Muscles, to move its limbs aright; a brain
And nerves, disposed for pleasure and for pain;
Eyes, to distinguish; sense, whereby to know
What's good or bad-is, or is not, its foe."

As the body of an animalcule consists of the same substance, or ultimate atoms, as the body of man himself, a single pound of matter may consist of more living creatures than there have been at any one period of time human beings on the face of the globe. Dr. Scoresby surprises us still more. When, as a Greenland captain, he was sailing in the northern seas, the surface of the water, for leagues, was marked by patches of a yellowish-green colour, arising from the presence of shoals of animalcules. One drop of this coloured water, taken up at random, contained about 26,500 of these living creatures. Reckoning sixty drops to a dram, the number of organised beings in a gallon of this sea-water would exceed by one-half the whole human population of the globe. A whale requires a sea to sport; a tumbler of water would be an ocean to a hundred and fifty millions of these animalcules.

Impenetrability is the term given to the property of matter whereby every portion of it occupies some space to the exclusion of all other matter from that space. Thus, as every child knows, one marble cannot be pushed into another. In a forcing-pump, millions of pounds' weight cannot force the piston down unless the water below it be allowed to escape. Leave a glass tube open at the bottom; close the top with the thumb; thrust it upright into a vessel of water; it will not be filled with that fluid, because there is matter between the water and the thumb-the air, which is as really impenetrable as iron or stone. If a tumbler or goblet be thrust down perpendicularly into a pail of water, over a floating lighted taper, the taper will continue to burn until the oxygen of the air is consumed. Divingbells are but the practical application of this parlour-table experiment.

Every visible mass of matter-say tin, salt, sugar-is a collection of invisibly minute atoms, made to adhere or abide together by the principle of Attraction. The Master Mind of the universe calls in no arrangement of hooks or nails, and has no occasion for gum or glue to accomplish this important result, illustrations of which meet us in all visible objects. If, in pouring out a glass of wine, particles of a broken cork mix with the wine, if the glass be allowed to remain undisturbed, these bits of cork will very soon be found adhering to the glass. Logs of wood floating in a pond approach each other, and then remain in contact. When the sea, after a storm, becomes smooth, the wreck of a ship destroyed

in the tempest will be seen gathered, by mutual attraction, into heaps. A couple of bullets, freely suspended by each other, are proved, by the torsion balance, not to hang perpendicularly, in consequence of their mutual attraction for each other. Dr. Maskelyne, at Mount Skehalion, in Scotland, ascertained by careful experiments, that a plummet suspended near the side of a mountain inclines towards it, in a degree proportioned to its magnitude. It is owing to this attractive force that we have so many minute masses of a rounded form, as dew-drops, water trickling on a duck's back, the tear of human misery, globules of quicksilver, which coalesce, when near, and form larger ones, and melted lead, which, descending from a lofty tower, in cooling retains the form of its liquid drops, and becomes the shot of the sports

man.

The attraction of cohesion is the power which keeps the parts of the same body together, and acts only at very short distances, but in different degrees of force, thus causing some bodies to be hard, others soft, and others tough. At first view, one might doubt whether it can be one and the same cause that draws a piece of iron to the earth with the moderate force called its weight, and that keeps the constituent atoms of the iron in their strong cohesion. The difficulty vanishes, when it is recollected that the attraction is in proportion to the proximity of the atoms to each other. Atoms in absolute contact would be millions of times nearer to each other than when but a quarter of an inch apart, and therefore would attract each other with the so much greater force. But for the surfaces of bodies being so irregular, that if applied to each other they can only touch in probably four or five points out of a million which the surface contains, bodies would stick and cohere together on every accidental contact, much to man's inconvenience and trouble. As the attendant in the ward of a lunatic asylum has his difficulties and responsibilities diminished by the fact that the insane seldom show a disposition to associate and combine together, so man is saved by the rough surface of most substances from the annoyance which he would experience, could all substances come into close contact with each other. If, for instance, two leaden bullets have equal portions smoothly cut off, and the fresh surfaces are brought into contact with a slight twist and pressure, a hundred pounds weight or force will hardly separate them. Two pieces of perfectly smooth plate glass or marble, if a little oil or water be spread over the surface of one, to increase the number of points of contact, be

laid on each other, they will adhere with great force. It is the same with freshlycut surfaces of India-rubber, which is in consequence, easily formed into elastic airtight tubes.

When such a domestic catastrophe, by maid, mistress, or child occurs, as the cracking of crockery, however much the good housewife may lament that the jar, the saucer, the basin lies in a thousand broken pieces, let her remember that it is the attraction of cohesion overcome in a thousand parts; and that while she is looking on the loss of her china, she may be renewing her acquaintance with natural philosophy; and that if the breakage be not too destructive, the same philosophy will bring to her aid a cohesive power of cement, that may admirably repair the damage, and save the poor maid or child from an ill-tempered scolding.

A flat piece of glass, balanced at the end of a scale, and then allowed to come in contact with water, adheres to the water; and this with much more force than the weight of the water adhering to it when the glass is forcibly raised-in fact, a force of five or six times its own weight will be necessary to raise the glass. In pouring water from a mug or vessel without a lip, the water, unless great care is used, will not fall perpendicularly from the mug, but will run down the outside of the mug, owing to the attraction between it and the water. Fluid as water is, its particles adhere so closely to each other, that small needles will float if gently laid on its quiet surface. Many light insects, it is supposed for the same reason, can walk on the surface of water without getting wetted. "They bathe unwet their oily forms and dwell With feet repulsive on the dimpling well." If a small globule of mercury be laid on a sheet of clean paper, and a piece of glass be brought in contact with it, the quicksilver will adhere to the glass, and be drawn away from the paper; but on bringing a large globule of mercury into contact with the smaller one, it will leave the glass and be absorbed in its own kind.

The

Attraction is called capillary- from capillus, the Latin for hair-from the property which tubes of a very small bore, scarcely of greater diameter than a hair, have of raising water above its level. smaller the bore, the higher does the fluid rise, as may be seen by immersing tubes of various bores, of not more than one-tenth of an inch in diameter, in a vessel of coloured water. Or this may be well illustrated by two plates of glass, joined together at one side, and kept a little open on the opposite side by a bit of cork or wood, and then placed perpendicularly in

a vessel of coloured water, when the water will rise in the form of a curve-the hyperbola of geometricians. Let an open tube be partially immersed, and the water within will stand on a higher level than the water around.

Capillary attraction acts between a solid and liquid when the former is either tubular or porous. A piece of sponge, or-as every one has seen, when there have been dregs at the bottom of his tea or coffee-cup -a piece of lump-sugar, coming in contact with water in the lowest part, becomes moistened throughout, in consequence of the numerous pores which these substances consist of. It is the same principle by which the wick of a lamp raises the oil an inch or more to supply the flame. A mass of cotton thread, or a towel, hanging over the edge of a wash-hand basin, will empty it of water as effectually as a syphon. Millstones have been quarried on this principle, as we showed in a recent paper. An immense weight may be raised a short distance, on the same principle, by first tightening a dry rope between it and a prop, and then saturating the rope with water, which, filling the pores of the rope, shortens its fibres, and makes them belly like the muscular action when in play in animals.

At one time, naturalists were wont to refer to the sap-vessels of the vegetable world as appropriate and striking instances of capillary attraction in raising the sap from the root to the summit of the highest tree, as well as the humblest moss or fungus. Botanical physiologists, who, like Dr. Unger, have thrown so much light upon the vital history of plants, now regard this ascent of the sap, not as the consequence of the small bore of the vessels through which the sap flows, but as an independent action, peculiar to, and dependent on vegetable life.

INGENUITY OF BIRDS. THRUSHES feed very much on snails, looking for them in mossy banks. Having frequently observed some broken snail-shells near two projecting pebbles on a gravelwalk, which had a hollow between them, I endeavoured to discover the occasion of their being brought to that situation. At last I saw a thrush fly to the spot, with a snail-shell in his mouth, which he placed between the two stones, and hammered at it with his beak until he had broken it, and was then able to feed on its contents. The bird must have discovered that he could not apply his beak with sufficient force to break the shell when moving about, and he therefore found out and made use of a spot which would keep the shell in one position.

AT the opening of the eighteenth century, the religious state of England was lower perhaps than ever previously or since. Many periods of church history have been ruder, but none more barren and unlovely. Of the general manners of an earlier epoch -namely, the Restoration-Mr. Macaulay has drawn a faithful and unfavourable picture. With features of the picturesque that make it a suitable era for the choice of a novelist, it bears strong marks of moral and social degradation. But the period of the Restoration had some religious advantages denied to the two next succeeding generations. The profligate reaction of the restored king's reign affected chiefly the court and the Cavaliers, who gladly escaped from the compulsory austerities of the Commonwealth; while the body of the people were still sincerely, if also somewhat gloomily, disposed to piety. Moreover, the age of great preachers was not wholly gone by; for such the despised Puritans emphatically were-faithful, earnest, and devout, even more than eloquent and learned; "mighty in Scripture," and furnishing themselves diligently out of that inexhaustible armoury and treasury. The effects of this able and zealous ministry, exercised for the most part on the lower and middle classes of society, were still largely felt among the people. The polished but unpointed sermons of the Episcopal clergy could not so rivet the attention, or transfix the heart. Assent to the evangelical doctrines of the Prayer-book was a matter of course, rather than of positive conviction and belief; and the sermon which should have urged them upon the mind and conscience, was commonly more cold and formal than the reading of the Liturgy itself, but neither so scriptural nor so personal in its character. The Puritan and Nonconformist, on the other hand, preached from a full heart as well as from a furnished head, and reasoned, like Paul, "of righteousness, and temperance, and of judgment to come."

But when the eighteenth century commenced, a general lull of religious feeling appears to have come upon all the churches in the land, Dissenting as well as National. If another Echard had chosen to write, at this time, "of the Grounds of the Contempt of the Clergy," they must have been pronounced moral rather than physical, furnishing less matter for the humorous

satirist, but prompting a severer note of warning and rebuke. A few eminent examples of the opposite condition occur to us as exceptions to this very general ruleburning and shining lights, made more conspicuous by the surrounding darkness, and faintly indicating the wide out-lying danger. The faithful few are loud in their lamentations over the degenerate church. How the flocks of the national folds were fed and guarded, may be partly surmised from the character of their pastors, and the character of their pastors may be fairly gathered from the lips of their bishops. "Our Ember Weeks," says Bishop Burnet,

66

are the burden and grief of my life. The much greater part of those who come to be ordained are ignorant, to a degree not to be apprehended by those who are not obliged to know it. The easiest part of knowledge is that to which they are greatest strangers; I mean, the plainest part of the Scriptures, which they say, in excuse for their ignorance, that the tutors in the Universities never mentioned the reading of to them; so that they can give no account, or at least a very imperfect one, of the contents even of the Gospels. Those who have read some few books, yet never seem to have read the Scriptures. Many cannot give a tolerable account even of the Catechism itself, how short and plain soever. They cry, and think it a sad disgrace to be denied orders, though the ignorance of some is such that, in a well-regulated state of things, they would appear not knowing enough to be admitted to the holy sacrament." Now, if these were conscientiously rejected by the good Bishop, those only one shade better were certainly admitted to orders, and charged with a cure of souls. And if such was the spiritual darkness of those who ministered the word of truth to the people, how should these latter, forming the great bulk and body of the church, be themselves "light in the Lord?"

As in the Establishment, so also in the Dissenting churches: with them, too, piety and usefulness had come to be the remarkable exception. Some had lapsed into the Socinian heresy; others were fallen in a state of torpor. If the candlestick was not yet removed out of its place, it cast a reproachful light over congregations of professors who had lost their first love, and were "neither hot nor cold" in the service and worship of God. The decay of practi

cal religion is sorely lamented by the devout few, who distinguish the Nonconformist party of that day. In general, it is somewhat unfair, especially for the purpose of comparison and depreciation, to draw our estimate of the piety of a church from the humbling admissions of its best and holiest members; for the standard of such men is unusually high, and their sense of error and shortcoming unusually acute. With them the tender conscience seems charged with all the conduct of the church; and with jealous eyes, as over their own souls, they closely mark and grievously deplore its sins, whether of action or defect. But at the period of which we speak the testimonies are too many, too uniform, and too distinct, to allow us to doubt of the degeneracy of the Voluntary churches, as being common to them with the church by law established. Dr. Isaac Watts admits it for his own, as he fears it is a confession due also from other bodies. "It is," says he, "a general matter of mournful observation among all that lay the cause of God to heart; and therefore it cannot be thought amiss for every one to use all just and proper efforts for the recovery of dying religion in the world."

Such was the disheartening state of the English Church in the first quarter of the eighteenth century. But a change was close at hand. There is a mysterious alternation of light and darkness in the moral world; and when the night is deepest, the dawn is nearest. And now the watchmen, who slumbered at their post, were to be awakened by the beams of morning. There are seasons in the economy of grace, as well as in that of nature; and to the Christian, as well as to the poet, it is given to "rejoice in hope." When winter comes can spring be far behind? And so it was at this dreary period. Night and winter had both seized upon the church. Like a frosted landscape glittering in the moonlight, it caught and reflected rather the secondary than the primary truths of Christianity, and wore its intellectual rather than its spiritual aspect. Its articles of faith were trees, symmetrical but bare, with sap at their roots, but no green foliage on their boughs; loaded with curious hoar-frost, and not bowed down with fruit. Its means of grace were to multitudes only as ice-bound channels; no longer living streams, they waited the advent of the heavenly day-spring to melt their formal fetters, and send them sparkling and singing over renovated plains.

The first to hail the coming breath of

spring are often those who are destined never to behold its flowers; and when the gracious Spirit of God is about to be poure! out on a dry and drooping church, the first intimation is sometimes given to one, him self invited to the fountain-head, and al ready passing into the unseen world. I was thus that the Divine purposes of bless ing were foreseen at this time, by an aged servant of the Gospel, as though, in nearing the eternal city, he was permitted to hear some faint commotion that betokened unusual grace to man. "Be steady," said the dying Rector of Epworth, placing his hands upon the head of his youngest son. "The Christian faith will surely revive in this kingdom. You shall see it, though I shall not." The serious temper of his children, already deepening into religious ardour, may indeed have served to prompt and encourage this strong faith; but the words of the speaker were at least remarkable, for events that speedily followed soon gave them something of the force of prophecy. The young man at this good patriarch's feet had already earned the opprobrious name of "Methodist."

"What makes you think you have?" "Because I have," she promptly replied. "But how do you know you have a soul!" "Because I do know," she answered again.

It was a child's reason; but the philosopher could hardly have given a better.

"Well, then," said he, after a moment's consideration, "if you know you have a soul, can you tell me what your soul is?"

"Why," said she, "I am six years old, and don't you suppose that I know what my soul is?"

"Perhaps you do. If you will tell me I shall find out whether you do or not." "Then you think I don't know," she replied, "but I do: it is my think."

"Your think!" said the philosopher, astonished in his turn; "who told you so "Nobody. I should be ashamed if I did not know that without being told."

The philosopher had puzzled his brain a great deal about the soul, but he could not have given a better definition of it in so few words.

The Ballad of Babe Christabel, with other Lyrical Poems. By GERALD MASSEY. Bogue: London.

WERE every working-man a Gerald Massey, despotism, either in Church or State, would not be worth six weeks' purchase. This People's Laureate is a working-man, knows the grievances of his oppressed class, and gives expression to the sentiments that smoulder in the breasts of the millions, with a pathos, a fervour, and an imagery that make this unpretending duodecimo contain more real poetry than will be found in many an aristocratic octavo of rhymes, and measured syllables. But we will introduce the Man to our readers before we introduce the Poet.

A brief biographical sketch from the pen of Eliza Cook informs us that-

"He was born in May, 1828, and first saw the light in a little stone hut near Tring, in Herts,one of those miserable abodes in which so many of our happy peasantry-their country's pride!-are condemned to live and die. One shilling a week was the rent of this hovel, the roof of which was so low that a man could not stand upright in it. Massey's father was, and still is, a canal boatman, earning the wage of ten shillings a week. Like most other peasants in this highly-favoured Christian country,' he has had no opportunity of education, and never could write his own name. But Gerald was blessed in his mother, from whom he derived a finely-organized brain, and a susceptible temperament. Though quite illiterate, like her husband, she had a firm, free spirit-it is broken now!-a tender yet courageous heart, and a pride of honest poverty which she never ceased to cherish. But she needed all her strength and courage to bear up under the privations of her lot. Sometimes the husband fell out of work, and there was no bread in the cupboard, except what was purchased by the labour of the elder children, some of whom were early sent to work in a neighbouring silk-mill. Disease, too. often fell upon the family, cooped up in that unwholesome hovel; indeed, the wonder is, not that our peasantry should be diseased, and grow old and haggard before their time, but that they should exist at all in such lazar-houses and cesspools. Sometimes four of the family, and the mother, lay ill at one time (of the ague), all crying with thirst, with no one to give them drink, and each too weak to help the other. How little do we know of the sufferings endured by the poor and struggling classes of our population, especially in rural districts! No press echoes their wants, or records their sufferings; and they live almost as unknown to us as if they were the inhabitants of some undiscovered country."

Is it not time that, instead of heaping such wealth on a Wellington while living, and expending such a sum on him when dead; instead of giving such enormous salaries to prelates and rectors, and bestowing on each member of the royal family more money every day than thou

our

sands of these sons and daughters of Adam have in their whole life; that Christian patriots set their shoulders to the work of providing the means of comfortable support and sufficient education for these abandoned ones? We are not levellers; but we do see that there must be something at fault in our social condition, when happy peasantry," during the last winter were earning ten, or at most twelve shillings a week; when flour was three and fourpence a stone; when a farm labourer with four young children could not satisfy his offspring's hunger, though every penny of his wages were spent in flour; and when the peasant's wife in her confinement could have nothing in the house for her support but bread and a morsel of cheese, or an onion! What provision for a woman in childbed! Is it not time that pampered luxury were reduced? Is it any wonder that minds like Massey's, not crushed by the horrors of this state, are aroused to dissatisfaction with our social condition, and with the laws and taxation that produce, or at any rate aggra vate it? And is he disloyal who endeavours to direct the attention of Christian patriots to a condition disgraceful to civilisation, and calculated to alienate the masses from the Christianity with which they are taught to associate these intolerable evils?

"At eight years of age Gerald Massey went into the silk-mill, rising at five o'clock in the morning, and toiling there till half-past six in the evening; up in the grey dawn, or in the winter before daylight, and trudging to the factory through the wind or the snow, seeing the sun only through the factory windows. What a life for a child! What a substitute for tender prattle, for childish glee, for youthful pastime, with 9d., 1s.. or 1s. 3d. for the whole week's work! But the mill was burnt down, and the children held jubilee over it. The boy stood for twelve hours in the wind, and sleet, and mud, rejoicing in the conflagration that thus liberated him. Who can wonder at this?"

It is one of the incalculable evils of our social system, that child labour becomes indispensable to the parent that food may be procured for the family. The period of life, which Nature teaches should be devoted to gambols and recreation to strengthen and develop the animal economy, is spent in "grinding life down from its mark," and bringing on premature old age and death.

"Having had," says Gerald, in a vivid picture of a working-man's child life, "to earn my own dear bread by the eternal cheapening of flesh and blood thus early, I never knew what childhood meant; I had no childhood. Ever since I can re