December, 1776, before daylight in the morning. A great many of these lights were playing in a neighbouring field, in different directions; from some of which there suddenly sprang up bright branches of light, something resembling the explosion of a rocket, that contained many brilliant stars; and the hedge, with the trees on each side of the hedge, was illuminated. This appearance continued but a few seconds, and then the will o' wisps played as before. M. Waltire was not near enough to observe if the apparent explosions were attended by any report.

From these and other facts which have been recorded, and indeed from the familiar occurrences of the winter months, it appears that the ignis fatuus belongs to a class of phenomena which prove that light and heat, though so intimately connected, may exist separately; or, to speak more correctly, that the peculiar substance, whatever it may be, in which these qualities inhere, contains sometimes the one in a latent state, and sometimes the other. This is only another remarkable property of that most wonderful substance which seems to pervade universal nature, and to combine the various phenomena of electricity, of galvanism, and probably also of magnetism, along with those of light and heat, sometimes in a quiescent, and sometimes in a highly active state.

The phenomena of light without heat, are not so frequently the subject of observation as those of heat without light; but various well known, and indeed familiar, instances of the latter do occur. Of this kind is the light of the glow-worm, of fire-flies, of the medusa tribe, which are diffused so plentifully over the surface of the sea, in tropical regions; of other marine productions; of the scales of fish, and of animal and vegetable substances in the process of putrefaction. Nor must we forget the beams of the moon, which, so far from exhibiting the presence of heat, are even said by some to be slightly frigorific.

An attempt, more ingenious, I think, than successful, has been made to connect the light of the ignis fatuus with the phenomena of falling stars, which may be shortly stated. It

18 supposed, that some phosphoric fluid, arising from the decomposition of animal or vegetable substances, passes into the atmosphere, and continues to float there, without mixing with the atmosphere itself; that this fluid, when it appears in the form of a will o' wisp, becomes ignited, by some means, near the surface of the earth, at a certain point; and that this ignition communicates itself successively to other portions of the same fluid, with which it comes in contact, occasioning that apparently capricious flitting from place to place, for which this meteor is remarkable; and it is further supposed, that other portions of a similar fluid pass, unilluminated, to the higher regions of the air, in a continued column, till they ascend above the region of the clouds, where from some chemical cause, the upper part of the column takes fire, and the ignition is carried backward to the portions with which it is in connexion. Such is the hypothesis; and it might certainly account for some of the appearances; but it is quite inadequate to the explanation of others; and, as to the phenomena of falling stars, recent discoveries have opened views on that subject, of a nature far more extensive and sublime.

In the next paper, I shall advert more particularly to some phosphorescent appearances which seem to resemble those of the ignis fatuus, and which may perhaps ultimately assist in discovering the natural cause of the phenomenon; and, in the meantime, without attempting to explain it, I shall merely say, that, whatever may be its own sphere of utility, there can be no doubt it is connected with a principle which abundantly exhibits the perfections of the great Creator.

We conclude this account with a beautiful description of these appearances, extracted from the 'British Georgics,' a work of the amiable author of 'The Sabbath.'

VOL. IV.

'Sometimes November nights are thick bedimmed
With hazy vapours floating o'er the ground,

Or veiling from the view the starry host;

At such a time, on plashy mead or fen

A faintish light is seen, by southern swains

Called Will-o' Wisp; sometimes from rushy bush
To bush it leaps, or, cross a little rill,

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Dances from side to side in winding race.
Sometimes with stationary blaze it gilds
The heifer's horns, or plays upon the mane
Of farmer's horse returning from the fair,
And lights him on his way, yet often proves
A treacherous guide, misleading from the path
To faithless bogs, and solid seeming ways.
Sometimes it haunts the churchyard, up and down
The tombstones' spiky rail streaming, it shows
Faint glimpses of the rustic sculptor's art,

Time's scythe and hour-glass, and the grinning skull,
And bones transverse, which, at an hour like this,
To him, who passing, casts athwart the wall
A fearful glance, speak with a warning knell.
Sometimes to the lone traveller it displays
The murderer's gibbet, and his tatter'd garb,
As lambently along the links it gleams.'

SECOND WEEK-SUNDAY.

GENERAL ASPECT OF WINTER.

THE general aspect of winter is forbidding. It is the night of the year; the period when, under a mitigated light, nature reposes, after the active exertions of spring and summer have been crowned with the rich stores of autumn. We now no longer survey with admiration and delight those wonders of creative power, which arrested our attention, in that youthful season when herbs, plants, and trees awoke from their long sleep and started into new life, under the kindly influences of warmer suns and gentler breezes; and when the feathered tribes made the fresh-clothed woods and lawns, and the blue sky itself, vocal with the music of love and joy. Nor do we now expatiate in the maturer beauties of summer, when light and heat flushed the glowing heavens and smiling earth, and when the clouds distilled their grateful showers, or tempered the intense radiance by their flitting shade: And mellow autumn too has passed away, along with the merry song of

the reapers, and the hum of busy men, gathering stores from the teeming fields.

Instead of these genial influences of heaven, our lengthening nights, and our days becoming perpetually darker and shorter, shed their gloom over the face of nature; the earth grows niggardly of her supplies of nourishment and shelter, and no longer spreads beneath the tenants of the field the soft green carpet on which they were accustomed to repose; man seeks his artificial comforts and his hoarded food; the wind whistles ominously through the naked trees; the dark clouds lower; the chilling rain descends in torrents; and, as the season advances, the earth becomes rigid, as if struck by the wand of an enchanter; the waters, spell-bound, lie motionless in crystal chains; the north pours forth its blast, and nature is entombed in a vast cemetery, whiter and colder than Parian marble.

Yet, even in this apparently frightful and inhospitable season, there are means of pleasure and improvement, which render it scarcely inferior to any other period of the revolving year; while proofs of the power, wisdom, and goodness of the great Creator are not less abundantly displayed to the mind of the pious inquirer. With reference to the angry passions of the human race, it is said that God 'causes the wrath of man to praise him, and restrains the remainder of wrath;' and a similar remark applies, with a truth equally striking, to the troubled elements. The Almighty sets bounds to the raging ocean, saying, 'Hitherto shalt thou come, and no further, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed.' He regulates by his wisdom the intensity of the tempest, ' staying his rough wind in the day of the east wind.' All the active powers of nature are his messengers: Fire and hail, snow and vapour,' as well as 'stormy winds fulfil his word.' Nothing, indeed, can be more worthy of admiration, than the man. ner in which the rigours of winter are tempered, so as to contribute to the subsistence and comfort of living beings.

It is true that, even in the ordinary occurrences of life, there are, in winter, probably more distressing and fatal inci

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dents tnan during the other seasons of the year. A snow storm may overwhelm a shepherd and his flock; a tempest may cause a gallant vessel and its crew to perish; a fire may lay a village in ashes; disease, attendant on exposure to at rigorous climate, may invade the unwholesome and comfortless huts of the poor; or, in a season when the wages of agricultural labour cease along with the power of working in the open air, famine may emaciate and destroy whole families; but such events as these, melancholy as they are, must be ranked among the common evils of life, and belong to a class, marking a peculiar feature in the government of this fallen world, to which I have previously adverted, and which can never be far from the mind of the accurate observer of nature. At present let us take a rapid glance at the other side of the picture, and we shall see enough to prove, that, even in these gloomy months, the paternal care of an all-wise and beneficent Governor is not less conspicuous than in other periods of the year.

If we look at the lower animals, how wonderful are the kind provisions of Providence. Among the numerous tribes of insects, reptiles, birds, and quadrupeds, there appears to be a general presentiment of the coming desolation. Some, impelled by a wonderful instinct, provide for themselves comfortable retreats, each tribe adapting its accommodation to its peculiar circumstances, burrowing in the earth, or boring beneath the bark of trees and shrubs, or penetrating into their natural hollows, or lodging in crevices of walls and rocks, or diving beneath the surface of the water, and lying immoveable at the bottom of pools, lakes, or marshy streams. Here they are preserved during this barren period, either by feeding on the stores which, with a foresight not their own, they had collected in the bountiful weeks of harvest, or by falling into a deep sleep, during which they become unassailable by the attacks either of cold or of hunger, or by issuing daily or nightly from their resting places, and gathering the food which a providential care has reserved for them, and taught them how to seek. Others, chiefly belonging to the winged