little creatures heave up the ocean on us. The river that to the poet's eye flows on for ever in the same channel, "giving a kiss," and kisses only, to every pebble and every sedge "it overtaketh in its pilgrimage," is detected to be secretly scraping, abrading, cutting out the earth like a knife, and washing it away into the sea. On the other hand, the earthquake and the volcano, which were looked on as paroxysms and agonies of nature, are transformed in our imagination into the constant ministers of beneficent change, and of creative purposes; and the momentary violence they commit, is to be excused on the plea of the great and permanent good they effect. For it is they who build the hills and the mountains, whence flow the streams of abundance upon the earth, and which, instead of being the gigantic, melancholy ruins Bishop Burnet took them to be, are the palaces and storehouses of nature, which it is given in charge to these sons of Vulcan to construct and to repair from the ravages which the soft rains of heaven incessantly commit upon them. Astronomy, too, notwithstanding the severe discipline she has undergone, has in these later times resumed all the boldness of her youth, and brought her stores of science to the construction of the most splendid cosmogony that ever attracted the faith of the learned. She has girt her long robe around her, and entered the lists with, and far outstripped, whatever is boldest in the speculations of the youngest of the sciences. The nebular hypothesis, though not yet entitled, as we think, to be considered other than an hypothesis, has assumed a shape and consistency which forbids an entire rejection of it, which enforces our respect, and which, at all events, habituates the imagination to regard our planetary system as having probably been evolved, under the will of Providence, by the long operation of the established laws of matter. It is quite a legitimate object of science, therefore, to view the laws of the physical world--whether they regard its mechanic movement, its chemistry, or its zoology--in their creative as well as reproductive functions; and it is the purpose of a work lately published, entitled "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation," and which has drawn to itself considerable attention, to collect and arrange whatever hints or fragments of knowledge science affords, enabling us to bring the successive phenomena of creation under the formula of general laws. In this purpose it is impossible to find a shadow of blame, and the work will probably answer one good end, that of directing the studies of scientific men into paths but little or timidly explored. But unfortunately, what the author has collected as the results of science, are, in some instances, little else than the wild guess-work of speculation. He has no scruple whatever in imitating those early geographers, who, disliking the blank spaces of undiscovered regions, were in the habit in their charts