There is room in the world no doubt, and even in old countries, for an immense increase of population, supposing the arts of life to go on improving, and capital to increase. But although it may be innocuous, I confess I see very little reason for desiring it. The density of population necessary to enable mankind to obtain in the greatest degree all the advantages, both of co-operation and of social intercourse, has in all the more populous countries been attained. A population may be too crowded, though all be amply supplied with food and raiment. It is not good for man to be kept perforce at all times in the presence of his species. A world from which solitude is extirpated is a very poor ideal. Solitude, in the sense of being often alone, is essential to any depth of meditation or of character, and solitude in the presence of natural beauty and grandeur, is the cradle of thoughts and aspirations which are not only good for the individual, but which society could ill do without. Nor is there much satisfaction in contemplating the world with nothing left to the spontaneous activity of nature, with every rood of land brought into cultivation which is capable of growing food for human beings, every flowery waste or natural pasture ploughed up, all quadrupeds or birds which are not domesticated for man’s use exterminated as his rivals for food; every hedgerow or superfluous tree rooted out, and scarcely a place left where a wild shrub or flower could grow without being eradicated as a weed in the name of improved agriculture. If the earth must lose that great portion of its pleasantness which it owes to things that the unlimited increase of wealth and population would extirpate from it for the mere purpose of enabling it to support a larger, but not a better or happier population, I sincerely hope, for the sake of posterity, that they will be content to be stationary long before necessity compels them to do so.
This is picturesquely eloquent; but it may be argued that a public “green” or common, in the neighbourhood of a large town, is often a rendezvous for the idle and abandoned, in their brutalizing sports: the great city, like a cauldron, with more evils than that in Macbeth, seems to boil over, and deposit its scum upon the circumjacent ground.
The Druids and their Healing Art.
We might expect to find, from the universality of their application, remedies for
the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to
preserved in perpetuo. In ancient Britain, the Druids were the depositaries of these secrets.
Amongst the early Britons, the ranks of the priests were recruited from the noblest families: their education, which often extended over a period of twenty years, comprehended the whole of the sciences of the age; and besides their sacred calling, they were invested with power to decide their civil disputes. Their dwellings and temples were situated in the thickest oak-groves, which were sacred to the Supreme Deity. The acorn, and above all, the parasitical mistleto, were held in high veneration: the latter was sought on the sixth day of the moon, and when found was only cut by a priest of the highest rank, for it was accounted a sovereign remedy for all diseases. The practice of the healing art has ever commanded the esteem of the rudest nations: hence it was the obvious policy of the priests, or Druids, to study the properties of plants. Of their progress we have no record; but who knows from what a far antiquity come the traditionary virtues of many of our native plants?
Their famous Mistleto, or all-heal, was considered a certain cure in many diseases, an antidote to poison, and a preventive of infection. And, we have, in the present day, a very old nostrum, named Heal-all, the universal virtues of which are described as equalling the mistleto of our ancestors.