Has poetry a nobler theme than this? Agencies are seen like winged spirits of infinite power, each one working in its own peculiar way, and all to a common end,--to produce, under the guidance of omnipotent rule, the waters of the rivers and the seas. As the great ocean mirrors the bright heaven which overspreads it, and reflects back the sunlight and the sheen of the midnight stars in grandeur and loveliness; so every drop of water, viewed with the knowledge which science has given to us, sends back to the mind reflections of yet distant truths which, rightly followed, will lead us upwards and onwards in the tract of higher intelligences,-- “To the abodes where the eternals are.” In the discoveries connected with electricity, we have results of a more tangible character than are as yet connected with the other physical forces; and it does appear that this science has advanced our knowledge of nature and of the mysteries of creation far more extensively than any other department of purely experimental inquiry. The phenomena of electro-chemical action are so strange that we must return for a moment to the consideration of the decomposition of water, and the appearance of hydrogen at one pole, and of oxygen at the other. It appears that some confusion of our ideas has arisen from the views which have been received of the atomic constitution of bodies. We have been accustomed to regard water,--to take that body as an example of all,--as a compound of two gases, hydrogen and oxygen; an equivalent, or one atom of the first, united to an equivalent or one atom of the last, forming one atom of water. This atom of water we regard as infinitely small; consequently a drop of water is made up of many hundreds of these combined atoms, and a pint of water of not less than 10,000 drops. Now, if this pint of water is connected with the wires of a galvanic battery, although their extremities may be some inches apart, for every atom of oxygen liberated at one pole, an atom of hydrogen is set free at the other. It has been thought that an atom has undergone decomposition at one point, its oxygen being torn from it, and then there has arisen the difficulty of sending the atom of hydrogen through all the combined atoms of water across to the other pole. A series of decompositions and recompositions have been supposed to take place, and the communication of effects from particle to particle.