history by romance. Humphry Potter must be taken from the catalogue of idle boys, and placed in the list of thoughtful and inventive minds. He was a pupil in the best school, the school of example, and living in the midst of ingenious mechanical contrivances was incited to add another to the number. Here was the starting-point of Watt, and it is well known that he brought to his task acquirements more profound than can be included under the designation of popular science; but the information it supplies would have sufficed for his principal invention the separate condenser-as well as for the majority of the improvements which the steamengine, in its multiform applications, has since received. Slight knowledge, directed sometimes by talent, and sometimes by genius, actually made many of the steps in the most surprising creation of modern days, and was all that was needed to have made many more. A large volume would not contain the history of kindred examples. As science is diffused the more they will be multiplied, for what escapes one mind occurs to another. Contrivances which seem obvious have not been always the earliest made. The building a separate channel for smoke does not appear to us a far-fetched idea; yet Greek and Roman magnificence was polluted from their inability to devise the arrangement. Shot, which is made by passing lead through a cullender that separates it into drops, lost its globular form, which is essential to its carrying true, by alighting while it was soft, till a Bristol workman in 1782 hit on the simple expedient of letting it fall from a tower, that it might cool in the descent. Invention is not exhausted. Every year something is found out, and we have often less reason to wonder that the discovery has been made than that it should never have been made before. Newton met Bentley accidentally in London, and asked him what philosophical pursuits were going on at Cambridge. None," replied Bentley, "for you kill all the game; you leave us nothing to pursue.' "Not so," said Newton, you may start game in every bush, if you will but beat for it."

Lord Bacon assigns to science a twofold object, the relief of man's estate, and the glory of the Creator. There has never, in this country, been a disposition to underrate its last, and most honored use. In the same spirit in which they studied the "book of God's word," Englishmen have studied the "book of God's works." Maclaurin heard Newton observe that it gave him particular pleasure that his philosophy had promoted the

attention to final causes, and his followers, who could not rival him in his genius, have not degenerated from his piety. It has been their delight to dwell upon the fact, that though a casual survey of the world proclaimed a Maker marvellous in goodness and in power, yet every hidden law which was brought to light afforded additional evidence of design, and showed him beyond what man could conceive," wonderful in counsel and excellent in working." With us the exceptions at least have been few, and none of them. deserve to be remembered. But in France atheism, without limitation or disguise, has too often been blended with an extensive acquaintance with natural philosophy; and a living man of science, M. Comte, imputing to the works of creation the imperfections which in reality are in his own judgment, has come to be of the opinion of that impious king, who said that if the Deity had condescended to consult him he could have given him some good advice. Supposing it impossible that a philosopher who had run the range of physics, and written a bulky work in which he contends for the utmost strictness of reasoning, could take up a dogma which shocks the instincts of mankind, without some plausible pretense, we read his observations with close attention and painful interest. We laid down the book astounded at their imbecility and could only re-echo the Psalmist's declaration, that it is the fool which has said in his heart there is no God. His argument might have been penned expressly to prove that there is a credulity of scepticism as well as a credulity of belief, and it is difficult to assign any motive for his creed except the morbid passion for distinction which leads some men, and especially Frenchmen, to prefer the elevation of a gibbet rather than walk upon level ground. Yet he had every advantage, for he only undertook to insinuate objections, which must always be easy on mysterious questions, about which knowledge is imperfect.

Atheists are cowards in discussion; they dare not meet the united evidence, and set out in a formal shape the contending system by which they are bound to establish that the contrivances of the world did not call for a contriver. Even of cavils we can fix upon nothing tangible, amidst the cloudy language of M. Comte, except that the arrangements we make are usually superior to the arrangements we find. And this is the argument which is to disprove that there is a maker and governor of the world! Is it so much as a defect in the scheme that man

has often to plan for himself? With every thing ready prepared to our hands, ingenuity would languish for want of stimulus; and if it be a curse to eat our bread in the sweat of our brow, a greater curse still, in our present condition, lights upon him whose forehead neither sweats from toil nor aches from thought. As Alexander wept when no more worlds were left to conquer, so we likewise should sigh if a too bountiful nature left nothing to be discovered and nothing to be improved. It is part of our enjoyment here to employ our talents in neutralizing evils, in turning apparent disadvantages into benefits, in finding in hostile agencies elements of power which a presiding genius converts to as many friendly ministers. Nor need we suppose that a progressive development of material advantages, instead of a complete and original perfection, bore hard upon earlier generations, who, living in the infancy of the world, lived also in the infancy of civilization. Man, with respect to corporal comforts, is the creature of habit. To whatever he is accustomed, that he enjoys. The Greenlander, with his wretched hut and barren soil, believes himself the most favored of created beings, and pities the lot of nations which are destitute of the luxury of scals. In like manner it is probable that the early inhabitants of Britain were as satisfied with a cave or a cottage of clay, as we with our mansions adorned with all the products of the arts. So, too, in the same age the king would think himself meanly accommodated in the house of the gentleman, the gentleman in the abode of the peasant-and yet custom has adapted each to his own. It is not the absolute degree of refinement that confers the pleasure; it is the improvement on what we are used to, the addition to what we already possess and this pleasure has been common to every period in which the wants of mankind were sufficiently keen to excite invention and summon art to the aid of nature. But in all our improvements we can only, by the strength and intellect which God has given us, mould the matter which God has made. If we can sail in ships upon the great deep, it is because He supplied us with the wood for their construction, and endowed it with buoyancy to float upon the waves. If we perform prodigies with steam, it is because He gave it an elastic power, ordained that fire should evolve it out of water, and provided us with both the water and the fire. We merely use the

things with which He has presented us, and presented with a foresight of the end to which our capacities and wants would enable us to devote them. We can adapt, but we cannot create. The greatest genius that ever lived is impotent to give being to the most insignificant particle of dust. It required the powers of Sir Isaac Newton to detect many natural laws; but even the Newtons of the human race can only discover laws-they cannot make them. We may worm out the the secret powers with which Nature is invested, and by new adaptations produce effects of which the native elements are utterly incapable; but at best we only avail ourselves of properties already existing, merely develope the latent energies innate in our materials. We pull to pieces and put together, we shape and we arrange, but we cannot add to the world a single atom, no-nor even take it away. Whatever our triumphs, we never passed this limit to human interference, which teaches everybody, capable of being taught, that we are after all only creatures, and that another is the creator. But M. Comte can believe any fable rather than believe a God. He is willing to imagine that the sun, the earth, and the planets may have come into being without an author, been whirled in their orbits, endowed with gravity, peopled with wonders; for, parodying Scripture, he asserts that the only glory which the heavens declare is the glory of Newton. The remark is one example out of many that French wit is often nothing but English flippancy. If the heavens declare the glory of Newton, then whose glory does Newton display? But the poison is too weak to take effect, except upon vain and vicious understandings. The arguments of atheists are like chaff in the wind-they may settle for a moment, but from their natural levity the first opposing current sweeps them away. We do not require the lessons of natural philosophy to teach us to believe. Their use is, that they assist us to adore. The further we go the more we are constrained to wonder and admire; and though we see but in part, and often retire baffled from the effort to interpret nature, we see enough to bring away the most inspiriting sentiment with which man can glow-the deep feeling of the Psalmist's words: "All Thy works praise Thee, O Lord, and talk of Thy power; there is no end of Thy greatness."

THE ancient kingdom of Denmark, which at one time played a prominent part in the history of Europe, but afterwards sank into the obscurity of a third or fourth-rate power, has within a very recent period again occupied the attention of the world in general, and of the British public in particular. The European renown of the Danish sculptor Thorwaldsen, first reminded foreign nations of the little kingdom of the North, from which in ancient times a race of heroes had issued to make conquests in more happy climes; translations of the modern productions of Danish literature next created an interest in the country which gave them birth; and within the last twelvemonth, the manly and unanimous exertions of the Danish people to maintain the rights of their king and of their country have gained for them the esteem of all impartial minds. A cursory glance at the historical development and present condition of this people, with a view to ascertaining how far the national character has influenced the government with regard to the honorable position it has assumed on recent occasions, will therefore not be without interest, particularly as Denmark is at this moment, in all internal matters, undergoing a transformation, the bearings of which are of great general importance; for, to be of any use to us, our judgments of the effect of institutions on the development of national excellence and prosperity must be based on the experience of all nations.

To the Christian reader no facts recorded in history are perhaps more interesting than the earliest manifestations of the new bond of union which had been introduced among the nations and individuals of the earth, as evinced in the brotherly welcome tendered by the early Christians of Rome to every co-religionist, whatever his country or his calling, and which so strongly excited the astonishment of the pagan Romans. The outward union which was subsequently manifested in the identical forms of worship observed in Westminster Abbey, in the Cathedral of Palermo, and under the dome of Throndhiem; in the universal sway of the Church of Rome, extending from the sun-lit shores of the Mediter

ranean to the ice-bound coasts of Iceland and Greenland-this unity, it is true, again disappeared. But the unity of the Church, such as St. Paul describes it, "one Lord, one faith, one baptism," nevertheless continues, and similar feelings to those manifested by the Christian Romans to their stranger co-religionists are now often evinced in inquiries addressed by members of one national church to those of another, in questions such as these: "What is the position of the church in your country?" "In what relation does it stand to the state ?" "What are its peculiar tenets and forms?" "How fares it with regard to sects and parties ?" Does not the fact, that questions such as these are often the first which are interchanged between intelligent persons of different countries, prove that they feel that they possess in common one essential good, and that with regard to these matters the advantages and disadvantages of each are those of all? At the present moment members of the Protestant Church have indeed additional reasons for making these inquiries of each other; not only because the Roman Catholic Church, strengthened from within, has been making conquests in the dominions of her adversary, but still more because the German Protestant Church, the Mother Church of Protestantism, is in a state of dissolution and internal decay. This fact renders the position of the Scandinavian Church, which will probably soon be the sole representative of the Lutheran Church, doubly interesting; for in the three northern kingdoms the tenets, symbols, and forms of worship of the Lutheran Church, universally adopted at the period of the Reformation, have suffered no modification since then. The history of the Scandinavian, but more particularly of the Danish Church, cannot indeed boast of any period of peculiar brilliancy; it has exercised no influence abroad; it has been receptive and assimilating, rather than active and conquering; and has therefore remained without any influence on the character of the Protestant Church in general. But in this quiet, self-contemplating, outwardly cold and moderate character, there