ncient 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 often used to form more magnificent structures as at Rome;
but, even when they are destroyed, so as to produce only dust, Nature
asserts her empire over them, and the vegetable world rises in constant
youth, and--in a period of annual successions, by the labours of man
providing food--vitality, and beauty upon the wrecks of monuments, which
were once raised for purposes of glory, but which are now applied to
objects of utility.

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONSOLATIONS IN TRAVEL***

******* This file should be named 17882.txt or 17882.zip *******

This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/8/8/17882

Updated editions will replace the p