Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844
THE TOMBLESS MAN. A DREAM
By Delta
I
I woke from sleep at midnight, all was dark,
Solemn, and silent, an unbroken calm;
It was a fearful vision, and had made
A mystical impression on my mind;
For clouds lay o'er the ocean of my thoughts
In vague and broken masses, strangely wild;
And grim imagination wander'd on
'Mid gloomy yew-trees in a churchyard old,
And mouldering shielings of the eyeless hills,
And snow-clad pathless moors on moonless nights,
And icebergs drifting from the sunless Pole,
And prostrate Indian villages, when spent
The rage of the hurricane has pass'd away,
Leaving a landscape desolate with death;
And as I turn'd me to my vanish'd dream,
Clothed in its drapery of gloom, it rose
Upon my spirit, dreary as before.
II
Alone – alone – a desolate dreary wild,
Herbless and verdureless; low swampy moss,
Where tadpoles grew to frogs, for leagues begirt
My solitary path. Nor sight nor sound
Of moving life, except a grey curlew —
As shrieking tumbled on the timid bird,
Aye glancing backward with its coal-black eye,
Even as by imp invisible pursued —
Was seen or heard; the last low level rays
Of sunset, gilded with a blood-red glow
That melancholy moor, with its grey stones
And stagnant water-pools. Aye floundering on,
And on, I stray'd, finding no pathway, save
The runlet of a wintry stream, begirt
With shelvy barren rocks; around, o'erhead,
Yea every where, in shapes grotesque and grim,
Towering they rose, encompassing my path,
As 'twere in savage mockery. Lo, a chasm
Yawning, and bottomless, and black! Beneath
I heard the waters in their sheer descent
Descending down, and down; and further down
Descending still, and dashing: Now a rush,
And now a roar, and now a fainter fall,
And still remoter, and yet finding still,
For the white anguish of their boiling whirl,
No resting-place. Over my head appear'd,
Between the jagged black rifts bluely seen,
Sole harbinger of hope, a patch of sky,
Of deep, clear, solemn sky, shrining a star
Magnificent; that, with a holy light,
Glowing and glittering, shone into the heart
As 'twere an angel's eye. Entranced I stood,
Drinking the beauty of that gem serene,
How long I wist not; but, when back to earth
Sank my prone eyes – I knew not where I was —
Again the scene had shifted, and the time,
From midnight to the hour when earliest dawn
Gleams in the orient, and with inky lines
The trees seem painted on the girding sky.
III
A solemn hour! – so silent, that the sound
Even of a falling leaflet had been heard,
Was that, wherein, with meditative step,
With uncompanion'd step, measured and slow,
And wistful gaze, that to the left, the right,
Was often turn'd, as if in secret dread
Of something horrible that must be met —
Of unseen evil not to be eschew'd —
Up a long vista'd avenue I wound,
Untrodden long, and overgrown with moss.
It seem'd an entrance to the hall of gloom;
Grey twilight, in the melancholy shade
Of the hoar branches, show'd the tufted grass
With globules spangled of the fine night-dew —
So fine – that even a midge's tiny tread
Had caused them trickle down. Funereal yews
Notch'd with the growth of centuries, stretching round
Dismal in aspect, and grotesque in shape,
Pair after pair, were ranged: where ended these,
Girdling an open semicircle, tower'd
A row of rifted plane-trees, inky-leaved
With cinnamon-colour'd barks; and, in the midst,
Hidden almost by their entwining boughs,
An unshut gateway, musty and forlorn;
Its old supporting pillars roughly rich
With sculpturings quaint of intermingled flowers.
IV
Each pillar held upon its top an urn,
Serpent-begirt; each urn upon its front
A face – and such a face! I turn'd away —
Then gazed again – 'twas not to be forgot: —
There was a fascination in the eyes —
Even in their stony stare; like the ribb'd sand
Of ocean was the eager brow; the mouth
Had a hyena grin; the nose, compress'd
With curling sneer, of wolfish cunning spake;
O'er the lank temples, long entwisted curls
Adown the scraggy neck in masses fell;
And fancy, aided by the time and place,
Read in the whole the effigies of a fiend —
Who, and what art thou? ask'd my beating heart —
And but the silence to my heart replied!
That entrance pass'd, I found a grass-grown court,
Vast, void, and desolate – and there a house,
Baronial, grim, and grey, with Flemish roof
High-pointed, and with aspect all forlorn: —
Four-sided rose the towers at either end
Of the long front, each coped with mouldering flags:
Up from the silent chimneys went no smoke;
And vacantly the deep-brow'd windows stared,
Like eyeballs dead to daylight. O'er the gate
Of entrance, to whose folding-doors a flight
Of steps converging led, startled I saw,
Oh, horrible! the same reflected face
As that on either urn – but gloomier still
In shadow of the mouldering architrave.
V
I would have turn'd me back – I would have fled
From that malignant, yet half-syren smile;
But magic held me rooted to the spot,
And some inquisitive horror led me on. —
Entering I stood beneath the spacious dome
Of a round hall, vacant, save here and there,
Where from the panelings, in mouldy shreds,
Hung what was arras loom-work; weather-stains
In mould appear'd on the mosaic floors,
Of marble black and white – or what was white,
For time had yellow'd all; and opposite,
High on the wall, within a crumbling frame
Of tarnish'd gold, scowl'd down a pictured form
In the habiliments of bygone days —
With ruff, and doublet slash'd, and studded belt —
'Twas the same face – the Gorgon curls the same,
The same lynx eye, the same peak-bearded chin,
And the same nose, with sneering upward curl.
VI
Again I would have turned to flee – again
Tried to elude the snares around my feet;
But struggling could not – though I knew not why,
Self-will and self-possession vaguely lost. —
Horror thrill'd through me – to recede was vain;
Fear lurk'd behind in that sepulchral court,
In its mute avenue and grave-like grass;
And to proceed – where led my onward way?
Ranges of doorways branch'd on either side,
Each like the other: – one I oped, and lo!
A dim deserted room, its furniture
Withdrawn; gray, stirless cobwebs from the roof
Hanging; and its deep windows letting in
The pale, sad dawn – than darkness drearier far.
How desolate! Around its cornices
Of florid stucco shone the mimic flowers
Of art's device, carved to delight the eyes
Of those long since but dust within their graves!
The hollow hearth-place, with its fluted jambs
Of clammy Ethiop marble, whence, of yore,
Had risen the Yule-log's animating blaze
On festal faces, tomb-like, coldly yawn'd;
While o'er its centre, lined in hues of night,
Grinn'd the same features with the aspick eyes,
And fox-like watchful, though averted gaze,
The haunting demon of that voiceless home!
VII
How silent! to the beating of my heart
I listen'd, and nought else around me heard.
How stirless! even a waving gossamer —
The mazy motes that rise and fall in air —
Had been as signs of life; when, suddenly,
As bursts the thunder-peal upon the calm,
Whence I had come the clank of feet was heard —
A noise remote, which near'd and near'd, and near'd —
Even to the threshold of that room it came,
Where, with raised hands, spell-bound, I listening stood;
And the door opening stealthily, I beheld
The embodied figure of the phantom head,
Garb'd in the quaint robes of the portraiture —
A veritable fiend, a life in death!
VIII
My heart stood still, though quickly came my breath;
Headlong I rush'd away, I knew not where;
In frenzied hast rushing I ran; my feet
With terror wing'd, a hell-hound at my heels,
Yea! scarce three strides between us. Through a door
Right opposite I flew, slamming its weight,
To shut me from the spectre who pursued:
And lo! another room, the counterpart
Of that just left, but gloomier. On I rush'd,
Beholding o'er its hearth the grinning face,
Another and the same; the haunting face
Reflected, as it seem'd, from wall to wall!
There, opening as I shut, onward he came,
That Broucoloka, not to be escaped,
With measured tread unwearied, like the wolf's
When tracking its sure prey: forward I sprang,
And lo! another room – another face,
Alike, but gloomier still; another door,
And the pursuing fiend – and on – and on,
With palpitating heart and yielding knees,
From room to room, each mirror'd in the last.
At length I reach'd a porch – amid my hair
I felt his desperate clutch – outward I flung —
The open air was gain'd – I stood alone!
IX
That welcome postern open'd on a court —
Say rather, grave-yard; gloomy yews begirt
Its cheerless walls; ranges of headstones show'd,
Each on its hoary tablature, half hid
With moss, with hemlock, and with nettles rank,
The sculptured leer of that hyena face,
Softening as backwards, through the waves of time,
Receded generations more remote.
It was a square of tombs – of old, grey tombs,
(The oldest of an immemorial date,)
Deserted quite – and rusty gratings black,
Along the yawning mouths of dreary vaults —
And epitaphs unread – and mouldering bones.
Alone, forlorn, the only breathing thing
In that unknown, forgotten cemetery,
Reeling, I strove to stand, and all things round
Flicker'd, and wavering, seem'd to wane away,
And earth became a blank; the tide of life
Ebbing, as backward ebbs the billowy sea,
Wave after wave, till nought is left behind,
Save casual foam-bells on the barren sand.
X
From out annihilation's vacancy,
(The elements, as of a second birth,
Kindling within, at first a fitful spark,
And then a light which, glowing to a blaze,
Fill'd me with genial life,) I seemed to wake
Upon a bed of bloom. The breath of spring
Scented the air; mingling their odours sweet,
The bright jonquil, the lily of the vale,
The primrose, and the daffodil, o'erspread
The fresh green turf; and, as it were in love,
Around the boughs of budding lilac wreathed
The honeysuckle, rich in earlier leaves,
Gold-tinctured now, for sunrise fill'd the clouds
With purple glory, and with aureate beams
The dew-refreshen'd earth. Up, up, the larks
Mounted to heaven, as did the angel wings
Of old in Jacob's vision; and the fly,
Awakening from its wintry sleep, once more
Spread, humming, to the light its gauzy wings.
XI
A happy being in a happy place,
As 'twere a captive from his chains released,
His dungeon and its darkness, there I lay
Nestling, amid the sun-illumined flowers,
Revolving silently the varied scenes,
Grotesque and grim, 'mid which my erring feet
Had stumbled; and a brightness darting in
On my mysterious night-mare, something told
The what and wherefore of the effigies grim —
The wolfish, never-resting, tombless man,
Voicelessly haunting that ancestral home —
Yea of his destiny for evermore
To suffer fearful life-in-death, until
A victim suffer'd from the sons of men,
To soothe the cravings of insatiate hell;
An agony for age undergone —
An agony for ages to be borne,
Hope, still elusive, baffled by despair.
XII
Thus as an eagle, from the altitude
Of the mid-sky, its pride of place attain'd,
Glances around the illimitable void,
And sees no goal, and finds no resting-place
In the blue, boundless depths – then, silently,
Pauses on wing, and with gyrations down
And down descends thorough the blinding clouds,
In billowy masses, many-hued, around
Floating, until their confines past, green earth
Once more appears, and on its loftiest crag
The nest, wherein 'tis bliss to rest his plumes
Flight-wearied – so, from farthest dreamland's shores,
Where clouds and chaos form the continents,
And reason reigns not, Fancy back return'd
To sights and sounds familiar – to the birds
Singing above – and the bright vale beneath,
With cottages and trees – and the blue sky —
And the glad waters murmuring to the sun.
FRENCH SOCIALISTS. 28
Socialism, as well in this country as in France, may be regarded as an offset of the French Revolution. It is true that, in all times, the striking disparity between the conditions of men has given rise to Utopian speculations – to schemes of some new order of society, where the comforts of life should be enjoyed in a more equalized manner than seems possible under the old system of individual efforts and individual rights; and it may be added that, as this disparity of wealth becomes more glaring in proportion as the disparity of intelligence and political rights diminishes, such speculations may be expected in these later times to become more frequent and more bold. Nevertheless we apprehend that the courage or audacity requisite to attempt the realization of these speculative schemes, must confess its origin in the fever-heat of the French Revolution. It required the bold example of that great political subversion to prompt the design of these social subversions – to familiarize the mind with the project of reducing into practice what had been deemed sufficiently adventurous as reverie.
What a stride has been taken since those olden times, when the philosophic visionary devised his Utopian society with all the freedom, because with all the irresponsibility, of dreams! He so little contemplated any practical result, that he did not even venture to bring his new commonwealth on the old soil of Europe, lest it should appear too strange, and be put out of countenance by the broad reality: but he carried it out to some far-off island in the ocean, and created a new territory for his new people. A chancellor of England, the high administrator of the laws of property, could then amuse his leisure with constructing a Utopia, where property, with all its laws, would undergo strange mutation. How would he have started from his woolsack if any one had told him that his design would be improved upon in boldness, and that such men as his own carpenter and mason would set about the veritable realization of it! At the present time nothing is more common or familiar than the project of changing entirely the model of society. "To subvert a government," writes M. Reybaud of his own country men, "to change a dynasty or a political constitution, is now an insignificant project. Your socialist is at peace with kings and constitutions; he merely talks in the quietest manner imaginable of destroying every thing, of uprooting society from its very basis."
Indeed, if the power of these projectors bore any proportion to their presumption, our neighbours would be in a most alarming condition. To extemporize a social system, a new humanity, or at least a new Christianity, is now as common as it was formerly, on leaving college, to rhyme a tragedy. The social projector, sublimely confident in himself, seems to expect to realize, on a most gigantic scale, the fable of Mesmerism; he will put the whole world in rapport with him, and it shall have no will but his, and none but such blind, imitative movements as he shall impress on it. And it is to a sort of coma that these projectors would, for the most part, reduce mankind – a state where there is some shadow of thought and passion, but no will, no self-direction, no connexion between the past and present – a state aimless, evanescent, and of utter subjugation. Fortunately these social reformers, however daring, use no other instruments of warfare than speech and pamphlets; they do not betake themselves to the sharp weapons of political conspiracy. They must be permitted, therefore, to rave themselves out. And this they will do the sooner from their very number. There are too many prophets; they spoil the trade; the Mesmerizers disturb and distract each other's efforts; the fixed idea that is in them will not fix any where else. Those who, in the natural order of things, should be dupes, aspire to be leaders, and the leaders are at a dead struggle for some novelty wherewith to attract followers. We have, for instance, M. Pierre Leroux, most distinguished of the Humanitarians, the last sect which figures on the scene, bidding for disciples – with what, will our readers think? – with the doctrine of metempsychosis! It is put forward as a fresh inducement to improve the world we live in, that we shall live in it again and again, and nowhere else, and be our own most remote posterity. We are not assured that there is any thread of consciousness connecting the successive apparitions of the same being; yet some slight filament of this kind must be traceable, for we are informed that M. Leroux gives himself out to have been formerly Plato. He has advanced thus far in the scale of progression, that he is at present M. Leroux.29
Still the frequent agitation of these social reforms cannot be, and has not been, without its influence on society. It is from this influence they gain their sole importance. Such schemes as those of St Simon, of Fourier, and of our own Robert Owen, viewed as projects to be realized, are not worth a serious criticism. In this point of view they are considered, at least in this country, as mere nullities. No one questions here whether they are feasible, or whether, if possible, they would be propitious to human happiness. But the constant agitation in society of such projects may be no nullity – may have, for a season, an indisputable and very pernicious influence. As systems of doctrine they may not be ineffective, nor undeserving of attention; and in this light M. Reybaud, in the work we now bring before our readers, mainly considers them.
M. Reybaud has given us a sketch of the biography and opinions of the most celebrated of those men who have undertaken to produce a new scheme of human life for us; he has introduced his description of them and their projects by some account of the previous speculations, of a kindred nature indeed, but conducted in a very different spirit, of Plato, Sir Thomas More, and others; and he has accompanied the whole with observations of his own, which bear the impress of a masculine understanding, a candid judgment, and a sound, healthy condition of the moral sentiments. The French Academy has distinguished the work by according to it the Montyon prize – a prize destined annually to the publication judged most beneficial to morals; and in this judgment of the Academy every private reader, unless he has some peculiar morality of his own, will readily acquiesce.
Our author is not one of those who at once, and without a question, reject all schemes for the amelioration of society; nor has he sat down to write the history of these social reformers for the mere purpose of throwing on them his contempt or irony. He has even been accused, it seems, by some of his critics, of manifesting too much sympathy with the enthusiasts he has undertaken to describe. He tells us, in the preface to his second edition, that he has encountered the contradictory accusations of being too severe, and too indulgent, towards them; from which he concludes, that he cannot have widely departed from the tone which truth and impartiality would prescribe. This is a conclusion which authors are very apt to draw; they very conveniently dispatch their several critics by opposing them to each other. But this conclusion may be drawn too hastily. Two contradictory accusations do not always destroy each other, even when they are made by judges equally competent. The inconsistency may be in the author himself, who may, in different portions of his work, have given foundation for very opposite censures. In the present case, although we have already intimated that M. Reybaud writes with a spirit of fairness and candour, we cannot admit him to the full benefit of the conclusion he draws in his own favour, from the opponent criticisms he has met with. There are individual passages in his work which it would be difficult to reconcile with each other, and which invite very different criticisms. On some occasions he appears to attribute a certain value to these tentatives at social reform, and intimates that they may probably be the precursors, or may contain the germ, of some substantial improvement; whilst at other times, he scourges them without pity or compunction, as a species of moral pestilence. He seems not to have been able, at all moments, to defend himself from the vertige which possesses the personages of whom he is writing; like a certain historian of witchcraft, whom we have somewhere read of, who had so industriously studied his subject that a faith in the black art imperceptibly gained upon him. The narrative goes on to say, that the unfortunate historian of witchcraft attempted to practise the knowledge he had obtained, and was burned for a wizard. But there the analogy will certainly fail. M. Reybaud soon recovers from the visionary mood, and wakes himself thoroughly by inflicting the lash with renewed vigour upon all the other dreamers around him.
This shadow of inconsistency is still more perceptible when speaking of the lives and characters of his socialists. Sometimes the reader receives the impression that an egregious vanity, an eccentric ambition, and perhaps a little touch of monomania, would complete the picture, and sufficiently explain that conduct, of a hero of socialism. At another time his enthusiasts assume a more imposing aspect. St Simon sacrificing his fortune, abjuring the patronage of the court, dying in extreme poverty – Charles Fourier refusing all entrance into commerce that would implicate him with a vicious system, and pursuing to the end, amidst want and ridicule, the labours of social regeneration – our own Robert Owen quitting ease and fortune, and crossing the Atlantic for the New World, there to try, upon a virgin soil, his bold experiment of a new society; – these men rise before us endowed with a certain courage and devotion which ought to command our admiration. We see them in the light of martyrs to a faith which no one shares with them – sacrificing all, enduring all, for a hope which is of this world, for schemes which they will never see realized, for a heaven which they may prophesy, but which they cannot enter; manifesting, in short, the same obstinacy of idea, and the same renouncement of self, which distinguish the founders of new religions. And indeed we are not disposed to deny, that in their character they may bear a comparison, in many points, with religious impostors. There is this striking difference, however, in the effect of their teaching: the religious impostor has often promised a paradise of merely voluptuous enjoyment, but he has promised it as the reward of certain self-denying virtues to be practised here on earth; whilst the socialist insists upon bringing his sensual ill-ordered paradise, wherein all virtue is dispensed with as superfluous, here, at once, upon this earth we have to live and toil in.
The first volume of the work contains an account of the life and writings of St Simon, Fourier, and Owen. The second is very miscellaneous. We encounter, to our surprise, the name of Jeremy Bentham in the category of socialists, and are still more startled to learn that the Utilitarians derive their origin from Robert Owen! It is a jumble of all sects, religious and political, in which even our Quakers are included in the list of social reformers – our excellent Friends, who assuredly have no wish whatever to disturb the world, but seek merely to live in it as it is, with the additional advantage of being themselves particularly quiet and comfortable. But we are so accustomed to the haste of negligence of the majority of French writers whenever they leave their own soil, (unless the literature or concerns of a foreign country be their special subject,) that we are not disposed to pass any very severe censure on M. Reybaud; and still less should we do him the injustice to prejudge his qualifications as an historian of his own countrymen, by the measure of accuracy he may display in that part of his work which relates to England. It is a part of his work which we have but slightly perused; our attention has been confined to the socialists of France.
Amongst these founders of society, and constructors of Mahometan paradises, Fourier is, we believe, the least known in this country. Some brief account of him will, we think, be acceptable; more especially as some of his ideas, leaving the narrow circle of his disciples, have found partisans amongst men who, in other respects, have a reputation for sobriety of thought. Our readers need not fear that we shall overwhelm them with all the institutions, plans, projects, arrangements – the complete cosmogony, in short, of this most laborious of the tribe. A very little of such matter is quite enough. One may say with truth that it is such stuff,
"Whereof a little more than a little
Is by much too much."
Nothing is more charming to the imagination than the first general idea of some new community, where all men are to be happy, every body active, benevolent, reasonable. But the moment we leave this general idea, enter upon particulars, and set about the arrangements necessary for this universally comfortable state of things, there is nothing in the world more tedious and oppressive. Proposals for new political institutions are sufficiently wearisome; but proposals for earthly elysiums, which are to embrace the whole circle of human affairs, become insupportably dull. It is child's play, played with heavy granite boulders. No; if we were capable of being seduced for a moment into the belief of some golden age of equality, where a parental government, presiding over all, should secure the peace and prosperity of all, we should need no other argument to recover us from the delusion than simply to read on, and learn how this parental government intends to accomplish its purpose. When we find that, in order to be relieved from domestic cares, we are to have no home at all; that our parental government, in order to provide for our children, begins by taking them away from us; when we picture to ourselves the sort of wooden melancholy figures we must become, (something like the large painted dolls in a Dutch garden, stuck here and there without choice or locomotion of their own,) we speedily lose all inclination to enter upon this discipline of happiness. We quit with haste this enchanted garden, which turns out to be an enormous piece of clockwork, and embrace with renewed content the old state of personal freedom, albeit attended with many personal inconveniences. Whilst reading of Utopian schemes, the idea has very vividly occurred to us: suppose that some such society as this, where land and wives, money and children, are all in common, had been for a long time in existence, and that some clever Utopian had caught an inkling of the old system so familiar to us, and had made the discovery that it would be possible, without dissolving society, to have a wife of one's own, a house of one's own, land and children of one's own. Imagine, after an age of drowsy clockwork existence, one of these philosophers starting the idea of a free society, of a social organization based upon individual rights and individual effort – where property should not only be possessed, but really enjoyed– where men should for the first time stretch their limbs, and strain their faculties, and strive, and emulate, and endure, and encounter difficulties, and have friendships. What a commotion there would be! How would the younger sort, rebelling against the old rotten machine in which they had been incarcerated, form themselves into emigrating bands, and start forth to try upon some new soil their great experiment of a free life! How would they welcome toil in all its severity – how willingly practise abstinence, and suffer privation, for the sake of the bold rights which these would purchase! – how willingly take upon themselves the responsibility of their own fate to enjoy a fortune of their own shaping! Hope herself would start from the earth where she had been so long buried, and waving her rekindled torch, would lead on to the old race of life!
Charles Fourier was the son of a woollen-draper at Besançon. Two circumstances in his early history appear to have made a strong impression upon him. When he was a child, he contradicted, in his father's shop, some customary falsehood of the trade, and with great simplicity revealed the truth; for this he was severely reprimanded. Afterwards, when he was of the age of nineteen, and a clerk in a merchant's house at Marseilles, he was present at a voluntary submersion of grain, made in order to raise the price in the market. These circumstances, he used to say, opened his eyes to the nature of human relations. Falsehood and selfishness, systematic falsehood and selfishness without a shadow of scruple, were at the basis of all our commercial dealings. It was time, he thought, that a new order of things should arise, founded upon veracity and a harmony of interests.
For himself, his part was taken. He became the man of one idea. "We might rather say of him," writes M. Reybaud, "that he traversed the world, than that he lived in it." He refused to enter into any commercial dealings that might implicate him in the existing system, and warp his feelings in favour of it; and exercised to the last, for a bare subsistence, the mere mechanical employment of a copying clerk. He never understood the art of making for himself two separate existences: one in the domain of fiction or of thought; the other in the land of reality. He passed all that might be called his life in the ideal world of his own creating.
According to Fourier, there is but one deep and all-pervading cause of the miseries of man: it is, that he does not comprehend the ways of God, or, in other words, the laws of his own being. If humanity does not work well, and with the same harmony that the planetary system exhibits, it is because he is determined to impress upon it other movements than those the Creator designed. Between the creature and the Creator there has been, as he expresses it, a misunderstanding for these five thousand years past.
The great error, it seems, that has been committed, is the supposing that there are any passions of man which require to be restrained. God has made nothing ill – nothing useless. You have but to let these passions quite loose, and it will be found that they move in a beautiful harmony of their own. These attractions– such is his favourite word – are as admirably adjusted as those which rule over the course of the planets. Duty, he says, is human – it varies from epoch to epoch, from people to people. Attraction– that is to say, passion – is divine; and is the same amongst all people, civilized and savage, and in all ages, ancient and modern. At present the passions are compressed, and therefore act unhappily; in future, they shall be free, satisfied, and shall act according to the law they have received from God. To yield to their impulse is the only wisdom; to remove whatever obstacles society has placed in the way of their free exercise, is the great task of the reformer.