A great age, a Titanic age, the 19th century, has coolly, intelligently, and sternly noted all those phenomena which the old navigators braved, but did not examine. In this century it is that we, for the first time, have dared to look the Tempest squarely, and fearlessly, and scrutinizingly, in the eyes. Its premonitory symptoms, its characteristics, its results;--each and all have been calmly watched, and carefully and systematically registered; and, then, from that registration, necessarily come explanation and generalization, and thence, the grand, bold--and, as our not very distant ancestors would have said, impious system--the _Law of Storms_. So! What we took, what we in the old, bold, but blind day, took for matter of caprice, is really, after all, reducible to a system, obedient to a Law! So! then, those terrible facts, that made the brain swim, the boldest quail, because they _fought shadows_ and _walked in the darkness_, so! then, those terrible facts have a certain regularity of recurrence, and the seaman, resolute and strong, calmly considers whether he cannot oppose to those regular attacks a defence no less regular. In brief, if the Tempest has its _science_, can we not create and use an _art_? An art not merely to survive the Tempest but even to make it useful? But our science and our art cannot be called into life and activity until we shall have laid aside our old and ill founded notion that Tempests are caused by "the caprice of the winds." Attentive observation has taught us that the winds are _not_ capricious, that they are the accident, sometimes, also, the agent of the Tempest, but that, generally speaking, the Tempest is an _electrical phenomenon_, and often occurs in the absence of gales.