EXPLANATION.

PERCHANCE it may have occurred to some person, who has taken the trouble of following the author throughout the speculations of the preceding pages-and who has permitted his imagination to wander over those far distant ages of the existence of our world, in which it has been represented as destined for conditions of being very different from the present, and probably much superior to them-perchance, I say, it may have been strongly suggested to such a person, while under the impression of such magnificent anticipations, to ask how it comes that an author who seems to delight in following nature throughout her most extensive changes, and in whose eyes, even the whole duration of the past condition of our world appears to be but as a matter of comparatively little moment should yet be so decidedly averse to those minor changes which are now agitating the condition of our country—and should not rather be disposed to hail them as the necessary preludes to some future order of things more perfect in itself, and more entirely in accordance with the progressive purposes of Divine Providence--and with the essentially active character of every thing that has a place upon earth. Considering the vastness of the changes, to the illustration of which some portion of the present work is devoted, it might have been surmised, that its author would have been among the most enthusiastic and decided of all those who look with desire to something better and more matured, on which the human race has yet to enter---and that there could be no accordance in his mind between the views which he evidently entertains respecting the essentially progressive character of all earthly things---and the desire which he yet seems to cherish, that the order of society to which he has been accustomed should be perpetuated throughout an indefinite extent of time.

Those, however, who have followed the author's researches with a more enlightened spirit-and with a juster appreciation of their

meaning and purpose-will form a very different conclusion,— and to all those who may wish to know how the apparent discrepancy is to be accounted for, he ventures, in a very few words, to give the following sentences of explanation.

Generally, then, he disapproves of the changes that are at present in agitation, because they are different in kind, different in extent or duration-and different in the mode of accomplishing them, from any which he has contemplated, or to which he could, with any regard to his principles, give the sanction of his approbation.

First, The changes now in agitation appear to him, not to lead to progression, but to the reverse-or to be a tendency, not to something more liberal, more enlightened, more suited to the true condition of man upon earth, and more productive to him of happiness but to something more extravagant, more like the errors and limited views of the ages that are past, and more fitted to disturb the comfort and to retard the progress of the race, than to carry it forward in the course in which it is desirable that it should proceed. As a friend to progression, therefore, he should be among the very last to approve of what is now going on when the proper tendency of the movement is acknowledged and understood to be what he has now ventured to represent it---and, therefore, instead of any discrepancy between his philosophical principles and his political notions-there is the most perfect consonance and harmony between them, when the view which he is disposed to take of the essential tendency of what he sees going on around him is taken into account.

Secondly, Those who are so intent on the regeneration of society at the present moment, have views of a very different extent, or requiring for their accomplishment a very different period of duration, from those which are advocated in the course of the present volume. The political innovators of the present times, like most of those who have preceded them in the same career, seem to be actuated by a notion, that society is about to assume its last and most perfect form; and that if their views were adopted and substantiated by actual arrangements, the utmost that the human mind could desire for the welfare of the species would have been attained. It is believed, in short, on the one hand, that whatever has been, or now is, is essentially bad, and

fit to be overthrown, because quite unsuited to the state of the world, in the times in which we live-and, on the other hand, that an order of society is about to be realized, which will fully and for ever answer all the demands which the progressive tendencies of the race can be supposed to make for their due development and success. But the author has no such views, either of what has been and now is—or of what is about to take place— he looks to a vast series of ages for the evolution even of what the existing arrangements of this earth permit us to expect as likely to be accomplished—and he believes that instead of a hasty realization of the ideal good which men are fond of contemplating, an extent of time must be allowed for its development, which in the statement of it would appear to many to border on extravagance and delusion.

In the last place, the changes or progress to which the author considers himself entitled to look-and to which only he could give his approbation or support-must be effected by means very different from those which are employed to effectuate the alterations in the social order that are at present under contemplation; -violence, and excitement, and party spirit,—and selfish intrigue —and all other influences similar to these, form no part of the apparatus which can be employed with effect in the realization of his views they must be carried forward by reason-and knowledge-and science-and art—and legislation—and happiness-and virtue, gaining each and all of them those slow advances which alone give any change a permanent and beneficial influence upon life; and having this opinion of the only kind of means that ever lead to lasting and true good, he considers himself bound to resist all attempts at change founded on the adoption of other instruments of progression, as among the worst evils that can happen to society, inasmuch as they disturb the public peace, and spread inconceivable misery throughout the community at the present time—and only eventually retard instead of advancing the progress which it is desirable that the world should continue to make.

Again, therefore, he repeats, that it is because he contemplates a progress different in kind, different in extent, and different in the means of its furtherance, from that which is now contemplated, that the author expresses his disapprobation of the movement

which he considers to be now threatening this country and all its institutions with disorder—and as he thinks he has the assent of all the best and wisest men-of those even who have ranged themselves on the side of change-to the opinions he has thus ventured to express he thinks also, that with the consciousness which he has of their conformity with the clearest dictates of his own understanding and heart, he would have no hesitation in adopting and avowing them, though the general voice of the thinking part of mankind should have been uttered in an opposite tone.

In a word, he believes it to be impossible that any person holding such opinions as he entertains and has avowed throughout this treatise, could feel any inclination to give his support to any of those retrogade-hasty---and ill-conducted movements, which have in all ages been the attendants and causes of revoluary disorder—and of individual, domestic, and social misery.

MY NATIVE LAND.

ALREADY three great periods have elapsed in the history of Scotland-each impressed with distinct characters-and each offering an interesting and most instructive subject of review.

The first of these is its heroic age-in looking back upon which, shadows of no ordinary magnitude seem to move in great grandeur and power before the mind-and which may well bear a comparison with those that have illustrated any other similar age of the world-or have become the cherished remembrances of any people upon earth. It is only necessary for substantiating this statement, to mention the names of Wallace, Bruce, Randolph, Graham, Ramsay, the records of whose achievements has not inappropriately been termed, by one of the historians of our land, "the Bible of the Scottish peasantry, they being their greatest favourites next to the Sacred Scriptures"-as, indeed, neither sacred nor profane history can present a more impressive assemblage to the mind of the student of the distant and early ages of the

race.

To these succeeded the times of the native kings of our country -"the romantic ages" as they have been well denominated of the Stuarts, a period still full of great and affecting recollections, whether we regard the origin of the family with whose name the time is associated, descended as that family was from the most venerated and renowned of its heroic warriors-the accomplishments by which the different individuals of that race were distinguished the warlike and other interesting events which occurred during their government of the country-the misfortunes which, from one generation to another, seemed to be their destined inheritance-or the melancholy close, corresponding in all its