A royal progeny! And she hath queenly cares: for her dear busy subjects all concerned! Bee, wast THOU spectator of that dreadful fight Wherein she slew her Rival!2 Insolent Pretender to her Throne! Ever since, reigning all peacefully? Dost thou remember when, awhile ye lost your Queen ? Anon what consternation through her realm! toil all suspended! Infants untended, and unfed : All, all amazed, alarmed; Hither and thither hurrying, from hive to outer air, to seek your Queen, ye loyal loving ones? See, she returns! and all again repose, and peace! I wonder, royal BEE, if ever thinks of thee, the ANT, republican! 3 Musing on thy well-compacted State, Strictly subordinate, And one supreme, lovely, guardian of order and of law? For ye, too, wise citizens! have strict statutes, and most biting laws!* Ye pattern type of conduct, policy, and government! Sagacious! Experienced: forecasting ones! Lessoning us human Bees, and Ants, royal! republican! who have ever concerned themselves with the doings of these wonderful and mysterious creatures, that the assertions concerning them in the text are true. 1 'Unexpectedly, I one day saw a queen on a comb: the next day I was favoured with a like view. She remained each day about an hour-the bees very respectfully making a free passage for her as she approached. About a dozen of them tenderly licked and brushed her all over, while others attended to feed her.'-The Ancient Beemaster's Farewell, by JOHN KEYS, p. 8, A.D. 1796. 2 See Note, No. XIV.-"The death struggle between the Rival Queen Bees.' 3 At the time when this was written, the government of France was republican. 4 SHAKESPEARE. 5 Ante, p. 29, note 6. 6 Buffon refused to allow the existence of intelligence in bees-referring all their actions, however admirable, to the results of their peculiar mechanism. or hope, Know ye sorrow, shame, remorse, -or dread despair? Have ye a Past, and Future? Or no to-morrow! all unconscious Now? And do ye THINK ?-The objects of your busy being know? And judge of means and end?' Perceiving, remembering, judging? Know ye of right, or wrong? What right? What wrong? Have ye a Soul, fed by undiscovered sense? 5 Or, dread question! know ye no MAKER? From that fruition glorious, eternally shut out! Incapable of light, all darkness: nical: Ay, Bee! Is there 'twixt thee and me a gulf profound, ordained to be? Stand I, on lofty REASON's brink, gazing proudly down on thee, With myriad fellows, clustering on the other side, On INSTINCT's7 edge, Betwixt us Gulf impassable, tremendous? Poor Bee! Dost thou see ME? 7 The word instinct literally signifies, something inciting or impelling, moving, or directing, (instinctus from in, and stingo, from oria, to prick or spur); but what that SOMETHING is, remains an awful and unfathomable mystery. It is in vain for the baffled philosopher to dogmatise on the subject. He can but conjecture; and should do so with reverence. The questions asked in the text are unanswerable by mortal man; who, nevertheless, is represented as disposed to assert the existence of distinctions, which God has placed it beyond his reach to discover, or establish. He is suddenly arrested in his progress through the dim regions into which he has entered, by the notion of his being, himself, at the moment, the subject of similar speculation to some being of a higher order of creation than himself: and is at length subdued and humbled into a spirit capable of learning the true lesson taught by contemplating the bee. Thinking so curiously, all so confi dent! Of thee, thy Being, Doings? -MYSELF! the while! Unconsciously contemplated by Intelligence, unseen! Transcending mortal man, Yet far himself from the Supreme, As finite from the Infinite! This moment loftily scanning ME, Suspending for a-while his cares sublime,1 And gazing down on ME, On all my Fellows clustering round, Of fancied splendour! vastness! Yet even to his wondrous eyes, but visible ! I, infinitely less to Him, than Thou to Me! Doth he, in turn, deny ME knowledge of my God, And think it to himself, perchance his awful fellows, all confined? To such insects, crawling o'er this petty orb, Quite incommunicable! Doth he muse on us, contemptuously! A curious race, minute, From our little Planet peering, inquisitive, out-among the stars! Thinking2 we tell their motions, distances! Weighing both Sun and Planets! O, feats stupendous! Feats sublime! 1 Sir Isaac Newton seemed to doubt whether there were not intelligent beings superior to us, who superintended the revolution of the heavenly bodies, by the direction of the Supreme Being.-This was said by a relative of Newton, in recording a 'remarkable conversation' with him.-BREWSTER'S Life, pp. 364-5. 2 This is introduced to show the possible fallacy of some of our most confident conclusions concerning the heavenly bodies. It is now, for instance, elaborately argued by one of the most eminent meu of the present day [A.D. 1854], that we have no sufficient reason for believing the stars to be inhabited, or, indeed, of the nature, as to system, magnitude, and distances, attributed to them by modern astronomical science.-See Of the Plurality of Worlds, passim. Soothed into repose, by sights and sounds Of an unwonted Unity, and Peace, and Concord, As though they owned the Presence awful, of Him Who maketh Wars to cease in all the world, Saying, Be still, and know that I am God. Mighty nations! all in glorious Congress met, As ye never met before, And may never meet again, When ye wake up, be it with thoughts of Peace, Peace, lovely Peace, Come from the God of Peace! And blessed harmony enwrap this troubled globe, 2 Ante, p. 30. Melting my soul away! They see me not-yet I their presence feel Fearfully! my ghostly kindred all! A royal group! Great Conquerors! Summoned from Earth, With systems of vast empire, ripening fast falling suddenly, asunder! 3 Scarce past his youth! His eye glances from Nile, to Indus! Now fixed upon the hundred-channelled SUTLEJ ! 5 -He heaves a mighty sigh! Now strains his ear as catching thundering sounds - Aliwal ! Sobraon! Again he sighs: his eye on Egypt fixed: Alexandria! Great CESAR too! also amazed, stern, sad: Beside him Saracen NAPOLEON! his gloomy eye fixed now on Egypt: India France: Spain: Italy: Germany Russia: How swells his mighty breast! 3 A sarcophagus, believed to be that which enclosed the coffin of Alexander the Great, is now in the British Museum! 4 He succeeded to the throne in his twentieth, and died in his thirty-third year. He was well entitled to be called Great. 5 Alexander, in his Indian expedition, advanced as far as the banks of the Sutlej: but his wearied troops began to murmur at the prospect before them, if they crossed the river. On this, he called a council of his generals-and they counselled, to his ineffable mortification, that they should retrace their steps. This was done, after erecting twelve altars, or towers, to indicate the point which he had reached. Doubtless he is thinking of this, at the moment to which the text points. 6 Can you not,' said the dying Napoleon to his physician, believe in God, whose existence everything proclaims, and in whom the greatest minds have believed?' |