expression after him, "The words which I have used I have pondered." I remained sitting on the beach with a very vacant mind, and amused myself, almost unconsciously, with throwing pebbles into the Mediterranean. END OF BOOK I. BOOK II. CISALPINE GAUL. "THE gentleman at Marseilles," says Bishop Jeremy Taylor, "cursed his stars, that he was absent when the ship set sail to sea, having long waited for a wind and missed it; but he gave thanks to the Providence that blessed him with the cross, when he knew that the ship perished in the voyage, and all the men were drowned." We had not to wait upon the winds; the new powers of science waited upon us, the elements only did not thwart. It may be that the extreme diminution of danger and hazard, which is now run by land or sea, causes that the temper of travellers should be less religious than it was. The adventures of modern voyagers are adventures of sentiment, not of rough, rude peril. We do not, therefore, feel ourselves leaning so sensibly on the Invisible Arm, by which we are in reality just as much sustained. Improvements, which appear to augment the independent power of man, do often weaken him morally, by thickening the mist which intervenes between his eyes and the agency of Pro vidence, with its multitudinous angelical workmen. Have we not watched for a sight of the mountainpeak on struggling mornings, while the mists were writhing and clinging about the rocky projections, and, ever when they threw themselves upon an upward current of air, and rose gaily, and grew towards a solid cloud, and the green bosom of the hill began to shine through the transparent vapor, where the sun crept in behind it, and the peak would in a few moments be clear and disengaged, behold! the heavy white volumes of mist have fallen down again, and hang as a curtain before the ravines, and the pinetops appear above the surface, and we are more weary of our watching, and less near to our desire? So has it been with science and its enlightenment, with regard to our better insight into Providence. Light seemed to precede each great discovery, but the self-standing power, which the discovery conferred upon us, clouded once more our moral vision. But we did see light. faith's food. Of that we are sure. It is Yet, if the facile rapidity of travel does tend to diminish our sense of the close presence and present help of God, it, like the other creations of the busy world, may mightily subserve the interests of the Church, and will in fact so subserve them. If the legions of great Rome were for some centuries toiling with the pickaxe and spade to construct mighty roads, by which Apostles might compass the ends of the earth, if those huge arteries were the uncon |