Come, lest this heart should, cold and cast away, Come, weary-eyed from seeking in the night And deign, O Watcher, with the sleepless brow, Is there, O is there aught that such as Thou Are there no briars across Thy pathway thrust, O if Thou wilt, and if such bliss might be, What though unmarked the happy workman toil, Dear are the hills of God. Far better in its place the lowliest bird Should sing aright to Him the lowliest song, Surely, our extracts amply prove we are not wrong in announcing treasure-trove in this new poet. As we write, Messrs. Longman and Co. advertise a third edition of these poems, and another publisher promises a new work* by the no longer unknown author. This marks a great appreciation. Let us hope so cordial a greeting and such substantial praise as the writer has received will encourage her to still higher efforts. Our one word of advice is, beware of a wide canvass. We want not great scenic representations, to suspend in cold halls and unvisited galleries, but lovely cabinet pictures, to hang, by preference, in our inner chambers, and keep about us near and numerous with our household gods. We would have ballads to teach the children to repeat, and songs the heart can sing with or without music, and now and then a classic verse, sharp cut and polished like an old world gem, and a prayer through which the soul in sorrow may pour itself in words, or the too-keen joy of a hope fulfilled may find a tempered flow. Is this asking too much? No; for we have pledge of it all, and even a fair proportion of fulfilment in the very first work of the writer, of whom we now take farewell, with a hearty God speed and earnest au revoir ! * "A Sister's By-hours." By Jean Ingelow. Strahan & Co. THEORIES OF THE EARTH. It may be all very well to say that philosophical speculations should be restrained within the limits either of science or revelation, or of both taken together; but it so happens that they never have been so restrained, and it may be reasonably concluded that they never will. Men have been always in the habit of reasoning on the probable causes of things, or on the manner in which events have been brought about, where neither revealed nor human history has afforded us information, and where science can never arrive at certitude. Indeed, in one sense of the word, views would cease to be speculative if they did not go beyond the bounds of known facts, or if they could be verified by actual knowledge; and such operations of the mind may be classed with those which the wise man described, who, when he proposed to himself " to seek and search out wisely concerning all things that are done under the sun," says :-"This painful occupation hath God given to the children of men, to be exercised therein." That our "searching out" should be always "wisely" conducted, is not to be expected, and men are doomed to go on to the end indulging often in visionary theories and hypothetical explanations of things beyond their knowledge. Of this nature are the speculations about the origin of our globe, which have formed a leading feature in every school or system of philosophy, and which come under the general description of "theories of the earth." The only true theory on the subject is the Mosaic account of the creation; but it may safely be admitted, as it generally is, that some portions of that account are not necessarily to be understood in a literal sense—that, for instance, the intervals of time which Moses designates as "days," need not be understood as natural days, but as some indefinite periods, the great length of which, if, as the geologists assert, they were indeed of a vast duration, was still as nothing in the immeasurable lapse of eternity. The learned Calmet admits that the inspired historian may have accommodated his language, in some instances, to the comprehension of the age in which he lived; and some biblical scholars, at the same time that they treat the words of Holy Writ with profoundest respect, have, nevertheless, speculated wildly on the probable course adopted by the Creator in the work of preparing this planet to be the habitation of man. Some of their speculations we shall notice presently; but, in the first instance, we shall pass in review the principal theories, started by philosophers of pagan Greece and Rome, on the cosmogony or generation of the earth. From the earliest ages, it was the favorite opinion of the philosophers that the world was formed out of chaos; and chaos was defined to have been a dark, turbulent, confused, heterogeneous mass of elementary matter, which, according to some, had existed from eternity; but, according to others, was only the first state of matter after being called into existence by the Creator. Among Persians, Phoenicians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romansamong philosophers, poets, and pagan priests-this idea of a primordial chaos prevailed. It may have been only a dim tradition of the truth as conveyed in the words of Genesis-" And the earth was void and empty," (or, as the Church of England version has it, "the earth was without form and void"), "and darkness was upon the face of the deep"-words which undoubtedly refer to a state of chaos-but the notion was universal. Xenophanes, who lived about six hundred years before Christ, and was the founder of the Eleatic sect, was the first who taught that the world was eternal in form as well as in matter. His opinion was upheld by many who followed him, as by Parmenides, Zeno, Stilpo, &c. ; it was revived with some modifications by Spinosa, and was, in some shape or other, a favorite theory with persons professing to be atheists, or who have held that God and the material universe are one and the same. It evinces such profound ignorance of the ordinary laws that govern nature, and involves so many absurdities, that it is not worth examination. The next class of the pagan philosophers were those who held that, although the world in its present shape had a beginning, still the matter of which it is composed existed from eternity; their principle being, that out of nothing nothing could be produced. These may be divided into two classes, the first comprising those who endeavoured to account for the generation of the world, or its constitution in its present form, by mechanical principles only; that is, by the internal or inherent activity of matter; and the second, those who had recourse to an intelligent mind, or divine power, for the organization of the universe out of its chaotic materials. The Stoics, Pythagoreans, Platonists, and others, belonged to the second class, with, of course, various shades of difference among them; and one of the most remarkable of the doctrines held by the former class was the atomic system of the Epicureans. These supposed matter to consist, in its primitive state, of an infinite number of indivisible and impenetrable particles, called atoms, which were of different sizes and figures, and all endowed with motion, and which, as the result of this motion and diversity of shape, but by mere chance, came, in process of time, to form all things in the universe. This also has been a favorite theory, in one shape or other, with modern unbelievers; but its utter absurdity is palpable; and it was well observed long ago, that it is just as reasonable to suppose that a shower of letters from the moon should, on touching the earth, form themselves mechanically into the Iliad of Homer, as that a world, where the minutest detail evinces design, should all be the production of chance. Of the modern theories of the earth, not the least curious is that of Mr. Whiston, published in 1708. According to him the globe, formerly in a chaotic state, only received form and its present place among the heavenly bodies at the time mentioned by Moses. In its primitive state he supposes it to have been a comet, the nucleus of which was a solid, globular, hot body, about 2,000 leagues in diameter. It was an uninhabited chaos, and was surrounded by a chaotic atmosphere, the constituent matter of which was sometimes liquified and sometimes frozen, according to the alternations of great heat and cold. By degrees, the eccentricity of the comet's orbit decreased; and, as it became nearly circular, the materials of the atmosphere arranged themselves, according to their specific gravities, into the present elements; the chaos assuming the shape of a sphere round the original fiery nucleus, which gradually cooled, but which he calculated might retain more or less of its primæval heat for 6,000 years. According to Mr. Whiston, the earth did not receive its diurnal motion till the fall of Adam; and paradise was situated under the tropic of Cancer, where it was intersected by the ecliptic. The year began at the autumnal equinox, that being the season in which Adam was created; and on the 18th of November, in the year of the Julian period 2365, or в.c. 2349, he calculated that the deluge commenced; its immediate cause being the passage of a comet close to the earth, producing a prodigious tide, which swept over the earth's surface. As the comet approached, the tide rose higher; and when at its greatest height, the effect was such, that the waters which occupied the abyss, under the outer crust of the earth, broke that crust, and the vapours of the comet's tail also producing intense rain, a quantity of water sufficient to cover the earth, above the tops of the highest mountains, would thus be accounted for, and that in a manner which would correspond sufficiently with the account of the deluge given by Moses. The rending of the earth's crust would explain the separation of the continents and islands, which might have been all connected together by dry land before; and Mr. Whiston having found, by calculation, that the great comet of 1680 might have passed sufficiently near our globe to produce all the effects he described, at the precise period mentioned above, did not consider his theory as a mere hypothesis, but boldly affirmed that he had demonstrated the cause of the deluge. At the time of this event, he adds, the comet's attraction and the centrifugal force elevated the equatorial regions, and changed the figure of the earth, from a sphere to a spheroid; while, at the same time, commenced the inequality between the solar and the lunar year, which previously had both consisted of exactly 360 days. M. Bourguet, a Frenchman, suggested a theory, according to which the earth, when first formed, was in a fluid state; the first solidification of its surface was suddenly broken by the centrifugal force, and the whole original structure was dissolved. This breaking up of the solid parts was the cause of the deluge; and at some future period the earth's crust will be blown up, with a terrific explosion, by the internal fires which are even now consuming the earth's substance, and will cause a general conflagration in the last catastrophe; after which the diameter of the globe will be much less than it is at present; and the surface, instead of exhibiting strata of submarine formations, will consist only of beds of calcined materials. Lazaro Moro, an Italian, conjectured, with a much better train of reasoning, that the solid parts of the earth had been raised from the bottom of the sea, by the force of subterranean fires, and that the existence of seashells and remains of marine animals on the dry land are thus to be accounted for. Buffon, the celebrated naturalist, framed a theory of the earth totally regardless of the account given in the inspired writings. The principal features of his hypothesis are these. The earth and the other planets of our system were, according to it, portions of the body of the sun, from which 66 Their masses issued they had been detached by the stroke of a comet. from the sun in the shape of igneus torrents, which assumed each a globular figure, by the mutual attraction of their parts; and which, on reaching to a distance, where their projectile force was overcome by the sun's attraction, commenced revolving round that luminary in circular, or rather elliptical orbits. Their revolutions on their axes he ascribes to the obliquity of the original stroke impressed by the comet, and from this rotatory motion on its axis resulted the earth's figure of an oblate spheroid. The surface of the globe gradually cooled down, and the vapours of its atmosphere gradually condensed, until they formed the waters on the earth's surface; the detritus deposited by these waters forming the vegetable mould; while the combination of different elements produced the metals in the fissures of the earth's crust. Such," says Buffon, was the condition of the earth when the tides, the winds, and the heat of the sun, began to introduce changes on its surface." And in contemplating the interior structure of the earth, the irregular disposition of every thing; the sunken mountains, filled up caverns, shattered rocks, and general confusion, it seemed to him to resemble the ruins of a former world. But the great agent, according to him, in moulding the surface of the globe into its present form was water. The conclusions to which all his reasoning leads, are:-that the flux and reflux of the ocean have produced all the mountains, valleys, and other inequalities on the surface of the earth; that currents of the sea have scooped out the valleys, elevated the hills, and given them their respective directions; that the ocean produces these effects by transporting earth, or the detritus of various substances, which is deposited in strata that are horizontal, or inclined, according as the original surface on which they have been deposited is flat or irregular, but which were in all cases parallel; that in the process of drying these strata were broken by perpendicular fissures of various widths; that the sinking of immense subterranean caverns, or unequal yielding of the foundation under some portions of great superincumbent masses, broke mountain ridges into separate chains, and into isolated peaks, forming valleys and precipices, &c. ; that the waters from the heavens, that is, the rain, have been gradually destroying the effects of the ocean, by continually diminishing the height of the mountains, filling up the valleys, choking the mouths of rivers, and reducing everything to its pristine level; until, in the lapse of ages, the dry land shall once more be covered by the ocean, which, once more, by its natural operations, shall create new continents out of its own depths. To this elaborate theory, however ingenious and plausible it may seem, there are several fatal objections. It does not explain the existence of the unstratified rocks, which form the great mass of the principal mountain chains, and even of whole continents; for its author rejects the volcanic agency, as being inadequate to the production of the great inequalities which we find on the earth's surface; and it is needless to say, that the notion of our earth having been broken from the body of the sun, by the collision of a comet, is a mere gratuitous and fantastic hypothesis. Our countryman, Kirwan, adopted the opinion held by so many other philosophers, that the primeval world was once, to a certain depth, in a soft |