it degenerate into irrational glorying, is no less cause of regret. We rejoice in the prevalence of that power, which binds us to "our native land" and makes us feel,

"That with all her faults we love her still."

But we would see it accompanied with a candid admission of her faults and imperfections. When contrasting the happiness and prosperity of our people, with that of the citizens of other governments, if we have turned away from the contemplation, still blind to our own failings, we have no ground for confidence. In former periods, her excellencies may have hidden her defects; but the time has past, in which the world judges of any system, public or private, from its general effect, but it looks into all its parts. An ardent spirit of inquiry and a keen sifting of old systems, characterize our times. Truth and error, right and wrong, are fast gaining their proper level. A democratic spirit pervades the world, and men are feeling their right and privilege to in quire into what is going on around them. To tyrants and despots it is like the distant rumbling of the dreadful earthquake, and for us it is

a voice of warning, bidding us search out our nation's errors and inconsistencies, and though hallowed by old associations, remove them. The good we can only preserve by a prompt removal of the bad. Hav.

ing studied our country's institu. tions, we are to take a firm stand in her defense; yet we are not to for get her faults but correct and remove them. Neither blinded by false patriotism, nor seduced from our duty by popular clamor, we must defend the right and yield the wrong, and thus elevate our country to a higher and more honorable sta tion. Thus shall we best ensure the perpetuity of our free insti tutions. And upon the present generation, probably, rest these duties. The world, so to speak, is in a transition state. "Old things are passing away," and another order of things is advanc. ing. As the disturbed and mingling materials become settled, so they will long remain. How im portant then the presence of correct principles, that when these materials assume a new shape, it may accord with all that is beautiful in a just and free state.

THE Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation it is now perhaps too late to review in form. Nor is such

Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, second edition, from the third London edition; greatly amended by the Author. And an Introduction by Rev. George B. Cheever, D. D. New York, Wiley & Putnam.

A Theory of Creation. [North American Review, April, 1845.]

Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. [American Review, May, 1845] Vestiges of the Nat. Hist. of Creation, [North British Review-republished in Littell's Living Age, No. 71.] VOL. IV.

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a review at this time important, since the work has been already noticed with ability by several distinguished writers on both sides of the Atlantic. But so singular in some respects is its character, and so remarkable has been its brief history, that we feel constrained to add some remarks of our own to those which have appeared in several of our contemporary periodicals. We do not indeed propose to give any thing more than a general view of the theory of our author, with a concise notice and summing up of the arguments for

and against it. In connexion with the remarks into which this plan will conduct us, we propose to speak in brief of two or three features in the reviews we have seen of "The Vestiges," which features seem open to strong objections.

We have no means of definite knowledge, but we judge that the work before us is less than a year old. But youthful as it is, its position and that of its author have been from the first, far from enviable. It has been a favorite target for literary marksmen. It has sustained, as well as it could, the incessant fire of newspaper squibs and the heavier discharges of less frequent periodicals. And if now its destruction has been accomplished, if its career is already terminated, it has been too brilliant to be soon forgotten. It has run through too many editions and over too extensive a portion of the reading world. Yet the book, we venture to predict, has produced nearly all the excitement and worked nearly all the mischief which may be expected from it. It is not a work of admirable logic, not a work of uncommon power. It can lay no claim to originality, certainly not as a theoryand as to argument, whatever it has advanced bearing such a semblance, or which by any courtesy can be viewed in such a light, has been over and over again demolished.

We have said that as a theory it is no new thing under the sun. The heathen philosophers, Democritus, Epicurus, and Lucretius, not only advanced, but to some extent adopted it as the grand feature of their philosophy. On the question of originality therefore, our author's pretensions must be at a discount. What he has done, and all that he has done, has been to summon geology to his aid in fortifying a theory which has been before the world more than two thousand years. By the light of this prominent and deeply interesting science, he has run up the line of cosmical cycles till he fancied he had come to the origin of

things. By her light, but we fear without a clear eye and an honest heart, he has penetrated the caves of pagan nations without the Gospel, and there, amidst elephantine skeletons and mud mummies in their niches, and shelves of doubtful fossils," sat down to reason and dream out the history and philosophy not only of those caves, but of this mighty world and the boundless universe.

The principles of inductive reasoning he has so far forgotten or overlooked, that he has attempted to make a single fact to which science had helped him, sustain a principle; he has mingled conjecture with fact in a confusion quite inextricable; assumption with legitimate conclusions or admitted truth; and we are compelled to add, mistakes or misstatements in regard to facts of science have been largely thrown in to make out his theory and "make up" his book. Nothing could be more admirable, or fit better than the description given of it as a whole, by a writer in the North British Review. He styles it "in its materials the detritus of natural history and physics, where the ingredients occur in no definite proportions, and where the affinities of nature have had no part to play; an intellectual breccia of amorphous fragments which equally defy the anatomy of the crystallographer and the analysis of the chemist." It is full of imagination and fancy. It is a scientific romance which by courtesy may indeed be said to be founded on fact, although its theory could not stand but for conjecture and assumption. And we should imagine that what "the Wandering Jew" is to true history, the book of our author is to true science.

But where did he obtain his ideas of creation? Must we suppose him to have rummaged over the extant writings of those old philosophers whose names have been introduced above, and to have perpetrated a foul plagiarism? To us he seems plainly to have taken his idea from the nebular hypothesis of planetary forma

tion, and having thus hit upon it, to have gone trooping up and down the fields as well of conjecture as of science, to find wherewith to maintain it.

Possessing himself thus with a va riety of what he professes to consider arguments, marshaling them according to the best tactics he knew, and filling all breaches in the ranks with a few dexterous assumptions, (and there is no way of getting along more rapidly in an argument,) as also with a few scientific principles, fresh coined apparently in his own mind, he has succeeded in throwing an air of much plausibility about his theory of creation. We say plausibility, but only with reference to the mass of readers who are in a strange region when you introduce them into the domain of science. They can not detect his errors. They can not recall him when he flies off after some conjecture to fortify a position which no argument defends. They might even be supposed to credit him, although he should affirm that fossil human skeletons had been discovered imbedded deeply in the primary rocks. To such his theory may be plausible. But to the scientific reader, able to discriminate between a scientific fact and a mere hypothesis, able to arrest him when he runs rapidly along the line of his argument, taking cardinal points for granted to such readers the book presents a theory which can scarcely be considered even plausible. It is quite too much to ask of such a mind that it receive, on an amount of evidence no greater than our author presents, the idea that one law, that of development, is adequate to explain, with out a Deity, all the phenomena of the universe from the universal "fire mist" period to the present time. One feels strongly like saying,

"Credat Judæus Apella; Non ego." Our author has withheld his name from the public, and it is still unknown even to suspicion. Who

ever he may be, he is certainly a master of style. And he has presented us with a charmingly writ ten book, one which in point of literary merit need put no one to shame. And we do not think that the book before us is anonymous be cause it is not executed in a style satisfactory to its author, but because in it he has run a fierce tilt against Christianity, done much to offend the cherished religious sentiments of all the good and pious of the reading world; and though blind, we doubt not, to the full bearing of his own system, he has gravely and seriously set himself to maintain a theory which virtually annihilates religion and gives us a universe without a God.

No wonder then, if only a bare fancy of the possible tendency of his system had struck his mind, that he should seek shelter in concealment. That man is certainly not to be envied who has by ever so wonderful a display of ingenuity or fine writing, drawn upon himself the lightning glance of public indignation, and the withering frown of all the good and holy. But is our author an infidel? Is he no better than a malignant atheist, who, with craven heart and serpent venom, has selected this mode of assailing, not Christianity merely, but even the being of a God? In this light he has been regarded by some of his reviewers. We think, however, that he is innocent, so far as regards any such imputation.

He may indeed be a bitter foe of our holy religion, but we are more ready to accuse him of attempting to seduce science from her legitimate sphere. We are more ready to think that his crime is all told, when you say that intellectual pride has impelled him to endeavor to maintain a cosmical theory which the nebular hypothesis had previously suggested, although it virtually annihilates any system of faith to be found in the Bible. we think that he was probably for the most part unapprehensive of the bearings of his theory, until since its pub

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lication. It is certain that he has suppressed, in the later editions, his section on the Macleay system which was the most objectionable feature of his work, as originally published. And, if we mistake not, his intellectual perceptions are quite as deserving of impeachment as his heart. Unaccustomed to the delightful aspect in which the Bible presents God to us, as at hand and not afar off, as noticing and interesting himself in human affairs, even the most trivial, like the fall of a sparrow, and numbering the very hairs of our heads, our author talks piously of Providence, devoutly of God's great designs, and, although as we think to some extent sincerely, yet he all the while affords sad evidence that the language he thus employs is that of his education, not of his theory. It is only a few phrases of the dialect of Canaan which cling to him yet in spite of the atheistic theory to which, like a fool to an anchor, he has lashed himself.

While therefore, we are unwilling to charge him with intelligently entertaining atheistic or pantheistic opinions; while we are still more unwilling to impute to him the design of making a malignant and dastardly attack upon our holy religion, we can apologize for him to his reviewers no farther. He has laid himself open to ridicule and satire, as well as to home thrusts of arguments fatal to his theory. This he has done, first by seriously advocating the nebular theory of planetary formation, which may be said to have been given up by all distinguished astronomers, and which, had it not been thus abandoned, is most effectually annihilated by Lord Rosse's gigantic, six foot reflector; next by attempting to erect on this dreamy foundation, a vast system of analogous development, adequate to explain all the phenomena of creation, and attempting to maintain that system by gross perversions and misstatements concerning what are facts of science. In thus endeavoring to establish a great theory, equally

at war with revelation and right reason, he has done what he could to jostle the beautiful edifice of Christianity, and has no good ground of complaint if its champions sally forth and do battle earnestly for their dearest birthright and their eternal hopes. At the same time it is not always expedient to take every advantage of an antagonist to which we may be justly entitled. And we think some of those who have ably reviewed the work of our author and triumphantly refuted his successive positions, have availed themselves of the advantages which he has thus given them, beyond what a truly generous spirit could allow. The cause to be submitted to the tribunal of public sentiment, was "a Creator, God, truly present in the universe, versus deified Law-the Deity seized of the universe or disseized by a usurping Law?" Such was the question at issue.

In its discussion, certainly the reviewers might concede to the author of the "Vestiges" whatever the most generous spirit would dictate, and yet find no trouble in demolishing the shadowy structure he had raised. Yet we think there has been a failure here

and it has been an unfortunate one. It has tended to set the tide of popular feeling in favor of our author. And why? Because men go in a mass for toleration. They go for it in intellectual matters, as well as in religious. However bold and pernicious may be the error of a system proposed for our consideration, let its author receive fair and gentlemanly treatment. Such is the demand of popular sympathy. And we think it has not been fully responded to in the reception of the work before us.

Some of the reviewers appear to have exhibited a spirit of intolerance. They have put a construction upon the author's motives in giving his theory to the world, that seems to us not altogether courteous, certainly not charitable. They have resorted to ridicule, and that of such a character and to such an amount as to bespeak a true persecuting furor, rather than a