The Star in the West

THE OLD BOTTLE 149 heavenly Father bids well to rival our earthly Parr ; but as long as we sprawl , what matters it what we sprawl before, if it be the shin -bone of an ass , or the pineal gland of our wretched imagination ? Whatever man has touched he has spoilt : one day he was struck with the mystic poetry of the waves , and he promptly hocussed slimy monsters from out the deep ; gazing on his lithe'and winsome daughter , he held her head under the green flood to satiate the rapacity of the offspring of his deluded imagination , who (he judged ) appreciated his dinner , as well as he did himself . Having devised religion , he by degrees fell into such excesses of worship , that religion bid well to exter minate his whole wretched race ; thereupon he dis closed science , which , when it has destroyed his former hobby , will in its turn run riot over all , till it also becomes such a pest , that it too , will have to give way to something better . Never contented , man ultimately finds that his double collection of manna rots . What the end will be no one knows , and few care ; that we shall ever reach a state verging on perfection is most improbable ; man could not stand it for long unless his worldly span were one of unam bitious affluence , and his heavenly one of spasmodic sensuality and forgetfulness . To have plenty of money and no ambitions , to eat like a hog , sleep like a hog , and to breed like a hog ; to be in a perpetual state of priapism , and to fall into slumbersome forgetfulness just when the pleasant is beginning to pall , and then to wake again to all the fury of desire . These two states , if we carefully dissect the corpse of religion , we shall find to lie at its basic foundation . On turning now to the works before us , we find traced therein an elaborate system rising from the