bubble on the surface of a brook admits us to the secret Every shell on the beach made to rotate in a cup of the mechanics of the sky. is a key to it. A little water explains the formation of the simpler shells; the addition of matter from year to year, arrives at last at the most complex forms; and yet so poor is Nature with all her craft, that, from the beginning to the end of the universe, she has but one stuff-but one stuff with its two ends, to serve up all her dream-like variety. Compound it how she will, star, sand, fire, water, tree, man, it is still one stuff, and betrays the same properties.”* When men woke up from barbarism and night, and began to contemplate the beauty of the world, they saw that amid the multiplicity of colours and of forms, and in the endless metamorphoses of things around them, whether they looked upon the granite peaks piercing the blue heaven with their hoary pinnacles; the wild sea with its midnight moans and summer laughter; the blue heaven with its storms and starlight beauty; or the green earth with its clustering woods and waving grasses, blossoming all over from pole to pole with a garment of living verdure; still the same invisible forces were at work, weaving all things in a web of unity, and connecting the most incongruous things together. Hence, in their mystic worship, and in the poetic utterances of their untamed hearts, they pictured nature under the various forms of Buddha, Vishnu, Osiris, Proteus, and Pan; all of them symbols of the same thought, and representing the creative power which for ever and ever transmutes one form into another, and evokes from "Emerson's Essays," Second Series, p. 121. corruption and death the creatures of a new creation. The story of the Phoenix is the story of the world, and as one form crumbles into ashes, another starts from its dust, to continue the chain of beauty, and push on the series of utilities. "Where is the dust that has not been alive? YOUNG. Of the sixty simple elements to which all the varieties of dead and living matter are reducible, some fifteen or twenty play the chief parts in the chemistry of the world. All the phenomena which take place around us, whether it be the upheaval of volcanic masses, or the floating of a gossamer in the summer air; the sweeping hurricane which tears up forests by the roots, or the blushing promise of the spring's first flowers; the forked lightning, and the tramping thunder which shakes heaven with deep pulsations, or the golden belts upon the body of the bee, and the fairy song he chants among the flowers; the trickling of molten metals into the fissures of the earth, or the passage of an idea through the brain of man; are dependent upon the separation and re-combination of various of these elementary principles; without the movements or metamorphoses of which, the whole world would be one scene of darkness and desolation. Chemical laws operate upon the minute atoms of which bodies are composed; and as all the atoms of matter have a spherical or globular form, the attractions and repulsions of atomic particles exhibit a close analogy to the attractions and repulsions of the worlds. It is possible, indeed, that there is but one attraction and one chemical law, and the phenomenon of an atom may be repeated in the dewdrop, in the bubble on the stream, and in the floating world. There is more poetry in the alembic and the test tube than the worldly dream about. In one direction the earnest workers are probing the secrets of Nature, and unravelling one by one the mystic threads that run through all her fabrications; and in another, poet-minds are arranging and diffusing the facts which the former have made known, that all the world may become inheritors of the new possession, and dwell with increased joy on the contemplation of these new treasures of the Almighty's handiwork.* If we trace back the history of our world into those remote eras of which the early rocks are records, we shall discover that the same chemical laws were operating then which control the changes of matter now. At one period the earth was a huge mass of fiery fluid, which, radiating or throwing off heat into space, gradually cooled, and became surrounded with a solid crust, entombing within itself a mere chaos of intensely heated materials, which now assert their existence in the shock "The Chemistry of the Seasons." By J. Griffiths, Author of "The Chemistry of the Four Elements," Chemical Lecturer to the Royal Family. London: John Churchill. 66 'Chemistry, as exemplifying the Wisdom and Beneficence of God." By George Fownes. Ibid. of the earthquake, and the awful outbreaks of volcanic fires. In later ages, when the crust had cooled still more, and the atmosphere let fall its showers, the still heated surface, hissing and roaring with the contact of the flood, was rent into enormous blocks, and dreadful abysses; which still remain all over the world, and form the wondrous monuments of an age of great convulsions. Later still the seas gathered together, the rocky masses were powdered into dust by the delicate fingers of the dew and the shower, the green herbs sprang up, and the monsters of the slimy deep appeared in obedience to the Creator's fiat, and the whole earth became a home of beauty in obedience to chemical law. The ceaseless play of the elements, and the mutations of the atoms, had built up the whole into one gorgeous scene of luxuriousness; and man was awakened into being to render the whole subservient to his wishes, and by tracing out the harmonies of the natural world, to arrive at a more exalted knowledge of his Maker. The atom of charcoal which floated in the corrupt atmosphere of the old volcanic ages, was absorbed into the leaf of a fern when the valleys became green and luxuriant; and there, in its proper place, it received the sunlight and the dew, aiding to fling back to heaven a reflection of heaven's gold; and at the same time to build the tough fibre of the plant. That same atom was consigned to the tomb when the waters submerged the jungled valleys. It had lain there thousands of years, and a month since was brought into the light again, imbedded in a block of coal. It shall be consumed to warm our dwelling, cook our food, and make more ruddy and cheerful the hearth whereon our children play; it shall combine with a portion of the invisible atmosphere, ascend upward as a curling wreath to revel in a mazy dance high up in the blue ether; shall reach earth again, and be entrapped in the embrace of a flower; shall live in velvet beauty on the cheek of the apricot; shall pass into the human body, giving enjoyment to the palate, and health to the blood; shall circulate in the delicate tissues of the brain; and aid, by entering into some new combination, in educing the thoughts which are now being uttered by the pen. It is but an atom of charcoal, it may dwell one moment in a stagnant ditch, and the next be flushing on the lip of beauty; it may now be a component of a limestone rock, and the next an ingredient in a field of potatoes; it may slumber for a thousand years without undergoing a single change, and the next hour pass through a thousand; and after all, it is only an atom of charcoal, and occupies only its own place wherever it may be. It is from the unceasing interchange of the particles of matter that the living lustre of the world is born; it is the separation of one atom of water from one atom of starch which gives rise to the formation of sugar; and to this change, produced by the mutual influences of warmth and moisture, the germination of all seeds is due, and hence the continuance of vegetation. Neither the oaks of the forest, nor the grasses of the field, could ever have burst into their green beauty but for this simple change in the elements of their seeds. The Seeds contain a large quantity of starch, a material best of all suited to resist the destroying influences to which seeds are sub M |