The Reader may remember, when he is thus reminded of it, that I delayed giving an account of Pompey, in answer to the question who he was, till the Dog-days should come. Here we are, (if here may be applied to time) in the midst of them, July 24, 1830.
Horace Walpole speaks in a letter of two or three Mastiff-days so much fiercer were they that season than our common Dog-days. This year they might with equal propriety be called Iceland-Dog-days. Here we are with the thermometer every night and morning below the temperate point, and scarcely rising two degrees above it at middle day. And then for weather;—as Voiture says, Il pleut pla-ple-pli-plo-plus.
If then as Robert Wilmot hath written, “it be true that the motions of our minds follow the temperature of the air wherein we live, then I think the perusing of some mournful matter, tending to the view of a notable example, will refresh your wits in a gloomy day, and ease your weariness of the louring night:” and the tragical part of my story might as fitly be told now in that respect, as if “weary winter were come upon us, which bringeth with him drooping days and weary nights.” But who does not like to put away tragical thoughts? Who would not rather go to see a broad farce than a deep tragedy? Sad thoughts even when they are medicinal for the mind, are as little to the mind's liking, as physic is grateful to the palate when it is needed most.
FRAGMENT ON HUTCHINSON'S WORKS.1
1 A Chapter was to have been devoted to the Hutchinsonian philosophy, and I am inclined to believe that this was a part of it.
These superstitions are unquestionably of earlier date than any existing records, and commenced with the oldest system of idolatry, the worship of the heavenly bodies. Hutchinson's view is that when Moses brought the Jews out of their captivity, all men believed that “Fire, Light, or the Operation of the Air, did every thing in this material system:” those who believed rightly in God, knew that these secondary causes acted as his instruments, but “those who had fallen and lost communication with the Prophets and the truth of tradition, and were left to reason, (though they reasoned as far as reason could reach) thought the Heavens of a divine nature, and that they not only moved themselves and the heavenly bodies but operated all things on earth; and influenced the bodies, and governed the minds and fortunes of men: and so they fell upon worshipping them, and consulting them for times and seasons.” “The Devil,” he says, “chose right; this was the only object of false worship which gave any temptation; and it had very specious inducements.” And it was because he thus prevailed over “the Children of disobedience,” that the Apostle stiles him “the Prince of the Powers of the Air.” “This made the Priests and Physicians of the antient heathen cultivate the knowledge of these Powers, and afterwards made them star-gazers and observe the motions of those bodies for their conjunctions and oppositions, and all the stuff of their lucky and unlucky days and times, and especially to make advantage of their eclipses, for which they were stiled Magi, and looked upon as acquaintance of their Gods; and so much of the latter as is of any use, and a great deal more, we are obliged to them for.” “But these,” he says, “who thought that the Heavens ordered the events of things by their motions and influences, and that they were to be observed and foreseen by men, robbed God of his chief attributes, and were ordered then, and ought still, to be punished with death.”