Richmond,
Jan. 29
Another earthquake was most distinctly felt in this city on
Thursday morning last, about 9 o'clock. Some persons
were rocked in their chairs. Some staggered as they
stood. Hanging keys oscillated. Doors and
windows flapped. Bedsteads and tall articles of
furniture were moved to and fro. Those who were at
breakfast saw a violent ripple on the surface of tea and
coffee. A few ran out of their houses in great
alarm. The convulsion was more sensibly felt on the
hill than below it; in high than in low houses. We
distinctly felt two of these convulsions, with the lapse of
15 or 20 minutes between them.
These are indeed times of wonder. Comets -- eclipses
-- tornadoes -- earthquakes. In the age of
superstition, these were held to be portentous signs.
Powers of the physical world, are ye not satisfied?
Are not your omens already out? Does not the
conflagration of the theatre verify your superstitious
auguries? Are not the ashes of our citizens
enough? But this is the language of
superstition. To the eye of the bigot, there seems to
be a mysterious sympathy between the revolutions of the
moral and physical world. But truth abjures such
absurdities. Was so large a mass as the comet whirled
from its immense circuit to speak to the inhabitants of this
smaller globe? Was the moon quickened in her
orbit? No; it was the regular course of her motion,
for on these data the astronomers had predicted the eclipse
of the sun; and what is history now, was once a prophecy
from their lips. The laws of earthquakes are just as
regular but more unknown to us; because these work out of
sight, in the very bowels of the earth.
Away then with these chimeras! They are only worthy of
those ingenious days of witchcraft, when if an old woman
sank in the water, she was innocent; if she swam, she was
guilty and was to be burnt for a witch. Away with all
the dregs of those "degenerate days." Whether they are
the tales of the nursery or of an old woman; whether we are
told of the fate of nations in an eclipse, or of a friend's
death in the winding-sheet of a candle; whether it be a
dream, or the vision of a bigot, just let loose from prison,
they are equally at war with the lessons of
philosophy. Where is the connection between the sign
and the event? What is it that links them
together? Where is the cause or where the effect.
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