verse consists as obeying certain rules. To obey a law, to act in compliance with a rule, supposes an understanding and a will, a power of complying or not, in the being who obeys and complies, which we do not admit as belonging to mere matter. The Divine Author of the universe cannot be supposed to have laid down particular laws, enumerating all individual contingencies which his materials have understood and obey,-this would be to attribute to him the imperfection of human legislation; but rather, by creating them endued with certain fixed qualities and powers, he has impressed them in their origin with the spirit, not the letter, of his law, and made all their subsequent combinations and relations inevitable consequences of this first impression; by which, however, we would no way be understood to deny the constant exercise of his direct power in maintaining the system of nature, or the ultimate emanation of every energy which material agents exert from his immediate will, acting in conformity with his own laws.-SIR J. HERSCHEL'S "Natural Philosophy.'

1. "If any one make bad verses, let him be beaten with a stick."

2. Literally, "from the preceding." Reasoning à priori is reasoning on grounds preceding actual knowledge.

3. In common language it is useful to apply the word "law" to designate principles or properties which can only be thus named by analogy. Whenever certain causes invariably or generally produce like effects, this consequence of effect upon cause is popularly termed "a law." Thus we speak of the law of nature with reference to inanimate or irrational subjects; of the law of gravitation, by which bodies are mutually attracted to each other; of the laws of motion; of the laws which regulate certain processes in animal and vegetable

economy, &c. In this sense laws have been defined to mean "the necessary relations resulting from the nature of things." The analogy is nobly expounded in a well-known passage of Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity,' at the end of the first book: "Of law there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world: all things in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power: both angels and men, and creatures of what condition soever, though each in different sort and manner, yet all with uniform consent, admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy." The whole passage will be found at p. 501 of this volume.

THE savage who never heard of the accelerating force of gravity, yet knows how to add to the momentum of his missile weapons by gaining an eminence; though a stranger to Newton's third law of motion,' he applies it to its practical use when he sets his canoe afloat, by pushing with a pole against the shore; in the use of his sling, he illustrates, with equal success, the doctrine of centrifugal forces, as he exemplifies (without any

knowledge of the experiments of Robins) the principle of the rifle-barrel in feathering his arrow. The same groom who, “in feeding his young war-horse to the sound of the drum," has nothing to learn from Locke or from Hume, concerning the laws of association, might boast, with far greater reason, that, without having looked into Borelli, he can train that animal to his various paces; and that, when he exercises him with the longe, he exhibits an experimental illustration of the centrifugal force and of the centre of gravity, which was known in the riding-school long before their theories were unfolded in the Principia of Newton.

Even the operations of the animal, which is the subject of his discipline, seem to involve an acquaintance with the same physical laws, when we attend to the mathematical accuracy with which he adapts the obliquity of his body to the rate of his circular speed. In both cases (in that of man as well as of the brute) this practical knowledge is obtruded on the organs of external sense by the hand of Nature herself; but it is not on that account the less useful to evolve the general theorems which are thus embodied with their particular applications, and to combine them in a systematical and scientific form for our own instruction and that of others. Does it detract from the value of the theory of pneumatics to remark, that the same effects of a vacuum and of the elasticity and pressure of the air, which afford an explanation of its most curious phenomena, are recognised in an instinctive process coeval with the first breath which we draw, and exemplified in the mouth of every babe and suckling?

When one of the unphilosophical artists of the circus gallops his round, standing or dancing upon his horse's back, and tosses up an orange, which he is afterwards to receive on the point of a sword, he presents to us an exemplification of some physical truths, connected with the most refined conclusions of science. To say nothing of the centrifugal power, or of the centre of gravity, the single experiment of the orange affords an illustration of the composition of forces, so apposite and so palpable, that it would have furnished Copernicus with a trumphant reply to the cavils of his adversaries, against the motion of the earth.

What an immense stock of scientific principles lie buried amid the details of manufactures and of arts! We may judge of this from an acknowledgment of Mr. Boyle, that he had learned more by frequenting the shops of tradesmen than from all the volumes he had read.

How many beautiful exemplifications of the most sublime mechanical truths are every day exhibited by the most illiterate

of the people! Nay, how great is the superiority, in point of promptitude and address, which some of those unphilosophical artists display, in circumstances where the most profound mechanician would be totally at a loss how to avail himself of his knowledge! The philosopher himself, the first time he is at sea, cannot cease to wonder, when he observes the theorems hitherto associated in his mind with mathematical diagrams, exemplified by every ship-boy on board; nor need he be ashamed to acknowledge his own incompetency to apply these theorems to their practical use, while he attempts to handle the ropes or to steer the vessel. Still less, however, would he have reason, on this account, to conclude, that, in studying the composition and resolution of forces, he had made an acquisition of no intrinsic value. STEWART's Philosophical Essays.'

2

Fluctuating.
Incredulity.

Condensation.

Pneumatics.

Captain.

Suspended.
Atmosphere.
Latitude.

Detract.
Equilibrium.

GALILEO' had found that water would rise under the piston of a pump to a height only of about thirty-four feet. His pupil Torricelli, conceiving the happy thought that the weight of the atmosphere might be the cause of the ascent, concluded that mercury, which is about thirteen times heavier than water, should only rise under the same influence to a thirteenth of the elevation he tried, and found that this was so, and the mercurial barometer was invented. To afford further evidence that the weight of the atmosphere was the cause of the phenomenon, he afterwards carried the tube of mercury to the tops of buildings and of mountains, and found that it fell always in exact proportion to the portion of the atmosphere left below it; and he found that water-pumps, in different situations, varied as to sucking power, according to the same law.

It was soon afterwards discovered, by careful observation of the mercurial barometer, that even when remaining in the same place, it did not always stand at the same elevation; in other

words, that the weight of atmosphere over any particular part of the earth was constantly fluctuating; a truth which, without the barometer, could never have been suspected. The observation of the instrument being carried still further, it was found that in serene dry weather the mercury generally stood high, and that before and during storms and rain it fell; the instrument, therefore, might serve as a prophet of the weather, becoming a precious monitor to the husbandman or the sailor.

When water, which has been suspended in the atmosphere, and has formed a part of it, separates as rain, the weight and bulk of the mass are diminished; and the wind must occur when a sudden condensation of aeriform matter, in any situation, disturbs the equilibrium of the air, for the air around will rush towards the situation of diminished pressure. To the husbandman the barometer is of considerable use, by aiding and correcting the prognostics of the weather which he draws from local signs familiar to him; but its great use as a weather-glass seems to be to the mariner, who roams over the whole ocean, and is often under skies and climates altogether new to him. The watchful captain of the present day, trusting to this extraordinary monitor, is frequently enabled to take in sail, and to make ready for the storm where, in former times, the dreadful visitation would have fallen upon him unprepared-the marine barometer has not yet been in general use for many years, and the author was one of a numerous crew who probably owed their preservation to its almost miraculous warning.

It was in a southern latitude. The sun had just set with placid appearance, closing a beautiful afternoon, and the usual mirth of the evening watch was proceeding, when the captain's order came to prepare with all haste for a storm. The barometer had begun to fall with appalling rapidity. As yet, the oldest sailors had not perceived even the threatening in the sky, and were surprised at the extent and hurry of the preparations; but the required measures were not completed, when a more awful hurricane burst upon them than the most experienced had ever braved, Nothing could withstand it; the sails, already furled and closely bound to the yards, were riven away in tatters; even the bare yards and masts were in great part disabled, and at one time the whole rigging had nearly fallen by the board.

Such, for a few hours, was the mingled roar of the hurricane above, of the waves around, and of the incessant peals of thunder, that no human voice could be heard, and, midst the general consternation, even the trumpet sounded in vain. In that awful night, but for the little tube of mercury which had given warning, neither the strength of the noble ship, nor the skill and

energies of the commander, could have saved one man to tell the tale. On the following morning, the wind was again at rest, but the ship lay upon the yet heaving waves, an unsightly wreck. The marine barometer differs from that used on shore, in having its tube contracted in one place to a very narrow bore, so as to prevent that sudden rising and falling of the mercury, which every motion of the ship would else occasion. Civilized Europe is now familiar with the barometer and its uses, and, therefore, that Europeans may conceive the first feelings connected with it, they almost require to witness the astonishment or incredulity with which people of other parts regard it. A Chinese once conversing on the subject with the author, could only imagine of the barometer that it was a gift of miraculous nature, which the God of Christians gave them in pity, to direct them in their long and perilous voyages which they undertook to unknown seas.-ARNOTT's Elements of Physics.'

6

1. Galileo was an eminent astronomer, the dungeons of the Inquisition, he died mathematician, and natural philosopher, in 1642, in the 78th year of his age. He who was born in Florence 1564. He is perhaps the most illustrious of the made important discoveries in relation to "Martyrs of Science" upon record. the laws of the pendulum, of falling bodies and of the magnet. After suffering great cruelties, and being confined in

2. Torricelli is another illustrious natural philosopher of Italy. He was born in 1608, and died in 1647.

WORDS are signs of natural facts. The use of natural history is to give us aid in supernatural history. The use of the outer creation, is to give us language for the beings, and changes of the inward creation. Every word which is used to express a moral or intellectual fact, if traced to its root, is found to be borrowed from some material appearance. Right originally means straight; wrong means twisted. Spirit primarily means wind; transgression, the crossing of a line; supercilious, the raising of the eye-brow. We say the heart to express emotion, the head to denote thought; and thought and emotion are, in their turn, words borrowed from sensible things, and now appropriated to spiritual nature. Most of the process by which this transformation is made, is hidden from us in the remote time when language was framed; but the same tendency may be daily observed in children. Children and savages use only nouns