visible even to the naked eye of a practised observer in different parts of the heavens. Under high magnifying powers several thousands of such spots are visible-no longer, however, faint white specks, but many of them resolved by powerful telescopes into vast aggregations of stars, each of which may with propriety be compared with the Milky Way of our system. Many of these nebulæ, however, resisted the power of Sir William Herschel's great reflector, and were, accordingly, still regarded by him as masses of unformed luminous matter. This, till a few years since, was perhaps the prevailing opinion, and the nebular theory filled a large space in modern astronomical science. But with the increase of instrumental power, especially under the mighty grasp of Lord Rosse's gigantic reflector and the great refractors at Pulkova and Cambridge, the most irresolvable of these nebulæ have given way; and the better opinion now is that every one of them is a galaxy like our own Milky Way, composed of millions of suns. In other words, we are brought to the bewildering conclusion that thousands of these misty specks, the greater part of them too faint to be seen by the naked eye, are, not each a universe like our solar system, but each a "swarm" of universes of unappreciable magnitude. The mind sinks overpowered by the contemplation. We repeat the words, but they no longer convey distinct ideas to the understanding.

But these conclusions, however vast their comprehension, carry us but another step forward in the realms of sidereal astronomy. A proper motion in space of our sun and of the fixed stars, as we call them, has long been believed to exist; their vast distances

only prevent its being more apparent. The great improvement which has taken place in instruments of measurement within the last generation has not only established the existence of this motion, but has pointed to the region in the starry vault around which our whole solar and stellar system, with its myriad of attendant planetary worlds, appears to be performing a mighty revolution. If, then, we assume that outside of the system to which we belong, and in which our sun is but a star like Aldebaran or Sirius, the different nebula of which we have spoken, thousands of which spot the heavens, constitute each a distinct family of universes, we must, following the guide of analogy, attribute to each of them also, beyond all the revolutions of their individual attendant planetary systems, a great revolution comprehending the whole; while the same course of analogical reasoning would lead us still farther onward, and in the last analysis require us to assume a transcendental connection between all these mighty systems—a universe of universes, circling round in the infinity of space and preserving its equilibrium by the same laws of mutual attraction which bind the lower worlds together.

It may be thought that conceptions like these are calculated rather to depress than to elevate us in the scale of being-that, banished as he is by these contemplations to a corner of creation and there reduced to an atom, man sinks to nothingness in this infinity of worlds. But a second thought corrects the impression. These vast contemplations are well calculated to inspire awe, but not abasement. Mind and matter are incommensurable. An immortal soul, even while clothed in "this muddy vesture of de

cay," is in the eye of God and reason a purer essence than the brightest sun that lights the depths of heaven. The organized human eye, instinct with life and spirit, which, gazing through the telescope, travels up to the cloudy speck in the handle of Orion's sword and bids it blaze forth into a galaxy as vast as ours, stands higher in the order of being than all that host of luminaries. The intellect of Newton, which discovered the law that holds the revolving worlds together, is a nobler work of God than a universe of universes of unthinking

matter.

If, still treading the loftiest paths of analogy, we adopt the supposition to me, I own, the grateful supposition-that the countless planetary worlds which attend these countless suns are the abodes of rational beings like men, instead of bringing back from this exalted conception a feeling of insignificance, as if the individuals of our race were but poor atoms in the infinity of being, I regard it, on the contrary, as a glory of our human nature that it belongs to a family, which no man can number, of rational natures like itself. In the order of being they may stand beneath us or they may stand above us; he may well be content with his place who is made "a little lower than the angels."

Finally, my friends, I believe there is no contemplation better adapted to awaken devout ideas than that of the heavenly bodies -no branch of natural science which bears clearer testimony to the power and wisdom of God than that to which you this day consecrate a temple. The heart of the ancient world, with all the prevailing ignorance of the true nature and motions of the heavenly orbs, was religiously impressed by their sur

Nobly does Aristotle observe that if there were beings who had always lived under ground in convenient-nay, magnificent--dwellings adorned with statues and pictures, and everything which belongs to prosperous life, but who had never come above ground-who had heard, however, by fame and report, of the being and power of the gods-if at a certain time, the portals of the earth being thrown open, they had been able to emerge from those hidden abodes to the regions inhabited by us; when suddenly they had seen the earth, the seas and the sky, had perceived the vastness of the clouds and the force of the winds, had contemplated the sun, his magnitude and his beauty, and still more his effectual power, that it is he who makes the day by the diffusion of his light through the whole sky; and when night had darkened the earth should then behold the whole heavens studded and adorned with stars, and the various lights of the waxing and waning moon, the risings and the settings of all those heavenly bodies, and their courses fixed and immutable in all eternity,—when, I say, they should see these things, truly they would believe that there are gods, and that these so great things are their works."

There is much by day to engage the attention of the observatory-the sun, his apparent motions, his dimensions, the spots on

his disc-to us the faint indications of movements of unimagined grandeur in his luminous atmosphere—a solar eclipse, a transit of the inferior planets, the mysteries of the spectrum, all phenomena of vast importance and. interest; but night is the astronomer's accepted time he goes to his delightful labors when the busy world goes to its rest. A dark pall spreads over the resorts of active life; terrestrial objects, hill and valley, and rock and stream, and the abodes of men disappear; but the curtain is drawn up which concealed the heavenly hosts. There they shine and there they move as they moved and shone to the eyes of Newton and Galileo, of Keppler and Copernicus, of Ptolemy and Hipparchus; yea, as they moved and shone when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy. All has changed on earth, but the glorious heavens remain unchanged. The plough passes over the site of mighty cities, the homes of powerful nations are desolate, the languages they spoke are forgotten; but the stars that shone for them are shining for us, the same eclipses run their steady cycle, the same equinoxes call out the flowers of spring and sendthe husbandman to the harvest, the sun sun pauses at either tropic as he did when his course began, and sun and moon, and planet and satellite, and star and constellation and galaxy, still bear witness to the power, the wisdom and the love of Him who placed them in the heavens and upholds them there.

on the 12th of June, 1804, and at an early age became a pupil of Baron Gros. His painting of "Achilles pursued by the Hunters" took the grand prize at Paris in 1831. He was a most industrious and prolific worker, and enjoys a greater reputation abroad than in this country, where few, if any, of his pieces have been brought. brought. Among his best works are "The Last Moments of the Cenci," "Charles IX. signing the Edict of the St. Bartholomew, "The Martyrs of Cilicia," "Jesus and the Virgin appearing to St. Francis of Assisi," "Laban receiving Jacob," "The First Interview of Jacob and Rachel," several subjects from Eugene Sue's Mystères de Paris, and a few battle-pieces of the Napoleonic wars.

SELECTIONS FROM DIODORUS SICULUS, THE HISTORIAN OF THE FIRST AGES OF THE WORLD.

EGYPTIAN ACCOUNT OF THE BEGINNING OF

THE WORLD.

HERE be two opinions of the first gen

eration of men amongst those excellent and learned persons which have written the true nature and history of things. Some of them say that the world is incorruptible and was not made, and that mankind hath been from all times without original or beginning. Others maintain to the contrary, that it is corruptible and was made, and that men at first were produced by generation. For at the beginning of all things both the heaven and the earth had one only essence and form, their natures being confounded together, and that afterward, the bodies and elements being separated the one from the other, the world took the form and order wherein now we see it.

In the beginning men sought their meat in the fields and led a rude and savage life; that the herbs and the trees of themselves furnished them with that which was necessary

for their living, and that the wild beasts were afterward enemies to men, who to resist them and for their common benefit began out of fear of them to assemble together in companies, giving mutual succor to each other and seeking up and down safe places for their habitation and abode. Now, the

sound of their voices was at that time confused and not intelligible, but within a while they made a separation and distinction of their voices, and called everything by its proper name. And, forasmuch as they were then abiding in divers parts of the world, they did not all of them use one and the same language, whence it followed that they had also different characters of letters. And thus were these first assemblies the true beginning of every people and nation.

Howbeit these first men, having neither succor nor aid from elsewhere, led a hard and miserable life, in regard they were naked, without the use of houses or fire, seeking their daily meat from hand to mouth, as they that had not the knowledge of keeping their wild fruits for their future use, nor reserving them for the time of need, whence it happened that in winter many of them died through famine or cold. But finally, taught by experience, they began to seek out dens and caves, both to shelter them from cold and therein also to store up their fruits. Having gotten, then, the knowledge of fire and of other necessary and profitable things, they found out also within a while many other commodities for a humane life, which in time necessity itself, the inventress of all

things, made known by degrees to the understanding of men.

DISCOVERY OF THE USE OF CORN.

Osiris, having married Isis and taken the kingdom upon him, invented many things serving for the use and sustentation of life, and by his good understanding and virtue gave an end to the slaughters which men made of one another for meat and victuals;

for Isis having first of all found out the use of wheat and barley, which before unknown grew by chance amongst other herbs, and Osiris having discovered the great benefit that redounded to them which did eat of that grain, all men began to use that food, as well for the sweetness of it as for that it seemed very commodious to them for taking away the cause of so many promiscuous cruelties and inhumanities. And these priests of Egypt do moreover allege (to demonstrate that Isis was the inventor of the grain) how it hath been observed by them from all antiquities, and is still at this present, that the reapers do in summer gather an handful of the ripest ears, thereof to make an oblation to the goddess, invoking the said Isis and rendering her the honor of

that invention.

ISIS' LAW OF MARRIAGE.

In that time the Egyptians made a law against the common custom of the other nations whereby every man was permitted to take his sister to wife, after the example of Osiris, that married his sister Isis, who after his decease never married again; but, having thoroughly revenged the murder of her said husband, she reigned justly all her lifetime, and by her many benefits to the people so obliged them as them as ever since a