The Sun. — 1825-03-23 (London, England)

FOR THE SUN.  MR. EDITOR—To those who are the least disposed to feel superstitious, it will appear that the last Northern Expedition sailed under the most unfavourable auspices. Suicide visited itbefore its departure ; and, if report be true, Captain PARRY sprained his ankle when he entered his ship previously to its sailing. The most undaunted among the Generals of ancient Rome would scarcely have ventured on in the teeth of so many bad omens. Thank heaven, we live in a more enlightened and a more adventurous arc. The statesmen and the commanders of the present day seek the hope of saccess, not in the flight of birds, in the quivering of entrails of slaughtered victims, nor in the appetite of chickens ; but in the depth of their political views, in the wisdom of their plans, and in the penetrating and comprehensive glance, which embraces at once the present and the future, and is fully prepared to meet whatever obstacles may arise, because such obstacles have been anticie pated, and the means of overcoming them have been duly combined. We are now too well acquainted with the immeasurable distance that separates the spiritual from the mere material world, to believe that, in the common occurrences of \life, the one can have any very great influence over the other. I wish, however, to be understood as meaning here, not that influence w hich is a necessary consequence of the intimate and incomprehensible union that exist between body and soul, but merely the occult influence which was attributed to either of them in the eyes of darkness and of ignorance. Deep as may be the gloom of superstition and of ignorance, it must be gradually, but effectually, dispelled by the light of knowledge and of philosophy. Yet so deeply rooted in the human breast is the love for the marvellous, and so much is man naturally inclined towards superstition, that even in our own. enlightened age many there are who feel more inclined than they would willingly admit to put some faith in omens of various description. Yet this, as indeed every other species of superstition, certainly betrays no inconsiderable weakness of intellect,and .constitutes one of the most singular anomalies in the constitution of the human mind• How powerful, yet how weak, is the reason of man? At one time, soaring to an elevation appa-1 rently beyond its utmost range; at others, sinking into a state of degradation, disgraceful even in a 1 brute.  The more deeply we reflect upon this matter. the more we must be struck by such an apparent contradiction existing in the very same beingMan, considered in a general point of view, is at once the model of all that is great and good, and of all that is disgraceful and detestable. The external perfect symmetry of his form, the amazing powers of his mind, deservedly place him high above all sublunary animals. Gifted With a soul, endowed with the capacity of producing every virtue, he may be considered as forming the co"nectiag link between heaven and earth—between the Creator and his creatures. Viewed as I have just described him, he is indeed a noble animal = nay, the noblest human imagination can conceive, as fitted to inhabit our earth. But, alas ! too frequently does his fair form-conceal a soul of the blackest die; too often are the powers of his mind employed to minister to his unbridled passions, or in the perpetration of the most disgusting, the most reprehensible crimes. He done is posessed of reason, and he alone is criminal With reflection. It is not, as in the brute, the instinctive impulse of necessity—it is the cool, the reflected intention to do harm, that urges him on to injure, to torture, to destroy his fellow men.  And was it ever so ? Most assuredly not ; for man is the creature of infinite wisdom and of i►►' finite goodness. He now displays some signs 01 perfection, because he was created perfect ; he is too often the slave of violent passions, because he has fallen from that original state of perfection. Ile is a mere wreck of what he formerly was ; a ruin still retaining marks of original beauty ; but nevertheless disfigured, degraded, and " fallen, fallen, from its high estate." This is a melancholy picture, but it is correct. It is not calculated to flatter our vanity ; but it may tend to awaken in our hearts the earnest desire of regaining what we have lost ; what vie must have lost for ever had not Divine goodness stepped in to our assistance.  Mr. Editor, the two first sentences of this' letter were written as an introduction to a slighc view of Captain LYON'S last work. I was incensibly led away by the train of thought those &EL sentences naturally awakened, till I have ties' passed as much as is proper upon the attention of those, among your readers, who may chance 'peruse these lines, and must therefore postpone ta a future period, the brief notice I intended t 0 take of the work in question. A. P.