Amb.—Your wish, if sincere, I doubt not will be gratified. Fix your powerful mind upon the harmony of the moral world, as you have been long accustomed to do upon the order of the physical universe, and you will see the scheme of the eternal intelligence developing itself alike in both. Think of the goodness and mercy of omnipotence, and aid your contemplation by devotional feelings and mental prayer and aspirations to the source of all knowledge, and wait with humility for the light which I doubt not will be so produced in your mind.
Onu.—You again perplex me; I cannot believe that
the adorations or offerings of so feeble a creature can influence the decrees of omnipotence.
Amb.—You mistake me: as to their influencing or affecting the supreme mind it is out of the question, but they affect your own mind, they perpetuate a habit of gratitude and of obedience which may gradually end in perfect faith, they discipline the affections and keep the heart in a state of preparation to receive and preserve all good and pious feelings. Whoever passes from utter darkness into bright sunshine finds that he cannot at first distinguish objects better in one than in the other, but in a feeble light he acquires gradually the power of bearing a brighter one, and gains at last the habit not only of supporting it, but of receiving delight as well as instruction from it. In the pious contemplations that I recommend to you there is the twilight or sober dawn of faith which will ultimately enable you to support the brightness of its meridian sun.
Onu.—I understand you, but your metaphor is more poetical than just; your discipline, however, I have no doubt, is better fitted to enable me to bear the light than to contemplate it through the smoked or coloured glasses of scepticism.
Amb.—Yes, for they not only diminish its brightness but alter its nature.
DIALOGUE THE THIRD. THE UNKNOWN.
The same persons accompanied me in many journeys by land and water to different parts of the Phlegræan fields, and we enjoyed in a most delightful season, the
beginning of May, the beauties of the glorious country which encloses the Bay of Naples, so rich, so ornamented with the gifts of nature, so interesting from the monuments it contains and the recollections it awakens. One excursion, the last we made in southern Italy, the most important both from the extraordinary personage with whom it made me acquainted and his influence upon my future life, merits a particular detail which I shall now deliver to paper.
It was on the 16th of May, 18-- that we left Naples at three in the morning for the purpose of visiting the remains of the temples of Pæstum, and having provided relays of horses we found ourselves at about half-past one o’clock descending the hill of Eboli towards the plain which contains these stupendous monuments of antiquity. Were my existence to be prolonged through ten centuries, I think I could never forget the pleasure I received on that delicious spot. We alighted from our carriage to take some refreshment, and we reposed upon the herbage under the shade of a magnificent pine contemplating the view around and below us. On the right were the green hills covered with trees stretching towards Salerno; beyond them were the marble cliffs which form the southern extremity of the Bay of Sorento; immediately below our feet was a rich and cultivated country filled with vineyards and abounding in villas, in the gardens of which were seen the olive and the cypress tree connected as if to memorialise how near to each other are life and death, joy and sorrow; the distant mountains stretching beyond the plain of Pæstum were in the full luxuriance of vernal vegetation; and in the extreme distance, as if in the midst of a desert,