Headlong Hall

e

sentinel at a side-table near the fire, copiously furnished with all the apparatus of tea, coffee, chocolate, milk, cream, eggs, rolls, toast, muffins, bread, butter, potted beef, cold fowl and partridge, ham, tongue, and anchovy. The Reverend Doctor Gaster found himself rather queasy in the morning, therefore preferred breakfasting in bed, on a mug of butter

ver their muffin and partridge, to walk together to a ruined tower, within the

e beautiful Cephalis, adding a few words about his expectations; the old gentleman was unable to withstand this triple battery, and it was accordingly determined-after the manner of the heroic age, in which it was deemed superfluous to consult the opinions and feelings of the l

a narrow and romantic pass, through the middle of which an impetuous torrent dashed over vast fragments of stone.

st extent, the effects of that tremendous convulsion which destroyed the perpendicularity of the poles, and inundated this globe with that torrent of physical evil, from which the gr

liptic shall again coincide with the equator, and the equal diffusion of light and heat over the whole surface of the earth

will be so. Explosion and convulsion are necessary to the maintenance of either hypothesis: for La Place has demonstrated, that the prece

as carried on at the same time from both the opposite coasts, was then very nearly meeting in the centre. They walked to the extremity of that part of it which was thrown out from the Caernarvonshire shore. The tide was now ebbing: it had filled the vast basin within, forming a lake about five miles in length and more than one in breadth. As they looked upwards with their backs to the open sea, they beheld a scene which no other in this country can parallel, and which the admirers of the magnificence of nature will ever remember with r

h the surrounding scene. The three philosophers looked on in silence; and at length unwillingly turned away, and proceeded to the little town of Tremadoc, which is built on land recovered in a similar manner from the sea. After

ntry, that an adventurous fiddler once resolved to explore it; that he entered, and never returned; but that the subterranean sound of a fiddle was heard at a farm-hou

ss a second fiddler, equally adventurous and more successful, sho

le colony we have just been inspectin

fungous excrescences, in the bosom of these wild and desolate scenes, impressed me with as much horror and amazement as the sudden appearance of the stocking m

m of human industry to which this system so essentially contributes: seas covered with vessels, ports resounding with life, profound researches, scientific inventions, complicated mechanism, canals carri

ous desires, to stimulate depraved appetites, to invent unnatural wants, to heap up incense on the shrine of luxury, and accumulate expedients of selfish and ruinous profusion. Complicated machinery: behold its blessings. Twenty years ago, at the door of every cottage sate the good woman with her spinning-wheel: the children, if not more profitably employed than in gathering heath and sticks, at least laid in a stock of health and strength to sustain the labours of maturer years. Where is the spinning-wheel now, and every simple and insulated occupation of the industrious cottager? Wherever this boast

t? voces, vag

im? flentes, i

? exsortes, et

dies, et FUNER

n the side of one of the rocks on the left. The force of contrast struck even on the phlegmatic spirit o

ivilised man. Mind, indeed, they have none, and scarcely animal life. They are mere automata, component parts of the enormous machines which administer to the pampered appetites of t

ing advantages. That a man should pass the day in a furnace and the night in a cellar

y what righ

all property and all posses

you justify t

ll societies; and, though it is certainly the source of enormous evil, I conceiv

evils, which they know to be so with respect to others, and which in reality are so with respect to th

efore understand, how that which a man perceives to be good can be in real

an I contend are false. If he c

a man troweth. Where there is no man there is no truth

contend that there is an universal and immutab

estigated the nature of things for centuries, yet no

degrees the diversities of opinion; so that, in process of time, moral science will be susceptible of mathematical demonstrat

ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine of every million of the human race, the remaini

e survivors of the whole system of terrestrial being, we shoul

perpetual struggle for the preservation of a perilous and precarious existence, while the remaining one wallows in all the redundancies of luxury that can be wrung from their la

a tremendous explosion, followed by a violent splashing of water, and various sounds of tumult