intuitively the child begins with prayer and worship on entering life, and
how intuitively on quitting life the old man turns back to prayer and
worship, putting himself again side by side with the infant!"

I made no answer, but, after a pause, spoke of fines and freeholds,
title-deeds and money; and when the business on hand was concluded, asked
my learned guest if, before he departed, he would deign to look over the
pages of my ambitious Physiological Work. There were parts of it on which
I much desired his opinion, touching on subjects in which his special
studies made him an authority as high as our land possessed.

He made me bring him the manuscript, and devoted much of that night and
the next day to its perusal.

When he gave it me back, which was not till the morning of his departure,
he commenced with eulogies on the scope of its design, and the manner of
its execution, which flattered my vanity so much that I could not help
exclaiming, "Then, at least, there is no trace of 'hallucination' here!"

"Alas, my poor Allen! here, perhaps, hallucination, or self-deception, is
more apparent than in all the strange tales you confided to me. For here
is the hallucination of the man seated on the shores of Nature, and who
would say to its measureless sea, 'So far shalt thou go and no farther;'
here is the hallucination of the creature, who, not content with exploring
the laws of the Creator, ends with submitting to his interpretation of
some three or four laws, in the midst of a code of which all the rest are
in a language unknown to him, the powers and free-will of the Lawgiver
Himself; here is the hallucination by which Nature is left Godless,
because Man is left soulless. What would matter all our speculations on a
Deity who would cease to exist for us when we are in the grave? Why mete