Why is it that in this matter America, so young, has outstripped Europe, so old? It is precisely because she is young, and burning with a desire to be in close connection with the whole globe. Upon her superb continent and in the midst of so many states, she yet deems herself solitary. So far from her European brother, she looks towards that centre of civilization as the earth looks toward the sun, and whatever seems to draw her into closer and more familiar connection with the grand old world, thrills her in every nerve. We have abundant proof of that from the joy, the intoxication, the perfect frenzy with which she hailed the completion of the submarine telegraph which joined the two distant shores, and promised that they should communicate within the brief space of minutes, in such wise that the two worlds should have but one thought. CHAPTER VI. TEMPESTS. It is with a very real and masterly genius that Maury has demonstrated the harmony that exists between air and water. As is the maritime ocean, so is the aërial ocean. Their alternating movements and the exchange of their elements are precisely analogous. The aërial ocean distributes heat over the world and making dryness or humidity. The latter, the air draws from the seas, from the infinity of the central ocean, and especially at the tropics, the great boilers of the universal cauldron. Dryness, on the contrary, the air acquires as it sweeps over the arid deserts, the great continents, and the glaciers (those true intermediate poles of the globe), which draw out its last drop of moisture from it. The heating at the equator and the cooling again at the pole, alternating the weight and lightness of the vapors, cause them to cross each other in horizontal currents and counter currents; while under the line the heat which lightens the vapors creates perpendicular currents, ascending from sea to sky. Previous to dispersing they hover in this misty region, forming, as it were, a ring of clouds around the globe. Here, then, we have pulsations both maritime and aërial, different from the pulse of the tide. This latter was external, impressed by other planets upon ours, but this pulse of various currents is inherent in the earth, it is her own veritable life. To my taste, one of the finest things in Maury's book, is what he says of salt: "The most obvious agent in producing maritime circulation, heat, would not alone suffice; there is another and a no less important agent, nay, an even more important--it is salt." So abundant is salt in the sea that if it could be cast on shore it would form a mountain 4,500 feet thick.