e of Covent Garden next season, I will let
you know, that you may dispose accordingly of your property in it.

I have finished the "Vestiges of Creation." I became more reconciled to
the theory it presents towards the close of the book, for obvious
reasons. Of course, when, abandoning his positive chain (as he conceives
it) of proved progression, after leading the whole universe from
inorganic matter up to the "paragon of animals," the climax of
development, man, he goes on to say that it is _impossible_ to limit the
future progress, or predict the future destinies of this noble human
result, he forsakes his own ground of material demonstration, on which
he has jumped, as the French say, _a peds joints_, over many an
impediment, and relieves himself (and me) by the hypothesis, which,
after all, in no way belongs peculiarly to his system, that other and
higher destinies, developments, may, and probably do, await humanity
than anything it has yet attained here: a theory which, though most
agreeable to the love of life and desire of perfection of most human
creatures, in no sort hinges logically on to his _absolute chain of
material progression_ and development. From the moment, however, that he
admitted this view, instead of the one which I think legitimately
belongs to his theory, irreconcilable as it seemed to me with what
preceded it, the book became less distasteful to me, although I do not
think the soundness of his theory (even admitting all his facts, which I
am quite too ignorant to dispute) established by his work. Supposing his
premises to be all correct, I think he does not make out his own case
satisfactorily; and many of the conclusions in particular instances
appear to me to be tacked or basted (to speak womanly) together loosely
and clumsily, and yet with an effect of more mutual relation, coherence,
and cohesion than really belongs to them.

Mr. Combe is delighted with the book--because it quotes him and his
brother, and professes a belief in phrenology; but Mr. Combe himself
allowed that the main proposition of the work is not logically deduced
from its arguments, and moreover admitted that though well versed in
_all_ the branches of natural science, the author was perfectly master
of _none_. He attributes the authorship to his friend Robert Chambers,
or perhaps to the joint labor of him and his brother William. If his
surmise in this respect is true there would be obvious reasons why they
should not ack