gratefully proud of a donation so distinguishing. Thus entitles us to think that it is chiefly with reference to the existence of the human race, to their moral and intellectual formation, to their present enjoyment of life, and to their future destinies after it, that this planet has been contrived and framed. Mankind are connected with every kind of substance upon it. They use whatever they can make useful them. All things not aerial, become subject to their disposal and government wherever they spread. Nothing can resist long their persevering diligence and ingenuity; and though we need not imitate the flight of Lord Bacon's sanguine hope, and believe that man may in time command the winds, yet we find him exerting such a surprising management as to these, as to make even the most opposing contribute to advance his course, to the astonishment of those rude minds which are but little acquainted with the attainments and ingenuity of the cultivated capacity.* Fire. heat, and vapour, the human genius has fully subdued to be its servants and allies; and wondrously, even to our enlightened day, is their steam application. It can, in some measure, avert and guide the lightning, and drain off the inundation, and compel the sea to respect its controlling bulwarks. We have seen our adventuring contemporaries make the lighter gases lift them up into the regions above the eagle's flight, and carry them safely beyond the clouds and snow. tific artisans, by the magnifying improvements of their optical instruments, can cause even the planets to appear to us as they would do if we were 800 or 1000 times nearer to them than we really are. These wonders have been ef Scien *The natural conception of an uncivilized mind of the impossibility of a vessel making way against the wind, and its astonishment at seeing the difficulty overcome by European ingenuity, were exhibited by one of the negroes of Delagoa Bay, whom they named English Bill, who was in the boat that sailed out to return to Captain Owen's ship when the wind was against them. "The natives had no idea of a vessel under sail reaching an object directly in the wind's eye; and when English Bill saw Lieut. Vidal making a tack in the opposite direction, apparently getting only farther from it, he said that he would go to sleep, as they would not catch the ship that night. The operation of changing the tack roused him from his doze; and, as he lifted himself up, he was quite astonished to find the ship not far off. He hung down his head, ashamed of his native ignorance, and exclaimed, "White man, Englishman, know ebry ting; Delagoa man know nutting. He great fool."Owen's Voyage, v. i. p. 149. †The gigantic telescope on Frauenhofer's principle, has been com fected by a fragment only of the human population-by some branches of the Christian portion of it, and almost within the last hundred or hundred and fifty years; and such progress is making by our philosophers in their investigations into the nature and laws of light, electricity, and magnetism, that even these ethereal elements may, before another century passes, be as much under the power of man, and as subservient to his conveniences, as fire and steam already are.* But the human race is the only order of living creatures on the earth that can perform these achievements, or even understand them, or that ever rise in thought to their Creator, or are able to discern and adore him. Hence, although we are outnumbered a myriad or a million of times by the uncomputable quantity of other animated and organized bodies, cotenants with us here in our common world, none can compete with us in the probability that this earthly planet has been made principally on our account, and not on theirs. None of these have any pretensions to be the subjects of a sacred history beyond that of their original creation, in its design and execution, and in their continued reproduction. The very bounded and instinctive uniformity of their habits and actions in all the successions of their several species, may be considered to indicate that no system at present ascertainable by us, has been pursued as to them, beyond that of their subsistence while they live, and of their being replaced, when they die, by an offspring like themselves. But with man we can perceive that it has been quite otherwise. A very complicated and diversified plan has been adopted and acted upon through his series of generations; and the great purpose of these farther Letters will be to attempt, though with great caution and unaffected self-mistrust, to pleted this year (1833) at M. Schneider's manufactory, at Munich. It has a focal distance of 15 feet, with an aperture of 10 inches. It exceeds Frauenhofer's celebrated Dorpat telescope in the ratio of 21 to 18 as to the clearness and distinctness of the heavenly body, and of 136 to 100 as to the intensity of the light. It magnifies above 1000 times, and causes Saturn to appear as he would if 816 times nearer, and the moon as if it were but 68 geographical miles from us.-Nuremburg Correspondenten, 1833. * Professor Powell, in his excellent History of Natural Philosophythe best in so small a compass-has justly stated, that "a- vast range of science, wholly of modern creation, has arisen in tracing the relations of light, heat, magnetism electricity, and galvanism."-P. 387. trace and describe as much of it as our insufficiencies will allow us to understand.* The Letters comprised in our former volume were written on the principle that our earth and its inhabitants were the CREATION of the DEITY. Independent of the authority on which this main fact is founded, it was reasoned, that our globe and its contents cannot have been eternal, because they are all compounded things; and no compound can have been eternal. All compounded things must have been preceded by the separate state of their component elements, before these became combined into the cohering aggregations in which we behold them. The science displayed in nature is evidence, tha! every part which exhibits it has been scientifically constructed, and therefore by a scientific or intelligent Creator A scientific construction is an arrangement of elements and their compounds into forms and combinations which previous thought and choosing will, for specific ends, had designed and determined on, and which their selected peculiarities, thus adjusted, accomplish. Science, in all the marks and indications of it, is the strongest demonstration we can have of the presence and action of intelligent mind in the formation of what presents it to our notice.‡ * Yet as 1 contemplate the vast multitudes of animated beings in their various classes and graduated magnitudes, and especially the little world of animalcules, and perceive that the innumerable quantities of these, though imperceptible to the unassisted eye, are as artificially and curiously framed, with as varied and complicated structures, as the largest animals, I cannot but feel that there are most probably distinct purposes and plans as to them in the great economy of creation, which we have not yet attained to perceive. They seem to belong to a system appropriated to themselves, which is different from that by which we are regufated. It will be a subject always worth thinking upon. It is right that the exact sciences and the visible phenomena which we can ascertain should be our first studies, and be as extensively acquired as possible. But it will be a healthful exercise to the mind to ascend at times from the mere material facts and laws which we know, to those superior meditations on the divine philosophy connected with them, which will lead us to trace in all things the system and meaning of our intelligent Creator, who has made nothing without design and purpose, and always for ends correspondent with the wisdom and benevolence which characterize his nature. Sacred Hist. vol. i. p. 11. 5th ed. It was with this feeling that the ancient philosopher, on landing on an unknown coast, which he feared might only have wild beasts or savages for its inhabitants, exclaimed, as he saw the tracing of some 3 Science like this is the intellectual character of our terrestrial habitation. As far as chymistry and natural philosophy can carry their researches, they find all things on our earth resolvable into simpler conditions, and ultimately into primary atoms or molecules, of which every visible substance is composed. Even those things which, from the sameness of their apparent matter, and from their not having been decomposed, are at present called simple substances, to distinguish them from what have been analyzed farther, are still but combinations of numerous adhering particles, whether of the same specific kind or not.t Nature has always met the mortal eye in this compoundeo state, because its structure was completed before human ex istence began; and the elementary molecules can nowhere now be found in their primary or single state; nor can our art simplify any thing into this primeval form. Everywhere we see matter in artificial compositions, and it recedes from our sight and touch before we can divide it into its earliest particles. But as these original atoms could not move themselves into those myriads and millions of definite organizations and limited figures, sublime masses and beautiful forms, which constitute our world, no deduction seems more just and certain, than that we and all the external things around us, have been framed by a Creator of adequate mind and power, who has exerted his thought, and imagination, and will, to design what he resolved to form and to execute by his omnipotence, whatever he had thus planned and determined to produce. To such a Being our reason, from our experience as to its own operation in ourselves, ascribes also purposes and ends in all that he fabricates; because we, in our inferior mind, can make nothing without them. Our views will vary according to the state and qualities of our intellect. The more weak and foolish we are, the more geometrical figures on the sand, Courage! my companions! here are the footsteps of men." *"All, or almost all, the substances found upon the globe of the earth, have been subjected to chymical investigation. The result has been, that all the animal and vegetable substances without exception, and by far the greatest number of mineral bodies, ARE COMPOUNDS."-Dr. Thomson's Inorganic Chymistry, v. i. p. 2. "The opinion at present entertained by chymists in general is, that simple substances are aggregates of very minute particles, incapable of farther diminution, and therefore called atoms."--Dr. Thomson, ib. p. & VOL. II.-D what we do will be marked by these qualities; but we shall always have some intended object to effect, even in our greatest absurdities. Mind always means. It cannot act without meaning, and its meaning will correspond with its state and nature. On these grounds we may safely infer, that the Deity has had purposes and ends in view in all that he has made, and always will have such in whatever he does or regulates; and that these will always be congenial and consistent with the properties and perfections of his nature, and cannot be otherwise. Thus science, reasoning, and revelation, unite to assure us of this grand truth, which must be the basis of all the views and observations that will form our present correspondence, as it was of our former one. What is true of the whole universe is equally so of our separate globe; and in this, peculiarly so of our human race, as the most prominent of its contents. We may regard ourselves as His specific workmanship, previously designed, most skilfully composed, and ever since most carefully attended to. It is a self-degradation of our own choice, if we will suppose, against all probability, that we are but links of an eternal chain of sequences, without beginning or end, and devoid of a Creator; or that in such a destitution, and in contradiction to visible fact, we are but the casual accidents or capricious assemblages of promiscuously moving atoms from a godless chaos. Our knowledge and our better feelings, which claim a source like themselves, should rescue us from these depreciating conjectures. We have had a more intellectual origination, and need not sink ourselves from it. The true opinion, therefore, as to that human nature which in its system, course, and operations, will be the subject of our succeeding contemplations, will be, that it has been a special design of the ETERNAL MIND, who, in such a period of his perpetual existence as he thought fit, was pleased to determine upon the fabrication of such a world as our earth exhibits itself to be-upon furnishing it with such living plants and animals as we lately reviewed-and upon forming on it successive generations of such intellectual creatures as mankind, with such persons, qualities, and powers, as have always distinguished our race. He accomplished his noble purpose by our creation; and he has since caused his same |