miracle of any kind evinces no ordinary power of invention. If this story be true, and true it must be unless holy Colette's reverend Roman Catholic biographers are liars, its truth cannot be admitted sans tirer à consequence; and it would follow as a corollary not to be disputed, that there are animals in the world of Angels. And on the whole it accorded with the general bearing of the Doctor's notions (notions rather than opinions he liked to call them where they were merely speculative) to suppose that there may be as much difference between the zoology of that world, and of this, as is found in the zoology and botany of widely distant regions here, according to different circumstances of climate: and rather to imagine that there were celestial birds, beasts, fishes, and insects, exempt from evil, and each happy in its kind to the full measure of its capacity for happiness, than to hold the immortality of brutes. Cudworth's authority had some weight with him on this subject, where the Platonical divine says "human souls that as could not possibly be generated out of matter, but were some time or other created by the Almighty out of nothing preexisting, either in generations, or before them," so if it be admitted that brute animals are 66 not mere machines, or automata, (as some seem inclinable to believe,) but conscious and thinking beings; then, from the same principle of reason, it will likewise follow, that their souls cannot be generated out of matter neither, and therefore must be derived from the fountain of all life, and created out of nothing by Him; who, since he can as easily annihilate as create, and does all for the best, no man need at all to trouble himself about their permanency, or immortality." Now though the Doctor would have been pleased to think, with the rude Indian, that when he was in a state of existence wherein no evil could enter, His faithful dog should bear him company, he felt the force of this reasoning; and he perceived also that something analogous to the annihilation there intended might be discerned in his own hypothesis. For in what may be called the visible creation he found nothing resembling that animalcular world which the microscope has placed within reach of our senses; nothing like those monstrous and prodigious forms which Leeuwenhoeck, it must be believed, has faithfully delineated.—Bishop has a beautiful epigram upon the theme kaλà ñégavrai : When thro' a chink*, a darkened room Down the long light that breaks the gloom, In sparkling agitation bright, To human search, or skill; She shows us Beauty still. But the microscopic world affords us exceptions to this great moral truth. The forms which are there discovered might well be called Abominable, inutterable, and worse Than fables yet have feign'd, or fear conceiv'd, Such verily they would be, if they were in which we are surrounded. But Nature has magnitude equal to the common animals by left all these seemingly misformed creatures in the lowest stage of existence, the circle of inchoation; neither are any of the hideous forms of insects repeated in the higher grades of animal life; the sea indeed contains creatures marvellously uncouth and ugly, beaucoup plus de monstres, sans comparaison, que la terre, and the Sieur de Brocourt, who was as curious in collecting the opinions of men as our philosopher, though no man could The reader may not be displeased to read the following beautiful passage from Jeremy Taylor. "If God is glorified in the sun and moon, in the rare fabric of the honeycombs, in the discipline of bees, in the economy of pismires, in the little houses of birds, in the curiosity of an eye, God being pleased to delight in those little images and reflexes of himself from those pretty mirrors, which, like a crevice in the wall, through a nar row perspective, transmit the species of a vast excellency: much rather shall God be pleased to behold himself in the glasses of our obedience, in the emissions of our will and understanding; these being rational and apt instruments to express him, far better than the natural, as being near communications of himself."- Invalidity of a late or Death-bed Repentance, vol. v. p. 464. | Illuminando igitur, vivificando, et uniendo est quod te superioribus agentibus conformans, in conceptionem et retentionem specierum efferaris. Here the Philosopher of Doncaster would have found himself in the dark, but whether because "blinded by excess of light," or because the subject is within the confines of uttermost darkness, is not for me his biographer to determine. make more dissimilar uses of their know-ideam. He was not acquainted with the speculation, or conception (as the Philotheistic philosopher himself called it) of Giordano Bruno, that deformium animalium forma, formosa sunt in cœlo. Nor would he have assented to some of the other opinions which that pious and high-minded victim of papal intolerance connected with it. That metallorum in se non lucentium forma, lucent in planetis suis, he might have supposed, if he had believed in the relationship between metals and planets. And if Bruno's remark applied to the Planets only, as so many other worlds, and did not regard the future state of the creatures of this our globe, the Doctor might then have agreed to his assertion that non enim homo, nec animalia, nec metalla ut hic sunt, illic existunt. But the Philotheist of Nola, in the remaining part of this his twelfth Conceptus Idearum soared above the Doctor's pitch: Quod nempe hic discurrit, he says, illic actu viget, discursione superiori. Virtutes enim quæ versus materiam explicantur: versus actum primum uniuntur, et complicantur. Unde patet quod dicunt Platonici, ideam quamlibet rerum etiam non viventium, vitam esse et intelligentiam quandam. Item et in Prima Mente unam esse rerum omnium CHAPTER CCXIV. FURTHER DIFFICULTIES. QUESTION CONCERN- In amplissima causâ, quasi magno mari, pluribus ventis sumus vecti. PLINY. THERE was another argument against the immortality of brutes, to which, it may be, he allowed the more weight, because it was of his own excogitating. Often as he had heard of apparitions in animal forms, all such tales were of some spirit or hobgoblin which had assumed that appearance; as, for instance, that simulacrum admodum monstruosum, that portentous figure in which Pope Gregory the Ninth after his death was met roaming about the woods by a holy hermit: it was in the form of a wild beast with the head of an ass, the body of a bear, and the tail of a cat. Well might the good hermit fortify himself with making the sign of the cross when he beheld this monster he approved himself a courageous man by speaking to the apparition, which certainly was not "in such a questionable shape" as to invite discourse: and we are beholden to him for having transmitted to posterity the bestial Pope's confession, that because he had lived an unreasonable and lawless life, it was the will of God and of St. Peter whose chair he had defiled by all kinds of abominations, that he should thus wander about in a form of ferine monstrosity. He had read of such apparitions, and been sufficiently afraid of meeting a barguest* in A northern word, used in Cumberland and Yorkshire. Brocket and Grose neither of them seem aware that this PP his boyish days; but in no instance had he ever heard of the ghost of an animal. Yet if the immaterial part of such creatures survived in a separate state of consciousness, why should not their spirits sometimes have been seen as well as those of our departed fellow creatures? No cock or hen ghost ever haunted its own barn door; no child was ever alarmed by the spirit of its pet lamb; no dog or cat ever came like a shadow to visit the hearth on which it rested when living. It is laid down as a certain truth deduced from the surest principles of demonology by the Jesuit Thyræus, who had profoundly studied that science, that when ever the apparition of a brute beast or monster was seen, it was a Devil in that shape. Quotiescumque sub brutorum animantium forma conspiciuntur spiritus, quotiescumque monstra exhibentur dubium non est, autoprosopos adesse Dæmoniorum spiritus. For such forms were not suitable for human spirits, but for evil Demons they were in many respects peculiarly so: and such apparitions were frequent. Thus the Jesuit reasoned, the possibility that the spirit of a brute might appear never occurring to him, because he would have deemed it heretical to allow that there was anything in the brute creation partaking of immortality. No such objection occurred to the Doctor in his reasonings upon this point. His was a more comprehensive creed; the doubt which he felt was not concerning the spirit of brute animals, but whether it ever existed in a separate state after death, which the Ghost of one, were there but one such appearance well attested, would sufficiently prove. He admitted, indeed, that for every authenticated case of an apparition, a peculiar cause was to be assigned, or presumed; but that for the apparition of an inferior animal, there could in general be no such cause. Yet cases are imaginable wherein there spirit or dæmon had the form of the beast. Their derivations are severally "Berg, a hill, and geest, ghost;". "Bar, a gate or style, and gheist." The locality of the spirit will suggest a reference to the Icelandic Berserkr. In that language Bera and Bersi both signify a bear. might be such peculiar cause, and some final purpose only to be brought about by such preternatural means. The strong affection which leads a dog to die upon his master's grave, might bring back the spirit of a dog to watch for the safety of a living master. That no animal ghosts should have been seen afforded, therefore, in this judgment no weak presumption against their existence. O Dove, "my guide, philosopher, and friend!" that thou hadst lived to see what I have seen, the portrait of the Ghost of a Flea, engraved by Varley, from the original by Blake! The engraver was present when the likeness was taken, and relates the circumstances thus in his Treatise on Zodiacal Physiognomy. This spirit visited his imagination in such a figure as he never anticipated in an insect. As I was anxious to make the most correct investigation in my power of the truth of these visions, on hearing of this spiritual apparition of a Flea, I asked him if he could draw for me the resemblance of what he saw. He instantly said, 'I see him now before me.' I therefore gave him paper and a pencil, with which he drew the portrait of which a fac-simile is given in this number. I felt convinced by his mode of proceeding, that he had a real image before him; for he left off, and began on another part of the paper to make a separate drawing of the mouth of the Flea, which the spirit having opened, he was prevented from proceeding with the first sketch till he had closed it. During the time occupied in compleating the drawing, the Flea told him that all fleas were inhabited by the souls of such men as were by nature blood-thirsty to excess, and were therefore providentially confined to the size and form of insects; otherwise, were he himself, for instance, the size of a horse, he would depopulate a great portion of the country. He added that if in attempting to leap from one island to another he should fall into the sea, he could swim, and should not be lost." The Ghost of the Flea spoke truly when he said what a formidable beast he should be, if with such power of leg and of pro boscis, and such an appetite for blood, he were as large as a horse. And if all things came by chance, it would necessarily follow from the laws of chance that such monsters there would be: but because all things are wisely and mercifully ordered, it is, that these varieties of form and power which would be hideous, and beyond measure destructive upon a larger scale, are left in the lower stages of being; the existence of such deformity and such means of destruction there, and their non-existence as the scale of life ascends, alike tending to prove the wisdom and the benevolence of the Almighty Creator. in the mind of every man when he comes into the world. In infants, the seeds lie buried and undiscovered, till after a while they sprout forth in a kind of rational leaves, which are words; and in due season the flowers begin to appear in variety of beautiful colours, and all the gay pictures of youthful fancy and imagination; at last the fruit knits and is formed, which is green perhaps at first, sour and unpleasant to the taste, and not fit to be gathered; till, ripened by due care and application, it discovers itself in all the noble productions of philosophy, mathematics, close reasoning, and handsome argumentation. I reflected further on the intellectual leaves before mentioned, and found almost as great a variety among them as in the vegetable world." In this passage, though written only as a sport of fancy, there was more, our speculator TOR'S THEORY WITH THE VEGETABLE thought, than was dreamed of in Steele's CHAPTER CCXV. FACTS AND FANCIES CONNECTING THE DOC WORLD. We will not be too peremptory herein: and build standing structures of bold assertions on so uncertain a foundation; rather with the Rechabites we will live in philosophy. Empedocles, if the fragment which is ascribed to him be genuine, pretended to remember that he had pre-existed not only tents of conjecture, which on better reason we may easily in the forms of maiden and youth, fowl and alter and remove. FULLER. Ir may have been observed by the attentive reader (and all my readers will be attentive, except those who are in love,)—that although the Doctor traced many of his acquaintance to their prior allotments in the vegetable creation, he did not discover such symptoms in any of them as led him to infer that the object of his speculations had existed in the form of a tree; crabbed tempers, sour plums, cherry-cheeks, and hearts of oak being nothing more than metaphorical expressions of similitude. But it would be a rash and untenable deduction were we to conclude from the apparent omission that the arboreal world was excluded from his system. On the contrary, the analogies between animal and vegetable life led him to believe that the Archeus of the human frame received no unimportant part of his preparatory education in the woods. Steele in a playful allegory has observed "that there is a sort of vegetable principle fish, but of a shrub also; Ηδη γάρ ποτ' ἐγὼ γενόμην κούρη το κόρος της Θάμνος τ', οἰωνός τε, καὶ εἶν ἅλι ἔλλοπος ἰχθύς. But upon such authority the Doctor placed as little reliance as upon the pretended recollections of Pythagoras, whether really asserted by that philosopher or falsely imputed to him by fablers in prose or verse. When man shall have effected his passage from the mortal and terrestrial state into the sphere where there is nothing that is impure, nothing that is evil, nothing that is perishable, then indeed it is a probable supposition that he may look back into the lowest deep from whence he hath ascended, recal to mind his progress step by step, through every stage of the ascent, and understand the process by which it had been appointed for him, (applying to Plato's words a different meaning from that in which they were intended,) ἐκ πολλῶν ἕνα γεγονότα εὐδαίμονα ἔσεσθαι, to become of many creatures, one happy one. In that sphere such a retrospect would enlarge the knowledge, and consequently the happiness also, of the soul which has there attained the perfection of its nature — the end for which it was created and redeemed. But any such consciousness of pre-existence would in this stage of our mortal being be so incompatible with the condition of humanity, that the opinion itself can be held only as a speculation, of which no certainty can ever have been made known to man, because that alone has been revealed, the knowledge of which is necessary: the philosophers therefore who pretended to it, if they were sincere in the pretension (which may be doubted) are entitled to no more credit, than | the poor hypochondriac who fancies himself a bottle or a tea-pot. Thus our philosopher reasoned, who either in earnest or in jest, or in serious sportiveness, παίζων καὶ σπουδάζων ἅμα, was careful never to lean more upon an argument than it would bear. Sometimes he pressed the lame and halt into his service, but it was with a clear perception of their defects, and he placed them always in positions where they were efficient for the service required for them, and where more valid ones would not have been more available. He formed, therefore, no system of dendranthropology, nor attempted any classification in it; there were not facts enough whereon to found one. Yet in more than one circumstance which observant writers have recorded, something he thought might be discerned which bore upon this part of the theory, some traces of those first affections, Those shadowy recollections, on which Wordsworth (in whose mystic strains he would have delighted) dwells. Thus he inferred that the soul of Xerxes must once have animated a plane tree, and retained a vivid feeling connected with his arboreal existence, when he read in Evelyn how that great king "stopped his prodigious army of seventeen hundred thousand soldiers to admire the pulchritude and procerity of one of those goodly trees; and became so fond of it, that spoiling both himself, his concubines, and great persons of all their jewels, he covered it with gold, gems, necklaces, scarfs and bracelets, and-infinite riches; in sum, was so enamoured of it, that for some days, neither the concernment of his grand expedition, nor interest of honour, nor the necessary motion of his portentous army, could persuade him from it. He stiled it his mistress, his minion, his goddess; and when he was forced to part from it, he caused the figure of it to be stamped on a medal of gold, which he continually wore about him." "That prudent Consul Passianus Crispus" must have been influenced by a like feeling, when he "fell in love with a prodigious beech of a wonderful age and stature, used to sleep under it, and would sometimes refresh it with pouring wine at the root." Certainly, as Evelyn has observed, “ a goodly tree was a powerful attractive" to this person. The practice of regaling trees with such libations was not uncommon among the wealthy Romans; they seem to have supposed that because wine gladdened their own hearts, it must in like manner comfort the root of a tree and Pliny assures us that it did so, compertum id maximè prodesse radicibus, he says, docuimusque etiam arbores vina potare. If this were so, the Doctor reasoned that there would be a peculiar fitness in fertilising the vine with its own generous juice, which it might be expected to return with increase in richer and more abundant clusters: forgetting, ignoring, or disregarding this opinion which John Lily has recorded that the vine watered (as he calls it) with wine is soon withered. He was not wealthy enough to afford such an experiment upon that which clothed the garden-front of his house, for this is not a land flowing with wine and oil; but he indulged a favourite apple-tree (it was a Ribstone pippin) with cider; and when no sensible improvement in the produce could be perceived, he imputed the disappointment rather to the parsimonious allowance of that congenial liquor, than to any error in the theory. But this has led me astray, and I must return to Xerxes the Great King. The predilection or passion which he discovered for the plane, the sage of Doncaster explained by deriving it from a dim reminiscence of |