ROMANISM. 



(p- 55?)- This represented his men- 

 tal peculiarity. As a general illus- 

 tration of such a distinction, it may 

 be said that a person may make all 

 observations possible on a complica- 

 ted subject, and yet be devoid of the 

 capacity or mental training so to 

 weave them into a theory or system, 

 that will immediately, or at any time, 

 meet with acceptance. Waterton 

 was not a " man of science " in the 

 proper sense of the word (whatever 

 he might have been as a taxidermist 

 and ornithologist), so that his editor's 

 words are out of place when he says : 

 " As a man of science, he has never, 

 in my opinion, obtained his rightful 

 place "(p. 133)? meaning by that, that 

 he was a " naturalist the first of his 

 own time, and in no age surpassed " 

 (p. i); and for other reasons than that 

 " he provoked many enemies by his 

 advocacy of truth and exposure of 

 error "(p. 133). "Few things are 



49 



easier than to feign a hypothesis " 

 (P- 5?) but few more difficult than 

 to make one good. Waterton spoke 

 of " Selborne's immortal natural- 

 ist," whom his editor alludes to as 

 one of his few favourite English au- 

 thors. It would have been well had 

 he studied him to more purpose 

 than he did, in two respects at least ; 

 that in every branch of natural his-v 

 tory, facts are everything, and theo- 

 ries and difficulties nothing, and that 

 among naturalists of the right stock, 

 opprobrious names and abusive epi- 

 thets should find no place. It is to 

 be hoped that for the future, no one 

 will maintain that Waterton " rarely 

 ventured upon a statement which he 

 had not abundantly verified," or 

 that " in all his pryings into animal 

 ways, his accuracy was extreme," 

 and, above all, that " to this hour 

 he has not been convicted of a 

 single error." 



ROMANISM. 



WATERTON literally dosed his 

 readers with his Romanism, 

 which makes it a subject of legiti- 

 mate comment here. Let almost 

 any religion of purely human origin, 

 with a regular priesthood, become 

 established and acquire a history 

 and traditions, and hardly any rea- 

 sonable means can extirpate it, al- 

 though it may disappear when its 

 followers, uninfluenced from with- 

 out, quarrel among themselves, and, 

 as in the case of Mahometanism, 

 move like an avalanche, carryingwith 

 it every object in its course. The 

 -less reason a devotee has for believ- 

 ing in the origin and truth of such 

 a religion, the greater seems the 

 difficulty in getting him to renounce 

 it, particularly among Asiatic races, 

 and as was illustrated in the fall of 



Paganism in Europe. That nat- 

 ural adhesion becomes amazingly 

 strengthened in the case of Roman- 

 ism, the most subtle and successful, 

 the best organized, and apparently 

 the most permanent of religions of 

 corrupt human nature, based on 

 certain scriptural truths, or some of 

 their aspects, and innumerable su- 

 perstitions, that took possession of 

 an originally divine building, or the 

 framework of it, and turned it into 

 another structure, and applied it, 

 with its traditions and associations, 

 for the most part, to other purposes 

 and towards other objects than the 

 original ones. By systematically 

 and perseveringly stimulating and 

 manipulating the religious instincts 

 and faculties from their very birth, 

 it has taken a transcendent hold on 



