crash, and, in the fearful avalanche, sometimes overwhelm whole villages and fields, carrying sudden and inevitable destruction to their inhabitants. Most distressing occurrences from this cause take place every year in those lofty and rugged districts where Nature has formed so strong a barrier against the encroachments of hostile armies, and where freedom so long maintained her throne, and religion her purity and independence, in the midst of enslaved and degraded kingdoms. In the narrow valleys of the Swiss Cantons, and along the ravines formed by those tributary streams which supply the ample currents of the Rhine and the Rhone, winter has terrors altogether unknown to the inhabitants of less Alpine territories. Sometimes an avalanche blocks up the channel between two mountains, till the accumulated waters of weeks or months force for themselves a passage, and, rushing forward with a tremendous flood, carry far-spread inundation and death over the smiling and wellpeopled valleys below. In other places, year after year, on the breaking up of the winter storms, rocks and stones, rolling down the sides of the mountains, gradually but surely overwhelm whole districts, which the industry of man had rendered fertile, and cause them to be abandoned to the eagle, the marmot, and the chamois. These encroachments are fearful, while others, of a description scarcely less formidable, occur in different situations of the same interesting ranges. Not unfrequently, the majestic glacier, undermined by some mountain stream, or rendered unstable by the accumulating snows and frosts of ages, gives way in an instant, and, toppling over from its giddy height, tumbles headlong to the lower grounds; not only bearing extensive destruction in its fall, but chilling, for many years, the climate of all the surrounding district with its wintry breath. Such calamitous events remind us, that we live in a world, among the conditions of which are desolation and suffering; and they carry our thoughts upward to that happy land where there is no death, no calamity, no change; where trials are past, and tears are wiped away; and where the dark valley, and the narrow path, have ended in a boundless and glowing paradise of eternal sunshine and unfading bloom. In one point of view, the events I have adverted to, are of importance in the controversy with him who dreams of the eternity of matter, and an eternal succession of uncreated beings. The process of decay which is so actively going on in our mountain ranges, is an undeniable proof of the comparatively recent formation of these rugged elevations, and, by a necessary consequence, of the present surface of the globe, of which they form so extensive and so essential a feature. It is impossible that they could have existed from eternity, or even for any period to which the power of calculation cannot easily extend. Had the earth endured without disruption for a million of years, for example, long ere now the power of frost, and other causes of decay, would have crumbled to dust the hardest projecting rocks, levelled the highest mountains, and reduced the whole surface of the globe to a marshy and unwholesome plain. Our world has neither existed from eternity, nor is it formed for eternal existence. While the frost rends asunder matter subjected to its influence, the air decomposes it, the storm scatters it, the rain washes it away, rivers and overwhelming torrents carry it to the valleys and the ocean; the formation of downs, the fall of forests, and the decay of vegetation, are continually altering the relative depth of the low grounds by their accumulations. "Ages on ages might indeed pass away before these agents could produce their extreme effects, yet that their action is neither inconsiderable nor very slow, innumerable observations have rendered incontestable."* Now, long before the earth had arrived at the point to which it is so evidently tending, the fall of the mountains would render it a comfortless and noxious habitation. Our springs and rivers would be absorbed and disappear in fetid swamps; the winds and rains, on which mountainous districts produce such salutary effects, would cease to be equably dispersed; in one extensive region, * Bushnan's Study of Nature. the stagnant atmosphere, loaded with poisonous vapors, would spread pestilence and death; and in another, winds, blowing continually and violently from one point of the compass, would shed a blight over both the vegetable and animal world. The wide-spread and desolate Steppes of Russia, in short, where nothing is seen on every side but a cheerless and level waste, and where, from horizon to horizon, a deathlike silence reigns, would be but a faint picture of the miserable scene, which a decayed world would present to its last sickly and dying inhabitants. But the earth is not destined to arrive at this state of feeble and decrepit age. Thousands of centuries before that period would arrive, its task will be accomplished, and its race run; for the irreversible decree of the Creator is, that, at no distant period, "the heavens, being on fire, shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat ;" ;" "the earth also, and the works that are therein, shall be burnt up." Yet how cheering is the promise with which that decree is accompanied,-that there shall be the creation or developement of "new heavens, and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness ;" and how appropriate is the exhortation of the apostle, "Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent, that ye may be found of Him in peace, without spot and blameless." TWELFTH WEEK-WEDNESDAY. VI. HOAR-FROST.-FOLIATIONS ON WINDOW-GLASS. THERE are some beautiful appearances which frost frequently assumes, to cheer us, as it were, and give an agreeable exercise to our taste, in the absence of that loveliness, which the hand of an indulgent Creator sheds so profusely over our fields and gardens, in the genial I. 23 VII. * months of spring and summer. I have already noticed the fantastic forms which ice assumes at a waterfall, and the pleasure which arises in the mind, on contemplating the loaded woods, and the undulating surface of the earth, after a fall of snow. Nature is almost always either grand or elegant; and, when it is otherwise, the very contrast is a source of enjoyment. In other words, the mind is so constituted as to derive pleasure from all the aspects of the external world. But there are some things better adapted than others to afford gratification to the taste; and, when I mention hoar-frost, a thousand agreeable recollections will arise in every mind. This appearance is occasioned by the freezing of the mist or dew, and seems to be the result of a process similar to that by which snow is formed in the higher regions of the atmosphere. There is this difference, however, that the snow is formed from the rain-drops or humid clouds suspended in the air, without any solid nucleus to which they can adhere; while the hoar-frost is usually elaborated on the blades of grass, or branches of trees, or other substances with which the moist particles come in contact. It is a wellknown law, that water does not readily freeze, unless it have some solid substance on which it can form. It is on this account that, in a pond or lake, we always see the first appearance of ice either along its margin, or shooting out in long beautiful feathers from some random stick or stone projecting on its smooth surface. In obedience to the same law, the watery particles floating in the air, after being exhaled from the surface of the earth, although they are at, or even below, the freezing point, retain their fluid state when the frost is 66 * The phenomena of dew, and of hoar-frost, when it arises from dew, are owing to the radiation of caloric from the surface of the earth, without any interchange from the sky. "The caloric radiated during the night," says Mrs. Somerville, by substances on the surface of the earth, into a clear expanse of sky, is lost, and no return is made from the blue vault, so that their temperature sinks below that of the air, whence they abstract a part of that caloric which holds the atmospheric humidity in solution, and a deposition of dew takes place. If the radiation be great, the dew is frozen, and becomes hoar-frost, which is the ice of dew." not very intense, till they meet with something solid, when they instantly become crystallized, and are deposited on the trees, the hedges, and the spreading meadows, in those elegant forms which so far excel the frostwork of art. This happens frequently in an atmosphere entirely clear; and indeed a cloudless sky is essential to that rapid evaporation from the earth's surface, which gives rise to an abundant dew; but we often observe the hoar-frost also produced by a dense haze, which broods over the surface of the low grounds, during the night, in the form of a sluggish cloud, and which is dissipated by the first rays of the rising sun. In this latter case, the snowy incrustation is thicker and more general, and the effect is like enchantment. The scene which, at nightfall on the preceding evening, was bleak and cheerless, is all at once converted into fairy land. Every vegetable substance, from the blades of grass which lay drooping in the naked fields, to the polished leaves of the evergreen and gnarled branches of the lofty forest oak, is suddenly fringed or clothed with a garniture of purest down, whose beauty surpasses the poet's dream, and is scarcely less substantial or less fleeting. Another most beautiful effect of frost, which, however, is only rarely observed in the climate of England, where the alternation from comparative warmth to intense cold is not so sudden as in some other countries, is finely described in the following wellknown passage of a poetical letter from Copenhagen, by Mr. Phillips. "Ere yet the clouds let fall the treasured snow, |