Reason may be regarded as the Instinct of the human race. Like instinct, commonly so called, it has an irresistible tendency toward certain results; and when circumstances favor, these results evolve. But reason is a slow and experimental instinct. It is long before it attains to any optimism. The inferior races are only repeating masterpieces which their ancestor produced in the year of the world One. Man is constantly improving on his models, and there are many inventions on which he has only hit in this 59th century of his existence. Nevertheless, as the oak is in the acorn, so these inventions have from the first been in the instinct of humanity. That is, if you say that its nest was in the mind of the bird, or its cocoon in the mind of the silk-worm as it came from the hand of its Maker, and if you consequently deem it true and devout to recognize in these humble fabrics a trace of the wisdom which moulds the universe; so we say that the Barberini Vase and the Britannia Bridge existed in the mind of our species when first ushered into this earthly abode, and now in the providential progress of events these germs have developed in structures of beauty or grandeur, whilst admiring the human workmanship, it is right and it is comely to adore the original Authorship. His are the minerals and the metals, the timbers and the vegetable tissues, from which our houses and our ships, our clothing and our furniture, are fabricated. Of these, the variety is amazing, and it plainly indicates that, in the arrangements of this planet, the Creator contemplated not only the necessities but the enjoyments of his intelligent creatures. For instance, there might have been only one or two metals; and the eagerness with which tribes confined to copper, or to gold and silver, grasp at an axe or a butcher’s whittle, shows how rich are the tribes possessing iron. But even that master-metal, with all his capabilities, and aided by his three predecessors, cannot answer every purpose. The chemist requires a crucible which will stand a powerful heat, and which, withal, does not yield to the corroding action of air or water. Gold would answer the latter, and iron the former purpose, well; but every one knows how readily iron rusts and how easily gold melts. But there is another metal—platinum—on which air and water have not the slightest action, and which stands unscathed in the eye of a furnace where iron would run down like wax, and gold would burn like paper. In the same way there are many ends for which none of these metals are available, but which are excellently answered by tin, and lead, and zinc, and rhodium, and mercury. Or will the reader bestow a passing thought on his apparel? His forefathers found one garment sufficient, and for mere protection from the weather a suit of cat-skin or sheep-skin might still suffice. But, oh reader! what a romance is your toilette! and should all the rest of you be prose, what a poem you