"TIME AND CHANCE." 



Vox et prcetrrea nihil — and. the name 



Of chance are but the arguments of fools. 



Swoll'n with th' expansion of their own conceit. 



Can that which is not, shape the things that are t 



Is chance omnipotent? — Resolve me why 



The meanest shell-fish and the noblest brute 



Transmit their likeness to the years that come ! 



Some, — how many ! — say that everything 

 is the result of " chance." Fie! Every cir- 

 cumstance, however slight, is planned and or- 

 dained. At least, so say we. 



Sir Walter Scott, walking one day along 

 the banks of Yarrow, where Mungo Park was 

 born, saw the traveller throwing stones into 

 the water, and anxiously watching the bub- 

 bles that succeeded. Scott inquired the ob- 

 ject of his occupation : " I was thinking," 

 answered Park, " how often I had thus tried 

 to sound the rivers in Africa, by calculating 

 how long a time had elapsed before the bub- 

 bles rose to the surface." It was a slight cir- 

 cumstance, but the traveller's safety fre- 

 quently depended upon it. 



In a watch, the mainspring forms a small 

 portion of the works, but it impels and 

 governs the whole. So it is in the machinery 

 of human life ; a slight circumstance is per- 

 mitted by the Divine Ruler to derange or to 

 alter it ; a giant falls by a pebble ; a girl, at 

 the door of an inn, changes the fortune of an 

 empire. If the nose of Cleopatra had been 

 shorter, said Pascal, in his epigrammatic and 

 brilliant manner, the condition of the world 

 would have been different. The Mahomedans 

 have a tradition, that when their Prophet con- 

 cealed himself in Mount Shur, his pursuers 

 were deceived by a spider's web, which co- 

 vered the mouth of the cave. 



Luther might have been a lawyer, had his 

 friend and companion, Alexis, escaped the 

 thunder-storm at Erfurt. Scotland had wanted 

 her stern reformer, if the appeal of the 

 preacher had not startled him in the chapel 

 of St. Andrew's Castle. If Mr. Grenville 

 had not carried, in 1764, his memorable reso- 

 lution, as to the expediency of charging " cer- 

 tain stamp duties" on the plantations of Ame- 

 rica, the western world might still have 

 bowed to the British sceptre. Cowley might 

 never have been a poet, if he had not found 

 the Fairy Queen in his mother's parlor. Opie 

 might have perished in mute obscurity, if he 

 had not looked over the shoulder of his 

 young companion, Mark Otes, while he was 

 drawing a butterfly. Giotto, one of the 

 early Florentine painters, might have con- 

 tinued a rude shepherd boy, if a sheep, drawn 

 by him upon a stone, had not attracted the 

 notice of Ciambue, as he went that way. 



We trace the same happy influence of 

 Slight Circumstances in the history of Science. 

 Pascal was born with a genius for mathema- 

 tical discovery. No discouragement could 



repress his eager passion for scientific inves- 

 tigation. He heard a common dinner-plate 

 ring, and immediately wrote a treatise upon 

 sound. While Galileo was studying medi- 

 cine in the University of Pisa, the regular 

 oscillation of a lamp, suspended from the 

 roof of the cathedral, attracted his observa- 

 tion, and led him to consider the vibrations 

 of pendulums. Kepler, having married a 

 second time, and resembling, perhaps, the 

 great Florentine astronomer in his partiality 

 to wine, determined to lay in a store from 

 the Austrian vineyards. Some difference, 

 however, arose between himself and the 

 seller with respect to the measurement, and 

 Kepler produced a Treatise, which has been 

 placed among the " earliest specimens of what 

 is now called the modern analysis." The slight 

 circumstance of Newton's observing the dif- 

 ferent refrangibility of the rays of light, seen 

 through a prism upon a wall, suggested the 

 achromatic telescope ; and led to the prodi- 

 gious discoveries in astronomy. The motion 

 of a speck of dust, it has been said, may illus- 

 trate causes adequate to generate worlds. 



In our common hours of reading, we are 

 affected by Slight Circumstances. A page, 

 a line, a word, often touches us in a large 

 volume. Frederic Schlegel was preparing 

 at Dresden, in the winter of 1829, a Lecture 

 which he was to deliver on the following 

 Wednesday; the subject was, The Extent of 

 Knowledge to which the Mind of Man seems 

 capable of attaining. It was between ten and 

 eleven o'clock at night when he sat down to 

 finish his manuscript. One sentence he had 

 begun : — " But the consummate and the per- 

 fect knowledge"' There the pen dropped 



from his fingers, and when the clock struck 

 one, the philosopher, the orator, and the 

 scholar, was no more. There is something 

 solemn and even tremendous in that abrupt 

 and mysterious termination — that dropping 

 of the curtain upon the intellectual scenery 

 which he was about to display to the eyes of 

 his audience. " The consummate and the 

 perfect knowledge" — and lo ! even while he 

 is gazing through the glass darkly, the 

 mirror of the intellect is clouded by a shadow 

 still blacker, and the Angel of Death con- 

 ducts him into a world where the consum- 

 mate and the perfect knowledge can alone be 

 found. 



The light and shade of life are produced 

 by Slight Circumstances. A little gleam of 

 sunshine, a little cloud of gloom, usually give 

 the tone and color to its scenery. Let us 

 begin with the light. How abundantly are 

 objects of consolation scattered about our 

 feet! Mungo Park, in his travels through 

 the interior of Africa, was plundered by rob- 

 bers at a village called Kooma. Stripped 

 even of his clothes, he sat down in despair in 

 the midst of a desert. The nearest European 



