of writing it. As soon as a work of this kind appears, inquiry after its author is afoot; and then begins a series of imputations which can terminate only when the real authorship shall have been avowed. To what annoyance are honest men in this way subjected! The work is, in the first place, ascribed to A. When A, after the lapse, it may be, of weeks, perhaps months, learns to what "bad eminence" he has been raised, he must come before the public, through the medium of the press, with a disclaimer. It is then, in the second place, ascribed to B; and B must do the same: then to C, and so round the whole circle of eminent writers. Nor is this all. It not unfrequently happens that the real author remains unknown; in which case A, B and C, notwithstanding their explicit disavowals of any participation whatever in the production of the work, continue under the opprobrium of having written it with their contemporaries and posterity not merely suffering the consequences of an unrighteous imputation, the condemnation of a crime they never committed nor dreamed of committing, but being branded as liars for denying it. Lee, Burke, Lord Sackville and Sir Philip Francis, are to this day bearing, in different degrees, the reproach of the unknown Junius, already adverted to; and greater reproach than to be deemed, however slightly, the author of productions so rife with calumny, so steeped in malignity, so barbarously abusive, we can scarcely conceive.

In view of these and other considerations, unnecessary to adduce, it is our deliberate opinion, that the authorship of an anonymous work of injurious tendency not only may be inquired after, but ought to be. Inquiry should be pushed in every conceivable direction, and with untiring diligence. No place of concealment should escape its scrutiny; nor should it rest until the author, however fertile in expedients to avert detection, shall stand confessed-in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the only argument necessary for his complete discomfiture; for with the appearance of the author in propria persona, the light of his influence as a writer grows dim and soon goes out

We shall not apologize, then, for the following, perhaps feeble, attempt to identify the author of the Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation; a work, the manifest tendency of which,

its extraordinary circulation, the commendation bestowed on it in certain high quarters, though properly denounced in others, and, of consequence, the widelyspread and deleterious influence it is fitted to exert, give it an importance both in a religious and scientific point of view, exceeded by that of no other which has recently issued from the press. So far as its influence could be counteracted by an exposure of its numerous fallacies in reasoning and misstatements of facts, it has been already done in this and other reviews both in America and Europe. If to the results of these useful labors we add a knowledge of the author, and thus deprive it of its factitious character, and of his utter incompetence for the work which he undertook to perform, when he began writing the Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, and thus reduce him to a level with the common herd of superficial pretenders, nothing would seem to be wanting to render the system of sanatory measures complete.

To begin, then, the writer of this work, we regret, though we cannot hesitate to say, in view of the evidence we are able to adduce, is Isaac Taylor, the author of the Natural History of Enthusiasm, Saturday Evening, Spiritual Despotism, and the Physical Theory of a Future Life. With every allowance for liability to mistake, we think we cannot err in holding Mr. Taylor responsible for its existence. If the difficulties of the supposition are great, and we confess they are; if it appear incredible, and we confess it does, that a man who had written so many works of, apparently, a very different tenor from that of the Vestigesworks which would be creditable to the abilities and acquirements of any theologian in England or the United States, which have gained for their author an enviable reputation in both countriesshould be capable of writing a work containing a flagrant, bold, unblushing assertion of assumed facts, and a train of cool and deliberate reasoning from those facts, which subvert, if admitted, the very foundations of Christianity: we have only to say that the proofs which attest his hand in the composition of it, are as nearly decisive as we could expect them to be, considering the nature of the case. Besides, if we look into the matter somewhat more closely, we shall, perhaps, find reasons for modifying our belief in the incompatibility of the sentiments of the Vestiges with those of

previous acknowledged works of Mr. Taylor; and these perhaps, also, the very grounds on which the supposition of his being the author of the former is deemed incredible, may afford corroborative evidence of its truth. It can be shown that at least one of Mr. Taylor's acknowledged works, published several years ago, sufficiently resembles the Vestiges to be regarded as its twin-brother; for

"An apple cleft in two, is not more twin Than these two creatures."

The tendency of the work referred to was, at the time, not understood; it is not yet understood. Men were blinded by the nature of the subject; by the flattering prospects it opened to human hope; by its soothing appliances to human pride. Hence, instead of being to him a ground of disparagement, it materially increased and extended a reputation already great. This reputation, doubtless, is dear to Mr. Taylor; and he was by far too shrewd not to perceive that, if he published, supposing him to have published, the Vestiges under his "seal and sign manual," though in it following the same line of thought, bearing on the same general conclusion, it would be brought in jeopardy-there being nothing in the subject of this work or in his treatment, (but the reverse,) to conceal from men its obvious tendency to overthrow the Christian system. We have thus a reason for its anonymous publication. The reluctance of the author to be known is satisfactorily explained; a reluctance otherwise, we conceive, wholly inexplicable. That he was afraid to incur the responsibility of the commotion his work might cause in the religious and scientific world, simply in consequence of its paradoxical character, of running counter to received belief, is a supposition not to be entertained for a moment-it is not consistent with his own avowals. He earnestly declares, and we have no reason to doubt, his serious belief of the doctrines, general and particular, which he advocates; he considers them "valuable, and their dissemination a blessing" he believes that "they have nothing in them which can injure the public mind ;" and he impressively informs us that they are given to the world for "the sole purpose of improving the knowledge of mankind, and, through that medium, their happiness." With this depth of conviction, attaching this importance to his doctrines-finally,

believing, as he does, in their subserv iency to the best interests of mankindis it conceivable that he would hesitate to incur any of the common hazards incident to an avowal of his name? Think of Paul, for such a reason, publishing anonymously the gospel of the Son of God, and you have a fair illustration of the absurdity of regarding this man's fear of the reception, absolutely considered, with which his doctrines might meet, as the controlling motive which induced him to suppress his name; and when we reflect that he plants himself on the immovable foundations of science, and hence has no imaginable reason to fear, since he lives—not in the age of Galileo, when to announce that Jupiter has his satellites, was a crime but in an age when scientific facts are verified as soon as they are announced, and universally admitted as soon as they are verified; this absurdity will appear even still more glaring. No, it was no such fear, but there was a fear, nevertheless; and how simple is the solution of all this reluc tance to publish under his own signature, if we view the author as giving utterance, in this book, to sentiments subversive, or thought to be subversive, of a whole life of previous teaching; as reversing the case of the Apostle but just now named-and instead of preaching the faith he once destroyed-destroying, or thought to be destroying, the faith which he once preached. With Cassio, he knows the value of a reputation; but, more provident than Cassio, he resolved to retain it. In fine, all the circumstances of the anonymous publication of the Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation which we are able to divine, are favorable to the supposition that Mr. Taylor is the author; so viewed, they tend to fortify the conclusion at which we expect to arrive by a comparison of this work with any other known to have proceeded from his pen. This comparison we shall now commence. Placing it by the side of the Physical Theory of a Future Life, the work to which we have alluded as its twin-brother, we make the most striking coincidences in the style, as to general tone, and the use of words and phrases; in fundamental and subordinate ideas; in minor incidents. To the evidence of authorship in common, to be adduced under each of these heads, we ask attention.

I. The peculiarities of style are, in both of these works, precisely the same.

The style of Mr. Taylor, as it appears in his Physical Theory and other works, it is by no means difficult to identify. It is singularly correct, but studied, cold, reserved, and somewhat pedantic-betraying a dash of high self-estimation in the writer; it is vigorous, too, in no ordinary degree, but vigorous without variety of movement; it is vigorous, and remarkably monotonous at the same time; tiring by a repetition of similar impressions, and producing in one a sensation not unlike that of a man pushed or dragged along, much to his dissatisfaction, by force steadily and continuously exerted. This is the style of the Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation; best marked, indeed, in the purely historical portions of the work, but appearing in full costume, whenever the author has an opportunity, as in the closing chapters and occasionally elsewhere, for argument or reflection. [We shall offer no examples of these peculiarities, for a full illustration of them would occupy more space than we have at command. We must refer the reader to the works themselves; or, if these are not at hand, to the copious extracts under succeeding heads.]

But while there is this general coincidence of style in the Vestiges and Physical Theory, &c., there are several minor coincidences which deserve notice.

1. The use of what the vulgar expressly term "hard words;" the substitution of the less for the more familiar-of Latinized English, for the simple, intelligible, good old English of the Saxons. We subjoin a few examples of single words of not unfrequent occurrence in both. Thus, in the Vestiges, we have cognizance, abnormal, mobility, pre-human, postulate, actuary, isolatedly, retrogression, aberrant, arrestment, persistency, potentiality, tellurian, super-adequacy, under-adequacy, &c., &c. ; in the Physical Theory, incertitude, occult, nascent, potent, vivacious, reluctate, aperose, cogitation, extra-human, telluric, tangential, &c., &c.

2. The use of the same words and phrases.

Of single words, a few are these: Mundane, the only word, we believe, employed in the two works to express the same idea.-Vestiges, pp. 249, 269, 270, 287; Physical Theory, pp. 148, 188, 220: conditions, to express the circumstances necessary, favorable or adapted, to generation, development, growth, &c., &c. This is a frequently repeated,

and, apparently, a favorite word with our author; consequently, we notice only a few of the numberless occasions on which it is used.-Vestiges, pp. 12, 23, 45, 114, 140, 143, 161, 164, 172, 227, et. al.; Physical Theory, pp. 38, 41, 68, 75, 203, et. al. Rudiments, rudimental, in the sense of germs, germinal.-Vestiges, pp. 20, 21, 149, 255, 260, 261, 262; Physical Theory, pp. 12, 95, 267, 271.

Of phrases, let the following suffice: some are striking.

"Thus we avoid the damage, which the

very appearance of an opposition to natuvery true that Christianity has suffered ral truth," &c.-Vestiges, p. 291. "It is damage by vain presumptuous intrusion into its mysteries," &c.-Physical Theory,

p. 11.

"Reverting to a former illustration," &c.-Vestiges, p. 21. "To revert a moment to our present conjecture," &c.Physical Theory, p. 190.

"The observations made upon the surstrongly to support the hypothesis," &c. face of the moon, by telescopes, tend

Vestiges, p. 33. "Many reasons may be adduced, strongly tending to suggest the belief, that all races," &c.-Physical Theory, p. 178.

"It might well be with a kind of awe," &c.-Vestiges, p. 48. "It might well happen," &c.-Physical Theory, p. 177.

"My sincere desire in the composition the History of Nature, with as little disof the book, was to give the true view of &c.-Vestiges, p. 290. "Or that it can turbance as possible to existing beliefs," rightfully have any force in disturbing our religious convictions."-Physical Theory, p. 10.

Beside these phrases there are two others, which though used in a different sense in the two works, have peculiarities clearly implying a common origin. One of these we shall quote; to the other we can merely refer.

"There are, indeed, abundant appearances as if, throughout all the changes of the surface, the various kinds of organic life invariably pressed in, immediately on the specially suitable conditions arising," &c.-Vestiges, p. 115. "Organic life presses in, as has been remarked, wherever there was room and encouragement for it."-Vestiges, p. 122.

"There may be a yearning after the lost corporeity, or after the expected corporeity: there may be a pressing on toward the frequented walks of active existence. Now let it be just imagined that, as almost all natural principles and modes of life are open to some degree of inequality, and ad

mit excepted cases, so this pressure of the vast community of the dead, toward the precints of life, may, in certain cases," &c. -Physical Theory, p. 224.

The other phrase, to which we adverted, turning upon the words definite, and indefinite, are found on p. 257 of the Vestiges; and p. 41, of the Theory of a Future Life.

II. The coincidence of subject matter is still more remarkable than the coincidence of style; affording evidence not less by their number than their specific nature, that the two works were projected and executed under the auspices of the same mind.

1. The fudamental idea of the two works is precisely the same; namely, the development of a lower organization into a higher by law. In the Theory of a Future Life, the author's aim is to show that the future man, the man beyond the grave, is to be a development by law, or a natural development of the present man. In the Vestiges, the present man, with his specific organization, is a development by law, or a natural development of some one of the various lower animals; which, again, was itself a development of some other below; and so down to the simplest forms of existence. The two books are, therefore, but parts of one book; two divisions of the same general proposition; two elements of the same thought; yet the Physical Theory, when it appeared, was lauded heavenhigh! The Vestiges come forth, alter et idem, and loaded with execrations, it sinks into the Abysm!-perhaps. Such is man: marvelously tickled, tickled to the very marrow, at the idea of unfolding by law or otherwise, into the unshorn gorgeous magnificence of an archangel! but barely hint with the author of the Vestiges, or with my Lord Monboddo before him, that he is himself an unfolding, by law, of monkey organization with its caudal extension abraded by the bad habit of sitting on it, and the world is instantaneously in an uproar! Verily, Lady Montague was right: "Men and women have a deal of human nature in them." But not to linger by the way, though a pleasanter subject of dalliance we know not of, the following extracts, which are necessarily somewhat liberal, will evince the coincidence of which we are now speaking.

"There may be, as in fact we assume that there are, the strongest physical rea

sons for expecting a new and expanded life, as intended for the human family. Innumerable analogies gathered from the processes of the vegetable and animal world, illustrate, and in a sense, corroborate this expectation; while the irresistible impulses and instincts of the human mind -moral as well as intellectual-all support it. Yet there is a particular or incidental consequence, resulting from our receiving the knowledge of another life through the medium of miraculously attested revelation, which demands to be noticed; and it is this, that the corporeal renovation of human nature, which may properly be regarded as an established part of the great order of the material and sentient universe,

or as a NATURAL TRANSITION, comes to be," &c.-Physical Theory, p. 136. stances, that our own conviction of the "It will perhaps be found, in some inreality of things future, or unseen, has suddenly and remarkably become more impressive, merely in consequence of our having seen reason to think of them as natural, or as proper parts of the established scheme of the universe, instead of miraculous interruptions of that scheme." -Physical Theory, p. 138.

"With the daily and hourly miracles (so to call them) of the vegetable and anirenovations, transitions, and transmigramal world before our eyes; with creations, tions innumerable going on, while yet individuality and identity are preserved, nothing ought to be thought incredible or unlikely concerning the destiny of man which comports with these common wonders, and which in itself is only an analogous transformation. No prejudice of the vulgar can be more unphilosophical than is that which would obstruct, for a moment, our acquiescence in the belief of a future transfusion of human nature, with its individuality, into a new and more refined corporeal structure. The profound resources of the Divine Intelligence are constantly being developed in our view, not in a thousand modes merely, but in a hundred thousand; and it is perfectly manifest that this Sovereign Intelligence-master of whatever is abstractedly possible, delights in taking the utmost range of diversity, not merely as to fashion, but as to rule and condition, and as to history and circumstance; and if so low a mode of speaking were tolerable, one might say, the probabilities that man, the chief terrestrial animal, and an animal of so complex a constitution, is destined to undergo several transitions, are as a thousand to one of the contrary. Everything belonging to human nature is mysterious, or rather, bespeaks the existence of powers and instincts undeveloped, and which, though they just indicate their presence, do not reach their apparent end."-Physical Theory, p. 139.

"Whether it is to take place in that same day of telluric ruin, or not, there is to be-and it is to come in at a proper part of the great economy of the universe-a second birth of the human family; when all born of Eve shall, by the creative energy, live again, and, whether for the better or the worse, individually, shall take their stand upon a higher level of physical existence than at first. This transition, which now we find it so difficult to think of, otherwise than with a sort of incredulous apprehension, as a mysterious article of our Christian faith, shall, when it occurs, be felt, however momentous in its consequences, as a simple fact, and as forming a natural epoch in the history of man, whom, we shall then understand to be a creature destined, from the first, to metamorphoses, and for extended progression."-Physical Theory, p. 149.

"Some other idea must then be come to with regard to the mode in which the Divine Author prodeeded in the organic creation. Let us seek in the history of the earth's formation for a new suggestion on this point. We have seen powerful evidence that the construction of this globe and its associates, and inferentially that of all the globes of space, was the result, not of any immediate or personal exertion on the part of Deity, but of natural laws which are expressions of his will. What is to hinder our supposing that the organic creation is also the result of natural laws, which are in like manner an expression of his will."-Vestiges, p. 117.

"The tendency of all these illustrations is to make us look to development as the principle which has been immediately concerned in the peopling of this globe; a process extending over a vast space of time, but which is nevertheless connected in character with the briefer process by which an individual being is evoked from a simple germ. The whole train of animated beings, from the simplest and oldest up to the highest and most recent, are, then, to be regarded as a series of advances of the principles of development, which have depended upon external physical circumstances, to which the resulting animals are appropriate."-Vestiges, p. 153.

"The sum of all we have seen of the psychical constitution of man is, that its Almighty Author has destined it, like everything else, to be developed from inherent qualities, and to have a mode of action depending solely on its own mode of organization. Thus the whole is complete on one principle. The masses of space are formed by law law makes them in due time theatres of existence for plants and animals: sensation, disposition, intellect, are all in like manner developed and sustained in action by law. It is most interesting to

the mysteries of nature thus ultimately resolve themselves. The inorganic has one final comprehensive law, GRAVITATION; the organic, the other great department of mundane things, rests in like manner on one law; and that is, DEVELOPMENT,

On these extracts we forbear making a single remark; not because they do not afford scope for it, but simply because they are of themselves sufficiently explicit and intelligible. They obviously assert and labor to confirm the same general proposition: Natural development or development by law. As we might expect, the same coincidence is found in the subwhere the leading idea is thus identical, ordinate ideas. A few of these are worthy of notice.

1. The distance of fixed stars.

"The nearest of the fixed stars is at a greater distance from our system than 19,200,000,000,000 miles; and the most remote of those that are distinctly visible by the telescope, are probably twice that distance, or much more."-Physical Theory, P. 58. "Methods of computation which are not uncertain, afford us the means of advancing a negative proposition, to this effect, that the nearest of the fixed stars is more remote than the distance already mentioned; (p. 58.) or about twenty billions of miles a distance which would be traversed by light, (passing ninety-five millions of miles in 8 min. 7 sec.,) in three years and two hundred and sixteen days. But there are millions of stars so much more remote than those that have been supposed to afford a parallax, that they may actually have ceased to exist three thousand years ago, and yet may appear in their places.' Physical Theory, pp. 253-4.

"Attempts have been made to ascertain the distance of some of the stars by calculations founded on parallax: it being previously understood that, if a parallax of so much as one second, or 3600th of a degree, could be ascertained in any one instance, the distance might be assumed in that instance, at not less than 19,200 millions of miles. In the case of the most brilliant star, Sirius, even this minute parallax could not be found; from which, of course, it was to be inferred that the distance of that star is something beyond the vast distance that has been stated In some others, on which the experiment has been tried, no sensible parallax could be detected; from which the same inference was to be made in their case."-Vestiges, p. 8.

2. The constitution of other globes and

our own.