The Unknown.—­I dare not offer any speculations on this grand and awful subject.  We can hardly comprehend the cause of a simple atmospheric phenomenon, such as the fall of a heavy body from a meteor; we cannot even embrace in one view the millionth part of the objects surrounding us, and yet we have the presumption to reason upon the infinite universe and the eternal mind by which it was created and is governed.  On these subjects I have no confidence in reason, I trust only to faith; and, as far as we ought to inquire, we have no other guide but revelation.

Phil.—­I agree with you that whenever we attempt metaphysical speculations, we must begin with a foundation of faith.  And being sure from revelation that God is omnipotent and omnipresent, it appears to me no improper use of our faculties to trace even in the natural universe the acts of His power and the results of His wisdom, and to draw parallels from the infinite to the finite mind.  Remember, we are taught that man was created in the image of God, and, I think, it cannot be doubted that in the progress of society man has been made a great instrument by his energies and labours for improving the moral universe.  Compare the Greeks and Romans with the Assyrians and Babylonians, and the ancient Greeks and Romans with the nations of modern Christendom, and it cannot, I think, be questioned that there has been a great superiority in the latter nations, and that their improvements have been subservient to a more exalted state of intellectual and religious existence.  If this little globe has been so modified by its powerful and active inhabitants, I cannot help thinking that in other systems beings of a superior nature, under the influence of a divine will, may act nobler parts.  We know from the sacred writings that there are intelligences of a higher nature than man, and I cannot help sometimes referring to my vision in the Colosaeum, and in supposing some acts of power of those genii or seraphs similar to those which I have imagined in the higher planetary systems.  There is much reason to infer from astronomical observations that great changes take place in the system of the fixed stars:  Sir William Herschel, indeed, seems to have believed that he saw nebulous or luminous matter in the process of forming suns, and there are some astronomers who believe that stars have been extinct; but it is more probable that they have disappeared from peculiar motions.  It is, perhaps, rather a poetical than a philosophical idea, yet I cannot help forming the opinion that genii or seraphic intelligences may inhabit these systems and may be the ministers of the eternal mind in producing changes in them similar to those which have taken place on the earth.  Time is almost a human word and change entirely a human idea; in the system of Nature we should rather say progress than change.  The sun appears to sink in the ocean in darkness, but it rises in another hemisphere; the ruins of a city fall, but they are