eyond the influence of
an imagination excited by disease. From youth, even to age, women are
our guardian angels, our comforters; and I dare say any other handsome
young female, who had been your nurse in your last illness, would have
coincided with your remembrance of the vision, even though her eyes had
been hazel and her hair flaxen. Nothing can be more loose than the
images represented in dreams following a fever, and with the nervous
susceptibility produced by your last illness, almost any agreeable form
would have become the representative of your imaginary guardian genius.
Thus it is, that by the power of fancy, material forms are clothed in
supernatural attributes; and in the same manner imaginary divinities have
all the forms of mortality bestowed upon them. The gods of the pagan
mythology were in all their characters and attributes exalted human
beings; the demon of the coward, and the angelic form that appears in the
dream of some maid smitten by devotion, and who, having lost her earthly
lover, fixes her thoughts on heaven, are clothed in the character and
vestments of humanity changed by the dreaminess of passion.

_Amb_.--With such a tendency, Philalethes, as you have shown to believe
in something like a supernatural or divine influence on the human mind, I
am astonished there should be so much scepticism belonging to your vision
in the Colosaeum. And your view of the early state of man, after his
first creation, is not only incompatible with revelation, but likewise
with reason and everything that we know respecting the history or
traditions of the early nations of antiquity.

_Phil_.--Be more distinct and detailed in your statements, Ambrosio, that
I may be able to reply to them; and whilst we are waiting for the sunrise
we may discuss the subject, and for this, let us seat ourselves on these
stones, where we shall be warmed by the vicinity of the current of lava.

_Amb_.--You consider man, in his early or first created state, a savage,
like those who now inhabit New Holland or New Zealand, acquiring by the
little use that they make of a feeble reason the power of supporting and
extending life. Now, I contend, that if man had been so created, he must
inevitably have been destroyed by the elements or devoured by savage
beasts, so infinitely his superiors in physical force. He must,
therefore, have been formed with various instinctive faculties and
propensities, with a perfection of form and use of