sea-weed, too, that is cast upon its tenantless shores soon crumbles into mould, and unites with the debris of the former polyps. At last, some seeds from the neighboring lands are driven to its strand, and there finding a soil united for their growth, soon sprout, under the influence of a tropical sun, into fresh life, and clothe the ocean isle with verdure and vegetation. Then, _last_, man comes, and taking possession of the land, erects him a house to dwell in, and cultivating the soil he finds, soon converts the ocean-rescued land into cultivated plains. Islands thus formed are constantly increased in circumference by the same means as those that gave them birth; the same agency is ever at work, adding particle on particle to the rising land. But is it not strange that such simple means can resist the ever-flowing and roaring ocean--that such simple animals can uprear a masonry which shall resist the violence of the waves and defy the power of the breakers? Is it not strange that a single polyp can form a structure in the bosom of the ocean, which shall stand, a victorious antagonist to the storm when works of man and other "inanimate works of nature" would have crumbled into nothing before the relentless fury of a disturbed ocean? "Let the hurricane tear up its thousand huge fragments, yet what will that tell against the accumulated labor of myriads of architects at work day and night, month after month?" for here organic force is opposed to the raging elements, and opposing, is victorious. [From the Dublin University Magazine] A NIGHT IN THE BELL INN. Though few men are themselves on visiting terms with their ancestors, most are furnished with one or two decently-authenticated ghost stories. I myself am a firm believer in spectral phenomena, for reasons which I may, perhaps, be tempted to give to the public whenever the custom of printing in folio shall have been happily revived; meanwhile, as they will not bear compression, I keep them by me, and content myself with now and then stating a fact saving the theory to suggest itself. Now it has always appeared to me that the apostles of spectres (if the phrase will be allowed me) have, like other men with a mission, been, perhaps, a little precipitate in assuming their facts, and sometimes find "true ghosts" upon evidence much too slender to satisfy the hard-hearted and unbelieving generation we live in. They have thus brought scandal not only upon the useful class to which they belong, but upon the world of spirits itself--causing ghosts to be so generally discredited, that fifty visits made in their usual private and confidential way, will now hardly make a single convert beyond the individual favored with the interview; and, in order to reinstate themselves in their former position, they will be obliged henceforward to appear at noon-day, and in places of public resort.