hbors and friends,--and, in a word, that of all whose
experience we can test?"

"I agree with you."

"I am content," replied Harrington; "but at the outset it seems to me
that the expression I have used requires a little expansion to meet
the sophistry of our opponents. I will either explain myself now, and
then leave you to judge; or I will say no more of the matter here, but
pursue our discussion, and let the difficulty (if there be one) disclose
itself in the course of it, and be provided for as may be in our power."

"What is it?"

"It is this;--that it cannot, with truth, be said, in relation to
many phenomena, that (so far as our experience informs us) they do
follow each other in an absolutely invariable order; which phenomena,
nevertheless, we believe to be as much under the dominion of law as
the rest; and any violation of this law, I presume, you would think
as much a miracle as any other. For example, we do not find the same
remedies or the same regimen will produce the same effects upon
different individuals at different times; again, the varieties of the
weather, in every climate, are dependent upon so many causes, that
it transcends all human skill to calculate them. Yet I dare say you
can easily imagine certain degrees and continuity of change in these
variable phenomena which you would not hesitate to call as much miracle
as if the dead were raised, or the sun stayed in mid-heaven."

"Yes, unquestionably," replied Fellowes; "if I found, for instance that
a dozen men could take an ounce of arsenic or half a pound of opium with
impunity, I should not hesitate to regard it as a miracle, although the
precise amount sufficient to kill in any particular case might not be
capable of being ascertained. In the same manner, if I found that though
the amount of heat and cold in summer and winter in our climate is
subject to marked variations, yet that suddenly for several consecutive
years we had more frost in July than in December; that gooseberries and
currants were getting ripe on Christmas day, and men were skating
on the Serpentine on the 10th of August, I should certainly argue that
a change tantamount to a miracle had been wrought in nature."

"You have just expressed my own feelings on that point," said Harrington;
"and it was this very consideration which made me say, that, in order to
render my expression perfectly clear, and to obviate misconception
and misrepresentation, we must endeavor to includ