(115) I pursue this argument no further; but, lastly, make an appeal to the senses, which, indeed, must finally decide all questions, however abstruse they may be in their principles, however elaborate in their details. Lastly, therefore, I point to the actual condition and existence of animated beings, in full proof that their numbers and food are balanced. Nothing below the sun can be more evident, than that if the former overbalance the latter, misery, co-extensive with the evil I am denying to exist, that is,-universal and unceasing,-must be the result. Nothing can be clearer than that animal happiness is totally irreconcileable with an insufficiency of food. In this proof, at length, we are in broad day-light, if I may so express myself; the eye of the deepest philosopher, however assisted, may have been inadequate to discover, in a sufficient number of cases, that precise and necessary connexion throughout the various parts of animated Nature, for which we have been contending; the profoundest reasoner may fail in arranging the facts which may be apparent, and making the necessary deductions from them, so as to be universally successful in the high and interesting argument we have been pursuing; but the eye of the simplest rustic is fully capable of discerning those results, which must for ever decide this question;-results, neither doubtful nor disputatious, which cannot be overlooked, nor by possibility be mistaken. The senses instantly apprehend them, and transmit their import at once to the understanding and to the heart.

(116) If there is the alleged tendency in all animated life to increase beyond the "nourishment provided for it;" if Nature has scattered existence with profusion, but has been sparing in its sustentation; then must there be universal misery through every tribe of those irrational beings, to which I am now exclusively alluding. I appeal to human experience, if this be the case. To advert to that part of animated Nature, of which man takes little or no heed, and which is generally removed beyond the limits of his interference: I ask, are they seen multiplying around us in unsustainable numbers? After having represented Nature as an arena of universal carnage, where her offspring are

Never ending, still beginning,
Fighting still and still destroying

are these warring germs of existence, though still feeding upon each other, starving? Does Nature, I ask, exhibit these scenes of unceasing strife and confusion, where slaughter is the sole and evident business of life; to which want and famine are to be superadded, to rectify the constant tendency to redundancy? Do the insects sport awhile in the air, and, before their natural date of being, drop by exhausted myriads, and strew the ground with expiring animation? Do the birds pour their faltering and unfinished songs, and, adorned with the mockery of beauty and gaiety, drop from the branches, and flutter, and die at our feet? Do the fishes, increasing so as to spread the devastation through the other element, become torpid and expire by millions, till the pure medium to which they appertain is polluted with their floating carcasses? Or, if these queries be dismissed through the door of absurdity, by saying that the constant tendency of all these tribes of beings to have too little food, is accompanied by a constant tendency to an excess of it; which is precisely the argument founded on mutual destruction, as the case is put by those who maintain the superfecundity of all animated nature; to stop at once this loop-hole of retreat, let us ask whether those animals, on which none others prey, are, in their native haunts, seen in this constant state of inanition and death, which would be the inevitable consequence of their increasing beyond the balance of their food. Is the eagle of the north seen thus pining away; with that eye which lit its fires at the meridian blaze faded; with those pinions with which he once scaled the heavens, drooping; and the mighty talons with which he was wont to strike and destroy, powerless and relaxed;-dying for want of food? Or is the majestic monarch of the animal creation, the lion, found in his native seats, thus subdued and quailed by want, till, weak and cowardly, he becomes the ready prey of every careless obtruder: or otherwise has he to raven on his species in default of other food, till his haunts are strewed with the carcasses of his own kind? I repeat the question, is the scene of Nature one of general suffering, agony, and death? No :-such a condition, as it respects the universal number of existences, is as a single exception to the vast plurality of cases; as it regards that single exception, the moment of actual suffering is probably short, in comparison with the allotted term of enjoyment; nor

can even that individual instance be traced to an insufficiency in the general provision of Nature for all animated beings.

(117) Turn we then from the view of this phantasma, formed by distorted principles and distempered feelings, to the contemplation of Nature, in the sober lights of philosophy and truth. Let her secluded haunts be open to the inspection, I care not of whom, so that he have an eye to see, and a heart to feel, the happiness of her animated progeny. Without sending such a one with Humboldt to the southern regions, swarming with universal animation; or with Acerbi to the north, which, notwithstanding our notions of it as a dreary solitude, is probably, both on earth and ocean, at least as luxuriant of life, let him penetrate into the wilder scenery with which this country even yet abounds, or lose himself in the seclusion of some of those afforested demesnes which still exhibit Nature in her loveliest, because most unconstrained, attitudes, and which recall to our ideas that paradise which the poet of England has taught imagination to restore. There, on the wane of some summer's day, and before the animal tribes have retired to their timely repose, let him lay himself down upon "the sloping cowslip-covered bank," and, shaded by a canopy of flowering and luxuriant foliage, look and listen. He will find, according to a celebrated observer of nature, all the animal tribes, down to the insects, wallowing in luxury; or, as Paley says of them, “so happy as not to know what to do with themselves." Close to his eye, to which the clearness of the air and the nearness of the ob jects give a sort of microscopic acuteness, he sees innumerable insects, many of which, if he is not a practised entomologist, are minute and brilliant strangers; and if he is, are constantly putting his knowledge to a severe test; all full of life and enjoyment, leaping about with incredible agility, climbing up the spiry grass, or disporting on the flowers with which it is embroidered: amongst these the bee is plying its busy harvest, and filling up every interval of labour with its song; a conspicuous example, perhaps, of the happy business of every inferior wing. If he chance to look to the roots of his verdant pillow, still he sees nature swarming with animation; innumerable terrene insects strike his notice, many of them, perhaps, resting during the sultry hours, but whose labours he would have witnessed had he been there at the dewy dawn instead of the close of the day,

in innumerable shining threads suspended from every point of grass, and investing the whole surface of the meads with a film of inconceivable fineness and lustre. Whichever way he looks, there is not a plant or a flower without its appropriate population. Further from him he sees throngs still more innumerable,

Which flutter joyous in the solar beam,

And fill the air, or float the dimpling stream,

all expressing, as far as motion and appearance without language can express it, the utmost measure of enjoyment. Nor are even sounds wanting to signify the reign of universal plea

sure.

Far more unequivocal than the busy noise arising from the crowded haunts of human beings, is that continuous murmur of unnumbered wings, and the ceaseless hum, with which their universal occupation is plied, which soothes and falls upon the ear in one continued and unbroken unison, save when the exulting songs of the painted birds, responding in innocent rivalry, add melody to this pleasing and perpetual note of harmonious nature. In the shallows of the clear stream which flows babbling at his foot, he sees multitudes of existences which flit along like living shadows full of activity and pleasure: while dimpling its surface, or gathering in clouds above it, another order of beings, that of insects of different tribes and various degrees of brilliancy, are disporting; forming a world of their own, replete with equal plenty and joyousness. The wild animals meantime occasionally scud past him, intent upon their pastime, from which his intrusion on their haunts startles them; some of the nobler ones, whose stately forms excite his admiration, gaze at him at a distance, and pass on. Through an opening vista of the wooded solitude, he sees a whole herd of these moving as by one impulse; every motion as buoyant as though they were almost aërial. And far beyond the bounds of the surrounding domain, a still more magnificent prospect spreads before him. The surface of the earth, to the distant horizon, is tesselated with enclosures, and glows with manycoloured crops. Here the pastures are clothed with flocks; there the valleys are covered over with corn: the little hills rejoice on every side; they shout for joy, they also sing! Human habitations are sprinkled over the prospect, like gems on the mantle of Nature; and here and there they cluster into a

VOL. II.

2 Y

town; while the temples of Divine worship, "which point with taper spire to heaven," are seen rising as far as the eye can stretch, and crown the happy prospect with the proof, that mankind are neither insensate, nor ungrateful; that they know who it is that "gives them rain and fruitful seasons, filling their hearts with food and gladness." He gazes till the tints of day fade, and the glorious prospect recedes from his sight. The busy tribes of life are hushed in repose, one solitary and unrivalled songster only keeps up the vigil in the temple of Nature, but in what strains does she "charm the listening shades, and teach the night His praise!" He looks up and beholds the eternal stars successively rekindling their fires, and resuming their courses; and the moon walking forth in her brightness. All the near and transitory scenes of Nature thus cut off, the soul calls home its scattered thoughts, and centres them in loftier meditations concerning that mysterious Being, whose works it had just been contemplating, and who now appears more intimately and awfully present. He rises, and retires to his wonted place: in a frame of solemn devotion which recognizes the Deity alone, and him only in his one sacred attribute of unbounded and everlasting goodness.

(118) Such are the feelings which the undisturbed contemplation of Nature has ever inspired. Hence was it that those strains were poured forth by one of the earliest and sublimest of the poets, probably composed in the recesses of Nature, during many a solemn night; when he was feeding his sheep in the wilderness. Most of his divine odes make these perpetual appeals to the surrounding works of creation which I have been attempting: Linnæus, in the little tract I have in my hand, which is one of the earliest of his efforts in that immortal field which he afterwards made his own, commences with a quotation from one of these, with which I shall conclude:

O JEHOVAH,

QUAM AMPLA SUNT OPERA TUA!

QUAM EA OMNIA SAPIENTER FECISTI!

QUAM PLENA EST TERRA POSSESSIONE TUA!

END OF THE SECOND VOLUME,