Yet would we still our vigil keep, No tidings yet we only see A bark, that seems 'twixt time a link Comes looming slowly into sight Gaily she comes-but where is she And yet before the storm that rends The wind is hush'd, the sky serene- So calm, the trusting heavens are seen Afar the sea-gull wings its flight, Time comes and goes, but ne'er may bring That gallant ship and crew! The hopes to which we fondly cling, Are waxing dim and few! Though calm and bright the sea appears, Sad fancies rise to view, A storm -a farewell shriek-a wreckOn the dark wave, a drifting speck! The sea hath mighty secrets! deep To know the worst were best! Ne'er of that ocean wanderer May we the story learn The waves alone could speak of her, With their voices harsh and stern;- A vague reality of wo! And now by many a dreary hearth, A vacant seat appears And sireless children cease their mirth, EDINBURGH, May, 1841. J. H. JUN. ཀཀཀཀ་འའ་་་་་་་འ དང་ཉ THE AGENTS OF CIVILIZATION. A SERIES OF LECTURES.-LECTURE SECOND. THE HERO. THE agencies which have most powerfully assisted the progress of an early civilization, are often those with which a subsequent and more enlightened civilization is called on to contend. Truth remains eternal and unchangeable, like its Author, the eternal and unchangeable God; but social institutions and social instrumentalities vary with the varying wants of humanity. No such in strumentality, or such institution, can be wholly a falsehood at any period of its career. It is destroyed, and deserves destruction, only when its falsehood predominates over its usefulness and applicability; or when some other instrumentality or institution takes its place. Every age lives in the midst of a mass of decaying falsehoods and of nascent truths; of falsehoods whence the vital hath nearly evaporated, but where the semblance of life remains; of truths which are freshly and vigorously vital, but which have not yet assumed the semblances of vitality. The truths exist long as powers, before assuming the perfect garb of presences; and the falsehoods exist as presences, long after having ceased to exist as powers. And this is the cause of all violent political changes. The enemies of truth are not sufficiently acquainted with the growing energies of truth; and they are equally ignorant of the gradual decay that has been undermining the falsehoods of which they are the interested champions. They lean on an apparent aid, which is shivered into atoms at the first touch of opposition; and they have to grapple with a foe, whose stalwart force they despised, because that force was not clothed with a brilliant array of outward appliances. Such violent changes, however, will always become more rare in the onward course of the world; for this reason, among others,—that each successive transformation of society will embody less of falsehood than the preceding-that thus it will gather round it less of selfish adherencethat, consequently, as well from diminished numbers as from diminished zeal and diminished strength, the conservative minority will be less disposed to risk a physical struggle with the democracy. Yet all changes, whether violent or peaceful, will bring the result which I have commenced by indicating-the destruction, as bad, of agencies that have formerly been blissful. And we must understand this fact, we must imbue our whole thinkings with it, if we wish to read the history of man with purpose and with profit. It is little that we admit the mere circumstance of human progress, unless we are able to grasp those high philosophical principles by which that progress is guided, and which can always calculate, amid the darkest gloom of the political horizon, the transitions through which redemption is to be evolved. Among agencies of civilization, formerly salutary, but which have now become bad, war may be prominently named. Of war I have ever been the uncompromising opponent. No words can express my disgust and horror at the wholesale murder of man by his fellow-man; and it will ever be one of the dearest objects of my mission to aid in banishing war from the face of the earth. Yet war, that hideous monster that slakes his fierce thirst with the hot blood of human bosoms, has been one of God's potencies for stimulating social improvement. I cannot enumerate the various ways in which this effect has been accomplished; but it is evident, that one of those ways is the impulse that war has given to the mechanical ingenuity of man. The first employments of the human race were agricultural. Keepers of sheep and tillers of the ground shared for a time between them the range of human occupation. Simple were the modes of life, and few were its wants. In this simplicity, however, man was not meant by his Creator to remain. It afforded him the pleasure of the animal, but not the happiness of the man. It was destroyed by strife,-that strife through the wretchedness of long centuries preparing the blessedness of centuries more: and strife did what labour alone could not have done. Primeval man, working for his daily bread, had no inducement to enterprise. The fertile land on which he dwelt, yielded almost spontaneously a sufficiency for his humble needs; and he had only to cast the seed with a careless hand into the soil, and it rose up in thousandfold abundance to reward him. His dwelling-his implements of industry-the whole texture of his existence, would be of the rudest description, because there was no motive to amelioration. Man felt no higher desire than the desire of food and of clothing, and these were supplied by an exertion so slight as to call forth almost no activity of the intellect. War, by multiplying human relations, roused this activity; and one of the first tendencies of mental activity was evidenced in mechanical skill. When two tribes assumed a hostile position towards each other, one, of course, would be the inferior as to strength. How was it to remedy this inferiority? Manifestly by the fruitfulness of its invention; by constructing weapons and means of attack and of defence, to counterbalance the superiority of its enemy's numbers. It would discover instruments that would fly to a greater distance—that would be more easily wielded-that would strike more inevitably, and kill more rapidly than the instruments of the foe; and in order to guard against any surprise, and more quickly to take advantage of any fortunate incident, it would learn to fortify every natural fortress, whether found in the depths of the forest gloom, or on the steep and rugged cliffs of the mountain. Here, then, was progress, though the immediate object of that progress was unsparing havoc; for the weapons of war, and the modes of fortification, would insensibly extend their influence to the improvement of the implements of agriculture, and of the different species of habitation. War, while thus giving an impulse to the mechanical ingenuity of man, had also a social power. Agriculture is, from its nature, an isolated employment. It continues so even now in countries as thickly populated as our own; and in primeval times this feature must have been still more notable,-times when whole continents lay almost untrodden by a human tread. War dispelled this isolation; it congregated into places of safety larger or smaller portions of human beings for purposes of common protection. The occasional fortifications erected in the forest or on the mountain, were found to be less convenient and effectual than the hamlet, which offered unceasing facilities of defence without interrupting agricultural occupations. Such hamlets could be nothing but clusters of miserable huts; but they contained the great and abiding germs of social developement. They contained the germs of all art and science—of all manufactures-of all commerce-and of all government. The object for which these homes were grouped together soon became a secondary one. Their inhabitants by degrees came to think less of the enemy, than of the materials which their united experience afforded for adding to the comfort and abundance of the tiny community. Their wants having increased beyond those which shepherds or peasants alone could supply, it was perceived that the readiest mode of supplying them, was by allotting to each person the duty for which he seemed |