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 Ex Libris 
 C. K. OGliEN 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 / 
 
 W A SJ E : 
 
 A 
 
 LE CTURE 
 
 DELIVEEED AT THE 
 
 BRISTOL INSTITUTION 
 
 FOB 
 
 THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE, LITERATURE 
 V AND THE ARTS, 
 
 ON 
 
 TUESDAY, Februaby the 10th, 1863, 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS, M.D, F.RS.,Ed. 
 
 FELLOW OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS, 
 CONSULTING PHYSICIAN TO THE BRISTOL GENERAL HOSPITAL, ETC., ETC, 
 
 LONDON: 
 BELL AND DALDY, 186, FLEET STREET, 
 
 1863.
 
 PRINTED BY ISAAC ARROWSMITH, QUAY STREET, BRISTOL.
 
 BIT 
 
 TO 
 
 The Rev. BENJAMIN JOWETT, M.A., 
 
 RKGIUS PROFESSOR OF GREEK 
 
 IN THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, 
 
 THIS LECTURE IS INSCRIBED, IN TOKEN OF 
 
 ADMIRATION, ESTEEM, AND 
 
 ATTACHMENT.
 
 

 
 SYLLABUS 
 
 Waste of solid substance of the Earth — surface of moun- 
 tains — coasts — rocks, — from sea-waves — rainfalls, &c. — pp. 1 — 10. 
 
 Waste of Vegetable Life — struggle for existence — depredations 
 of animals — accidents. — pp. 10 — 12. 
 
 Waste of Animal Life — by hutdkn agency — waste in geologic 
 periods. — pp. 12 — 15. 
 
 Waste of Human Life — by natural agents — pestilence and 
 war — destruction of aboriginal races — waste of human capabili- 
 ties.— pp. 15—22. 
 
 Waste of the Works of Man — cities — libraries — literature, 
 —pp. 22—28. 
 
 Questions and Reflections, —pp. 29 — 36. 
 
 Compensations. — pp. 36 — 48. 
 
 Waste viewed as transmutation. — pp. 48 — 51.
 
 LECTURE ON WASTE. 
 
 It would not be in accordance with your feel- 
 ings or my own, were I to commence the 
 business of this evening without making reference 
 to the great loss which this Institution has so 
 recently sustained in the death of our venerated 
 President, the Marquis of Lansdowne. That 
 event has cast a shade over far wider spheres 
 than this. The gloom has been felt in the 
 Senate, and in her Majesty's Council, and it has 
 spread over the whole nation; but it is not 
 wonderful that the loss should be specially felt 
 in an Institution which has for so many years 
 derived honour and encouragement from the 
 prestige of that illustrious name. I am not so 
 presumptuous as to think of attempting to ])yo- 
 nounce Lord Lansdowne's eulogy, though I
 
 might be prompted to say something from the 
 fact that I had the privilege of enjoying his 
 Lordship's acquaintance ; for with that largeness 
 of heart, which was one of his prominent charac- 
 teristics, he extended his friendship from the very 
 highest in the land to the most humble. Many 
 worthy tributes have been already offered to his 
 memory, and there are more to come. Many 
 eloquent voices, many brilliant pens will be ready 
 to set forth and record what Henry, Marquis 
 OF Lansdowne was as a public man, as one of 
 the leaders of a great political party, as a Senator, 
 a Councillor, a Minister of State ; — but it is not 
 fitting that in an Institution devoted to science, 
 literature, and art, silence should be altogether 
 kept, when science, literature, and art have lost 
 one of their most enlightened cultivators, one of 
 their most munificent patrons, one of their most 
 ardent friends. We in this Institution, in par- 
 ticular, must lament his death, but we must also 
 feel thankful that he was so long spared to us. 
 Lord Lansdowne was elected President in the 
 year 1836, so that our Institution had the benefit 
 of his protection and patronage for nearly thirty 
 years.
 
 I need not say more — to say more would be 
 ill-timed and impertinent — but I could not well 
 say less ; and I proceed, therefore, to the Lecture, 
 the subject of which, and I trust the tone of it 
 also, will not be altogether out of harmony with 
 the thoughts and feelings which must arise in 
 our minds, when we consider how much of highest 
 talent and culture, how much experienced states- 
 manship, how much knowledge and wisdom, how 
 much taste and refinement, how much worth, 
 nobleness, and goodness, have been lost to the 
 world — how much happiness and enjoyment to a 
 vast circle of admiring and loving friends — how 
 much honour and countenance to ourselves — by 
 that event to which I have thus made so slight 
 and inadequate an allusion. 
 
 To THE student of Einal Causes there are no 
 facts in nature that on a first view present more 
 difiiculties than those which belong to decay and 
 destruction. Fertile lands in a very few hours 
 overspread by a desolating inroad of the sea, on 
 the retreat of which, if ever it does withdraw, 
 there is left for a time a sandy, stony desert ;
 
 4 
 
 plants of exquisite organisation springing above 
 the soil and dying undeveloped ; forests and prairies 
 consumed by fire ; myriads of animals, multitudes 
 of buman beings perishing in full life and strength : 
 these and many like facts are at first sight startling. 
 The mighty, ever- teeming mother Earth — is she 
 thwarted by some malignant power in her schemes 
 of beneficence ? or, by some blind law of produc- 
 tiveness, does she go on for ever throwing off her 
 wonderful progeny, careless, Avhen they have left 
 her bosom, whether they live or die, or what ulti- 
 mate destiny awaits them ? 
 
 But we will not now ask questions. Let us 
 survey in detail a few of the phenomena of waste, 
 and either when they are under our eyes, or when 
 we are recalling them, some obvious enquiries will 
 suggest themselves. 
 
 Among the fragile forms of the animated world 
 around us, one is so used to the sight of destruc- 
 tion, that the questions alluded to are almost less 
 likely to arise than when, by some accidental cir- 
 cumstance, we become aware of decay among ob- 
 jects which had seemed to be fixed and enduring. 
 I shall not easily forget the impression made upon 
 me one day, when I stood for the first time in a
 
 scene of savage g'randeur, which is, I dare say, well 
 known to many of this audience — the upper re- 
 gion of the Mer de Glace. It was the early morn- 
 ing ; some golden light had just begun to shoot 
 into the deep indigo of the sky above the moun- 
 tains in the east; and while I was endeavouring 
 to grasp the more salient points of that wonder- 
 ful scene, fearing lest some essential element of 
 its sublimity might be overlooked, my atten- 
 tion was caught by sounds of crashing, unlike 
 the solemn peals with which distant avalanches 
 announce their descent, and I asked the guide 
 what was the cause of those sounds. He told 
 me, with the indifference of a person to whom 
 that which I enquired about was a matter of daily 
 routine, that it was only the breaking and fall- 
 ing down of masses of rock in the mountains. 
 And there, assuredly, as I looked up towards the 
 rugged peak of the Charmoz, and observed atten- 
 tively the different slopes, I could see masses of 
 stone continually tumbling down; — small enough 
 in the distance, but quite discernible ; — and every 
 few seconds or so, the sound was repeated. Now 
 the obvious thought that arose was, — if those 
 sounds, or, rather, the causes of them, were always
 
 6 
 
 going on, was not that mountain falling away 
 piecemeal, and destined to leave its giant limbs 
 in tlie valleys, which would, in time, be no 
 longer valleys, but plains? The peaks and the 
 ridges looked so broken and jagged and splintery 
 against the sky, that, with that sound constantly 
 in one's ears, it was di£B.cult to avoid expecting 
 that they might snap off before our eyes ; — for- 
 getful for a moment of the vast dimensions of 
 what looked like needles and sword-blades. I 
 know not whether those peaks and ridges have 
 really had any of their lines and angles altered 
 since they were first accurately observed; but we 
 may be certain that, whether their chief features 
 have changed or not within the records of human 
 generations, those everlasting hills are everlasting 
 only to the bodily eye of man, that cannot see 
 changes on so large a scale, and that they are 
 surely wasting and crumbling to decay. 
 
 But any one who has observed the moraine of a 
 glacier might interpose, — Surely it is not necessary 
 to strain the eyes to the mountains themselves, 
 Avhen, immediately at their feet, proofs of de- 
 struction or disintegration are visible in blocks of 
 granite, some of immense size, either still rest-
 
 ing on the ice, or left on the sides of the ice- 
 river along' which the glacier once descended, but 
 from which it has of late years withdrawn, — leav- 
 ing, however, these proofs of its gigantic poAvers 
 both of support and of conveyance. 
 
 Striking as is this work of demolition in stu- 
 pendous masses of the earth's substance, there is 
 not less sure a work of destruction effected, 
 though in a somewhat less imposing way, by 
 rivers that are perpetually wearing down the 
 surfaces which they traverse, and carrying the 
 results of their attrition to the plains below. 
 Rain-falls even have their effects, and sometimes 
 on a large scale, as when by sudden condensa- 
 tion of great masses of vapour the mountain tor- 
 rents are enormously swollen. Such rocks as the 
 stratified horizontal sandstone may in this man- 
 ner be reduced to sand and gravel by the flooded 
 streams. Sir. C. Lyell, describing the action of 
 such rain-falls on the south face of the Khasia, 
 or Garrow Mountains in Eastern Bengal, says 
 " so great is the superficial waste or denudation, 
 that what would otherwise be a rich and luxuri- 
 antly wooded region is converted into a wild and 
 barren moorland."
 
 8 
 
 Mr. Jukes, in an opening address before the 
 Geological Section of the British Association at 
 Cambridge (1862), when speaking of the wearing- 
 down force exerted by rains, gave as an instance 
 the loss of altitude sustained by the great lime- 
 stone range of the south of Ireland, a loss com- 
 puted to be as much as from 300 to 400 feet. 
 
 The waste of land in landslips is too well known 
 for us to dwell upon it, as well as the corroding 
 effect of the sea on shores. In certain situations 
 on the eastern and southern coasts of our own 
 island, the signs of such destruction are but too 
 obvious. When the shores consist of brittle, 
 crumbling substances, as in the tertiary strata, 
 such effects do not surprise one. But the harder 
 and more resi stent rocks are not safe from the de- 
 vastations of the ocean. On the northern coasts 
 of Great Britain may be seen some very striking 
 remains of rocks that would a 'priori have seemed 
 invulnerable. Granite, gneiss, mica-slate, serpen- 
 tine, greenstone, porphyry, stand in broken masses, 
 with rent and angular forms, that attest in a wild 
 picturesque manner the terrible battering to which 
 they have been subjected by the violence of 
 the Atlantic Avaves urged on by westerly gales.
 
 In some parts the inroads of the sea are made 
 comparatively easy by the decomposition of soft 
 granite. When the waves have once had access 
 by such means, they are not slow to improve 
 their opportunity, and they widen the breach by 
 rude mechanical force. But even without this 
 preliminary sapping, the sea will battle against 
 a rampart of porphyry, "with all the force of 
 great artillery," says Dr. Hibbeet, till it has 
 forced an entrance.* 
 
 The wasting power of water is exhibited in 
 one part of Europe in forms most strange and 
 fantastic. In Saxon Switzerland, as it is called, 
 or rather miscalled, you look down from a 
 wooded height into a valley filled with rocks, 
 which, to the dullest imagination, call up the 
 images of castles, pillars, obelisks, broken colon- 
 nades, rude sculptured tombs, and every species 
 of ruin or rough- hewn work in stone that the 
 eye may have ever seen. These singular forms 
 are the remnants of basaltic rocks, which have 
 in geologic periods been rudely dealt with by 
 waters, eaten into, worn down, battered and 
 broken. 
 
 * See Lyell's " Elements of Geology," ji. 300.
 
 10 
 
 The desolations from igneous forces, whether 
 let loose on the surface of the earth from the 
 fiery months of volcanoes, or pent up in the 
 interior, and made manifest in earthquakes, belong 
 to the veriest commonplace of devastation, and 
 need only this passing allusion. 
 
 The waste of organic forms and of their life 
 is exemplified in that group of phenomena, which 
 Mr. Darwin has so well described as resulting 
 from the struggle for existence. " We behold the 
 face of nature," he says, "bright with gladness, 
 and we often see superabundance of food; we 
 do not see, or we forget, that the birds which 
 are idly singing round us mostly live on insects 
 or seeds, and are thus constantly destroying life; 
 or we forget how largely these songsters, or their 
 eggs, or their nestlings, are destroyed by birds 
 and beasts of prey." He tells us how seedlings 
 are destroved in vast numbers by various enemies ; 
 for once on a small piece of ground he found 
 that out of 357 seedlings no less than 295 were 
 destroyed. The more vigorous plants destroy the 
 Aveaker ones, even when fully grown ; " thus out 
 of tAventy species growing on a little plot of turf
 
 11 
 
 (three feet by four), nine perished from the other 
 species being allowed to grow up freely." 
 
 Destruction on a large scale is effected by pre- 
 datory animals. It has been calculated that 
 were sportsmen to remain idle for a season there 
 would be no increase of game, unless the game- 
 keepers were constantly on the watch to destroy 
 vermin. Inclemencies of season work great havoc ; 
 sometimes directly, by cutting ofP a supply of 
 food, but still more so indirectlv, bv increas- 
 ing the com23etition with other species. How 
 vegetable growths may be kept down and seem 
 to disappear under the destruction of animals, 
 is strikingly shown by the effects of enclosure. 
 I remember noticing many years ago in the 
 Highlands of Scotland, at Pitlochry, near the pass 
 of Killicrankie, that though the profusion of 
 birch trees in some situations indicated that they 
 were indigenous, yet the partiality of their dis- 
 tribution seemed opj^osed to the idea, for they 
 were wanting on large tracts that appeared to 
 present the same soil, the same substrata, and 
 the same qualities of atmosphere. It was 
 explained to me by my friend Professor Porbes 
 that the differences dej)ended on enclosure, and
 
 12 
 
 that it would be only necessary to fence in a piece 
 of ground so as to prevent the access of cattle, 
 and birches would shew themselves in abundance. 
 When Mr. Darwin's book came into my hands, 
 I was interested in finding that this naturalist 
 had made a like observation as to fir trees.* 
 
 Very extensive destruction is sometimes brought 
 on the vegetable world by accidents, or by the 
 carelessness of man. Thus, one has read of grass- 
 land on fire over miles of plain, and of vast 
 forests laid waste in the same manner ; the com- 
 bustion having arisen from neglect in extinguish- 
 ing a fire that had been used by some wandering 
 tribe or party of travellers. 
 
 Animals are extinguished on a large scale by 
 human agency. " That the extinction of many 
 of the existing races of animals must soon take 
 place," says Dr. Mantell, "from the immense 
 destruction occasioned by man, cannot admit of 
 doubt. In those which supply fur, a remarkable 
 proof of this inference is cited in a late number 
 of ' The American Journal of Science.' Imme- 
 diately after South Georgia was explored by 
 Captain Cook, in 1771, the Americans commenced 
 
 =;< " Origin of Species," p. 71.
 
 13 
 
 carrying seal skins from thence to China, where 
 they obtained most exorbitant prices. One million 
 tivo hundred thousand skins have been taken 
 from that island alone since that period ; and 
 nearly an equal number from the Island of 
 Desolation ! The number of the fur seals killed 
 in the South Shetland Isles (s. lat. 63°,) in 1821 
 and 1822, amounted to three hundred and twenty 
 thousand. This valuable animal is now almost 
 extinct iu all these islands. From the most 
 authentic statements it appears certain that the 
 fur trade must henceforward decline, since the 
 advanced state of Geographical Science shows 
 that no new countries remain to be explored. 
 In North America the animals are slowly decreas- 
 ing, from the persevering efforts and the indis- 
 criminate slaughter practised by the hunters, 
 and by the appropriation to the use of man of 
 those forests and rivers which have once afforded 
 
 them food and protection."* 
 
 Bat all instances of destruction of vegetable and 
 
 animal life on the present surface of the earth 
 are as nothing, compared with the evidences pre- 
 sented in older strata. It would be incrcdi- 
 
 * Dr. Mantell's " Wotiders of Ceology," vol. i., p. 104.
 
 14 
 
 ble, had we not unequivocal proof given to the 
 senses, that there had been such extensive de- 
 struction of vegetable forms as the coal measures 
 reveal : the coal itself being, as you know, the 
 product of the decomposition of coniferous plants. 
 As to animal life, it is enough to think of the ex- 
 tensive coral reefs and islands built up by animals ; 
 and of mountains nearly composed of the debris 
 of animals, as in the oolite which runs through a 
 great part of Europe, and of the enormous col- 
 lection of encrinitic remains in the mountain- 
 limestone. 
 
 And almost everywhere we find the debris of 
 living forms scattered, or densely packed in their 
 stony beds, to a degree that makes the earth 
 seem a great collection of catacombs — a vast 
 necropolis. It is by a strong effort of the 
 imagination that we conceive those strata to 
 have been once scenes of beauty and verdure 
 and luxuriance, shadowed by stately palms, and 
 populous with animal tribes ; and it is rather 
 a painful effort to reflect on the ruin and 
 desolation and destruction that overtook crea- 
 tures into which God had breathed the breath 
 of life, however little else there may have been
 
 15 
 
 in these beings to excite our sympathy. In our 
 own experience we see only the destruction of 
 individuals, however numerous, the species still 
 remaining ; but the palaeontologist discovers that 
 in the worlds under his survey Nature was scarcely 
 more conservative of species than of individuals. 
 
 So careful of the type ! but no, 
 
 From scarped cliff and quarried stone 
 She cries — " A thousand types are gone ! 
 
 I care for nothing ; all shall go." 
 
 And hoAV has man been wasted ! I will not 
 liere say how he has been wasted by himself, — 
 by his own folly and wdckedness ; nor how he has 
 been wasted by his fellow-man,^ by greed and 
 recklessness and oppression and cruelty. But 
 he has seemed to be wasted by the elements, — 
 by agencies over which human will and human 
 thought could have no control : starved by the 
 failure of crops, poisoned in marshes and jungles, 
 swept away by floods, swallowed up by earth- 
 quakes, consumed by the lava, or choked and 
 buried in the ashes of volcanoes, drowned in angry 
 or perfidious seas, and, above all, smitten by 
 those unseen angels of death whose wings are 
 spread on mysterious pestilences.
 
 16 
 
 As to the scale on which human beings have 
 perished from the last-named cause, we may in- 
 stance the devastation of the Black Plague, in 
 the fourteenth century. Here are one or two 
 items taken from Hecker's "Epidemics of the 
 Middle Ages," p. 23 :— 
 
 In Florence died of the Black Plague 
 " Venice ... 
 
 " Marseilles, in one month 
 " Sienna ... 
 " Paris 
 
 " St. Denys 
 
 " Avignon 
 
 " Strasburg 
 
 " Lilbeck ... 
 
 " Basle 
 
 " Erfurt, at least... 
 
 " Weimar 
 
 " Limburg 
 
 60,000 
 
 100,000 
 
 16,000 
 
 70,000 
 
 50,000 
 
 14,000 
 
 60,000 
 
 16,000 
 
 9,000 
 
 14,000 
 
 16,000 
 
 5,000 
 
 2,500 
 
 100,000 
 
 51,100 
 
 " London, at least 
 
 " Norwich 
 
 To -which may be added — 
 Franciscan Friars in Germany .. ... 124,434 
 Minorites in Italy 30,000 
 
 In many places in France not more than two out of twenty 
 
 of the inhabitants were left alive, and the capital felt the fury 
 
 of the plague alike in the palace and the cot. 
 
 * * .jf * * « ***** * 
 
 The churchyards were soon unable to contain the dead, and 
 many houses left without inhabitants fell to ruins. In Avig-
 
 17 
 
 non, the Pope found it necessary to conseci-ate the Rhone, tliat 
 bodies might be thrown into the river without delay, as the 
 churchyards would no longer hold them ; so, likewise, in all 
 populous cities, extraordinaiy measures were adopted, in order 
 speedily to dispose of the dead. In Vienna, where for some 
 time 1200 inhabitants died daily, the interment of corpses in 
 the churchyards and within the churches, was forthwith pro- 
 hibited, and the dead were then arranged iu layers, by thousands, 
 in six large pits outside the city, as had already been done in 
 Cairo and Paris. — Ibid., p. 25, 
 
 I liave said that I would not speak of that de- 
 struction of man which has come from the will 
 of man ; — else what waste might appear before us 
 in the carnage of battles, the slaughter of storm 
 and sack, wholesale murders by wicked kings, 
 wholesale butcheries by savage mobs, and the tor- 
 turing deaths instigated by fanatical and malig- 
 nant priests. But one cannot wholly exclude 
 wars from the category of those desolations which 
 fall upon man against his will, when one thinks 
 by how few minds and hands some of the most 
 devastating wars have been directed. 
 
 When 60,000 soldiers lay stretched on the frozen 
 plain of Eylau, and nearly a like number under a 
 scorching sun on the field of Wagram, it cannot 
 be said that, though struck down in war, they 
 were the victims of their own violent passions. 
 
 c
 
 18 
 
 They lay there stiff in death, or writhing in 
 anguish, because the ambition of one man willed 
 it ; — the heart of one man was reckless of the 
 amount of suffering and misery and death, at 
 which he purchased his ends, provided only he 
 did attain them. Had a plague swept over the 
 Palatinate, the people could not have been less 
 the authors of their own calamities than they 
 were, when the savage soldiers of Duras obeyed 
 the orders issued from the salons of Versailles, 
 with the consent of that bigoted voluptuary who 
 boasted of his descent from St. Louis. And, indeed, 
 in almost all wars but those of a purely defen- 
 sive kind (and this exception applies to one side 
 only) we must put the destruction of human life 
 under the head of Waste ; and I know not what 
 other term will do so well for the heaps of skele- 
 tons which in our own time have encumbered 
 the Khyber Pass, or which are strewn round the 
 walls of Sebastopol, and still more for the corpses 
 now rotting on the plains of Virginia. 
 
 Let us think, too, of the disappearance of 
 whole races of mankind ; and what havoc must 
 have been made by the inroads of stronger 
 races trampling down the weak, — driving them
 
 19 
 
 from their hunting fiekls, planting tliem out 
 from their pastures, exterminating them by the 
 cruelties, the diseases, the vices of civilised 
 nations ; — worse still, some of these civilised 
 nations (for example, the Spaniards in America,) 
 smiting them down with the cross, in practical 
 blasphemy of that symbol of love and pity. 
 Even in our own milder times, there has been 
 enough of extermination to make philanthropists 
 set on foot a society, for the protection of 
 aboriginal races. 
 
 These are some instances of one kind of waste 
 of human life : but there is another view which 
 indicates enormous waste, simply in the unde- 
 veloped potentiality of man. If we look over 
 the map of the world, and consider how long it 
 has been peopled, and how richly, and then 
 consider what man now is, and how little he 
 has attained to, comparatively, can we avoid 
 thinking of waste ? History tells us what 
 myriads lie buried in the old Greek and Roman 
 lands, and in all our modern Europe. Something, 
 too, we know of the human relics that are blown 
 about in the desert dust of Egypt and Pales- 
 tine. Asia, mother of the nations, bewilders
 
 20 
 
 the imagination that tries to call up the series 
 of races that, according* to the most limited 
 chronology, have hung on her mighty breast. 
 Whoever has dared to push towards the pesti- 
 lential interior of that quarter of the world, the 
 fringe only of which, till in these latter days, 
 travellers have been contented to touch, has 
 found human life ever teeming, ever exhaust- 
 less : while, in what Ave call the New World, 
 cities actually overgrown by ancient forests, and 
 remains of old polities long worn out, and traces 
 of a civilization which it must have taken ages 
 to accomplish, and which it has taken ages to 
 efface, tell how man there, too, has abounded. 
 I say nothing of the tribes now dimly looming 
 through the mists which have enveloped the 
 primeval anthropology of the earth, but which 
 have had some light thrown upon them by the 
 combined researches of the antiquarians and 
 naturalists of these latter days. Every part of 
 the survey increases our awe, and brings l3ack 
 on us a humiliating feeling of ignorance, far 
 surpassing that Avhich ensues on the contem- 
 plation of fossil infusoria and fossil saurians. 
 We are sure, from various evidences, that it
 
 21 
 
 must have been all for ultimate good; how, we 
 know not. Allow that the intellectual, and 
 moral, and religious development of one race, is 
 no measure for that of another, and that the 
 capacities and susceptibilities in these respects 
 are not equal nor alike ; still in the lowest types 
 of man there are germ.s of powers, possibilities 
 of being, enough to make the inevitable question 
 start to the mind, — what have all these men and 
 women done since they breathed the breath of 
 life? These countless tribes, with their quick 
 senses, their nimble apprehensions, their mar- 
 vellous hands, their erect stature, their " large 
 discourse of reason," and their shaping fancies; 
 what have they done in proportion to their 
 numbers? Alas! the "vanity of vanities," 
 which the preacher so mournfully ejaculated 
 nigh three thousand years ago, was but another 
 formula for what we are trying to discourse of 
 under the category of Waste. 
 
 And yet something has been done; one race 
 has given monuments to all succeeding ages of 
 the height to which philosophy, and poetry, and 
 art can rise : another of the power which men 
 may attain by force of laAv and patriotism, and
 
 22 
 
 political organization ; another of the gifts of 
 God in the endowment and development of 
 religions sense and religious knowledge ; and the 
 men of the present time have learned wonderful 
 mechanical arts, and the virtues of social love 
 and social compassion. 
 
 Yes, something has been done in some parts 
 of the world. But, alas ! of that which has been 
 done how much has perished ! Cities innumerable 
 have been absolutely swept away, and of the 
 greatest the remains are meagre; — Babylon and 
 Nineveh marked only by mounds, till the genius 
 and industry of this age disinterred some won- 
 derful relics ; Thebes, with comparatively few 
 fragments of temples, and obelisks, and sphinxes, 
 and gigantic statues, yet unburied by the sand ; 
 Athens, not even the skeleton of its former 
 strength and beauty, but with only a mutilated 
 member here and there ; and Home, standing on 
 the ruins of at least three predecessors ; more, 
 perhaps, lying buried beneath than has since stood 
 above, even when that, of which so little is left, 
 was unimpaired. To these the least instructed 
 in history will be able to add a long catalogue 
 of other cities, of Avhich a fcAv present picturesque
 
 23 
 
 remains like Baalbec and Palmyra, others that 
 survive only in their names, others with so little 
 remaining except their names, that, like the 
 Ephesus of Mr. Ealkenee, it is only to be re- 
 constructed by means of the utmost ingenuity, 
 fortified by all the resources of archselogical 
 knowledge, and artistic skill, and classical 
 scholarship. But long lists of names of cities 
 might be culled from ancient authors which 
 are literally dead names, not having one single 
 association in our minds, at least in ordinary 
 minds. And, again, figures might be brought 
 forward recounting the numbers of cities, the 
 names of which have vanished even from the 
 countries where they stood. It is an old lament, 
 the lament over perished cities. Listen, for one 
 moment, to this from the preface to Burton's 
 "Anatomy of Melancholy": — 
 
 Tell me, politicians, why is the fruitful Palestina, noble Greece, 
 Egypt, Asia Minor, so much decayed, and (mere carcases now) 
 fahi from what they were 1 The ground is the same ; — but 
 the government is altered ; the people are grown slothful, idle ; 
 their good husbandry, policy and industry is decayed. JS^on 
 fatigata aut effeta humus (as Columella well informs Sylvinus) 
 sed Twstrd fit inertici, &c. May a man believe that which Aris- 
 totle, in his Politicks, Pausanias, Stephanus, Sophianus, Ger- 
 belius, relate of Old Greece ? I finde heretofore 70 cities in
 
 24 
 
 Epirus (overthrown by Paulus ^milius), a goodly province in 
 times past, now left desolate of good towns, and almost inhabi- 
 tants ; — 62 cities in Macedonia, in Strabo's time. I find 30 in 
 Laconia, but now scarce so many villages, saith Gerbelius. If any 
 man, from Mount Taygetus, should view the countrey round about, 
 and see tot delicias, tot urhes per Peloponnesum dispersas, so many 
 delicate and brave built cities, with such cost and exquisite cun- 
 ning, so neatly set out in Peleponnesus, he should perceive them 
 now ruinous and overthrown, burnt, waste, desolate, and laid level 
 with the ground. Incredibile dictu, &c. And as he laments, 
 Quis talia fando, Temperet a lachrymis ? Quis tarn durus aut 
 ferreus (so he prosecutes it), who is he that can sufficiently con- 
 dole and commiserate these ruins 1 Where are those 4000 cities 
 of Egypt ; those hundred cities in Crete 1 Are they now come 
 to two ? What saith Pliny and ^lian of Old Italy ? There 
 were, in former ages, 1166 cities : Blondus and Machiavel both 
 grant them now nothing near so populous and full of good towns 
 as in the time of Augustus (for now Leander Abertus can find 
 but 300 at most), and, if we may give credit to LiVY, not then 
 so strong and puissant as of old : " They mustered 70 legions 
 in former times, which noio the knoion world loill scarce yield. 
 Alexander built 70 cities in a short space for his part : our 
 Sultans and Turkes demolish twice as many, and leave all deso- 
 late. Many will not believe but that our island of Great Britain 
 is now more populous than ever it was ; yet let them read Bede, 
 Leland, and others ; they shall finde it most flourished in the 
 Saxon Heptarchy, and in the Conquerours time was far better 
 inhabited, than at this present. See that Doomsday Book ; and 
 shew me those thousands of parishes, which are now decayed, 
 cities ruined, villages depopulated, &c. 
 
 But all such destruction points mainly to the 
 
 waste of the larger works of man's hands, though
 
 25 
 
 there was indeed much of other waste, — much 
 waste of the arts and the products of the arts 
 that made life happy and enjoyable, and that 
 elevated and embellished it — (as for instance what 
 sculptures demolished, what frescoes effaced !) — and 
 the loss of the genius and knowledge and skill 
 which planned those cities, with all their towers 
 and domes and temples, their theatres and palaces. 
 But there has been still greater waste of thought 
 in the lost literature of the world, — partly because 
 the characters cannot be read, still more because 
 the records are gone, — the books have perished. 
 And it is a melancholy reflection that vast stores 
 of knowledge so painfully hived up, that finest 
 gems of thought so carefully polished, so care- 
 fully set, should have been not merely lost by 
 the accidents of time, but should have also been 
 recklessly and blindly destroyed by the animosity 
 of hostile nations and hostile creeds. 
 
 "The literary treasures of antiquity," says Mr. 
 D' Israeli, " have suffered from the malice of 
 men, as well as that of time. It is remarkable 
 that conquerors, in the moments of victory, or 
 in the unsj)aring devastation of their rage, have 
 not been satisfied with destroying men, but have
 
 26 
 
 even carried their vengeance to books. The 
 Romans burnt the books of the Jews, of the 
 Christians, and the Philosophers ; the Jews burnt 
 the books of the Christians and the Pagans ; and 
 the Christians burnt the books of the Pagans and 
 the Jews. The greater part of the books of 
 Origen and other heretics were continually burnt 
 by the orthodox party." Gibbon pathetically 
 describes the empty library of Alexandria, after 
 the Christians had destroyed it, "The valuable 
 library of Alexandria was pillaged or destroyed; 
 and near twenty years afterwards the appearance 
 of the empty shelves excited the regret and indig- 
 nation of every spectator, whose mind was not 
 totally darkened by religious prejudice. The com- 
 positions of ancient genius, so many of which 
 have irretrievably perished, might surely have 
 been excepted from the wreck of idolatry, for the 
 amusement and instruction of succeeding ages; 
 and either the zeal or avarice of the Archbishop 
 might have been satiated with the rich spoils 
 which were the reward of his victory." 
 
 But the waste of disuse suggests reflections 
 scarcely less mournful. Have you not felt when 
 pacing along the galleries of great libraries,
 
 27 
 
 glancing' from side to side at the labels and names 
 on those piled up treasures, with their blazonry 
 as faded and pale as the escutcheons in the adjoin- 
 ing churches, — have you not felt that those titles 
 to immortality (for such the poor departed 
 authors in the pride of their hearts conceived 
 them to be), were, after all, the most impressive 
 lessons that could be taught of the transitoriness 
 of human glory, of the vanity of human expec- 
 tations? It is sad to walk in a churchyard over 
 the graves of nameless dead, — it is sadder to 
 walk through cloisters of venerable colleges and 
 cathedrals, and to see on the foot-worn pavement, 
 and on the walls laden with pompous monu- 
 ments, the names of men who, for all that we 
 or thousands like us know about them, might 
 just as well have been nameless. In vain does 
 the poor weak voice cry out from the tomb, siste 
 viator ! We do not stop, for why should we ? 
 the tenant's name is nothing to us. We linger 
 only a moment to admire the turn of phrase in 
 the panegyric, or even, alas ! only to smile at 
 its quaint conceits ; and if a serious thought 
 comes over us it is not for those unknown dead, 
 but for the sadness of the common doom that
 
 28 
 
 involves the hopes and joys and labours of all 
 our race, — quam vance sint sj>es qtiam jiuxa sint 
 hominum gaudia, — "how vain the hopes of men, 
 how fleeting are their joys." And so, I say, it 
 is very mournful to g4ance at those unknown 
 names and titles in our great libraries, which, 
 indeed, are great cemeteries ; and there lie the 
 authors with all their glorious thoughts, their 
 fine moralizings, their convincing arguments and 
 eloquent admonitions, all coffined in the very 
 volumes that were to keep them ever living; 
 and the titles on the labels are little better than 
 epitaphs, and for all that they bring to our 
 minds, there might as well have been only a 
 simple " Hie jacet." 
 
 Such thoughts as these give us hints of the 
 waste of oblivion. We just descry the objects 
 before they are finally di*awn behind the im- 
 penetrable curtain. But who shall conjecture 
 what great, and heroic, and beneficent beings, 
 what glorious and beautiful works, have been 
 gathered into the eternal darkness, leaving not 
 one wreck or token to tell the after ages how 
 woeful has been their loss?
 
 29 
 
 Under the term Waste, I have included the 
 premature decay, or the destruction of that which 
 has seemed to have a definite work to fulfil, or 
 a definite place in the order and constitution of 
 the universe. Instances have arisen before our 
 minds in the perishing of organic forms before 
 they have matured, in human beings cut off in 
 their prime, in the destruction of human works, 
 in the breaking up of parts of the material 
 fabric of the world. We have seen enough to 
 prove that such phenomena, anomalous as they 
 at first sight appear, are too numerous to be 
 regarded as exceptional. Such seeming cliaos 
 must somehow belong to the universal kosmos, 
 for there is a continuity in the disruptions, a 
 constancy in the changes, a sort of rhythm in 
 the discords. Change is the soul of the world ; 
 all things are in flux, and there is nothing sta- 
 tionary but in the thought of man. He sees the 
 seed sprout, and the stem spring up, and the 
 flower blossom, and the seed form and fall, and 
 he thinks that this is to happen over and over 
 again in the same order. If in reality he saw 
 the same things and the same forces at work, he 
 would assuredlv see the same results, for no one
 
 30 
 
 will disj)ute that the same antecedents will 
 beget the same consequents. But he is in reality 
 looking at different things, which only seem 
 to be the same. 
 
 The faith in nature, and in her constancy and 
 perfection, according to man's notion of constancy 
 and perfection, leads to many errors of inference. 
 The prevalence of definite forms in organic life 
 has much to do with the idea in question. Yet 
 how often is this same work of nature incom- 
 plete. You can scarcely find a plant with every 
 leaf or petal perfect, — scarcely an animal in 
 which there is not some defect, however trifling. 
 The soil and the atmosphere, to which the seed 
 and the animal are indigenous, are a part of 
 nature, as well as the organic beings in ques- 
 tion ; but the one often does not bear, and the 
 other is cut off immature. Such facts belong as 
 much to the system of nature, as the perfect 
 organisms growing and flourishing, and they all 
 come under the law of change and transmutation ; 
 and if we could see all, we should perceive that 
 out of the decay and death life was ever springing. 
 Individual leaves, or blossoms, or seeds, or whole 
 plants, may fail ; but look at the ever-returning
 
 31 
 
 wealth of foliage, and the never failing flowers, 
 and the teeming produce, and the swarming flocks 
 and herds ! The contingencies of blight and 
 decay and destrnction are provided against by a 
 productiveness that will more than compensate 
 for such losses. And those casualties, disturbing 
 and distracting as they seem, would, if traced 
 along their several lines and clusters of causes, 
 be seen to bear the same order and arrangement 
 as the phenomena which we more easily appre- 
 hend ; and we should find all subordinated to 
 laws of change, revolution, motion. The mem- 
 ber must shrink, or be cast ofi", for the sake 
 of the individual form ; and the individual form 
 goes for nothing in comparison with the species ; 
 and the species must end, when the time is come 
 for the conditions of its existence to be altered. 
 
 Lightning and tempest — volcanoes and earth- 
 quakes — fog and frost — drought and deluge — 
 dearth and blight and poison — old age, disease and 
 death, — all belong to the same plan as sunshine, 
 dews, and showers; and verdure, bloom, and 
 vintage ; and youth and health and strength and 
 beauty. 
 
 It is the shortness of our time on earth, the
 
 32 
 
 limitation to our own powers of production, that 
 makes us stand aghast at the contemplation of 
 what we call waste. We propose to ourselves 
 definite ends, — and for these we work, and de- 
 sign, and plan, and go through endless perplex- 
 ities, and encounter endless obstacles; and if all 
 our deliberations and contrivances and resolves and 
 exertions fail in their purpose, we feel that our 
 thought and care and toil have been spent in vain. 
 And our hearts, as well as our minds and hands, 
 may be disappointed. Ambition frustrated, hopes 
 defeated, affections bereaved or blighted, — these, 
 too, cause man to say, — Why all these throbbings, 
 and agitations, and dreamings, and yearnings, if 
 they were to come to nothing? Would it not 
 be better not to feel, than to look back on such 
 profitless expenditure of feelings — "the weary 
 chase the wasted hour ! " But man sees not as 
 God sees. 
 
 " The One remains, — the many change and pass, — 
 Heaven's light for ever shines, earth's shadows fly ; 
 Life, like a dome of many colour'd glass, 
 Stains the white radiance of eternity." 
 
 But the discontent of man comes from his 
 greatness as well as from his littleness. It is
 
 33 
 
 because lie has Hone so much with so mueli 
 strength and skill, that he is vexed that the work 
 of his hands does not always accomplish his wishes, 
 or that, when they have been completed, still the 
 works are not abiding. Lord of Nature and her 
 finite beings, subjugating the qualities of matter 
 and the forces of matter to his will and purpose ; 
 creating nothing, but taking command of the 
 powers of nature and compelling them to work 
 under new combinations, so as to supply his 
 wants, and augment his pleasures, and gratify 
 his pride; and dealing with form and colour and 
 sound, so that things in the outward world shall 
 be copies of the ideas in his mind, and present 
 to other men, and for ages on ages, the same 
 thoughts and feelings which he was the first to 
 conceive ; he is dissatisfied when, in the courses of 
 time, and the fatal conjunctures of chance, the 
 things which he had bound together fall asunder, 
 and the old undisciplined forces of nature resume 
 their sway, and the primitive combinations of 
 elements return to what they were, before he 
 took possession of them, and set them in new 
 places, and gave them new Avork and new 
 functions ; and he is mortified because his Avebs are 
 
 D
 
 34 
 
 unwoven, and his compositions dissolved, and his 
 forms effaced; and he sighs out his "vanity of 
 vanities," as if he had a right that his works 
 should abide for ever. And from this state of 
 feeling he is apt when looking at the works which 
 are none of his, to transfer his sentiments, or to 
 extend his sympathy to the gods themselves; for 
 he mourns over the waste of the riches, and over 
 the losses and destruction and decay of the works 
 of nature, as if they were his own. But this 
 superfluous lamentation and compassion comes 
 from his shortsightedness. 
 
 In the processes of nature we must look beyond 
 the seemingly marked divisions. These are mere 
 resting places for mortal thought. Combinations 
 and compositions are but for a time. The ele- 
 ments, of which they are made, arrange them- 
 selves ever anew. The form seems to vanish, but 
 its essence has not melted away; it has become 
 another, it is transformed. 
 
 Is it asked, why were not things differently 
 adjusted? Why the struggle for life? Why so 
 precarious a dependence on the elements ? Why 
 those fatal competitions and conflicts? Why 
 the ineffectual battle of the weak with the
 
 35 
 
 strong? Why should the mights almost always 
 become the rights ? Why such profuseness in 
 production, only to provide for the certainty of 
 failure and extinction ? Whj should humanity 
 have been made so prone to multiplication, that^ 
 in order to maintain a due proportion to the 
 means of subsistence, there must be reductions by 
 such terrible processes as war, pestilence, and 
 famine? These and a thousand like questions 
 are the absurd and unprofitable speculations of 
 human ignorance. 
 
 If, with our limited range of view, standing, as 
 we do, on so very low a terrace for any prospect 
 of the universe, — if even so standing and looking, 
 we can discover a predominance of good over evil, 
 and discern that some of the works of ravage and 
 dissolution lead on to happiness and beauty, we 
 ought to be content and believe that it is so with 
 all. And the more we reflect, the more we shall 
 be convinced that the waste, over which we mourn, 
 is not really waste but transformation, the most 
 striking type of which is seen in the mutual 
 changes of the great forces of nature ; heat pass- 
 ing into electricity, this into chemical attraction, 
 and this into mechanical motion, and this again
 
 36 
 
 back into heat and light. Por these forces are 
 ever vanishing, ever re-appearing, ever destroyed 
 yet ever preserved, going through endless phases 
 of regenesis by virtue of their reciprocal con- 
 vertibility. 
 
 Moreover, if we review, though hastily, the 
 ground which has been traversed, we shall 
 perceive that, in some instances, phenomena, 
 which appeared at first sight very disastrous, are 
 balanced by compensations, or prove to have been 
 of only temporary duration. The fabric of the 
 solid earth may be broken and dissolved in one 
 part, but it is built up and added to in another. 
 The rivers that rush down the mountain, plough- 
 ing it or planing it away, are elsewhere "soAving 
 the continents to be." " The mud, sand, and 
 other detritus," says Dr. Mantell, "thus pro- 
 duced, are reconsolidated by certain chemical 
 changes which are in constant activity, both on 
 the land and in the depths of the ocean, and 
 new rocks are thus in progress of formation." 
 "Elevations and subsidences," says Dr. Buck- 
 land, " inclinations and contortions, fractures and 
 dislocations, are phenomena which, although at 
 first sight they present only the appearance of
 
 37 
 
 disorder and confusion, yet, when fully under- 
 stood, demonstrate the existence of order, method 
 and design, even in the operations of the most 
 turbulent among the many mighty physical 
 forces, which have affected the terraqueous globe." 
 
 Again, while the sea makes such encroach- 
 ments on the land as we noticed in the earlier 
 part of the lecture, we know, on the other hand, 
 that it retires from other shores, leaving vast 
 tracts of fertile land reclaimable by man's in- 
 dustry ; and there are names on our maps, which 
 tell that the towns which bore them were once 
 sea harbours, though now lying far inland. 
 
 The very deaths of plants must give life to 
 innumerable other forms ; and our artificial 
 systems of fertilization obviously consist in making 
 use of the remains of organic beings which 
 have perished. But all examples of such con- 
 version of loss into gain shrink in extent before 
 the great carboniferous deposits. Those spoils 
 of ancient forests were transported to lakes 
 and estuaries, and there buried, or, we should 
 rather say, stored up in subterranean treasure- 
 houses for the future use of man, and then by a 
 series of volcanic revolutions lifted up to within
 
 38 
 
 his reach. It was not for nothing that the gTand 
 and stately forests of palms were sepulchred in 
 the depths of the earth. But for all that 
 enormous destruction, where would have been the 
 blazing hearths of England ? — where those won- 
 derful changes, social and national, that are 
 involved in the mechanical applications of steam ? 
 In adducing some striking instances of the 
 devastations of pestilence, we went back to the 
 fourteenth century. There have been many 
 terrible plagues since that Black Plague, and the 
 cholera of our own time is not to be forgotten. 
 But still there has been a notable though a 
 gradual diminution of such visitations. The 
 steady progress of improvement in sanitary 
 knowledge and sanitary practice, at least in 
 Europe, has abated much of the virulence of the 
 diseases that were formerly so destructive. And 
 the great triumphs of Jenner's discovery are 
 never to be kept out of view, though one of the 
 very effects of it lias been that of removing 
 from sight the signs of the existence of that 
 evil which his genius and perseverance taught 
 man to avert. Of many diseases the mortality 
 has been greatly reduced by the advance of
 
 39 
 
 science ; and even as to epidemics, though, when 
 they have come, they have been apt to exact their 
 dues, with a frightful rigour, from those who have 
 fallen within their power ; yet there is good 
 reason for believing, that in the progress of 
 social improvements they will find fewer and 
 fewer subjects. 
 
 The lost literature of the world, as we glanced 
 at it, seemed a woeful illustration of waste. But as 
 to even this deprivation we can discern some topics 
 of solace and reconcilement. Of what has perished 
 it is probable that a large part was not worth 
 preserving ; another part having fulfilled its tem- 
 porary function has died away; and of another 
 part it may be said, that what was really valuable 
 in it has been insensibly gathered into the col- 
 lective thought of educated minds. There have 
 been books which were valuable for the know 
 ledge they contained ; but their essence has long 
 since been distilled and absorbed into the general 
 knowledge of mankind; and the original sources 
 are objects of curiosity rather than of use. This 
 may be said of nearly all the literature of science. 
 But the case is different in regard to those 
 writings, the excellence of which consists in the
 
 40 
 
 beauty of their composition. The loss of these 
 we must regret, like that of fine paintings 
 and sculptures, the form and colour of which 
 are essential to their character. The truths 
 which Newton discovered would remain with 
 us, if his " Principia" and other treatises had 
 sunk in that fatal river of Time, which, Lord 
 Bacon tells us, drowns what is weighty and 
 precious, and floats down only what is light 
 and worthless. But if the actual Odyssey, and 
 Hamlet, and Paradise Lost, were gone, no one 
 could tell another what they were. The words 
 themselves in their collocation are as essential 
 as the thoughts ; the form is no less indispensable 
 than the substance. But such works form but a 
 small proportion of great libraries. And of that 
 small proportion, comparatively little can be 
 enjoyed by even industrious students, distracted 
 as they must be by the ever increasing literature 
 of the times they live in. Nor is it needful to 
 think only of this prolific age, with its journal- 
 ism ever presenting new and stronger claims on 
 attention. More than two centuries ago literature 
 seemed redundant. 
 
 In 1632 (says Mr. Masson, in his life of Milton) just as
 
 41 
 
 now, people complained of a plethora of books. " Good God," 
 says Wither, in his Scholars Purgatory, " how many dung- 
 boats full of fruitless volumes do they yearly foist upon his 
 Majesty's subjects ; how many hundred reams of foolish, pro- 
 fane, and senseless ballads do they quarterly disperse abroad." — 
 (Vol. i. p. 510.) 
 
 And Sir Thomas Browne expresses a like 
 feeling : — 
 
 I have heard (he says) some with deep sighs lament the lost 
 lines of Cicero ; others with as many groans deplore the 
 combustion of the library of Alexandria ; for my own part 
 I think there be too many in the world, and could with 
 patience behold the urn and ashes of the Vatican, could I, 
 with a few others, recover the perished leaves of Solomon. 
 * * * * 'Tis not a melancholy utinam of my own, but 
 . the desires of better heads, that there were a general synod ; 
 not to unite the incompatible differences of religion, but for the 
 benefit of learning, to reduce it, as it lay at first, in a few 
 and solid Authors ; and to condemn to the fire those swarms 
 of rhapsodies begotten only to distract and abuse the weaker 
 judgments of scholars, and to maintain the trade and mystery 
 of Typographers. — (Relig. Med. sec. 24.) 
 
 It is curious to notice the different aspects 
 under wliich the waste of literature appears to 
 the same person at different times. I have 
 quoted Gibbon's lamentation over the first de- 
 struction of the library of Alexandria by a 
 Christian Bishop. With his usual partiality he 
 speaks more leniently of the second destruction 
 by the Mahometans : —
 
 42 
 
 I sincerely (he says) regret the more valuable libraries which 
 have been involved in the ruin of the Roman Empire ; but 
 when I seriously compute the lapse of ages, the waste of 
 ismorance, and the calamities of war, our treasures rather than 
 our losses are the objects of my surprise. Many curious and 
 interesting facts are buried in oblivion ; the three great histories 
 of Eome have been transmitted to our hands in a mutilated 
 state ; and we are deprived of many pleasing compositions of 
 the lyric, iambic, and dramatic poetry of the Greeks. Yet we 
 should gratefully remember, that the mischances of time and 
 accident have spared the classic works to which the suffrage of 
 antiquity had adjudged the first place of genius and glory ; 
 the teachers of ancient knowledge, who are still extant, had 
 perused and compared the writings of their predecessors ; nor 
 can it fairly be presumed that any important truth, any useful 
 discovery in art or nature, has been snatched away from the 
 curiosity of modern ages. 
 
 As to the destrviction of races of men, it may 
 console us to bear in mind, that if the individual 
 man must not repine at changes which, though 
 they ruin him, add to the happiness of multitudes 
 of his fellowmen, it cannot be our duty to mourn 
 over the disappearance of races, which have been 
 superseded by others, of higher endowments and 
 larger capacities. The modes in which they 
 have perished, or been absorbed, or amalgamated, 
 may have been painful to contemplate ; but those 
 dreadful facts belong to the category of questions 
 for which, as we have already hinted, there is at
 
 43 
 
 present no solution, — there being no rest for the 
 perplexed, inquiring* mind, but in the belief that 
 they belong to the AYorking of a Divine plan of 
 the universe that must end in good, though in 
 an unknown way. And even with our present 
 perceptions, and powers of understanding, if we 
 survey the countries where such changes of in- 
 habitants have taken place, I cannot imagine 
 that anyone would desire that those changes 
 should be reversed. The Mohawk and the Chip- 
 pewa may be fine figures for the imagination ; 
 and stirring tales may be told of their strength 
 of limb, and marvellous quickness of eye and 
 ear, and of their love of justice, and of their 
 possession of some few domestic virtues, and 
 some shadowy notions of religion ; but who 
 would wish them to return to their huntina- 
 grounds with their painted skins, and their 
 tomahawks and scalping knives, or even with 
 their rude implements of the chase and their 
 primitive wigwams, and to occupy these regions 
 where another race, however intrusive in the 
 first instance, has now spread fields of waving 
 corn, and scattered the land over with smiling 
 homesteads, and built great cities with churches
 
 44 
 
 and colleges and halls of state, and introduced 
 * the ennohling sciences and refining arts of the 
 highest civilization achieved by man ? No. 
 Alas ! for the poor Aborigines ! Alas ! for their 
 struggle for existence, their pangs, their heart- 
 breakings, their many miseries ! They must go ; 
 " some natural tears we shed, but wipe them 
 soon." They must fall under the general law. 
 So vanished the Canaanites before those wondrous 
 Children who were to be the learners and 
 teachers of the best and purest religion man- 
 kind has known. So vanished the Pelasgians be- 
 fore the Hellenes, who were to be the authors 
 of the profoundest philosophy, and the creators of 
 the highest poetry and the finest arts. So 
 vanished the Etrurians, and Oscans, and Um- 
 brians, before the race that was to teach 
 law, and political organization, and scientific 
 warfare. So vanished the allophyllian races of 
 our northern Europe, before those branches of 
 the great Aryan stock, who brought the useful 
 arts, the mechanical inventions, the comforts 
 of life, and, in the fulness of time, and under 
 the inspiration of Christianity, the mitigations 
 of suffering, the sympathy for the afflicted.
 
 45 
 
 tlie pity for the poor, and the sorrow for the 
 sinful, embodied in the hospitals and asylums 
 and reformatory institutions of our modern 
 life. 
 
 And with such reflections in our minds we 
 cannot mourn over the waste of the old cities. 
 They are gone. Be it so. Would you build up 
 Thebes again ? and again see the worship of 
 the cat, and the cow, and the ibis, even allow- 
 ing that such superstitious practices were sym- 
 bolical of esoteric doctrines highly abstract and 
 spiritual ? Would you raise up ancient Bome, and 
 recall her Romans, with their cruel, pitiless con- 
 quests, their insulting triumphs, their butcherly 
 and debasing sports ? One would rather have even 
 modern Rome with her spies, and her dungeons; 
 for the misery she inflicts by her bigotry and 
 tyranny, is at least on a smaller scale. 
 
 But Athens — could we recover Athens from 
 the wreck, would it not be a temptation to wish 
 the order of changes rolled back to what she 
 was, when Pericles ruled the destinies of grander 
 intellects, finer fancies, more cunning hands, 
 more delicate senses, more eloquent tongues 
 than the world has known before or since.
 
 46 
 
 Had we the architects and sculptors, would we 
 not rebuild her Parthenon and Erectheum, repair 
 and set up again her Theseus and Ilissus, and 
 all "those forms that mock the eternal dead 
 in marble immortality," and bid her sages once 
 more " walk the olive grove of Academe," and 
 recall the silent voices of her orators and poets? 
 No ; it is better as it is. Fancy must not be 
 allowed to dazzle the eyes of our judgment 
 with the picture of that city ; 
 
 " A city such as vision 
 Builds from the purple crags and silver towers 
 Of battlemented cloud, as in derision 
 Of kingliest masonry." 
 
 We must not forget what was wanting to her 
 citizens, and which we now possess, with our 
 riper civilization, our advanced sciences, our 
 mighty arts, our purer morals, our holier 
 religion. One thought alone is enough to 
 make us acquiesce even in the ruin of ancient 
 Athens. While knowledge and wisdom were 
 embodied in Pallas Athene, and much that 
 was charming was represented by Aphrodite, 
 yet those higher sentiments and associations
 
 47 
 
 which arise in our minds with the name of 
 woman, were not in the minds of the Greeks. 
 Centuries upon centuries of confusion, and 
 misery, and darkness, had to pass over "poor 
 humanity's afflicted will," hefore that beautiful 
 phase of our modern life was evolved, which 
 represents the ideas contained in chivalry, and 
 the acknowledgment by man of that soften- 
 ing, elevating, and refining process, which he 
 owes to the purer soul, and the more loving 
 heart of woman. This the Greeks had not; so 
 let them go, and their peerless city with 
 them. 
 
 If we could, we would not have them again ; 
 nor can we join with Schiller in wishing to 
 revive their beautiful mythology. Rather would 
 we apostrophise their gods in the language of 
 one of our own poets : — 
 
 " Very pale ye seem to rise 
 
 Ghosts of Grecian deities ! 
 
 ***** 
 Gods bereaved, gods belated, — 
 
 With your purples rent asunder ! 
 Gods discrowned and desecrated, 
 
 Disinherited of thunder !
 
 48 
 
 Get to dust, as coramon mortals, 
 
 By a common doom and track ! 
 Let no Schiller from the portals 
 Of that Hades call you back, — 
 Or instruct us to weep all 
 At your antique funeral. 
 
 Pajj, Pan is dead ! " 
 
 Were it merely to indulge our curiosity, one 
 would like to reanimate the dwellers in such 
 cities as those of old Etruria, about whom we 
 know so little. But they are gone; they have 
 had their day and their place. As to all that 
 is 2'one from the world, there must have been 
 a reason for its departure as well as for its 
 cominff. Death is in the scheme of the uni- 
 verse no less than life. So we must be con- 
 tent to say with solemn reverence, — 
 
 "Let the dead past bury its dead." 
 
 Could we from some far-off extra-mundane 
 station look at events which near at hand seem 
 so disastrous, — all the destruction and havoc 
 and desolation in the world,— they would, 
 probably, under so different an angle of vision, 
 assume an entirely different aspect. The whole 
 system of things being one of unceasing change 
 and flux, such terms as death, and Avaste, and
 
 49 
 
 wreck, and ruin, would lose their significance; 
 they would melt into ideas of unfolding, dis- 
 integration, repulsion, and separation; links in 
 that great chain which is also made up of 
 works of development, attraction, composition, 
 and formation, which are for ever going on, since 
 motion is the ultimate law of the universe. 
 The mutations in the solid fabric of the earth, 
 whether gradual or abrupt, at which our imagi- 
 nation is so much amazed and almost frightened, 
 would look like undulations, heavings, and sub- 
 sidences, — dissolving views of a sublime order of 
 changes; the replacement of old cities by new 
 would appear as little more than kaleidoscopic 
 recombinations; and the busy, striving, toiling, 
 battling tribes of men, falling away here and 
 re-appearing there, would harmonize with the 
 varying scenes of the vegetable world, — the up- 
 rooting of forests, — the springing of flowers, and 
 herbs, and crops, and plantations, where once 
 were desert plains or monotonous prairies, — and 
 the rising of lovely islands from the bosom of 
 the barren sea. 
 
 And all would be seen as order, growth, de- 
 
 E
 
 50 
 
 velopment, in the midst of disruption, disin- 
 tegration, and decay. Under our limited powers 
 of observation, tlie shifting atoms of organic 
 forms are so insensibly re^olaced by like atoms, 
 in like combinations, that perfect similarity is 
 mistaken for identity. The rosy cheek of youth, 
 and the brilliant eye of beauty, are under- 
 going perpetual dissolution and recomposition 
 in the midst of their health and loveliness. 
 With vision microscopically sharpened, we should 
 at every moment discern, in the marvellous pro- 
 cesses of cellular life, destruction, decay, and 
 separation, alternating with repair, and growth, 
 and re-union. And so the great globe itself, 
 which to our mortal survey seems covered and 
 confused with waste, and wreck, and ravage, may 
 to the mental eye, removed far oflP by imagina- 
 tion, or by philosophic abstraction, present only 
 the varying phases of renovation and reproduc- 
 tion, which are ever prevailing over inevitable 
 revolutions and destructions. 
 
 All the teachings of experience, and all the 
 divinations of analogy, lead us to believe that 
 those chances and changes and metamorphoses
 
 51 
 
 will ever eventuate, sooner or later, in something 
 better and nobler; and that the new earth and 
 the noAV Heavens which the highest and purest 
 minds have been inspired to look for, and to 
 prefigure in solemn vision, will infinitely surpass 
 in beauty and glory all those which have gone 
 before them. 
 
 AHROVVSMITH, PRINTER, QUAY STREET, BRISTOL.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
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