th) to prepare
him for his future destination. It was his mother's proudest wish to see
her son a Dissenting Minister. So if we look back to past generations (as
far as eye can reach) we see the same hopes, fears, wishes, followed by
the same disappointments, throbbing in the human heart; and so we may see
them (if we look forward) rising up for ever, and disappearing, like
vapourish bubbles, in the human breast! After being tossed about from
congregation to congregation in the heats of the Unitarian controversy,
and squabbles about the American war, he had been relegated to an obscure
village, where he was to spend the last thirty years of his life, far from
the only converse that he loved, the talk about disputed texts of
Scripture and the cause of civil and religious liberty. Here he passed his
days, repining but resigned, in the study of the Bible, and the perusal of
the Commentators,--huge folios, not easily got through, one of which would
outlast a winter! Why did he pore on these from morn to night (with the
exception of a walk in the fields or a turn in the garden to gather
brocoli-plants or kidney beans of his own rearing, with no small degree of
pride and pleasure)?--Here were "no figures nor no fantasies,"--neither
poetry nor philosophy--nothing to dazzle, nothing to excite modern
curiosity; but to his lack-lustre eyes there appeared, within the pages of
the ponderous, unwieldy, neglected tomes, the sacred name of JEHOVAH in
Hebrew capitals: pressed down by the weight of the style, worn to the last
fading thinness of the understanding, there were glimpses, glimmering
notions of the patriarchal wanderings, with palm-trees hovering in the
horizon, and processions of camels at the distance of three thousand
years; there was Moses with the Burning Bush, the number of the Twelve
Tribes, types, shadows, glosses on the law and the prophets; there were
discussions (dull enough) on the age of Methuselah, a mighty speculation!
there were outlines, rude guesses at the shape of Noah's Ark and of the
riches of Solomon's Temple; questions as to the date of the creation,
predictions of the end of all things; the great lapses of time, the
strange mutations of the globe were unfolded with the voluminous leaf, as
it turned over; and though the soul might slumber with an hieroglyphic
veil of inscrutable mysteries drawn over it, yet it was in a slumber
ill-exchanged for all the sharpened realities of sense, wit, fancy, or
reason.