'The Flying Post,' the 'Daily Courant,' the names of
which may be supposed to imply speed, never reached lone country places
till weeks after they had been printed on their one duodecimo sheet of
thin coarse paper. Religion, too, just emerging into glorious light from
the darkness of popery, had still her superstitions; and the mantle that
priestcraft had contrived to throw over her exquisite, radiant, and
simple form, was not then wholly and finally withdrawn. Romanism still
hovered in the form of credulity.
But now, with shame be it spoken, in the full noonday genial splendour
of our Reformed Church, with newspapers, the leading articles of which
rise to a level with our greatest didactic writers, and are competent
even to form the mind as well as to amuse the leisure hours of the young
readers: with every species of direct communication, we yet hold to
fallacies from which the credulous in Charles's time would have shrunk
in dismay and disgust. Table-turning, spirit-rapping, _clairvoyance_,
Swedenborgianism, and all that family of follies, would have been far
too strong for the faith of those who counted upon dreams as their
guide, or looked up to the heavenly planets with a belief, partly
superstitious, partly reverential, for their guidance; and in a dim and
flickering faith trusted to their _stars_.
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