at Venice, announced me as his relative, and had me educated under his own eye, with parental care. Like me, he nourished the hope I never cease dwelling on, of one day seeing my father's fame cleared, and if that hope failed, he had bound himself to divide his fortune between me and his only daughter.

Aldonga Bertolini was my senior by three years, and consequently while I was yet considered a boy, was of an age to marry. ΑΓ nineteen she beecame the wife of the Marquis Irivulzio. I was but sixteen, it is true, but my heart and my understanding, matured by suffering and reflection, were much further advanced. I was naturally tender and romantic; I was penetrated with the most profound gratitude to my benefactor; and it had long been my fondest day-dream, the hope of recompensing his affection, by devoting my life to his daughter's happiness, when I should have succeeded in restoring my family name and dignities.

This wish would have become powerful, if only coupled with the remembrance of obligation; but as I contemplated the ravishing beauty of Aldonga, and passed from admiration to adoration of her various accomplishments, the wish amounted to a passion. She filled my whole soul. I deemed such devotion to her a debt due to her father, and this youthful romance became the fountain of future misery.

It was one part of my high-strained resolves, to conceal this attachment until fate should grant me the means of revealing it without fear of being considered selfish. not even Aldonga therefore suspected it, and gliding from flirtation to flirtation (for even love saw that variety predominated in her otherwise charming disposition), she at length fell violently in love with the handsome Irivulzio, became his wife, and quitted Venice for Florence. Their nuptials and her departure tore my secret from me. seized with a brain-fever, during the delirium of which, my exemplary protector heard me rave of love and his daughter. On my recovery he frankly told me the discovery he had made: he lamented that I had not reposed confidence in him ere it was too late for him to aid me; assured me of his joy, had I been

I was

his son indeed; then adverting to my extreme youth, urged me to go myself with him, in quest of one important proof of my father's innocence.

This proposition roused me as if by magic power; I shook off my criminal depression, and set out with Bertolini to that country to which my injured father had been accused of having sold himself.

What is man, Francois, that he becomes so cor: upt in great societies!-that he will not blush to act in concert with others, those crimes his conscience would spurn if called on to perform singly? How different is a government and an individua!! I went to de

a

maud, then to beseech that government to refute the calumny against my parent: simple testimony to his innocence would have been sufficient, if properly transmitted to our Court.-No! they refused to grant my request; they would neither refute nor confirm. State-secrets were inviolate, and the honour of a man who was not of their nation, had no claim upon them. Nothing availed, and I returned back unsatisfied.

Yet think not my exertions slumbered after this period; I scarcely thought of any thing else; for the passion I had wrought myself into for Aldonga soon ceased to agitate my heart. I breathed but in the hope of restoring my father's good name, and already had I obtained some important information from a person once in the confidence of Prince when the Marchioness Irivulzio returned home a widow. Shortly after their union, her husband, who worshipped pleasure, had taken her to reside in Paris, where every elegant and seducing pleasure was to be found. His mother had been a French-woman, consequently he had many relations at the gay Court of Louis XIV. where Aldonga soon became a distinguished favourite.

Irivulzio's was not a character formed to retain the affections of a wife, and Aldonga was not of a nature to bear indifference without resentment. They gradually absented themselves from each other; he abandoned himself to gaming and the company of dis solute actresses, while his beautiful wife was surrounded by admiration and devotion from

heightened now by the perfection of grace!
She dazzled ́my senses-but she ceased to
touch my heart: it seemed to me even that
there was an air of wanton pleasure dif-
fused there! all this beauty, all this grace,
which made my severer nature recoil.
(To be continued.)

ON THE PROBABILITY OF THE LAND BEING AGAIN SUBMERGED IN THE OCEAN.

(Continued from Vol. III. Page 304.)

20

PROBABILITY OF THE LAND BEING SUBMERGED IN THE OCEAN

The capes of St. Roque and St. Augustine, appear to have been divided from the Gulph of Guinea, as the concave coasts on each side of the Gulph of Mexico, with all their fragments, now islands, were rended from the convex shores of Africa, of which the Cape de Verde is the most prominent part. The remaining part of the American coast of the United Provinces and Labrador, must have been in contact with Europe, to the British Islands: after which it seems to have divided in three parts, and left Greenland a central land, the east side of which I conceive, was torn from Norway aud Lapland, and the west be

succession of crystallizations taking place, the whole mass changed its figure. The contraction of the parts still beneath the sea, compelled those now above it to project, and rend its exterior incrustrated shell, (for the water baving greater power to act on what was in contact with the coarser sediment, caused it first to concrete.) Thus when the huge body lifted itself through the ocean, some of its fixed insulated parts were raised so high as to become mountains; other matter in a state of softness, forcing up through the chasms to the surface, for causes before explained, brought near the superfices of the world such a va riety of metals and other fossils as the Deitytween Cape Farewell to Cape Bedford, have knew would be necessary for the comforts and well-being of its intended inhabitants, which would otherwise have lain so deep as to have rendered all human researches to have pro. cured them wain. Respecting the sea, it must be, and always was salt, from the quantity of saline matter that was left suspended therein after the deposition of all other bodies, and as it made no inconsiderable part of what was precipitated, by being diffused throughout the whole stony mass, might be the chief cause, at the time of crystallization, of compelling it to change from round to that figure which it now bears.

On perusing the map of the world, I am inclined to think that the land came first through the water, nearly in one united mass, and that the American continent was torn from this, for all the lesser rents whether now seas, bays, lakes, or chasms, would not admit of the matter expanding sufficiently to accommodate itself to the periphery of a larger circle. Had the whole remained united, it is probable that the western part would have been so high as to have rendered it unfit for the habitation of man; or had it been in such a state of softness as to admit of its being drawn across the western ocean, there would not have been matter enough to appear above the surface of the water; and as the Americau continent was higher, and exceeded the other in a latitudinal direction, the centrifugal force caused by the motion of the earth on its axis from west to east, makes it more probable, that that continent was torn from this part of the world, to restore the equilibrium.

the features of being drawn from the concave shores of the north-east parts of Labrador, and the isle of Good Fortune. The motion of the falling land to the westward, would cause the water to rush round the Capes of Good Hope and Horn, into the chasm, whilst a vast quantity might have rolled back over the sur. face of the descending continent into the same gulph; that it did pass over the land seems evident, from all the large rivers in America running eastward, from the superior size of the rivers themselves, and from the vast lakes that abound in that country; as the extreme velocity and weight of the water, must force large channels through the land in its passage across it, and tumbling down precipices make buge pits in its surface; some of which are now great lakes.

Here I canuot forbear giving the reins to fancy for a moment, to suppose ourselves then in existence, holding a higher rank in the chain of beings, and at a convenient distance from our globe, with souls sufficiently comprehensive, and eyes capable of extending

over it.

At that period what a commotion should we have beheld, to see the immense continent of America falling, falling, falling westward, and driving the sea on heaps before it, in a prodigious state of turbulency; to have ob served the violence with which the latter rushed back into the dreadful chasm, and in all probability, an innumerable number of volcanoes; all bursting forth from different parts of the earth, on the first presentation of the inflammable matter to the atmosphere;

and to conceive the finger of God, or some su perior Being, arresting this astonishing mass in its career, just at a proper height above the water, when restored to its level, to make it fit and convenient for the animals to be created. By such reflections we are lost in wonder, and awed to silence and adoration.

If the fixation of the land, was wrought by means corresponding with the preceding conjectures, I think it probable, that the exterior part only became a firm body, the principal of which is the stony mass, and that all within is now in a state of fluidity; of these ponderous bodies (some of them have wonderful properties) the electric and magnetic matter may form a constituent part, and that all this incrustated mass might still be subject to some motion. It seems rational likewise to suppose, that by the justle caused at the time of crystallization, small portions of those fluids might be caught in the part that became fixed, and perhaps be the reason why mercury, which may constitute a great part of the interior, is found in the crannies of the rock, and the cause why the inflammable matter became pent up in the firm part of the globe; which matter it is not unreasonable to suppose, is in a state of fluidity at this time: these ideas might receive some support from the volcanic mountains, which seem to have been more numerous in the earlier ages than at present, probably from the great quantity of such substances being at first caught up, or enclosed in the shell of the earth; many masses of which are now burnt out, or greatly diminished, and from the variation of the needle by the motion of the magnetic matter : not that I conceive the craters of those vol. canoes do communicate with the grand mass of fluids in the centre, but with small caverns of inflammable bodies confined in the exterior crust, and not so deep as totally to exclude it from the action of the air.

It might be asked, why the highest mountains should emit fire? as it may be thought the rallies, being nearer the centre, should be the volcanoes, and the volatile parts of the combustible matter escape much easier than by forcing up through an immense body of rock; to which I reply, that all mountains, shether formed after the manner observed by

those of Dartmoor, or by some parts of the rocky matter, at the time of crystallization, being pushed much higher than the general surface, the former being squeezed up from a more profound depth, are more likely to produce metals, and other ponderous bodies as are contained in the bowels of the earth, than any other parts near the surface, and to have their strata more jumbled and broken; the layer also that composes the base of a mountain produced by the latter means, it is probable, is of the same nature as would be found by digging in the neighbouring plain a depth equal to the perpendicular height thereof; and from the broken strata, and wide fissures of the most elevated mountains, the air can more easily gain admission to any inflammable bodies therein, than through the horizontal lamina of earths and clays, which cover the general surface, or less broken strata of the inferior hills.

But to return to that state of the globe in which it was left when the water became pellucid, and fit to be inhabited with all the stony and earthy mass round and beneath its surface.

When God saw it was an element fit to sup port life, he animated matter and caused the sea to be filled with the first parents of the present occupiers; and as the chief part of the surface within the arctic and antarctic circles, when the water covered the face of the globe, was soon conglaciated by the intenseness of the cold, and remained a firm body, I think it not without the reach of probability to suppose, that there might be a creation of amphibious animals, if not a few land quadrupeds, to prowl over those regions, to de vour the carcases of dead fish, with which the polar circles are known to abound: I am led to this remark chiefly by observing the attention of the Deity to permit nothing to take place without turning it to some advantage towards the wonderful work of creation; the plum, peach, and other fruits, we are informed by naturalists, are worlds to some sort of animalculæ, and the remotest island, rising from the middle of the ocean, has its inhabitants of some kind or other; but if there were any quadrupeds in those parts, which certainly must be few, and in all likelihood

and this so wonderfully varied and contrived,
that the grand compounder Death, seems to
be compelled to repair his own ravages ;
in destroying the living faculty in one large
animal, he supplies the means of its support
for thousands of smaller creatures, and thus in
the very act of destruction, gives new life to
the animal, and vigour to the vegetable

should not lay unadmired, he raised the men

tal powers of one species of mortal beings so high, as to be capable of feeling astonishment and pleasure in contemplating the wonderous scene, and gave them minds so capaci

How long this globe remained with its watery world. He cloathed and armed each, accordface revolving round the sun, the inheritance|ing to his necessities, and that this great work only of fish, and perbaps a few polar amphibious animals, before chrystalization, will for ever remain unknown to us; but when that great event took place, the grand field for animation was laid open before that vivifying Being, on which he so liberally displayed his wonderous, as to conceive, that there must exist a ful power, by giving forin and existence to the great Power who did all these marvellous multifarious creation, from the man to the things. meanest insect, with all the vegetable kingdom, an immense and graduated chain of life;

SPANISH INQUISITION.