Note 1 — LETTER LXV.

What a lovely vision, half of it, at any rate, to the eye of modern progress! Foretelling, doubtless, smoking furnaces, and general civilization, in this Amorite land of barbarous vines and fig-trees! Yes—my progressive friends. That was precisely what the vision did foretell,—in the first half of it; and not very many summer mornings afterwards, Abram going out for his walk in the dew round his farm,1 saw its fulfilment in quite literal terms, on the horizon. (Gen. xix. 28.) The smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace. But what do you make of the other part of the night-vision? Striking of oil? and sale of numerous patent lamps? But Abram never did strike any oil—except olive, which could only be had on the usual terms of laborious beating and grinding, and in moderate quantities. What do you make of the second half of the vision?