motion, sensation, life. Is the being destroyed? does no finer part sur vive? is this active, animated creature now consigned to eternal oblivion and unconsciousness? 20. Recollect, in some vulgar instances, the vast difference as to a man's manners, between his being in the immediate sphere of his praclice and authority, and out of it. Remarkable instance in the captain of a Dublin and Liverpool packet; instance in a collier at Norton, a kind of foreman. He was quite an unassuming, and what is called sheepish creature in a parlor where I had seen him before, but he was all man when seen on his own proper ground; all man, not only in respect of his habitual companions, but in respect of the very identical persons whom he had been so awkward and half-timid with, in the parlor. 21. While Mr. D. was reading a chapter this morning, I had a deep feeling of disliking all social exercises, unless it could be with an individual or two with whom I could feel an entire reciprocation of soul. This was a feeling of individuality, not of impiety; and how often I have experienced it, even in the presence of worthy people ;—a feeling as if I could wish to vanish out of the room, and find myself walking in some lonely wood. I have a feeling of being still completely insulated, and that therefore the forms of a serious sociality are irksome. This is not felt in the public exercises of a congregation, by the official person, because he feels to be occupied in his own work, as an official and insulated individual, and not as one of the large and heterogeneous company. His sympathies are not seeking to mingle with all the beings who ar present, in the same manner as they feel as if they ought to do, when it is only a small domestic party. 22. I know not how to bring into intelligible description a feeling which I have many times been obscurely conscious of having, and particularly in two or three instances of late;—a feeling of revolting when I find myself coming into anything like intimate, confiding kinuness (I have no reference to any kind of personalities whatever) with persons, however worthy and kind, if they are not the individual or two with whom my intimacy can be congenial and entire. It is a part and an operation of the same feeling which would recoil from the direct personalities of love with any one that was not the absolute object of love. It is a noble law that (in the case of a refined and reflective mind at least) all the symbols that of right belong to tenderness are felt to be out of place with any one but a real object of tenderness. 23. Wesley's moderation in sleep, and his rigid constancy in rising early, being mentioned in the company of Mr. Bradburn, who travelled with Wesley almost constantly for years, he said that Wesley generally slept several hours in the course of the day; that he had himself seen him sleep three hours together often enough. This was chiefly in his carriage, in which he accustomed himself to sleep on his journeys, and in which he slept as regularly, as easily, and as soundly, as if he had gone to bed. A zealous, ignorant Methodist, who considered Wesley as alto gether an angel, was most indignant at hearing this said by Mr. S., who heard Bradburn say it, and exclaimed, “ Bradburn must be a liar!" 66 24. Have been looking a little while in the parish register of this town, which begins in the first year of Elizabeth. I felt something venerable, by its antiquity, even in such a dull thing as this. The impression is from reflecting that all these persons (those recorded, and those who recorded them, in the earlier part) are so long since dead; and that so many of the things, and persons, and events, that we look back upon as long since gone, were posterior to the birth or marriage here recorded. 25. Had a most beautiful evening walk, and a diversity of views. From an eminence overlooked a wide extent of wood, the soft, moulded forms of the superficies of which were inexpressibly beautiful;-distant country, remote hills and horizon, setting sun, the White Horse, the venerable memorial of Alfred, which I looked upon with an emotion which few other monuments could cause. There was a most enchanting softness spread over the whole view of heaven and earth, which gradually faded into the sombre, and then the gloom of evening. 26. I am privileged to see one more night of surpassing beauty;—a moonlight night, with a gentle, unequal gale, in an August so temperate, and so wet with delicious rains, that the intense green of the earth is perceptible by this moonlight. I feel an earnest wish to seize such a view of nature, and fix it in my mind, even for ever. It is a very noble luxury to see such aspects of solemn beauty; and I will not be ungrateful nor neglectful. 27. Have been reading a most awful account of an eruption of Vesuvius; how far correct is one of the feelings caused by this description? namely this; a feeling as if the actions of man, in a moral view, and in the sight of the Creator, could scarcely be of any manner of consequence; the creature as a physical being appearing so inconceivably insignificant, so despicable, so much on a level with the smallest reptile, when he and his powers, &c., are placed in thought beside these enormous natural phenomena and powers. But the feeling cannot be right when it goes the length, as I feel it inclined to do, of annihilating all difference between virtue and vice, in the way of asking, What signifies it what thoughts, as they are called, this despicable animalcule entertains in what he calls his mind? what signifies it into what articulations he may form the trivial sound which he calls his v、ice, in uttering what he calls speech? what can it signify in what manner he uses his insect limbs in what he calls action, and sometimes comxluct? what signifies all the trivial action, thought, speech, and existence itself of such an atom, that he should deem himself under some sublime law of accountableness to the infinite Spirit, and that there should be an aw.ul distinction between moral good and evil in such an agent? At the same time how prodigiously it would modify one's manner of thinking, on almost all subjects, if it were possible to retain strongly in the mind the grand class of ideas, and that standard, that kind of general measure for perceiving the magnitude of all objects, which would result from the mind having taken its pitch and level, so to speak, in this elevated region. (How vilely this is expressed!) I mean simply to say, that the mind, while expanded and elevated by the contemplation of these grand subjects, perceives many things to be little, which at other times it views as important; and if it could be kept habitually in this state of expansion and elevation, it would acquire a grand standard according to which it would perceive, and measure, and estimate, all these objects. In its expressions and representations, therefore, it would express as trivial many things which, for want of this high standard, it regards and speaks of as great and important. Yet those who read or heard its sentiments would not feel coincident, because they would not have in their minds this grand standard for measuring little and great. But to a great extent, truth and justice (intellectual justice) require this to be done. A man should, as far as he can, make his standard of the proportions of things the same as the standard of the universe. But alas! what a despicable atom, and almost infinitely less than an atom, he appears in this very attempt of thinking according to the grand scale of proportions. But still, things may be great or little, with respect to the wants, interests, and happiness of man, though they be all inexpressibly and equally little and trivial with respect to the universe, and as measured on the degrees of its grand scale or standard. This is the standard according to which we must chiefly think. Yet still something of this kind should be done. Quote one of my own sentences,-" We have often talked of this bold quality (decision of character), and feel its extreme importance," -"extreme importance !" Vain words!—extreme importance in what determines the movements of a microscopical tadpole, called man! Such will be the just remark while applying the grand standard. But then, by the standard of human interests, which substantially after all must be the standard chiefly referred to and used, by this standard of our own, the thing is important. Perhaps after all, there is but little real analogy between the physical and the moral standard of great and little ; perhaps not enough to warrant our drawing from the one any measures by which to judge of the things belonging to the other. Taken as a mere physical agent, MAN, compared to the physical powers and grandeur of a volcano is infinitely little and despicable; but it is not in his physical powers and being that man finds his true value; he is an intellectual and moral agent, and if the phenomena and qualities of this moral and intellectual being possibly be justly compared by means, if it existed, of any intermediate principle and common measure of proportions, with the grand physical phenomena of an earthquake, a stormy ocean, or a volcano, those moral could phenomena might prove much the more grand.* Perhaps, according to that Divine standard, which is the ultimate abstraction of all relations, analogies, measures, and proportions, and in which the laws and principles of the natural world and those of the moral, are resolved in the same (are in their original undivided essence), the grandeur of a virtue may be as great, or much greater than that of a volcano, the mischief of a vice as great as that of an earthquake. While reading this tremendous account of Vesuvius (and as long as it is forcibly remembered), how contemptible appears my own comparison of the valor and anger of Homer's heroes to Vesuvius.† Achilles like Vesuvius!! How impossible to have made such a comparison, if ▾ had composed those sentences while under the full impression of the account I have just now read, of the awful phenomena of one of the eruptions of Vesuvius (in Dr. Gregory's Economy of Nature). But yet, is it absurd in regard to the ideas of the reader, who probably has not in his mind, any more than the writer had in his, a grand habitual idea of the volcano? to him it will be but strong enough, and he will feel no extravagance. Whereas, had some much inferior thing been mentioned (as a furnace for instance), it would have appeared quite feeble, and almost despicable, as a parallel to Achilles and Diomedes. We do injustice to almost everything we mention; our ideas are infinitely less (if it is any sublime object at least) than the thing itself. * L'homme n'est qu'un roseau le plus faible de la nature, mais c'est un roseau pensant. Il ne faut pas que l'univers entier s'arme pour l'écraser. Une vapeur, une goutte d'eau suffit pour le tuer. Mais quand l'univers l'écraserait, l'homme serait encore plus noble que ce qui le tue, parce qu'il sait qu'il meurt; et l'avantage que l'univers a sur lui, l'univers n'en sait rien. Ainsi toute notre dignité consiste dans la pensée. C'est de là qu'il faut nous relever, non de l'espace et de la durée. Travaillons donc à bien penser ; voilà la principe de la morale.-PASCAL, Pensées, Partie I., art. iv., 6. "Let this susceptible youth, after having mingled and burned in imagination among heroes, whose valor and anger flame like Vesuvius, who wade in blood, trample on dying foes, and hurl defiance against earth and heaven; let him be led into the company of Jesus Christ and his disciples, as displayed by the evangelists, with whose narration, I will suppose, he is but slightly acquainted before.""-Essay on the Aversion of Men of Taste to Evangelical Religion. Letter V. 17 CHAPTER V. RESIDENCE AT BOURTON ON-THE-WATER-VISIT TO FROME-ECLECTIC REVIEW-BIRTH OF HIS SON-EXCURSION INTO NORTH WALES -VISIT TO BRISTOL AND FROME-HALL'S PREACHING-DEATH OF HIS PARENTS-DOMESTIC HABITS-REMOVAL TO DOWNEND. 1808-1817. MR. FOSTER'S marriage took place in May, 1808. In one of his earliest letters after this event, addressed to a highly esteemed friend* at Frome, he says, "If the distance of some miles and some months could obliterate from my own mind all regard for persons with whom I have passed so many agreeable and animated hours, I ought to conclude, that I am myself no longer remembered with kindness at the Iron-Gates, or at the cottage; but as I experience no such effect of time and distance, I will not let myself believe it is experienced by my friends, especially as probably less alteration has taken place in their circumstances than in mine; unless, indeed, my good friend Miss S. has by this time been (where I have repeatedly warned you, there was danger of her going) to Gretna Green. In this last case, I fear that she at least will have quite forgotten me, whereas I, after an adventure somewhat of this kind, have a very faithful and friendly remembrance of her. I seem to have so little more to tell about myself in consequence of the change of situation caused by that adventure, that I clearly perceive those adventurers who fill large volumes with their own story, must make very large use of fiction ; and that a book which I have just been reading, written by a very plain-sailing gentleman of the name of Patrick Gass, who narrates a grand voyage of discovery, across the continent of North America to the Pacific Ocean, and back again, in a rather thin octavo, is the very standard for all, who in relating their own adventures are determined to tell nothing but what is new, and nothing but what is true. For myself, indeed, if I will tell nothing * Mrs. John Sheppard, August 3, 1808. |