Accommodation of organized life to circumstance, by diverging ramifications, . . . 381 Retrospective glance at our pages, . . . 388 {1} INTRODUCTION. NAVIGATION is of the first importance to the improvement and perfecting of the species, in spreading, by emigration, the superior varieties of man, and diffusing the arts and sciences over the world; in promoting industry, by facilitating the transfer of commodity through numberless channels from where it is not, to where it is required; and in healing the products of those most fertile but unwholesome portions of the earth, to others more congenial to the existence of the varieties of man susceptible of high improvement: Water being the general medium of action,—fluidity or conveyance by water, almost as necessary to civilized life as it is to organic life, in bearing the molecules forward in their vital courses, and in floating the pabulum (the raw material) from the soil through the living canals to the manufactories of assimilized matter, and thence to the points of adaptation. {2} As civilization progresses under the influence of navigation, and the earth exchanges her straggling hordes of savages for enlightened densely-peopled nations, every climate and country will be more set apart to its appropriate production, and the utility of the _great conduit, the_ OCEAN, will more and more be developed, and become the grand theatre of contested dominion—superiority there being almost synonymous with _Universal Empire_—dry land only the footstool of the _Mistress of the Seas_[1]. In the still hour which has followed the cannon roar of our victories, we seem disposed to sleep secure, almost in forgetfulness, that we possess this superiority, that we stand forth the Champion of the World, and must give battle to every aspirant to the possession of the _trident sceptre_. As soon as the recent principles of naval motion and new projectiles, conjoined to shot-proof vessels, shall have been brought to use in naval warfare, marine will have acquired a great comparative preponderance over land batteries, and every shore be still more at the mercy of the Lords of Ocean.