gins to increase in quantity; small clouds of black smoke are seen at short intervals, shooting up through the centre of the white column, and suddenly losing themselves in the higher regions of the air. These clouds soon increase in number, and at last the whole column assumes a black appearance. During the night, this black smoke resembles a pillar of flame; an appearance which the lowest part of the column retains even during the day. This smoke becomes highly electrical; and continual flashes of forked lightning are seen darting from it in every direction. In this state, it is sometimes carried by the winds into the adjoining country, where it commits the most dreadful ravages. On some occasions, it has been known to extend to a distance of 100 miles, laying waste every thing around, killing the shepherd and his flocks on the mountains, blasting the trees, and setting fire to the houses. In this state of the mountain, showers of ashes frequently occur, red hot stones of immense size are projected to an astonishing height in the air, and the earth seems convulsed to its centre.

EARTHQUAKES.

An earthquake is a sudden concussion of the earth, accompanied with unusal noises, resembling frequently subterranean thunder, and sometimes, as loud as the report of cannon. It produces from the earth an emission of vapor, flame, water, stones, or other substances, is usually attended with a sulphureous smell, and differs in violence from a slight shock to the most tremendous convulsion. The concussion is subject to considerable variety in its form. or direction. When violent in the first degree, nothing can withstand its all destroying impetus. It resembles a stroke of vengeance urged by the might of Omnipotence itself. The palace and the cottage, the temple and the obelisk, all the works of industry and the monuments of art, lie around in disjointed fragments, or the earth yawns and they sink into the vast and

fathomless profound. Lofty mountains with their rocks and woods are precipitated into the valleys and plains, with wide spreading ruin and hideous commotion. The ancient courses of rivers are obstructed, and their waters forced to become stagnant, or cut for themselves new and circuitous channels. Whole tracts of country with their cities, villages, and human inhabitants, their flocks and herds, and all they contain, suddenly disappear, and lakes or the ocean OCcupy their place. Nor is the sea, or the heavens, ex• empt from the tumult. The waters of the deep, in the wildest disorder, now retreat from the shore, and now assail it with irresistible fury, while the skies themselves, rent with thunder and glowing with lightning, have presented, at times, the terrific appearance of a canopy of fire. It is scarcely hyperbolical to say, that the very fabric of nature seems ready to be resolved into its primary elements, and that the reign of chaos threatens to return.

COMETS.'

These bodies afford a wonderful display of the infin itude of space, the grandeur of the universe, and the immensity as well as the power, wisdom, and goodness of Him who rules all, controls all, preserves al', and is every where present. In relation to these points, the comet seems to impart to us a more luminous and impressive lesson, than all the other bodies that roll through the heavens. More rapid in its motion than the lightning of the skies, travelling several millions of miles every hour, it journies at this rate for many centuries, before it completes a single round of its customary orbit. How many other suns it passes, through how many other systems it sweeps, and what proportion of entire space it traverses during this stupendous career, it does not belong to us even to conjecture. Imagination itself, unable to pursue it through a field so unbounded, shrinks from the attempt in absolute despair. When we reflect on the inconceivable impc

tus with which the comet moves; the number of oth er celestial bodies it must necessarily pass in its course; the thousand fragments into which it would shiver both itself and them, were it to impinge against them; the disorder and confusion likely to ensue in the grand system of nature, from such an event, and the difficulty of regulating and controling millions of such bodies, all flying in swift and simultaneous motion-when we reflect on these points, we are lost in amazement, at the power, the wisdom, the vigilance, and the benignity of that Being, who sits at the helm of creation, and directs the movements of the mighty machine. Such is the lofty, and pious style of reflection, which the appearance of comets is calculated to inspire. And, should it not be thought to savour of self-commendation, we might safely, because truly, add, such is the style which oftentimes took possession of our own mind, on viewing the comet of 1811, alike unusual for its magnitude and brilliancy. It is, in a peculiar manner, when looking on these bodies, that we are inclined with the poet, emphatically to exclaim, "An undevout astronomer is mad."

APOSTROPHE TO THE OCEAN.

Hail thou inexhaustible source of wonder and contemplation! Hail thou multitudinous ocean! whose waves chase one another down like the generations of men, and after a momentary space are immerged for. ever in oblivion! Thy fluctuating waters wash the Varied shores of the world, and while they disjoin nations, whom a nearer connection would involve in eternal war, they circulate their arts and their labors, and give health and plenty to mankind.

How glorious! how awful are the scenes which thou displayest! Whether we view thee, when every wind is hushed, when the morning sun silvers the level line of the horizon, or when its evening track is marked with flaming gold, and thy unrippled bosom reflects the radiance of the over-arching heavens

Or whether we behold thee in thy terrors, when the black tempest sweeps thy swelling billows, and the boiling surge mixes with the clouds, when death rides the storm, and humanity drops a fruitless tear for the toiling mariner, whose heart is sinking with dis may !

When the mind contemplates the flux and reflux of thy tides, which from the beginning of the world were never known to err, how does it shrink at the idea of that divine power which originally laid thy foundations so sure, and whose omnipotent voice hath fixed the limits where thy proud waves shall be stayed!

APOSTROPHE TO THE SUN.

O thou that rollest above, round as the shield of my fathers! Whence are thy beams, O sun! thy everlasting light? thou comest forth, in thy awful beauty, and the stars hide themselves in the sky; the moon cold and pale, sinks in the western wave. But thou thyself movest alone who can be a companion of thy course! The oaks of the mountains fall: the mountains themselves decay with years; the ocean shrinks and grows again; the moon herself is lost in heaven; but thou art forever the same; rejoicing in the brightness of thy course. When the world is dark with tempests; when thunder rolls, and lightning flies; thou lookest in thy beauty, from the clouds, and laughest at the storm. But to Ossian, thou lookest in vain; for he beholds thy beams no more; whether thy yellow hair flows on the eastern clouds, or thou tremblest at the gates of the west. But thou art perhaps like me for a season, and thy years will have an end. Thou shalt sleep in thy clouds, careless of the voice of the morning. Exult then, O sun, in the strength of thy youth! Age is dark and unlovely; it is like the glimmering light of the moon, when it shines through broken clouds, and the mist is on the hills; the blast of the north is on the plain, the traveller shrinks in the midss of his journey.

I: 2

RUINS OF PALMYRA

I daily visited the monuments which cover the plain, and one evening, absorbed in reflection, I had advanced to the valley of Sepulchres. I ascended the heights which surround it, from whence the eye commands the whole group of ruins and the immensity of the desert. The sun was set; a red border of light, on the distant horizon of the mountains of Syria, still marked its tract: the full-orbed moon was rising in the east, on a blue ground, over the plains of the Euphrates; the sky was clear, the air calm and serene ; the dying lamp of day still softened the horrors of approaching darkness; the rising freshness of the night attempered the sultry emanations from the heated earth; the herdsmen had given their camels to repose; the eye perceived no motion on the dusky and uniform plain; profound silence rested on the desert; the howlings only of the jackall, and the solemn notes of the bird of night, were heard at distant intervals. Darkness now thickened; and already, through the dusk, could only be discerned the pale phantasms of columns and walls. The solitude of the place, the tranquillity of the hour, the majesty of the scene, impressed on my mind à religious pensiveness. The aspect of a great city deserted, the record of times past, compared with its present state, all elevated my mind to high contemplations. I sat on the shaft of a col. umn, my elbow reposing on my knee, and head reclining on my hand, my eyes fixed, sometimes on the desert, sometimes on the ruins, I abandoned myself to a profound reverie. Here, said I, once flourished an opulent city; here was the seat of a powerful empire. Yes! these places, now wild and desert, were once animated by a living multitude; a busy crowd circulated in these streets now solitary. Within these walls, where now reigns the silence of death, resounded incessantly the noise of the arts, and the shouts of joy and festivity: these piles of marble were regular palaces; these fallen columns adorned the majesty of temples; these ruined galleries traced the public placHere-assembled a numerous people for the sa

es.