God has implanted in animals, and especially in man, to enable them to exercise aright their power of choosing their food. As the human body is composed of a certain set of elements united in certain proportions, it is indispensable that the food we consume should contain the precise ingredients of which the body is composed. No substances but those of which the body consists can feed the body, nourish it, repair its constant waste. Yet men have been dining for thousands of years in ignorance alike of their own chemical constitution and of the exact composition of their viands. We take pains to procure a dinner daily; but nobody ever asks whether it contains (as it were) bricks for the walls, timber for the floor, glass for the windows, or marble for the mantelpiece. We must, in some way or other, contrive to procure iron for the blood, sulphur for the hair, and phosphorus for the brain; but at no table in the kingdom do we ever find these indispensable articles appearing in the bill of fare. How, then, explain the fact that so many millions of human bodies have been repaired without difficulty and without mistake? We can only ascribe this remarkable result to a kindly Providence, which has not merely spread a table for us, but has also implanted a subtle instinct in our nature, which, when discreetly followed, attracts us to what is chemically congenial, and repels us from what is useless or injurious. Since animals have food provided for them of the same ingredients as their bodies, and are able by the use of that food to repair the constant waste of tissues and organs, it might be expected that their bodies would never wear out, but always subsist under a process of alternate demolition and reconstruction. And probably this would be the case, if the vitalizing principle continued to abide and to exert its force. But the fact is very different. At last disease and death arrive. The vital power being withdrawn, the precarious alliance into which the material elements had entered begins to dissolve, and the body of the animal breaks up. The nitrogen of the albuminous compounds deserts its late comrades to combine with hydrogen and form ammonia; another portion of the hydrogen unites with carbon to pro duce carburetted hydrogen, and more hydrogen combines with sulphur to yield sulphuretted hydrogen. Thus the constituents of the body are disbanded, and thus, too, the glorious shapes, which once walked this earth in all the pride of strength and superiority, vanish in fetor and putridity. Back they go-though but recently the home of intelligence, the dwelling-place of the soul, the seat of genius -to the insensate dust beneath, and to the atmospheric charnel-house above. Through this ordeal of putrefaction our frames must all pass to the realms of lifeless matter. The hand that writes this sentence was once earth such as we all trample on, and soon will be earth again, and perhaps, ere the writer's name has been forgotten by surviving friends, will be transformed into the cypress of the cemetery, or the daisies of the country churchyard. The matter, too, of that eye which reads this sentence was allied a little while ago to the elements of inorganic matter; and the time cannot be very distant ere some have to mourn at those terrible words read over it-" Dust to dust and ashes to ashes." Compiled from KEMP. VASTNESS OF THE UNIVERSE. APART from all consideration of the mechanism of the solar and stellar systems, and of the countless number and marvellous structure of the organized beings that people them, there is enough in the mere quantity of matter in the universe to impress us with a profound sense at once of the vastness of Creation, and of the almightiness of the Creator. The earth is a globe about 8000 miles in diameter, and 25,000 in circumference; and, consequently, its surface contains nearly two hundred millions of square miles,—a magnitude too great for the mind to take in at one conception. Were we to take our station on the top of a mountain of moderate size, we should perceive an extent of view stretching 40 miles in every direction, forming a circle 80 miles in diameter and 250 in circumference, and comprehending an area of 5000 square miles. In such a situation, the scene around us-consisting of hills and plains, towns and villages, rivers and lakes-would form one of the largest objects which the eye, or even the imagination, can steadily grasp at one time. But such an object, grand and extensive as it is, forms no more than the one forty-thousandth part of the terraqueous globe; so that, before we can acquire an adequate conception of the magnitude of the world, we must conceive 40,000 landscapes of a similar extent to pass in review before us. Allotting twelve hours a-day to the task, it would take us 8 years and 48 days to survey the whole surface of the globe, even in this cursory manner. These remarks apply to the earth as a mere superficies. But the earth is not a mere superficies, it is a globe, whose contents amount to well nigh 300,000,000,000 cubical miles. Were the earth a hollow sphere, surrounded merely by an external shell, 10 miles thick, its internal cavity would be sufficient to contain a quantity of materials one hundred and thirty-three times greater than the whole mass of continents, islands, and oceans, on its surface, and the foundations on which they are supported. We have the strongest reasons, however, to conclude, that the earth, if not a solid mass from the surface to the centre, has, at least, a solid exterior crust of two or three hundred miles in thickness. What an enormous mass of materials, then, is comprehended within the limits of that globe on which we tread! How great must be the power of that Being who spake the earth into existence by His word, and "hangeth it upon nothing!" When we contemplate, by the light of science, those planetary bodies which, along with our globe, revolve around the sun, the earth dwindles into an inconsiderable ball. One of those planets is more than 900 times the size of our world, and encircled with a ring which would nearly reach from the earth to the moon; and another is of such a size, that it would require 1500 globes of the bulk of the earth to form one equal to it in dimensions. The sun himself is 1,300,000 times larger than the terraqueous globe. But the solar system, stupendous as it is, occupies only a small portion of the expanse of space. Even to the naked eye that space is seen to be peopled by nearly a thousand starry bodies of a character quite different from those that move around our sun. The telescope brings into view not merely thousands but millions of these bodies. The great zone of the Milky Way, which has in all ages arrested attention from its peculiar appearance, is found, on the application of the telescope, to be nothing else than a pathway of stars so densely crowded as to be separately indistinguishable to the unaided eye. Herschel informs us that "in one quarter of an hour's time there passed no fewer then 116,000 stars through the field of view of his telescope." Yet all these countless orbs are suns similar to our own, with attendant planetary trains. Every one of those fixed stars, which seem only so many brilliant spangles on the drapery of night, is the luminous centre of a system far exceeding, in many instances, that to which our globe belongs. The star Sirius, for example, which is equal to sixty-three suns, must irradiate and control a planetary system much vaster than our solar one. Nor do the fixed stars, though millions in number, and each the centre and sun of a system of worlds, exhaust the stellar universe. In various quarters of the heavens the telescope has discovered patches of dim, hazy light, now well-known by the name of Nebulae. Some of these were from the first believed to be dense clusters of stars, only rendered indistinct and nebulous from their immense remoteness; others, however, were supposed to be portions of diffused gaseous matter in the course, as was conjectured, of being condensed into stars. But by means of Lord Rosse's magnificent telescope, these nebulous masses, previously irresoluble, have been at once resolved. What seemed only dim patches of twilight haze, as yet unformed into suns, are discovered to be already systems of countless suns glowing with ancient fire; and the conclusion to which these nebulous phenomena inevitably point is, that the starry firmament, of which our solar system is a part, is only one of the innumerable galaxies of firmaments which people the tracts of space. The millions of suns which light up our nocturnal sky, and the millions of planetary systems attached to them, are, after all, when compared with what lies in the immeasurable spaces beyond, only as a raindrop to the ocean. Here, then, with reverence, let us pause and wonder! How great beyond all conceivable idea of greatness must He be, who by His almighty fiat caused all this vast assemblage of material things to emerge from nothing into exis tence, and evermore upholds it, with all its complicated movements! Surely that man is little to be envied who is not impressed, by such contemplations, with an overwhelming sense of Creative Power. Compiled. SPECIMENS OF THE POETRY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. (Chronologically arranged.) THE lark has sung his carol in the sky, The bees have hummed their noontide lullaby; Now, glad at heart, the gossips breathe their prayer, The babe, the sleeping image of his sire. A few short years, and then these sounds shall hail So soon the child a youth, the youth a man, Then the huge ox shall yield the broad sirloin, And once, alas! nor in a distant hour, |