The eggs of a whole county were first to be submitted to experiment, previous to taking the entire Commonwealth under the capacious wing of the Hatcher. The first process of cubation completed, it was only necessary to heat the Patent, and the business was done, and so were the chickens; but instead of producing hens or roosters, it only roasted the eggs—and very nicely it did it, too, it is said. Nature defied the power of figures, and gave facts as arguments. The hens of the neighborhood survived the innovation, and went on in the old way. Our friend had burned his fingers as well as his eggs, and was sore when the subject was touched. It was his bull, and he didn’t wish him horned. A dilemma, neither horn of which he wished to take. He had hatched himself a life-time remembrancer whenever he heard a cock crow—and he wanted no crowing. He was no _eg_-otist on this subject; on the whole, he would rather cry _peccavi_—and shell out—he would stand treats, but no jokes. But, my dear Jeremy, do not consider me as sneering at the ambition of man to outdo his fellows, to surpass all previous knowledge, to wrest nature from herself to fulfill his purposes—it is of the eternal law of progress. Man can no more stop, and be contented, than the worlds which are revolving in space, can rest and shine on. Each age makes a giant’s stride onward. The past is strewn with theories toppled down, and with systems exploded. The monuments of philosophy, the labor of ages, are the marks now for the child’s finger of scorn. The voyage of Columbus is now the work of a week. Work, did I say?—his toilsome and desolate path over the waters, is now the holyday ramble of all nations. Thought itself leaps a continent in a second, and by means of cipher, is communicated to minds thousands of miles distant, putting the _speed_ of steam, the glory of an age just gone, to shame; accomplishing its purpose, even while the sonorous steam-whistle is but giving its note of departure. The press, in a night, performs the labor of a year, in multiplying printed thought, and a Commonwealth, a Nation is shaken in the time requisite, formerly, to ink the rollers for Franklin’s heavy edition. Who will say that man himself shall not yet be shot into the air like a rocket, and diverge at pleasure to any point of the compass, in defiance of the caprice of air-currents? That if he can now snatch from the sun a likeness of himself in an instant of time, he shall not, one day, look the sun itself in the face with unblinking eyes, take his observations from the horn of some remote planet, and return to earth to record his discoveries. “Philosophy,” you will say. But how much is philosophy herself learning daily? How much of her previous knowledge is shown daily to have been worthless? The chemist, the geologist, the astronomer, torture nature continually for her secrets, but the provident Mother is chary. It is but by a step at a time that her