OF THE LATE PROFESSOR ROBISON. 523 



weight; none had the power or the skill to direct its course y 

 what movements it might communicate to other bodies, how 

 far it would go, or in what quarter, it seemed impossible to 

 foretel. The amazement became general ; no man was so 

 abstracted from the pursuits of the world, or so insula- 

 ted by peculiarities of habit and situation, as not to feel 

 the effects of this powerful concussion. All fixed their eyes 

 on the extraordinary spectacle which France exhibited ; where, 

 if time is to be measured by the succession of events, a year 

 was magnified into an age ; and when in a few months one 

 might behold more old institutions destroyed, and more new 

 ones projected or begun, than in all the ten centuries which 

 had elapsed between Charlemagne and the last of his succes- 

 sors : — In a word, where the ancient edifice, founded in the 

 ages of barbarism with such apparent solidity, strengthened 

 and adorned in the progress of civilisation with so much skill 

 and labour, was in one moment levelled with the dust, A ge- 

 neral state of alarm and distrust was the effect of the convul- 

 sions which men saw every where around them ; where the in- 

 stitutions held as sacred from their origin, or venerable from 

 their antiquity, and essential to the order of society, were seen, 

 not falling to pieces from natural decay, but blown up by the 

 force of a sudden and unforeseen explosion. From such a 

 condition of the world, jealousy and credulity could not fail to 

 arise. When danger is all around, every thing is of course 

 suspected ; and when the ordinary connection between causes 

 and effects cannot be traced, men have no means of distinguish- 

 ing between the probable and the improbable ; so that their 

 opinions are dictated by their prejudices, their impressions, and 

 their fears. Such, accordingly, was the state into which mens 

 minds were brought at this extraordinary crisis j and even in 

 this country, removed, as we were, from the danger, by so 



strong 



