and necessarily includes the love of man, as it connects gratitude with beneficence, and exalts that which was moral to divine, confers new dignity upon goodness, and is the object, not only of affection, but reverence. On the contrary, the devotion of the selfish, whether it be thought to avert the punishment which every one wishes to be inflicted, or to insure it by the complication of hypocrisy with guilt, never fails to excite indignation and abhorrence. Carazan, therefore, when he had locked his door, and turning round with a look of circumspective suspicion, proceeded to the mosque, was followed by every eye with silent malignity: the poor suspended their supplication when he passed by; and though he was known by every man, yet no man saluted him. Such had long been the life of Carazan, and such was the character which he had acquired, when notice was given by proclamation, that he was removed to a magnificent building in the centre of the city, that his table should be spread for the public, and that the stranger should be welcome to his bed. The multitude soon rushed like a torrent to his door, where they beheld him distributing bread to the hungry, and apparel to the naked; his eye softening with compassion, and his cheek glowing with delight. Every one gazed with astonishment at the prodigy; and the murmur of innumerable voices increasing like the sound of approaching thunder, Carazan beckoned with his hand; attention suspended the tumult in a moment, and he thus gratified the curiosity which had procured him audience. To Him who touches the mountains and they smoke, the Almighty and the most merciful, be everlasting honour! He has ordained sleep to be the minister of instruction, and his visions have reproved me in the night. As I was sitting alone in my harem, with my lamp burning before me, computing the product of my merchandise, and exulting in the increase of my wealth, I fell into a deep sleep, and the hand of Him who dwells in the third heaven was upon me. I beheld the angel of death coming forward like a whirlwind, and he smote me before could deprecate the blow. At the same moment I felt myself lifted from the ground, and transported with astonishing rapidity through the regions of the air. The earth was contracted to an atom beneath; and the stars glowed round me with a lustre that obscured the sun. The gate of paradise was now in sight, and I was intercepted by a sudden brightness which no human eye could behold; the irrevocable sentence was now to be pronounced; my day of probation was passed; and from the evil of my life, nothing could be taken away, nor could anything be added to the good. When I reflected that my lot for eternity was cast, which not all the powers of nature could reverse, my confidence totally forsook me; and while I stood trembling and silent, covered with confusion and chilled with horror, I was thus addressed by the radiance that flamed before me: "Carazan, thy worship has not been accepted, because it was not prompted by love of God; neither can thy righteousness be rewarded, because it was not produced by love of man: for thy own sake only hast thou rendered to every man his due; and thou hast approached the Almighty only for thyself. Thou hast not looked up with gratitude, nor round thee with kindness. Around thee, thou hast indeed beheld vice and folly, but if vice and folly could justify thy parsimony, would they not condemn the bounty of Heaven? If not upon the foolish and the vicious, where shall the sun diffuse its light, or the clouds distil their dew? Where shall the lips of the spring breathe fragrance, or the hand of autumn diffuse plenty? Remember, Carazan, that thou hast shut compassion from thine heart, and grasped thy treasures with a hand of iron: thou hast lived for thyself; and, therefore, henceforth for ever thou shalt subsist alone. From the light of Heaven and from the society of all beings shalt thou be driven: solitude shall protract the lingering hour of eternity, and darkness aggravate the horrors of despair." At this moment I was driven by some secret and irresistible power through the glowing system of creation, and passed innumerable worlds in a moment. As I approached the verge of nature, I perceived the shadows of total and boundless vacuity deepen before me, a dreadful region of eternal silence, solitude, and darkness! Unutterable horror seized me at the prospect, and this exclamation burst from me with all the vehemence of desire: "O! that I had been doomed for ever to the common receptacle of impenitence and guilt! there society would have alleviated the torment of despair, and the rage of fire would not have excluded the comfort of light. Or if I had been condemned to reside on a comet that would return but once in a thousand years to the regions of light and life, the hope of these periods, however distant, would cheer me in the dreary interval of cold and darkness, and the vicissitude would divide eternity into time." While this thought passed over my mind, I lost sight of the remotest star, and the last glimmering of light was quenched in utter darkness. The agonies of despair every moment increased, as every moment augmented my distance from the last habitable world. I reflected with intolerable anguish, that when ten thousand years had carried me beyond the reach of all but that Power who fills infinitude, I should still look forward into an immense abyss of darkness, through which I should still drive without succour and without society, further and further still, for ever and for ever. I then stretched out my hands towards the regions of existence with an emotion that awakened me. Thus have I been taught to estimate society, like every other blessing, by its loss. My heart is warmed to liberality; and I am zealous to communicate the happiness which I feel, to those from whom it is derived; for the society of one wretch, whom in the pride of prosperity I would have spurned from my door, would, in the dreadful solitude to which I was condemned, have been more highly prized than the gold of Afric or the gems of Golconda.' At this reflection upon his dream Carazan became suddenly silent, and looked upward in an ecstasy of gratitu-le and devotion. The multitude were struck at once with the precept and example, and the caliph, to whom the event was related, that he might be liberal beyond the power of gold, commanded it to be recorded for the benefit of posterity.-Hawkesworth. NATURE IN MOTION.* MIGRATION OF STONES. No vulgar error has perhaps longer prevailed among men, than that of the permanency and immutability of our globe. The peace in which our mother earth seems to slumber is but an illusion: in all nature nothing is ever at rest. The moon around the earth, the earth around the sun, that sun around another great centre, and all the heavenly bodies in one unbroken circle around the throne of the Almighty-all are in restless motion, 'Putnam's American Monthly.' treading their path in the great world of the Lord, and praising his name in neverceasing anthems. But even at home, our own great mother Earth is not, as many still believe, at rest, and its very foundations are every now and then giving signs of the mysterious life which is throbbing in this vast globe. Meteoric stones, also, come like aerial messengers from distant, unknown spheres, and speak loudly of the life in spaces unknown to human vision. For stones travel as well as life-endowed organic bodies; they are, in fact, the very oldest travellers on earth of whom we have any knowledge. The mountains are not everlasting, and the sea is not eternal. Thousands of years ago, rocks began to shiver in the fierce cold of the Polar regions; even Sweden and Norway, Greenland and Spitzbergen, became intolerable, and they set out on their great journey to the warmer south. But huge, unwieldy travellers as they were, they soon tired, and rested awhile in the wide, sandy wastes which stretch through Northern Europe and Asia. Some, the large ones, remained there, bleak, blasted masses of rock, sterile and stern, like grim giants of dark, old ages. Their lighter companions, smaller and swifter, rolled merrily on towards the foot of mountains, and there they also lie, scattered over the plains of Europe and Siberia. Science calls them 'erratic' stones, the people know them as 'foundlings,' for there they are, like lost children, belonging to another climate and a different race from those which surround them. When they travelled, man knows not. It must have been in times of yore, however, when the great Northern Ocean covered yet with its dark waves mountain and forest in the very heart of the continent. Other blocks travelled against their will, packed up in snow and ice. Whole islands of ice, we know, were torn off by terrible convulsions from the coasts of Scandina via; the storm-tossed sea hurled them into her powerful currents, and thus they broad shoulders huge masses of rock that were carried southward, bearing on their had rolled down from their native mountains. These gigantic guests from the north soon stranded against the mountains of the continent; they melted under a more genial sun, and their burden fell bottom of this vast sea rose and became to the ground. When, afterwards, the dry land, these foreign visiters also rose and found themselves, with amazement, in a southern country, under a southern sun. Thus it is that the famous statue of Peter the Great which adorns one of the magnificent open squares of his city, was hewn out of Swedish granite-the same stone from the far north which furnished the colossal vase before the Museum in Berlin. How long ago these early travels were made by rock and stone, we know not; but they are by no means at an end. The same process is still going on, even now. The Arctic still sends her children out to dwell in warmer climes, and year after year sees wandering stones come from high, icy regions, and tumble into the Atlantic, or strand on the low shore at the mouth of the St Lawrence. Other rocks are sea-born. Lofty mountains, now capped with snow and wrapped in clouds, bear unmistakeable evidence that they once dwelt at the very bottom of the ocean. Sandstone blocks, piled up | high until they form large mountain chains, on which gigantic trees are deeply rooted, and the birds of heaven dwell, to whose summit men painfully climb to look down upon the sunny plain, were once mere loose, fragile sand down in the deeps of the sea. They are still mixed with countless shells, the bones of fishes, and a thousand relics of their former home. On the other hand, we know that large tracks of sea-bottom once belonged to the firm land, enjoyed air, light, and warmth, and abounded with life of every kind. But the sea came and buried them in eternal darkness. For the ocean, also, the infinite, is not the same to-day that it was yesterday-it changes form and shape like everything else on earth. The very heart of the globe is restless. Fused, molten stones are dragged from their hidden resting-places in the depths of the earth, passed through fiery ovens, and at last, in fierce fury, thrown out of volcanoes, where, as lava streams, they soon become solid, fertile, and fruit-bearing, or form new mountains on lands, new islands in the ocean. Even now stones still migrate, thanks to their old friends, ice-glaciers of vast, gigantic size, moving foot by foot. They may, therefore, be fairly included among the travelling portions of our globe. Their motion is slow but sure; the glacier of Grindelwald moves only about twentyfive feet a-year, but a signal-post fastened to a large granite block embedded in the Unteraar glacier progressed at the rate of nearly a thousand feet annually. Thus, stones travel on the back of icy waves from the mountain-top to the foot of the Alps, where they form grotesque groups and lofty ramparts, or lie scattered about on the plain, like the giant rocks of Stonehenge. They have, however, one mode of travel unlike all other kinds of locomotion, and so mysterious that human science has not yet fathomed its nature. Large masses of rock, namely, of truly gigantic dimensions, when by accident they fall into the deep crevices of these glaciers, return with quiet but irresistible energy to the surface, moving slowly, stealthily upward. Thus, not unfrequently vast pyramids or stately pillars of ice, broken loose from the mother glacier, are seen standing in isolated grandeur, and crowned with huge masses of stone. After awhile the strange forms change and melt, the rock sinks deeper and deeper, until at last it is lost to sight, deeply buried in snow and ice. Yet, after a time, it reappears above, and the Swiss say the glacier purifies itself. For, strange as it seems, the glacier does not suffer either block or grain of sand within its clear, transparent masses, and though covered for miles with millions of crumbling stones, with heaps of foliage and debris of every kind-at the foot of the mountain it is so clear and pure, that even the microscope fails to discern the presence of foreign bodies. What is equally amazing is, that whilst every weighty object, leaves, insects, dead bodies, stones, or gravels, sink alike into the cold bed, the organic parts decay quickly in the frozen, rigid mass, but the inorganic parts are thrown up again. Years ago, a horse fell into one of these glaciers; it sank, marking its outline distinctly, until it was seen no more. year afterwards, the clean, white skeleton projected from the top through the clear ice. In the middle of the sixteenth century, a succession of long winters, during which immense masses of snow fell, increased the glaciers so much, that they travelled faster and lower than usually, and in their course overwhelmed a little chapel at the foot of the Grindelwald. All was covered, mountains high, with snow and ice, and so remained for years, buried in ghastly silence. But lo! all of a sudden there appeared a black ungainly mass, high up on the glittering field-it was the chapel bell! Pious hands saved A it, carried it to a neighbouring town, and there the long-buried bell now rings merrily Sabbath after Sabbath. If stones travel thus by the aid of majestic glaciers slowly downwards, they have to perform their journeys from below upward in much less time. That fierce element which many believe to be still raging under the thin crust which we inhabit, breaks out every now and then through the great safety-valves that nature has provided. Already, Strabo and Pausanias tell us how, nearly three hundred years before Christ, the mountain Methone arose on the Trocenian peninsula. Ovid also describes, in beautiful verses, how a high hill, rigid and treeless, was suddenly seen where once a fair plain had been spread out. He traces it to vapours shut up in dark caverns below, and seeking, in vain, an outlet through some cleft. The soil began, at last, to heave, he says, and to swell under the pressure of the pent-up heat, until it finally yielded, and rose to a lofty height. Every age has seen huge rocks and large mountains appear thus unexpectedly on the surface of the globe. In the last century, the volcano of Jorullo rose, in Mexico, 1580 feet above the surrounding plain. The sea also has its volcanic mountains, which are, of a sudden, thrown up from the bottom. The famous island of Santorin, in 1810 still considerably below the surface, was in 1830 only a few feet from it. It appeared as an enormous peak, steep on all sides, but, on the top, presenting the crater of a sub-marine volcano. The igneous nature of the land below is strongly shown by sulphurie vapours, which rise so actively, that ships now anchor there, in order to clean their copper thoroughly and quickly. Stromboli, also, was in like manner, sent up from the deep, to take its place among the islands of the Mediterranean; and, although Italy is now comparatively quiet, still its volcanoes pour forth inexhaustible showers of burning mattter, and temporary islands start up now and then from the surrounding ing influence of heat and cold, rain and snow, and crumble, gradually, into coarsegrained sand. Wind and weather, clouds and springs, carry this down, where the restless waves of rivers and streams seize it and hurry it on, through vale and valley, on their long journey, until at last they reach the coast, and throw their burden into the great ocean. Thus, age after age, the loftiest parts of heaven-aspiring mountains are broken to pieces, and swallowed by the ever-hungry sea. There, by their own gravity, and by the pressure of the impending waters, they are pressed together, firmly and solidly, until they form new rocks, which human eyes do not see, and which, for thousands of years, may not be called upon to take their place upon the dry land. So that, if the ocean swallows mountains, they, in return, have their revenge, and fill up the sea, slowly and unseen, but with unerring certainty. Such is the might of small things upon earth! Slow as this process is, its effects are astounding. For the same abrasion and dilution has been going on for centuries, and gigantic rivers have ever since poured their contents into the ocean. Overcoming all obstacles, rushing, rolling gaily down from their mountain homes, falling over huge precipices, running past rocky ridges, they hurry on without rest and ceasing. Where do they rush to, so eagerly? Towards certain death, in the great ocean, For no sooner have they reached the distant shore, than their course is arrested; here they drop all the solid parts with which they were loaded, and thus form themselves a barrier against their further progress. These deposits form shoals and bars; they grow, as year after year brings new additions from the far-off mountains, until hills rise below the surface: the river has to divide, in order to pass them on both sides, and at last, the increasing sands appear above the water in the shape of a delta. Thus, new land is formed by these almost invisible particles, and how much is thus dropped may be seen from the River Rhone, which is a Tremendous in their birth, and gigantic thick, muddy stream, where it enters the in their effect, these sudden outbreaks can- Lake of Geneva, but leaves it a clear, not yet compare, in their permanent im- beautiful river. The same process has portance, with the quiet and almost im- actually choked up the mouths of the perceptible migration of small particles of Rhine and the Danube; and the Nile, sand and gravel. Large granite blocks whose sand-laden waters have literally and masses of sandstone, high on lofty formed all Lower Egypt, with its countmountain-tops, are exposed to the vary-less inhabitants and large populous cities, sea. now needs a canal, made by human hands, to find a way and an outlet to the Mediterranean! The Mississippi becomes, at its mouth, so slow and sluggish, that it can no longer bear up its burden; the immense masses of huge vegetable corpses, the giant trees from the far-off regions, where its sources lie. They sink to the ground, sand and mud fill the interstices up, and they form, here as at the mouths of all large rivers, a peninsula of new, firm land. The Ganges, operating on a still larger scale, pours its gigantic masses far out into the sea: sweet water being lighter than salt water, they float for some time above the dark green waves of the ocean; but, soon they meet the tide and outside breakers; here they drop their immense loads of sand, mud, and fertile soil, and, in spite of an unusually high tide, form an island more than two hundred miles long. A LEAP FOR LIFE. A young lad, on board of a man-of-war, in a playful contest with a domestic ape, ascended the mast in pursuit of the animal. The adventurous boy, after resting on the royal cross-trees, had been seized with a wish to go still higher, and moved by one of those impulses which sometimes instigate men to place themselves in situations of imminent peril, where no good can result from the exposure, he had climbed the skysail-pole, until he was actually standing on the main truck!-a small circular piece of wood on the very summit of the loftiest mast. The reverse of Virgil's line was true in this instance. It was comparatively easy to ascendbut to descend-what perils were comprised in that one word. There was nothing above him or around him but the empty air-and beneath him, nothing but a point, a mere point-a small unstable wheel, that seemed no bigger from the deck than the button on the end of a foil, and the taper skysail-pole itself scarcely larger than the blade. Dreadful temerity! If he should attempt to stoop, what could he take hold of to steady his descent? His feet quite covered up the small and fearful platform which he stood upon, and beneath that, a long, smooth, naked spar, which seemed to bend with his weight, was all that upheld him from destruction. An attempt to get down from that bad eminence' would be almost certain death; he would inevitably lose his equilibrium, and be precipitated to the deck, a crushed and shapeless mass. The peril in which the daring boy was placed soon drew on deck the entire ship's company-among the rest his father, the commodore. The arrival of the commodore changed the direction of several eyes, which turned on him, to trace what emotions the danger of his son would occasion. But their scrutiny was foiled. By no outward sign did he show what was passing within. His eye still retained its severe expression, his brow the slight frown which it usually wore, and his lip its haughty curl. Immediately on reaching the deck, he had ordered a marine to hand him a musket, and with this, stepping aft, and getting on the lookout-block, he raised it to his shoulder, and took a deliberate aim at his son, at the same time hailing him, without a trumpet, in his voice of thunder. 'Robert!' cried he, 'jump! jump overboard! or I'll fire at you.' The boy seemed to hesitate, and it was plain that he was tottering, for his arms were thrown out like those of one scarcely able to retain his balance. The commodore raised his voice again, and in a quicker and more energetic tone, cried, Jump! 'tis your only chance for life.' The words were scarcely out of his mouth, before the body was seen to leave the truck and spring out into the air. A sound, between a shriek and groan, burst from many lips. The father spoke notsighed not-indeed he did not seem to breathe. For a moment of intense interest a pin might have been heard to drop on deck. With a rush like that of a cannon-ball, the body descended to the water, and before the waves closed over it, twenty stout fellows, among them several officers, had dived from the bulwarks. Another short period of anxious suspense ensued. He rose-he was alive! his arms were seen to move!-he struck out towards the ship!-and despite the discipline of a man-of-war, three loud huzzas, an outburst of unfeigned and unrestrainable joy from the hearts of a crew of five hundred men, pealed through the air, and made the welkin ring. A man that hath no virtue in himself ever envieth virtue in others; for men's minds will either feed upon their own good, or upon other's evil; and who wanteth the one, will prey upon the other.-Lord Bacon. |