the reflection really, naturally, grow out of the perception; let the inference, when drawn, be really in harmony with the facts observed. There can be no doubt that the temperature of the British climate has been materially modified, within even the last century. This is a fact which we have noted. We remember the severity of our winters, and the bronzing heat of our summers; many have noticed the change without suspecting the cause; many have never reflected that man possesses the power to modify, and that he does modify the con.. ditions of climate. When France and Germany were covered with wood, Europe was much colder than at present; the Seine was frozen every year, and the vine could not be cultivated on this side of Grenoble. Forests, it is plain, lower the temperature of a country; they detain and condense the clouds as they pass, they pour into the atmosphere volumes of water dissolved as vapour; winds do not penetrate into their recesses; the sun never warms the earth they shade: and then look at the soil, formed for the most part of decayed leaves, and the stems of trees coated over with thick moss and brushwood, porous as it is, it is constantly in a state of moisture; and the cold and stagnant waters give rise to innumerable brooklets, and pools, and lakes. But Man, the civilizer, comes and fells the trees, and drains the morasses and the fields, strips the soils of their ancient forests, and the wind and

the sun disperse the superabundant moisture; the lakes dry up and the inundations cease; the volumes of moisture are poured into the rivers, and thus borne away, and the atmosphere becomes warmer and drier; the refraction of heat is not so severe in summer, the atmosphere is not so charged with frequent furious electric fires, it is not so cold in winter, the snow does not lie so thick upon the fields, and the moors. Here is a simple and easy explication of what seems, to many, a strange and mysterious circumstance; it is the result of observation, but simple perception, without reflection and inference, could never arrive at the solution.

And, therefore, accustom yourself to a habit of noting your observations, and subsequent reflection will assure you whether it be wise or not to throw such observations into aphorisms, or general conclusions. Do you doubt whether you have a wide sphere on which to observe? Why, I know not how far you may have travelled upon the road of inspection, but if you know the meaning of the frost upon your bedroom window pane, if you are acquainted with the mystery of the gas-light in your shop, or are familiar with the principle of that steam engine which whisked you along so swiftly the other day; if you are fully aware of the hidden meaning of these things, then you have learned also, that mystery and beauty lie all around you, waiting your vivid reading eye to unlock them. Why, Mr.

White found in the village of Selborne an universe for observation and instruction; and Parson Crabbe read human life better in a quiet hamlet than most of the great Poets have done in the wide circles of their large towns. Observe, of course, you can; so out with your note book, and jot it down. Mr. Gower, in his "Scientific Phenomena of Domestic Life," upon the remark that no effect is produced without a cause, and that similar causes will always produce similar effects, says, "whilst upon the subject of Chance it may be worthy of remark, that even games of hazard can hardly, strictly speaking, be called so. Let us take, for instance, the act of tossing up a shilling to see on which side it will fall. In this case, if we were aware of the exact weight of the coin, and the force employed to project it into the air, with the rotary motion communicated to it, we should be able to calculate the height it would attain, and how many revolutions it would take before reaching the ground; consequently which side would be upwards but as we have no means of arriving at this knowledge, it is uncertain to us which side will fall upwards. But the laws of Matter had decided the question the moment the shilling was projected into the air; therefore it was not Chance, but our undertaking to decide a question without any data from which to draw our conclusion. If a spring could be so placed as to throw the shilling

with exactly the same force and direction, it would always fall alike." Many observers have, in their own particular walk of scenery, succeeded in accurately calculating upon the certain cause which must be in operation from their beholding the event to which it has given birth; but here we have especially to guard against the illusions of the senses by which we all are so frequently imposed on. We are frequently at the mercy of circumstances, which either modify the impressions made, or combine them with adjuncts, which have become habitually associated with different judgments. It is truly wonderful that we should receive the sensible impression of an object at all. The telegraphic communication from the object to the mind baffles all power of solution, but the signal is given, and the impression is received; and as it is thus in the circumstances of daily occurrence, so also in more extraordinary events of life. We are compelled to link a certain cause and a certain effect together, but are altogether unable to supply the intermediate links of such cause and such effect. In Captain Head's vivid description of his Journey across the Pampas of South America, he tells us that one day his guide suddenly stopped him, and pointing high into the air, cried out, "A Lion!" Surprised at such an exclamation, accompanied by such an act, he turned up his eyes and with difficulty perceived at an immeasurable height

a flight of condors soaring in circles in a particular spot. Beneath that spot, far out of sight of himself or guide, lay the carcass of a horse, and over that carcass stood (as the guide well knew) the lion whom the condors were eyeing with envy from their airy height. The signal of the birds was to him what the sight of the lion alone could have been to the traveller, a full assurance of its existence. One great and certain good will result from the habit of observation; the world will be taken from the clutches and fangs of a cruel caprice; the mind will read everywhere the great and immutable principles of order; the movements of Nature will not seem to be ordained by the zigzag passion of a Grecian Deity, a Pan, or a Jupiter, a Saturn, or a Nox; but will bear most evidently the engraving of a "God, the same yesterday, today, and for ever."

Such observations will increase our wonder, and heighten our veneration. We shall, alike in the finest details, and in the most profound and infinite rangings of the plummet of Science, find the mighty arrangements of Power and Goodness, deeper than the plummet, and far more infinite than the struggling fancy of the spectator. If in this spirit Man of old had read Nature, how different had been his notions of God! meantime how different had been his notions of himself and his race. The perception which would have unveiled