TO THE EDITOR OF THE BEE.
(June 1. 1791.)
SIR,
A FEW evenings ago, having accidentally cast my eye upon the queries of Arcturus, in the 9th number of the second volume of your useful miscellany, concerning the great revolution of the heavens, or the Platonic year, as explained by M. de la Grange, of the academy of Berlin, I fell into a profound and pleasing meditation, (after supper, when I had retired to rest,) on the regularity and beauty of the universe, and on the divine energy of its Creator.
Astronomy and natural philosophy have always been my favourite studies, and I may say, the attendants of my devotion; so that while these delightful thoughts had taken full possession of my imagination, I fell into a sweet sleep, that called up before me the following most enchanting delusion:---
Methought I was seated on the ruins of a stately edifice that seemed to be the remains of an ancient abbey.[1]
The architecture exhibited a mixture of Greek, Roman, and Gothic; yet it was exceedingly pleasing and majestic.
All over the huge fragments of this magnificent building, I saw the usurpation of nature over art, that indicated the great antiquity of its destruction.
Oaks, elms, and yews of an immense bulk, grew from the rubbish within the walls.
The shapes of the doors and windows seemed but little altered; some of them were quite obscured; others only partially shaded by tufts of ivy; one circular window was edged only with its slender tendrils, and lighter foliage, wreathing about the sides and divisions of it[s] astragal carvings, which were radiated from the centre to the circumference.[2]
From the crevices of the ruins, there sprung a profusion of flowers, in the wildest, but most beautiful disorder.
The gold and purple gleam of the setting sun shone thro' the doors and windows, and the open aisles of the structure, beyond which there was a beautiful meadow, sprinkled with venerable trees of various hue and shape, amid the stems of which I observed a beautiful flock of sheep, and a shepherd reclining on the turf, playing on a flute to a shepherdess who stood by him, leaning on her crook, in a beautiful attitude of attention to his music.
From the reverberation of rocks that were beyond, a beautiful river that flowed through the meadow, echo brought to my delighted ear the mellow wooings of the shepherd's pipe.
Beyond the river, the horizon was bounded by a mountain[3] that seemed like the fabled mountain of Parnassus, but rose with three conical eminencies, whose tops were intercepted from my view by the clouds.
A gentle zephyr raised a voluptuous fragrance all around me; and during the intervals of the shepherd's music, I heard the responsive notes of the wood-lark, the thrush, and the nightingale.
An inexpressible sensation of pleasure thrilled through my nerves. Then there was an awful cessation of sound, and of motion, and a stillness that gave me the presage of an earthquake. Then the ruins seemed to shake below me, and a delightful sound of vocal music, at a distance, immediately succeeded in the shock; and I heard, as it were, the sounding of the pinions of gigantic birds.--- Suddenly I beheld, seated beside me upon the ruins, a young woman of enchanting beauty, who, before I could recover from my astonishment, laid her hands upon my mouth, and upon my eyes, and breathed upon me, when I perceived her to be an inhabitant of the celestial regions, yet I was not afraid.
She looked upon me with divine complacency.
Her features were overspread with all the well-known marks of human intelligence, but lighted up, and exalted to a degree, that filled me with the most pleasing awe and astonishment.
"My son, said she, (with a tone, accent, and expression, that is still upon my soul,) I have been with thee from the beginning of your existence, tho' unseen; I have been the anxious spectator of your warfare with the passions and prejudices of this stormy life; and I congratulate you on the prospect of a sweetly setting sun, after the succesful business of the day.
"To choose like Hercules, required the strength of Hercules; but you have made his choice under the protection of a greater and a stronger Deity than the Jupiter of Olympus.
"The universe is like its author, boundless, infinite, and eternal: But it is boundless, infinite, and eternal, not in itself, but as having for ever emanated from the infinite activity and benevolence of the Creator.
"To meet the powers of your limited understanding, and the extent of your experience, I shall figure matter to you, as the alphabet, and modified matter as the language by which the infinite mind of the Creator communicates itself to the creature, the whole having been brought forth from eternity to eternity, to operate the final purposes for ever of his power and of his goodness. The system of worlds, which we now inhabit, is as a mathematical point, as nothing, when compared to the boundless universe. This system of ours fills a sphere, the diameter of which would require nearly two thousand millions of our years, to allow a ray of light to pass along it with the same velocity that it is sped from the sun to this earth, which it travels in less than seven minutes! With a good telescope, you can see many thousands of such systems as this, which seem like little circular clouds in a bed of Derbyshire marble, or in a piece of polished agate. But the telescope, improved to the utmost extent of human mechanism, will never be able to shew any thing that can bear the smallest proportion to the magnitude of the universe.
"There are, in our system, twenty-six millions of inhabited globes, the greatest part of which exceed our globe, both in magnitude and importance. This system of ours, with the infinite and boundless systems of the universe, are perpetually moving and revolving, in obedience to the eternal laws of the Creator. Matter is ultimately determined by the divine energy, which, acting equally, and in all directions through infinity, produces all those appearances which your blind philosophers call by the names of gravitation, centrifugal, and centripetal forces, and a thousand other metaphors, which are very useful, but only as a technical memorial, like the arrangements of Linnæus the naturalist, or the arrangement of a dictionary, according to the letters of the human alphabet.
"The changes that happen in our universe, are all uniform and regular; but in the periods of revolution are of such immense duration, that it is difficult to determine all the relative motions with sufficient accuracy, to determine the return of the same points in the expanse of the visible heavens.
"There is nothing great or little in the eye of the Creator with respect to the universe; beware, therefore, how you think or talk of this your planet as great or diminutive.--- Endeavour to render yourself relatively great and good, with respect to your own world and your own society, and be satisfied.
"There is but one real mind in the universe, which you are permitted, and indeed enjoined by your nature, to study in the works of creation, and to look up from them, and know and understand your Creator.
"The globe we now inhabit, so far as you are concerned with it, has passed through six great periods of some thousand centuries, and you are in the beginning of the seventh, of which about eighty have elapsed, and your species is but in its infancy.
"In every world of the universe, the Creator has instructed the creature, by exhibiting the divine nature in the shape of the creature, and setting forth the deformity of error by the contrast; and this incarnation of the Creator is the grand instrument by which the moral wisdom of the Creator is transfused, and made effectual for the gradual melioration of all created beings that partake of the divine intelligence.
"This medium of safety and of wisdom is no other than active deity itself, and is universal and infinite as the universe itself.
"Ages of ages must elapse before any new epocha will arrive in your world; but man will continue to approach nearer and nearer for ever to perfection.
"It is like the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day; but it is liker the shadow of a dial, which generates a curve, the parameter of which is continually approaching to the boundary of the curve, but you can never attain it. So, my son, are you situated with respect to the universe, and to its Author; be diligent, be aspiring, be modest; save yourself from folly, from vanity, from vice, from every low pursuit, and continue to feed your soul with knowledge, with the consciousness of peace, and with the purity of virtue. Farewell."
Here ended my divine instructress, and with a smile, to which the smile of Jupiter on Juno, as described by Milton, seemed to be but vulgar, ascended up to heaven, from whence she came. I was agitated beyond all expression, and in my agitation I awoke.
Thus, Sir, I have given you the narrative of my most extraordinary dream, which I am sensible is not fit for the perusal of wise philosophers, to whom I am but as the nothing of my divine instructress; but if it can afford pleasure to any of the lovely girls that read the Bee, or even to any worthy old woman that reads it, with her stocking going on at the same time, I shall be perfectly satisfied.--- I am,
Mr Editor,
With regard, your humble servant,
ASTRO-THEOLOGUS.
[1] Dryburgh Abbey.
[2] The radiated window in Dryburgh Abbey.
[3] Eildon Hills.
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Originally published in David Stewart Erskine,
The Anonymous & Fugitive Essays of The Earl of Buchan,
Collected from Various Periodical Works,
(Edinburgh: William Nivison, 1816),
Vol.1, pp.352-359.