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the rainbow-that sacred emblem of the covenant between the Creator and His creatures. Awake thou Christian Britain! Awake thou that hast slept! Though the Memphian pyramid shall have crumbled into dust; though the world's imperial queen shall have fallen, a sad and "desolate relic" of her pristine power and anterior pride; though Palmyra be no more-no longer numbered among the magnificent of the earth, and all that remains of her be but a shapeless heap of ruin and decay; though the withering hand of Time hath rent in sunder the sphinx, and shook to their foundations the pyramids of the Egyptian plain :yet, oh, daughter of heaven-born comeliness! thou that liftest thy mighty front erect and lovely, amid the sounding waters of ocean's trackless wilderness! do thou unite in thy most religious strength and moral beauty all that is amiable and refined-all that is true and virtuous-to consummate" the promised and stupendous work of human regeneration now in the time of this religious and political strife!

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The former part of this Essay we have taken from the Edinburgh Literary Gazette, as admirably adapted to our purpose.-ED.

xxiv

THE PARTITION OF THE EARTH.

[FROM SCHILLER.]

WHEN Jove had encircled our planet with light,
And had roll'd the proud orb on its way,
And had given the moon to illume it by night,
And the bright sun to rule it by day;
The reign of its surface He form'd to agree
With the wisdom that govern'd its plan;
He divided the earth, and apportion'd the sea,
And He gave the dominion to man.

The hunter he sped to the forest and wood,
And the husbandman seized on the plain;
The fisherman launch'd his canoe on the flood,
And the merchant embark'd on the main :
The mighty partition was finished at last,
When a figure came listlessly on;

But fearful and wild were the looks that he cast,
When he found that the labour was done.

The mien of disorder, the wreath which he wore,
And the frenzy that flash'd from his eye,
And the lyre of ivory and gold which he bore,
Proclaimed that the Poet was nigh;

And he rush'd all in tears at the fatal decree,
To the foot of the Thunderer's throne,

And complained that no spot of the earth or the sea
Had been given the Bard as his own.

And the Thunderer smiled at his prayer and his mien,
Though he mourn'd the request was too late;
And he ask'd in what regions the Poet had been,
When his lot was decided by fate.

"Oh! pardon my error," he humbly replied,

"Which sprung from a vision too bright; My soul at the moment was close at thy side, Entranc'd in these regions of light.

"It hung on thy visage, it bask'd in thy smile, And it rode on thy glances of fire;

And forgive, if bewilder'd and dazzled the while,

It forgot every earthly desire.”—

"The earth," said the Godhead, "is portion'd away,

And I cannot reverse the decree;

But the heavens are mine, and the regions of day,

And their portal is open to thee."

LORD FRANCIS LEVESON GOWER.

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GEOLOGY embraces the consideration of the structure of the earth which we inhabit, and of the materials of which it is composed.

The earth, as far as it has been possible to ascertain, is composed of solid masses of rocks, placed over each other, and intersected by veins of metals; over which, on the surface, are the alluvial formations, consisting of coal, sand, gravel, clay, and loam.

GEOGRAPHY describes the surface of the earth; the shape and size of the land and seas; the boundaries of nations, and their climate and natural productions. It also teaches the character of the inhabitants; their government, religion, manufactures, and mode of living; and it ought to enable us to shun their errors, and profit by their experience.

The earth on which we live is a round ball or globe, eight thousand miles in diameter, and twenty-five thousand miles round. Its surface is covered with one part land, and three parts water, which are inhabited and filled with innumerable living creatures, among which is man.

From the

Of this immense globe little is known to us. surface to the centre is four thousand miles, yet no mine is a mile deep. We know nothing therefore of its interior. As far as man has penetrated, he has found successive layers or coats of different earths, lying on each other like the coats of an onion, or the leaves of a book.

B

In digging wells, various thicknesses of different soils are found in different places, in an order something like the following three feet of black earth called vegetable mould, four of gravel, five of gravel and sand, five of stone, three of sea-shells, fifty feet of clay, forty of sand, five of stone, three of marl, &c.; and what is remarkable, every layer is the same thickness as far as it extends, and generally parallel with the surface of the earth.

PROOFS OF NUMEROUS REVOLUTIONS ON THE SURFACE of the Globe.-If we institute a more detailed comparison between the various strata and those remains of animals which they contain, we shall soon discover still more numerous differences among them, indicating a proportional number of changes in their condition. The sea has not always deposited stony substances of the same kind. It has observed a regular succession as to the nature of its deposits; the more ancient the strata are, so much the more uniform and extensive are they; and the more recent they are, the more limited are they, and the more variation is observed in them at small distances. Thus the great catastrophes which have produced revolutions in the basin of the sea, were preceded, accompanied, and followed by changes in the nature of the fluid and of the substances which it held in solution; and when the surface of the seas came to be divided by islands and projecting ridges, different changes took place in every separate basin. Amidst these changes of the general fluid, it must have been almost impossible for the same kind of animals to continue to live: nor did they do so in fact. Their species, and even their genera, change with the strata; and although the same species occasionally recur at small distances, it is generally the case that the shells of the ancient strata have forms peculiar to themselves; that they gradually disappear, till they are not to be seen at all in the recent strata, still less in the existing seas, in which, indeed, we never discover their corresponding species, and where several even of their genera are not to be found; that, on the contrary, the shells of the recent strata resemble, as it respects the genus, those which still exist in the sea; and that, in the last-formed and loosest of these strata, there are some species which the eye of the most expert naturalist cannot distinguish from those which at present inhabit the ocean. In animal nature, therefore, there has been a succession of changes corresponding to those which have taken place in the chymical nature of the fluid; and when the sea last receded from our continent, its inhabitants were not very different from those which it

still continues to support. Finally, if we examine with greater care these remains of organized bodies, we shall discover, in the midst even of the most ancient secondary strata, other strata that are crowded with animal or vegetable productions, which belong to the land and to fresh water; and amongst the more recent strata-that is, the strata which are nearest the surface-there are some of them in which land animals are buried under heaps of marine productions. Thus the various catastrophes of our planet have not only caused the different parts of our continents to rise by degrees from the basin of the sea, but it has also frequently happened that lands which had been laid dry have been again covered by the water, in consequence either of these lands sinking down below the level of the sea, or of the sea being raised above the level of the lands. The particular portions of the earth also, which the sea has abandoned by its last retreat, had been laid dry once before, and had at that time produced quadrupeds, birds, plants, and all kinds of terrestrial productions; it had then been inundated by the sea, which has since retired from it, and left it to be occupied by its own proper inhabitants. The changes which have taken place in the production of the shelly strata have not, therefore, been entirely owing to a gradual and general retreat of the waters, but to successive irruptions and retreats, the final result of which, however, has been an universal depression of the level of the sea.

FOSSIL HUMAN SKELETON.-We give the following notice, as we find it recorded by Bush, in the "Hiberna Curiosa," premising that, till within a few years ago, the fossil bones of many animals were supposed to be human even by philosophical observers. In opening the harbour of Rye in Sussex, it is stated that the workmen came upon a stratum of timber, about twenty feet under the strand; and below one of the trees of this stratum they discovered the skeleton of a gigantic man in the position of climbing the tree,some unfortunate antediluvian (as it was conjectured), who had been drowned in attempting to save himself from the Deluge. What has now become of this supposed human fossil? If it could be recovered, it would form a good companion to the Guadaloupe specimen in the British Mu

seum.

FOSSIL WOOD FROM THE VALLEY OF THE IRAWADI, AVA. -Mr. Crawfurd, while on an embassy to Ava, in the latter part of 1826, collected a number of highly interesting geological specimens, which have been described by Professor Buckland. The author considers them as highly important,

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