in mental and moral. The man of mind gives permanence by arresting thought from oblivion's stream. By printing, that wondrous art, men now And hold converse e'en with the mighty dead, Sages of ancient times, as gods revered, As gods beneficent that blessed mankind With arts and arms, and humanised the world." We have now the accumulated experience of past ages. We have mind lampblacked into permanence. Praise to the man who taught the art of writing! Phoenicia, immortal be you! Printing is writing rapidly by blocks: hail to it! And why hail? Because it is the great arrester. A book is "the precious life-blood of a master spirit embalmed and treasured up." Let each remember that he can be immortal even by giving or saving a thought. He may not "read his own history in a nation's eyes;" but he may feel that he is chronicled in a nation's mind, by contributing his portion to a mental influence pervading a nation. Each, by adding one thought to the general stock, may add a widow's mite, and be assured that it will not be left unchronicled in heaven. Why these illustrations? For what these rhapsodies-by some, perhaps, so deemed? To demonstrate that change is nature; that wealth is change arrested; that man's wisdom is in regulating the changes so as to realise use. But there is more than even this sought to be conveyed. Change is nature's law, not chance's will. Change is as much the child of law as is man's arrest of change; and to enable man to realise the arrest, and, through it, the wealth, the benefit, the happiness-he MUST know the laws which regulate the change. Philosopher! he who ascribes all to chance? No; fool, rather: so stolid, not even "bruising in a mortar" can enlighten him. Increase is a result of change; so decrease is a result of change. What makes increase is, when man can regulate the laws the action of which would produce in the change decrease. Man then has an influence over increase. B 2 It may be well, then, to trace increase, and to try and work out the laws under which it is realisable; it may be well to try and work the problems - GIVEN CHANGE, HOW то GAIN INCREASE; and, GIVEN INCREASE, HOW TO GAIN BETTERING. Glance for a few minutes at the means of increase in the universe. "At present (September 4, 1839,) there is a very large cluster approaching the centre of the sun's disc, which consists of about eighteen large spots, the smallest of them not much less than the size of the earth, and some of them much larger. Besides these there are within the compass of the same cluster above eighty smaller spots, which can be distinctly counted by means of an achromatic telescope magnifying one hundred and twenty times-making about a hundred spots in all within the limits of one cluster. The smallest of these spots cannot be less than from five to nine hundred miles in diameter. One of the spots which lately passed off from the western margin of the disc, measured about the one-thirtieth part of the sun's diameter, and consequently must have been about thirty thousand miles in diameter, or nearly four times the diameter of the earth; and if it is to be considered as a solid body, it must be above sixty times larger than the earth. It contained an area of more than seven hundred millions of miles."" A spot indeed! and this spot, sixty times larger than this earth, passed off-where to? Mind feels the thought a burden; and when, further, it is learned that new worlds are continually forming in the great vastnesses of space, man bows his intellect to the great genius of increase, and feels true humility. He feels the thought is almost too much for nervous fibre to carry; it thrills the brain cords almost to breaking. It is finity approaching to infinity. It is too much let the earth be the base for further illustration. 3 Interesting indeed are the processes by which the earth is renewed its old parts disappearing,-its new parts appearing. An instance or two will instruct. CORAL ISLANDS, what are they? In the sea they must be, if islands. The builders, who are they? Animals-corals. These almost zoophite creatures make a house in which they dwell; they live, perform their parts, and die, but leave their houses as their monuments, the foundations on which other corals build their houses; and thus coral piles house upon house, until, at last, above the ocean's surface stands revealed the work of millions, in a coral island, presenting its pointed peaks, glorious to the naturalist, though fear-producing, when the tempest howls, to the navigator. Men call them coral reefs in their first formation. These reefs form a barrier, against which the ocean rushing, bears the various floating bodies, and these deposits. The following is a description of a coral island in the Pacific: "The next morning, after anchoring, I went on shore on Direction Island. The strip of dry land is only a few hundred yards wide. On the lagoon side we have a white calcareous beach, the radiation from which in such a climate is very oppressive; and on the outer coast a solid broad flat of coral rock, which serves to break the violence of the open sea. Excepting near the lagoon, where there is some sand, the land is entirely composed of rounded fragments of coral. In such a loose, dry, stony soil, the climate of the intertropical regions alone could produce a vigorous vegetation. On some of the smaller islets nothing could be more elegant than the manner in which the young and the full-grown cocoa-nut trees, without destroying each other's symmetry, were mingled into one wood. A beach of glittering white sand formed a border to these fairy spots." On this island were found plants of twenty-seven species, of nineteen different genera, and of sixteen orders; and it is declared by Mr. Keating, a naturalist, that, as the plants are almost all natives of the shores in the East Indian Archipelago, the seeds must have been carried towards the coast of New Holland, and then drifted back again, travelling 1800 and 2400 miles before germinating. Such islands become at last habitable for man and animals; the ocean thus becomes changed; and as time marches on with his changing hand, portions of habitable material occupy the places which once were water. Such is change; such is increase. But to visit the land itself. There" met with. وو RAISED BEACHES are It The An earthquake occurred in Chili on November 2, 1822. raised the sea beach for upwards of one hundred miles. actual amount of material raised was estimated at about fiftyseven cubic miles of solid earth. The ground was raised at Valparaiso three, and at Quintero four feet. It appears, that on the coast of the Baltic, the ground is raised in every twenty-five years one foot. Many places that were once on the shore are now many miles inland. In Great Britain are many RAISED BEACHES. In the vale of the Ribble, in Lancashire, are raised beaches of various elevations under three hundred feet; along both sides of the Frith of Forth is a terrace about twenty feet above the present level of the sea; a similar terrace forms a striking feature in the coast scenery of the Frith of Clyde. The Frith of Cromarty presents remnants of raised beaches; the town of Cromarty is built on a raised beach. In Inverness-shire raised beaches are found, marked on the sides of mountains now far from the sea, and at a great height above its level. Such are the three parallel roads, as they are called, of Glenroy, which are three level lines running along the sides of the mountain, exactly parallel to each other. But more extraordinary than these is the fact, related by Mr. Darwin, that petrified trees were seen by him on the Cordilleras, 7000 feet above the level of the sea, and 700 miles inland. And yet these petrifactions have resulted from the action of the sea; and consequently these trees must have undergone a change in their position equivalent to their present location of 7000 feet higher elevation than, and 700 miles inland from, the sea. Contemplating these changes on the earth's surface, the mind conceives the force of the great truths contained in the lines put forth in Beattie's Minstrel "Of chance or change oh let not man complain, Else shall he never never cease to wail; E'en from the imperial dome to where the swain Rears his lone cottage in the silent dale, Art, empire, earth itself, to change are doomed, Earthquakes have raised to heaven the humble vale, And gulfs the mountain's mighty mass entombed, The most minute agents effect the most mighty changes. What more trivial than sand? And yet on the north coast of Cornwall a considerable extent of country has been inundated by sand, constituting hills several hundred feet in height. So completely have these vast mounds shifted themselves from spot to spot, that the ruins of ancient buildings, originally overwhelmed by them, have again been laid bare in the rear of their line of progress. "Sand-hills or dunes appear to be composed in many instances of comminuted shells, mingled with the river-borne matter, and with the particles derived from the attrition of sea-shore shingles. On the western coast of the Hebrides, which feel the whole force of the Atlantic waves, there are large masses of sand thrown ashore, forming in some places patches of several miles in length, and at other points constituting hillocks from twenty to sixty feet high. "This sand,' says Mr. Macgillivray, 'is constantly drifting, and in some places islands have been formed by the removal of isthmi. The coast of the Netherlands is lined with sand-hills, formed by the action of the wind on the shore; and these hills now constitute the best protection to the Low Countries against the encroaching tendencies of the sea." But still more interesting results originate out of the sands. Look at the desert sands. "By the action, seemingly, of the west winds, the sands of the African interior have been gradually forced in more and more upon the banks of the Nile, until they have engulfed many cities, and have covered a great portion of the tillage lands of Egypt. The number of cities, towns, and villages, thus effaced from the earth, is too large to be calculated. The French traveller, Denon, tells us, that their summits still appear externally in many instances, and feelingly observes, that nothing can be more melancholy than to walk over villages swallowed up by the desert-sands-to trample under foot their roofs, to strike against the peaks of their temples, and to reflect, that here were cultivated fields—that here grew lofty trees, and that here were even the homes and habitations of men-and that all have vanished!' "' 5 |