hausted our subject; though that, indeed, were impossible-the subject is inexhaustible. Daily might we add to our knowledge of natural objects, and each day's addition would but open up fresh fields to our investigation. Plants and flowers attract by their loveliness, and charm with their external beauties; but, it is only when we become acquainted with their organization and their habit, that we can fully appreciate their

claims to attention. In the words of Mr. Hunt,

"The form and color of a flower may excite

our admiration; but when we come to examine all the phenomena which combine to produce that piece of symmetry and that lovely hue-to learn the physiological arrangement of its structural parts the chemical actions by which its woody fibre, and its juices are produced-and to investigate those laws by which is regulated the power to throw back the white sunbeam from its surface in colored rays-our admiration passes to the higher feeling of deep astonishment at the perfection of the processes, and of reverence for their great Designer. There are, indeed, 'tongues in trees; but science alone can interpret their mysterious whispers, and in this consists its Poetry." L. G.

" HE Americans have drawn a proper dis- | tinction between secular and religious instruction, confining the Church to its own duties, and leaving the schools free in the execution of theirs. They have not fallen into the ridiculous error of supposing that education is Godless' when it does not embrace theology. Education has both its secular and its religious elements. As men cannot agree as to the latter, let not the former, on which they are agreed, be prevented from expanding, by unnecessarily combining them. * * Suppose that we had schools for teaching arithmetic and mathematics alone, would any sane man charge them with being godless because they confined themselves to the teaching of such simple truths as that two and two make four, and that the three angles of a triangle are together equal to two right angles? And what holds good of a branch of secular education holds good of it in its entirety. If mathematics can be taught without theology, so can reading and writing, grammar and geography; in short, every department of secular learning. This This is the view which the Americans have generally taken of the subject, and they have shaped their course accordingly. They have left religion to fortify itself exclusively in the heart of man, whilst they have treated secu

lar education as a matter which essentially concerned the State. Either the church is fit for the performance of its own duties, or it is not. If it is not, it is high time that it were remodelled; if it is, there is no reason why it should call upon the school to undertake a part of its work. The school might, with the same propriety, call upon the church to aid it in the work of secular instruction. They will both best acquit themselves of their responsibilities, when they are confined exclusively to their own spheres. In America they are so, and with the happiest results. The children of all denominations meet peaceably together, to learn the elements of a good ordinary education. Nobody dreams of their being rendered godless by the process. Their parents feel assured that, for their religious education, they can intrust them to the church and the Sundayschool. Who accuses the Americans of being an irreligious people? Nay, rather, who can deny to them, as a people, a pre-eminence in religious fervor and devotion? ** Taking each country as a whole, the relig ious sentiment is most extensively diffused, and more active in its operations in America than in Great Britain. And this in a country in which religion has been left to itself."-Mackay.

But

THE undiscovered sources of the Nile will ever remain the most extraordinary instance of a geographical problem, which has frequently been on the point of solution only to be removed further off than ever. The inquiry concerning the sources of this beneficent and bounteous stream, to whose inundations whole nations have been from time immemorial indebted for their very being, dates from ante-historical times. The philosophers of Meroe, who first established the relation in point of time between the heliacal rising of the dog-star and the inundation of their sacred river, also undertook observations to determine the site of its sources. The same inquiry became an object with the greatest monarchs. It is said that Sesostris preferred the honor of such a discovery almost to all the victories he obtained. whether by this much-abused name Amun-mai Rameses II., or Shishank of Bubastis is meant, is not made clear. When Alexander the Great arrived at the temple of Jupiter Ammon he made inquiries concerning the fountains of the Nile, even before he asked about his own descent from Jupiter. The priests are said to have given him directions for finding them, and the Macedonian employed natives of Ethiopia to make the search, but in vain. Ptolemy Philadelphus succeeded Alexander in his attempts to discover the source of the Nile; but he likewise proving unsuccessful, the task was next undertaken by Ptolemy Evergetes, the most powerful of the Greek princes who sat on the throne of Egypt. Cæsar had the same curiosity with other conquerors to visit the springs of the Nile, although his situation did not allow him to make any attempt for that purpose. Nero, however, was more active. He sent two centurions into Ethiopia, with orders to explore the unknown fountains of this river; but they returned without having accomplished their errand. They reported that, after having gone a long way, they came to immense lakes, of which nobody knew the end, nor could they ever hope to find it. Bruce denounced this report as a fiction, as

| the Blue River, which he considered to be the Nile, forms no lakes throughout its course, excepting that of Tzana or Dembea, the limits of which are easily perceived. But we now know that the White Nile presents for a distance which comprises several degrees of latitude nothing but a continuation of inland lakes with islands, and so many tortuous streams as to lead to a confusion that may well have baffled early travellers. It is most probable, then, that Nero's expedition ascended the White Nile to a certain distance. But the attempts of the ancients met with the same uniform want of success, till Caput Nili quærere became a proverbial manner of denoting the impracticability of an undertaking; and the mystery was even made to assume a mythological character:

The frightened Nile ran off, and underground Concealed his head, nor can it yet be found. Ovid, ii., 296.

The first who in more modern times made an attempt to discover the sources of the Nile was a monk sent into Abyssinia, in the year 522, by Nonnosus, ambassador from the Emperor Justin. This monk is called Cosmas the Hermit, and likewise Indoplaustes, from his supposed travels into India. He, however, followed the course of the Tacazza, or north-westerly tributary to the Nile, and was thus led to Axum. Next was Peter Paez, also a missionary, of whose travels an account is given by Kircher. There is much reason to believe that Paez anticipated Bruce. That he may have written Sabala for Sacala, or have imperfectly described the exact number and size of the fountains, is of minor importance compared with the great facts established by him, and corroborated by Bruce, that these fountains are situated on the highest part of a valley, which resembles a great plain on every side surrounded by high mountains, in the west part of Gojam, and in the territory of the Agows. This, however, relates to the sources of the Blue River.

It is now ascertained beyond doubt that the most distant tributary to the Nile is the White River; and whatever doubts we may entertain, and which we shall soon enter upon at greater length, as to the detailed results of the expeditions undertaken by the Pasha, Mohammed Ali, still the great leading facts remain unimpeachable; a giant river forming a succession of inland lakes lying in the heart of Africa-the Mountains of the Moon, which have for so long a time been made to adorn the great space left on maps by the unexplored central regions of the same country, positively swept from the face of the globe-and the long-sought-for sources of the Nile not only carried to beyond the Line, but to a remote distance, which some connect with the basin of that great and little-known lake or inland sea, the Nyassi; others again, with the true Mountains of the Moon, as known to Ptolemy, skirting downwards in a line almost parallel to that of the eastern coast of Africa, to the regions designated as Zanguebar, Mozambique, and Mongas, Mocaranga, Monomotapa, or Monomoézi.

The discovery of a snow-clad mountain in the very regions in question, has lately come to impart a new and additional interest to this view of the subject. This discovery was made by a missionary of the name of Rebmann, who, on the occasion of an expedition into the interior, saw a mountain in the distance, called Kilimandjara by the natives, which had every appearance of being snow-clad. This simple and unpretending fact has, as is usual in the case of geographical discoveries, been violently assailed. Mr. Cooley (in the Atheneum, No. 1125) altogether denies the existence of snow on Kilimandjara. This he does upon the grounds that an intelligent native, who had described to him the mountains called Kirimanjara, and which he with much plausibility supposes to be the same, denied positively any knowledge of snowy mountains; and, secondly, because Mr. Rebmann was short-sighted, and he might be mistakenand ergo he was mistaken. To a scepticism of this very negative and purely controversial character, and for a proneness to which Mr. Cooley has earned a very unenviable notoriety, it is sufficient, till better evidence is obtained, to oppose the simple statement of a credible eye-witness. But, even supposing that the reverend gentleman was laboring under some mistake, the report of snowy mountains in the district now under review dates from a period long anterior to Dr. Beke's supposed exposition of Ptolemy's

views, or Mr. Rebmann's accidental discovery of a snowy mountain. In the Rev. Father Joano dos Santos's "History of Ethiopia," published in Paris in 1684, we find mention made of the Lupara, or Spine of the World, a range of shaggy mountains of prodigious height towering to the regions of the clouds; and in the "Great Edinburgh Geographical and Historical Atlas," the same range may be seen under the name of Lupata, or "the Spine of the World," marked down and described as being covered with perpetual snow.

The name given to these mountains by Mr. Rebmann and Mr. Cooley appears to be compounded of that of the great river of the country, called Zambese, and also sometimes Kilimani, or more commonly written Quilimane. It may, therefore, be presumed, that this river, as well as others that flow into the Indian ocean, have their sources on the eastern slope of these mountains, while the Nile has its sources on the western. If, it might pertinently be asked, the Nile does not drain the western slope of the Kilimandjara mountains, what does? The same rivers, it might be answered, and which have their sources beyond the mountains, and flow through them as the Great and Lesser Zab do the Persian Apennines, and the great rivers of the Punjaub do the Himma-leh; but this has not been shown, and the small body of water which the littoral rivers of Eastern Ethiopia carry to the Indian Ocean, would favor the idea of their being solely derived from the eastern slopes of the mountains.

The objects of the late viceroy of Egypt, in sending successive expeditions up the White Nile, do not appear to have been of so pure and praiseworthy a character as those entertained by his regal predecessors, if we are to believe Mr. George Gliddon, late United States' consul at Cairo, in his " Appeal to the Antiquaries of Europe on the Destruction of the Monuments of Egypt." "While mystified Europe rejoices at the prospect thus apparently opening to penetrate to the unknown sources of the Nile, and England congratulates herself upon the opportunity of opening a new trade with the interior of Africa, a new means of connection by the Nile with the Niger expedition (!), his highness the viceroy chuckles at the prospect of sending his unprincipled soldiery to carry all the horrors of combined Arnaoot and Egyptian warfare, and all the atrocities of slave-hunts, amongst peaceful, and therefore probably defenceless, negroes. Nor does the history of these expeditions far belie Mr. Gliddon's anticipations.