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    attempts at it as actually exist ? The wretched slaves of eastern superstition present their varieties of caste ,, like the strata of the earth , each pressing the other into darkness and obscurity , till the wretched pariah ( the lowest link of the chain ) exhibits a spectacle from which contemplation shrinks with horror .

    We are wonderfully clearsighted when we look through a telescope at distant nations or distant times ; but how stands the case when we look at home ? We are too near to see our own deformities , —too much habituated to our own customs to be struck by their atrocity . An accurate description of ourselves and our system , under some new name which would give an air of novelty to the detail , might place some facts in a better light ;

    and , to this purpose , use might perhaps be made of an idea that occurred to me the other day , during a solitary walk . I had been , the day before , to see the exhibition of the hydro-oxygen microscope , and I amused myself with imagining the minute griffins and giraffes , etcetera , etcetera , which were invisibly sporting in the air : I next fancied them as perambulating my own

    person and that of the pedestrians passing and repassing me ; till my mind suddenly sprung to the idea of this world being one of myriads of vast animals , existing in the immensit y of space ; and we , with all our steam engines and locomotive machines , the ingenious animalculae upon its back : then instantly occurred the idea of the mighty telescopes that might be bent upon us . Let

    us conceive these lenses , moral magnifiers ,, and plaeed within peeping reach of any of our little selves : —could we support the view ? Think of-petty motives , whose present hideous deformities are now lost in their minuteness , being so magnified : —think of our malevolence , with the poor modicum of charity , ( something like Falstaff ' s bread to his sack , ) how we should be shocked at

    the volume of the one , and strain our eyes to make out or view the other . Then the cloaks which we wear , especially that one of mystery in which vice walks about to keep itself warm ; and the curtains which we drop , as if to adorn , but really to conceal , some vacuity or deformity ;—think of these being magnified till we could discern , througli the apertures of hypocrisy , the vices it veiled !

    I do not know how far this fancy might have carried me , had not my mind been called away by the appeal of wretchedness . A being , who was soon to become a mother , implored my charity , and told a brief history of wretchedness—of hopelessness : her time of sorrow was drawing near , but hope of comfort she had

    none . When she left me , again I looked , but in another mood , upon this world . What did 1 there behold ? Humanity a drug ; valued for its accessories , not for itself ; and , if wanting such oi them as custom has given currency , suffered to fall like the forest

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    Human AnimalcuLe . 716

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1834, page 715, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2638/page/39/