_The Unknown_.--Religion, whether natural or revealed, has always the same beneficial influence on the mind. In youth, in health, and prosperity, it awakens feelings of gratitude and sublime love, and purifies at the same time that it exalts; but it is in misfortune, in sickness, in age, that its effects are most truly and beneficially felt; when submission in faith and humble trust in the Divine will, from duties become pleasures, undecaying sources of consolation; then it creates powers which were believed to be extinct, and gives a freshness to the mind which was supposed to have passed away for ever, but which is now renovated as an immortal hope; then it is the Pharos, guiding the wave- tost mariner to his home, as the calm and beautiful still basins or fiords, surrounded by tranquil groves and pastoral meadows, to the Norwegian pilot escaping from a heavy storm in the north sea, or as the green and dewy spot gushing with fountains to the exhausted and thirsty traveller in the midst of the desert. Its influence outlives all earthly enjoyments, and becomes stronger as the organs decay and the frame dissolves; it appears as that evening star of light in the horizon of life, which, we are sure, is to become in another season a morning star, and it throws its radiance through the gloom and shadow of death. DIALOGUE THE FIFTH. THE CHEMICAL PHILOSOPHER. I had been made religious by the conversations of Ambrosio in Italy; my faith was strengthened and exalted by the opinions of the Unknown, for whom I had not merely that veneration awakened by exalted talents, but a strong affection founded upon the essential benefit of the preservation of my life owing to him. I ventured, the evening after our visit to the cave of Adelsberg, to ask him some questions relating to his history and adventures. He said, "To attempt to give you any idea of the formation of my character would lead me into the history of my youth, which almost approaches to a tale of romance. The source of the little information and intelligence I possess I must refer to a restless activity of spirit, a love of glory which ever belonged to my infancy, and a sensibility easily excited and not easily conquered. My parentage was humble, yet I can believe a traditional history of my paternal grandmother, that the origin of our family was from an old Norman stock; I found this belief upon certain feelings which I can only refer to an hereditary source, a pride of decorum, a tact and refinement even in boyhood, and which are contradictory to the idea of an origin from a race of peasants. Accident opened to me in early youth a philosophical career, which I pursued with success. In manhood fortune smiled upon me and made me independent; I then really became a philosopher, and pursued my travels with the object of instructing myself and of benefiting mankind. I have seen most parts of Europe, and conversed, I believe, with all the illustrious men of science belonging to them.