whole house sunk before him. Still he was dignified; and wonderful as was his eloquence, it was attended with this most important effect, that it impressed every hearer with a conviction that there was something in him even finer than his words; that the man was infinitely greater than the orator. No impression of this kind was made by the eloquence of his son, or his son's antagonist. But with this great man- for great he certainly was — manner did |