steal out at solemn eventide, or blaze out all over the azure arch on a frosty night, without asking the questions which these authors strive to solve, or feeling himself the better for meditation on them?

And if there be inhabitants of other worlds, depend on it they feel much as we do. If there are folks on the other side of the moon, my word for it, they have scrambled up to the ridge which divides their hemisphere from that seen by us, and peered (even though they should risk their necks by it) down on the earth;-to them a glorious lamp, about thirteen times the size of the full moon, hanging motionless in their sky! Yes, I see it all; their philosophers are full of conjectures about us, and have absolutely settled it in their minds that so beautiful an orb must be the abode of innocence and happiness!

We know they are a little mistaken in this matter; but then, alas! may not we be too when we speculate in a similar manner about the diffusion of happiness, as well as life, in other worlds? This, I confess, is one of the most dismal thoughts which arrest us in our speculations on the "Plurality of Worlds." We are apt to imagine these beautiful abodes of light not only full of life, but of felicity also. How far may "distance lend enchantment to the view?" How far, as in other excursions of fancy, may we be the dupes of the seeming fair and beautiful? Do the shadows of evil lie as deep on the surface of those shining orbs, in spite of their radiant, exterior to us, as we know they do on our world, though the folks in the moon may be felicitating us on our splendour, and the poets of Venus returning the compliments of our own to her, by sonnetteering us as an "island of the blest?" It will not do to dwell on this side of the speculation; so let us come back, my friend, while we are still only the wiser for our transient flights through space, to the little circle of present duty, and leave the question of "Evil" to Him who has said that "secret things belong to God; but the things that are revealed, to us and to our children;" and He has revealed that "He will make all things work together for good to them that love Him." Yours ever affectionately,

R. E. H. G.

P.S. On reflection, why should this matter of the Plurality of Worlds be so long and so doubtfully disputed? Why should we have mere conjectures, when "modern science" can so easily give us certainty? Why does not "clairvoyance" settle the matter for us? What is the use of it, if it cannot determine such a trifling controversy? All that a clairvoyant has to do is to put himself en rapport with Mercury or Venus; and he can tell us all about the thing. As Hopeful says in the "Pilgrim's Progress," "Why should I remain in this dungeon, when I have a key in my bosom which will open all the wards in Giant Despair's castle?" So say I; why should we remain ignorant on this question of the "Plurality of Worlds," while there are clairvoyantes in the land? And there is the more inducement, surely, for these knowing ones to speak, inasmuch as they must have it all their own way; none can contradict them, unless, indeed (which is but too probable), they contradict one another. If they tell us that the inhabitants of Jupiter have two heads and ten eyes, pray, my dear friend, can you or I deny it? But I forget; the thing is already done; see the revelations of the "Poughkeepsie Seer," and you will find everything plain. The inhabitants of Jupiter, in particular, are duly described, anatomically, physiologically, mentally, and morally. After this, who but must be surprised that the controversy between our philosophers should go on?

I wish our clairvoyantes, in the meantime, would just condescend to tell us whether Austria is meditating treachery this coming spring, and how many troops and what munitions are at this moment in Sebastopol. Strange perverseness of these gifted beings! They can tell us all sorts of useless things: how Mr. Brown is employed, in the two pair of stairs' back, No. 10, of any street in London; what Sir John Franklin was doing on such a day at the North Pole; what sort of creatures inhabit Jupiter; and yet they won't let us know anything that is of any earthly use to us. How can they wonder that men are sceptical as to their powers, when they will not exercise them to any purpose? And strangely blind must they be to their own

interests! What would not the "Times "give for such a specimen of "Our own Correspondent!". what would not Government give for such an agent! In the name of common sense, try and persuade your clairvoyant friend, T. S, to do something for us.

LETTER LXXXIX.

To Rev. C. Ellis.

Arran, July, 1851.

My dear Ellis,

I think you would not easily imagine how a part of last evening was spent. Well, I will tell you. At the modest little table-d'hôte at the Brodick Arms (there might have been, perhaps, half a dozen of us present), I, with some others, was watching the progress of a discussion between two of the party, on a subject which I imagine they would not have chosen to discuss in such a place, nor, I dare say, before an audience of strangers. But they got insensibly embroiled, and at last urged each other on to give the most undisguised expression of opinion. The rest of us gradually left our commonplace chat to listen to them, except two, who seemed to think the discourse either not interesting or not important enough to detain them. "And what was the subject?" you will ask. Oh! a mere bagatelle, my dear friend, in these enlightened days; it was simply whether or not there be a God! or whether man alone, so far as we know, has the privilege of conscious intelligence and personal importance in the universe! Of the two combatants, one was an Atheist, and the other a Deist.

Confess, now, that you would not have guessed that such a subject would have been discussed at a table-d'hôte. I will add that you would not often hear it more acutely discussed in a college. Among the four or five of us who became gradually

interested listeners, was a citizen of Glasgow, a plain Christian man, who had probably never heard such undisguised impieties so calmly avowed and discussed before. He sat, for the most part, in a sort of fascination of horror, yet a highly interested and intelligent listener; for to many a Scotchman a little bit of "metapheesyks" is as dear as "oatmeal parritch." As he listened to the reckless challenging of truths, which seemed to him clear as the light, and infinitely more precious, he reminded me of nothing so much as a bird under the fascination of a serpent. At the close, however, he broke in with a very decisive expression of his opinion, and showed that, however he might have been fixed for a while by the rattlesnake gaze of a live Atheist, he was not going to jump down his throat.

And what was the general result, you will ask, of the controversy? Did it not end, as most others end, in convincing nobody?

Perhaps so; but not in confuting nobody. Each was victorious, triumphantly victorious, in defeating his opponent. The issue was a little like that which, according to Sully, attended a certain stratagem in the wars of the League. The citizens of the town of Ville-Franche went out at night to surprise the neighbouring town of Montpazier. That very same night the good folks of Montpazier had taken it into their heads to surprise the town of Ville-Franche! Each party accoutred a sufficient force, and each took a different route; each found the enemy's quarters obligingly vacated for the other's benefit; and when morning dawned, each party found itself at once successful and unsuccessful- victorious and defeated! "On pilla, on se gorgea de butin; tout le monde se crut heureux jusqu'à ce que le jour ayant paru, les deux villes connurent leur méprise."

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Among other things, the Deist affirmed that he had an intuitional consciousness of the Infinite and of the Deity. The Atheist denied that he was conscious of anything of the kind. Now, when one finite mind declared that it had a consciousness of the infinite, and another finite mind denied it had any such consciousness, it is hard to see how the controversy could go any

further in that direction ;- unless indeed the Deist had told the Atheist that he lied; which I suppose would not have ended, but rather changed the nature of, the controversy.

The Deist then got on to the old, and, as I believe, irrefragable argument of the "Marks of Design" in the universe and everything in it, and which, he contended, prove an "intelligent author."

The Atheist did not deny that there were plenty of marks of design; that is, just such things as design, supposing the universe the work of an intelligent author, would have exhibited ; but he affirmed with the great Comte, that though the adaptations of things, one to another, were infinite, they were not really indicative of design at all, but were simply "conditions of existence; that if man's eyes were not so and so constituted (surely an undeniable truth), he would not see, and that because they were so constituted, he did see (equally undeniable); and that is all that is to be said! Who but must be satisfied with so clear a statement?

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The misfortune is that it explains nothing, but leaves the whole argument just where it was. I must do my Deist the justice to say that he exposed this sophism admirably; he showed that it still attributed all the adaptations, which seem to indicate design, to blind chance or blind necessity christened with a new nothing," an unmeaning name ; it being still asked, how so many conditions of existence came so happily to conspire; as before it was asked how so many "marks of design" came to exist without any designer? He also remarked that manifold adaptations are not "conditions of being" merely, but conditions of wellbeing; that man doubtless could exist though he had a score of deformities. a hump on his back, or club feet; that he could put food into his stomach, though he had no palate which made it pleasant to do so, and so forth. I am sure he handled his argument capitally, and, I thought, M. Comte cut a very sorry figure.

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But he further argued that supposing all these apparent "marks" of design, apparent only, yet the mind of man was so constituted, its "conditions" of logic such, that the immense