to possess; and science is rather the pioneer | unexplored fastnesses. The face of nature than the impeder of its progress. The level changes not with the variations of fashion roads, indeed, which it cuts through unexplored One state of society may be somewhat more regions, are, in themselves, less fitted for its favourable to the development of genius than wanderings than the tangled ways through another; but wherever its divine seed is cast, which it delights to stray; but they afford it there will it strike its roots far beneath the surnew glimpses into the wild scenes and noble face of artificial life, and rear its branches into vistas which open near them, and enable it to the heavens, far above the busy haunts of comdeviate into fresh scenes of beauty, and hitherto mon mortals.

VARIOUS PROSPECTS OF MANKIND, NATURE, AND PROVIDENCE.

[RETROSPECTIVE REVIEW.]

"Under a perfect government, the inconve-earth would be overstocked at last, and the niencies of having a family would be so entirely removed, children would be so well taken care of, and every thing become so favourable to populousness, that though some sickly seasons or dreadful plagues in particular climates might cut off multitudes, yet, in general, mankind would increase so prodigiously, that the earth would at last be overstocked, and become unable to support its numerous inhabitants.

gardens. But when the dreadful time should | truth more unnatural than all their present at last come, when our globe, by the most calamities. Supposing men to have abused diligent culture, could not produce what was their liberty, by which abuse vice has once sufficient to nourish its numerous inhabitants, what happy expedient could then be found out to remedy so great an evil?

piness of man. Instead of the evil being re- | so refined and philosophic principles. On the garded as inevitable, a means was expressly contrary, the strength of a state was always enforced by which it might be completely regarded, in old time, as consisting in the avoided. Celibacy was shown to be a state number of its citizens. And, indeed, it is imof attainable and exalted virtue. In calcu- possible that any of the gigantic evils of manlating on the tendency of the species to in-kind should have arisen from the pressure of crease, we were no longer required to speculate on a mere instinct, but on a thousand moral and intellectual causes-on the movements of reason, sensibility, imagination, and hope. The rainbow could be as easily grasped or a sun-beam measured by a line, as the operations of the blended passion and sentiment of love estimated by geometrical series! We will, however, examine a little more closely the popular objection to theories of human improvement, which the principle of population is supposed to offer.

population against the means of subsistence; because it is impossible to point out any one state in which the means of subsistence have been fully developed and exhausted. If the want of subsistence, then, has ever afflicted a people, it has not arisen, except in case of temporary famine, from a deficiency in the means of subsistence, but in the mode and spirit of using them. The fault has been not in nature, but in man. Population may, in a few instances, have increased beyond the energy of the people to provide for it, but not beyond the resources which God has placed within their power.

The real question, in this case, is not whether, when the world is fully cultivated, the tendency of the species to increase will be The assertion, that there is, in the constant greater than the means of subsistence; but tendency of population to press hardly against whether this tendency really presses on us at the means of subsistence, an insuperable check every step of our progress. For, if there is no to any great improvement of the species, is in insuperable barrier to the complete cultivation direct contradiction to history. The species of the earth, the cessation of all the countless has increased in numbers, and has risen in inevils of war, and the union of all the brethren telligence, under far more unfavourable cirof mankind in one great family, we may safely cumstances than the present, in spite of this trust to Heaven for the rest. When this uni- fancied obstacle. There is no stage of civiliversal harmony shall begin, men will surely zation, in which the objection to any farther have attained the virtue and the wisdom to ex- advance' might not have been urged with as ercise a self-denial, which Mr. Malthus himself much plausibility as at the present. While represents as fully within their power. In the any region, capable of fruitfulness, remains era of knowledge and of peace, that degree of uninhabited and barren, the argument applies self-sacrifice can scarcely be impossible, which, with no more force against its cultivation, than even now, our philosopher would inculcate at it would have applied against the desire of him the peril of starvation. At least, there can be who founded the first city to extend its bounno danger in promoting the happiness of the daries. While the world was before him, he species, until it shall arise to this fulness; for might as reasonably have been warned to dewe are told, that every effort towards it pro- cline any plan for bringing wastes into tillage, duces a similar peril with that which will em- on the ground that the tendency of man to mulbitter its final reign. And if it should exist at tiply would thus be incited beyond the means last, we may safely believe, that He who pro- of supplying food, as we, in our time, while nounced the blessing, "increase and multiply," the greater part of the earth yet remains to be will not abandon the work of his hands; but possessed. And, indeed, the objection has far that this world then will have answered all the less force now than at any preceding period: purposes of its creation, and that immortal-because not only is space left, but the aids state will begin, "in which we shall neither marry nor be given in marriage, but be as the angels of God."

but a little farther?

of human power are far greater than in old time. Machinery now enables one man to do as much towards the supply of human wants, Let us inquire, then, whether the evidence as could formerly have been done by hundreds. of history, or the present aspect of the world, And shall we select this as the period of sowarrant the belief, that the tendency of the ciety in which the species must stand still, bespecies to increase beyond the means of sub-cause the means of subsistence can be carried sistence is a necessary obstacle to the improvement of its condition. If the wretchedness of man really flowed from this source, it is strange that the discovery should not have been made during six thousand years of his misery. He is not usually thus obtuse, respecting the cause of his sorrows. It will be admitted, that his distresses have most frequently arisen from luxury and from war, as their immediate causes. The first will scarcely be attributed to the want of food; nor can the second be traced to so fantastical an origin. Shakspeare, indeed, represents Coriolanus, in his insolent contempt for humanity, as rejoicing in the approach of war, as the means of "venting the musty superfluity" of the people; but kings have not often engaged in the fearful game on

It seems impossible to cast a cursory glance over the earth, and retain the belief, that there is some insuperable obstacle in the constitution of nature, to the development of its vast and untried resources. Surely, immense regions of unbounded fertility-long successions of spicy groves-trackless pastures watered by ocean-rivers formed to let in wealth to the midst of a great continent-and islands which lie calmly on the breast of crystal seas, were not created for eternal solitude and silence. Until these are peopled, and the earth is indeed "replenished and subdued," the command and the blessing, "increase and multiply," must continue unrecalled by its great Author. Shall not Egypt revive its old fruit

fulness, and Palestine again flow with milk and honey?

arts to their highest perfection. Gratitude, honesty, and good faith, had no place in the breast of Athenian citizens. The morals of the Spartans were even more despicable than those of their rivals. Their mixture of barbarity and of craft towards their foes and the states which were tributary to their powertheir unnatural sacrifice of the most sacred of the affections of nature to mere national glory wretched Helots, who were their property,have scarcely a parallel in human history. The long conspiracy of Rome against the liberties of mankind, carried on from the time of its foundation until it began to decline, served to string every sinew into a horrid rigidity, and to steel the heart to the feelings of compassion. This is the description of its progress by one of its own historians:

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Raptores orbis, postquam cuncta vastantibus defuere terræ, et mare scrutantur; si locuples hostis est, avari; pauper, ambitiosi: quos non oriens non occidens satiaverit; soli omnium opes atque inopiam pari affectu concupiscunt. Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium, atque ubi solitudinem pacem appellent." (Tacitus, Vita Agricole, 30.)

The proscriptions of Marius and Sylla alone proved what this savage spirit could perpetrate at home, when it had exhausted all opportunities of satiating, among foreign states, its thirst for slaughter.

If we pass over the improvements in morals the amelioration of war-the progress of political science-and the redemption of the female sex from degradation and from bondage

The hypothesis, that population left to itself will increase in a geometrical progression, while the means of subsistence can only be enlarged in an arithmetical progression, is a mere fantasy. Vegetables, cattle, and fish, have far greater powers of productiveness than the human species; and the only obstacle to those powers being developed in an equal de--and their dreadful conduct towards the gree, is the want of room for them to increase, or the want of energy or wisdom in man to apply the bounty of nature to its fittest uses. The first want cannot exist while the larger part of the earth is barren, and the riches of the ocean remain unexhausted. The second, with all the disadvantages of ignorance, war, tyranny, and vice, has not prevented the boundaries of civilization from widely extending. What is there then in this particular stage of society, which should induce the belief, that the sinews of humanity are shrivelled up, and its energy falling to decay? The same quantity of food or of clothing-the same comforts and the same luxuries-which once required the labour of a hundred hands, are now produced almost without personal exertion. And is the spirit in man so broken down and debased, that, with all the aids of machinery, he cannot effect as much as the labour of his own right arm would achieve in the elder time? If, indeed, he is thus degenerate, the fault, at least, is not in nature, but in external and transitory causes. But we are prepared clearly, though briefly, to show, that man has been and is, on the whole, advancing in true virtue, and in moral and intellectual energy. It cannot be denied, that there are many ap--we shall find, in one great change alone, parent oscillations in the course of the species. If we look at only a small portion of history, it may seem retrograde, as a view of one of the windings of a noble river may lead us to imagine that it is flowing from the ocean. The intricacies of human affairs, the perpetual opposition of interests, prejudices, and passions, do not permit mankind to proceed in a right line; but, if we overlook any large series of ages, we shall clearly perceive, that the course of man is towards perfection. In contemplating the past, our attention is naturally attracted to the illustrious nations, whose story is consecrated by our early studies. But even if we take these, and forget the savage barbarism of the rest of the world, we shall find little to excite our envy. Far be it from us to deny, that there were, among these, some men of pure and disinterested virtue, whose names are like great sea-marks in the dreariness of the perspective, and whom future generations can only desire to imitate. Our nature has always had some to vindicate its high capabilities of good. But even among the privileged classes of Greece and Rome-the selected minority, to whom all the rights of nature were confined more strictly than in the strictest modern despotism-how rare are the instances of real and genuine goodness! The long suc-posed to wild beasts, or sentenced to die upon cession of bloody tragedies-that frightful alternation of cruelties and of meannesses-the Peloponnesian war, was perpetrated in the midst of the people, who had just carried the

ample reason to rejoice in the advances of the species. The simple term, humanity, expresses the chief difference between our times and the brightest of classical ages. In those there was no feeling for man, as man-no recognition of a common brotherhood-no sense of those qualities which all men have in common, and of those claims which those who are "made of one blood" have on each other for justice and for mercy. Manhood was nothing, citizenship was all in all. Nearly all the virtues were aristocratical and exclusive. The number of slaves-their dreadful condition-and the sanction which the law gave to all the cruelties practised on them-showed that the masters of the world had no sense of the dignity of their nature, whatever they might feel for the renown of their country, or the privi leges of their order. The Spartan youths massacred their Helots, to nurture their valour. Indeed, the barbarities inflicted on that miserable race, by those whom we are sometimes taught to admire, would exceed belief, if they were not attested by the clearest proofs. At Rome, slaves, when too old for work, were often sent to an island in the Tiber, and left there to perish. On the slightest offence, they were frequently thrown into fish-ponds, ex

the cross. And in the same spirit of contempt for humanity, and veneration for the privileged orders, parents had power to imprison their children or put them to death, and wives were

left, without protection, to the brutal ferocity | not the vain and the transitory, but the true of their husbands. and the eternal, which are the same through all changes of society and shifting varieties of fashion. The heavens yet "tell the glory of God;" the hills, the vales, and the ocean, do not alter, nor does the heart of man wax old. The wonders of these are as exhaustless as they are lasting. While these remain, the circumstances of busy life-the exact mechanism of the social state-will affect the true poet but little. The seeds of genius, which contain within themselves the germs of expanded beauties and divinest sublimities, cannot perish. Wheresoever they are scattered, they must take root, striking far below the surface, overcropped and exhausted by the multitude of transitory productions, into a deep richness of soil, and, rising up above the weeds and tangled underwood which would crush them, lift their innumerable boughs into the free and rejoicing heavens.

With how different feelings are the rights of humanity regarded in these happier seasons! Slavery is abolished throughout the Christian kingdoms of Europe, and, with few exceptions, equal justice is administered to all. There is no grief which does not meet with pity, and few miseries which do not excite the attempt to relieve them. Men are found of sensibilities keen even to agony, who, tremblingly alive in every fibre to wretchedness, have yet the moral heroism to steel their nerves to the investigation of the most hideous details of suffering, with no desire of applause or wish for reward, except that which success itself will give them. Within a few short years, what great moral changes have been effected! The traffic in human beings, which was practised without compunction or disgrace, and defended in parliament as a fair branch of commerce, is now made a felony, and those who are detected in pursuing it would almost be torn in pieces by popular fury. The most cruel enactments against freedom of thought and of discussion have been silently repealed, while scarcely a voice has been raised to defend or to mourn them. And, above all, a moral elevation has been given to the great mass of the rising generation, by the provision for their instruction, of which no time, or change, or accident can deprive them.

The advancement of natural science and of moral truth do not tend really to lesson the resources of the bard. The more we know, the more we feel there is yet to be known. The mysteries of nature and of humanity are not lessened, but increased, by the discoveries of philosophic skill. The lustre which breaks on the vast clouds, which encircle us in our earthly condition, does not merely set in clear vision that which before was hidden in sacred gloom; but, at the same time, half exhibits masses of magnificent shadow, unknown before, and casts an uncertain light on vast re

There is a deep-rooted opinion, which has been eloquently propounded by some of the first critics of our age, that works of imagina-gions, in which the imagination may devoutly tion must necessarily decline as civilization expatiate. A plastic superstition may fill a advances. It will readily be conceded, that limited circle with beautiful images, but it no individual minds can be expected to arise, chills and confines the fancy, almost as strictly in the most refined periods, which will surpass as it limits the reasoning faculties. The mythose which have been developed in rude and thology of Greece, for example, while it peobarbarous ages. But there does not appear pled earth with a thousand glorious shapes, any solid reason for believing, that the mighty shut out the free grace of nature from poetic works of old time occupy the whole region of vision, and excluded from the ken the high poetry-or necessarily chill the fancy of these beatings of the soul. All the loveliness of later times by their vast and unbroken sha- creation, and all the qualities, feelings, and dows. Genius does not depend on times or on passions, were invested with personal attriseasons, it waits not on external circumstances, butes. The evening's sigh was the breath of it can neither be subdued by the violence of the Zephyr-the streams were celebrated, not in most savage means, nor polished away or dis- their rural clearness, but as visionary nymphs sipated among the refinements of the most glit--and ocean, that old agitator of sublimest tering scenes of artificial life. It is "itself alone." To the heart of a young poet, the world is ever beginning anew. He is in the generation by which he is surrounded, but he is not of it; he can live in the light of the holiest times, or range amidst gorgeous mar-jestical struggle of high passions and high vels of eldest superstition, or sit "lone upon the shores of old romance," or pierce the veil of mortality, and "breathe in worlds to which the heaven of heavens is but a veil." The very deficiency of the romantic, in the actual paths of existence, will cause him to dwell in thought more apart from them, and to seek the wildest recesses in those regions which imagination opens to his inward gaze. To the eye of young joy, the earth is as fresh as at the first-the dew-drop is lit up as it was in Eden-and "the splendour in the grass, the glory in the flower," yet glitters as in the spring-time of the world.

The subjects in which genius rejoices are

thoughts, gave place, in the imagination, to a trident-bearing god. The tragic muse almost "forgot herself to stone," in her lone contemplations of destiny. No wild excursiveness of fancy marked their lighter poems—no ma

actions filled the scene-no genial wisdom threw a penetrating, yet lovely, light on the silent recesses of the bosom. The diffusion of a purer faith restored to poetry its glowing affections, its far-searching intelligence, and its excursive power. And not only this, but it left it free to use those exquisite figures, and to avail itself of all the chaste and delicate imagery, which the exploded superstition first called into being. In the stately regions of imagination, the wonders of Greek fable yet have place, though they no longer hide from our view the secrets of our nature, or the long vistas which extend to the dim verge of the moral horizon. Well, indeed, does a grea