72 A CONTINENTAL TOUR. 



forbear to add one other extract on the mutual adaptation 

 of outward nature and the mind of man — a theme on 

 which, sixteen years afterwards, his eloquent friend Dr 

 Chalmers, in his Bridgewater Treatise, discoursed so 

 sublimely. It occurs after a glowing description of 

 Chambery : — 



" I never passed two whole days together of something 

 so near to happiness as I did among the mountains of 

 Savoy ; and though I was too delighted to think of it at 

 the time, I have since been very much pleased to recognise 

 in this a very striking confirmation of a favourite creed 

 of mine. I am now more than ever convinced that there 

 are no mental ills that may not be cured by a timely, a 

 sincere, and a trusting recurrence to those medicines which 

 lie everywhere scattered about for us among the forms 

 and influences of nature ; that in an inartificial state of 

 society and manners, all the fancies, and feelings, and 

 associations that come to the mind from the external 

 world are expressly adapted, by their very nature, to meet 

 and combine with others which previously existed in the 

 mind itself, and to engender, by their union, powers and 

 effects that could not have been produced in any other 

 way ; in fact, that the mind of man and the external 

 world are made expressly for each other, as the sexes are 

 in man and woman, and that powers and capabilities 

 exist in each, which can never be properly and naturally 



