"That would be, indeed, burning like a house on fire," observed Mr. Bagges. "But there is another gas, called nitrogen," said Harry, "which is mixed with the air, and it is this which prevents a candle from burning out too fast." “Eh?” said Mr. Bagges. "Well, I will say I do think we are under considerable obligations to nitrogen." "I have explained to you, uncle," pursued Harry, “how a candle, in burning, turns into water. But it turns into something else besides that. The little bits of carbon that I told you about, which are burned in the flame of a candle, and which make the flame bright, mingle with the oxygen in burning, and form still another gas, called carbonic acid gas, which is so destructive of life when we breathe it. So you see that a candle-flame is vapor burning, and that the vapor, in burning, turns into water and carbonic acid gas.' "Haven't you pretty nearly come to your candle's end' ?" said Mr. Wilkinson. "Nearly. I only want to tell uncle that the burning of a candle is almost exactly like our breathing. Breathing is consuming oxygen, only not so fast as burning. In breathing, we throw out water in vapor and carbonic acid from our lungs, and take oxygen in. Oxygen is as necessary to support the life of the body as it is to keep up the flame of a candle." "So," said Mr. Bagges, "man is a candle, eh? and Shakspeare knew that, I suppose (as he did most things), when he wrote, 'Out, out, brief candle!' Well, well; we old ones are moulds, and you young squires are dips and rush-lights, eh? Any more to tell us about the candle ?" "I could tell you a great deal more about oxygen, and hydrogen, and carbon, and water, and breathing, that Professor Faraday said, if I had time; but you should go and hear him yourself, uncle." "Eh? well, I think I will. Some of us seniors may learn something from a juvenile lecture, at any rate, if given by a Faraday. And now, my boy, I will tell you what," added Mr. Bagges, "I am very glad to find you so fond of study and science; and you deserve to be encouraged; and so I'll give you a-what-d'ye-call-it? a galvanic battery on your next birthday; and so much for your teaching your old uncle the chemistry of a candle." LESSON XIII.— -THE POETIC REALITIES OF NATURE. 1. THE animated marble of ancient story is far less wonderful than the fact, proved by investigation, that every atom of matter is interpenetrated by a principle which directs its movements and orders its positions, and involved by an influence which extends without limits to all other atoms, and which determines their union or otherwise. 2. We have gravitation drawing all matter to a common centre, and acting from all bodies throughout the wide regions of unmeasured space upon all. We have cohesion holding the particles of matter enchained, operating only at distances too minute for the mathematician to measure; and we have chemical attraction, different from either of these, working no less mysteriously within absolutely insensible distances, and by the exercise of its occult power giving determinate and fixed forms to every kind of material creation. 3. The spiritual beings which the poet of untutored nature gave to the forest, to the valley, and to the mountain, to the lake, to the river, and to the ocean, working within their secret offices, and moulding for man the beautiful or the sublime, are but the weak creations of a finite mind, although they have for us a charm which all men unconsciously obey, even when they refuse to confess it. They are like the result of the labors of the statuary, who, in his high dreams of love and sublimated beauty, creates from the marble rock a figure of the most exquisite moulding which mimics life. It charms us for a season; we gaze and gaze again, and its first charms vanish; it is ever and ever still the same dead heap of chiseled stone. It has not the power of presenting to our wearying eyes the change which life alone enables matter to give; and, while we admit the excellence of the artist, we cease to feel at his work. 4. The mysteries of flowers have ever been the charm of the poet's song. Imagination has invested them with a magic influence, and fancy has almost regarded them as spiritual things. In contemplating their surpassing loveliness, the mind of every observer is improved, and the sentiments which they inspire, by their mere external elegance, are great and good. But on examining the real mysteries of their conditions, their physical phenomena, the relations in which they stand to the animal world, "stealing and giving odors" in the marvelous interchange of carbonic acid and ammonia for the soul-inspiring oxygen-all speaking of the powers of some unseen, indwelling principle, directed by a supreme_rulerthe philosopher finds subjects for deep and soul-trying contemplation. Such studies lift the mind into the truly sublime of nature. The poet's dream is the dim reflection of a distant star; the philosopher's revelation is a strong telescopic examination of its features. One is the mere echo of the remote whisper of Nature's voice in the dim twilight; the other is the swelling music of the harp of Memnon,1 awakened by the sun of truth, newly risen from the night of ignorance. 5. Poetical creations are pleasing, but they never affect the mind in the way in which the poetic realities of nature do. The sylph moistening a lily is a sweet dream; but the thoughts which rise when first we learn that the broad and beautiful dark green leaves of the lily, and its pure and delicate flower, are the results of the alchemy which changes gross particles of matter into symmetric forms, of a power which is unceasingly at work under the guidance of light, heat, and electrical force, are, after our incredulity has passed away-for it is too wonderful for the untutored to believe at onceof an exalting character. 6. The flower has grown under the impulse of principles which have been borne to it on the beam of solar light, and mingled with its substance, and it has a language for all men. The poet, indeed, tells us of a man to whom "The primrose on the river's brink A yellow primrose was to him, And it was nothing more." But it was something more. He perhaps attended not to the eloquent teaching of its pure pale leaves; he might not have been conscious of the mysterious singing of that lowly flower; he might perchance have crushed it beneath his rude foot rather than quaff the draught of wisdom which it secreted in its cell; but the flower still ministered to that mere sensualist, and in its strange tongueless manner reproved his passions, and kept him " a wiser and a better man" than if it had pleased God to leave the world without the lovely primrose. But 7. A stone, likewise, is merely a stone to most men. within the interstices of the stone, and involving it like an atmosphere, are great and mighty influences-powers which are fearful in their grander operations, and wonderful in their gentler developments. The stone and the flower hold, locked up in their recesses, the three great known forces, light, heat, and electricity, and, in all probability, others of a more exalted nature still, to which these powers are but subordinate agents. Such are the facts of science, which, indeed, draw" sermons from stones," and find "tongues in trees.” Science alone can interpret the mysterious whisperings of Nature, and in this consists its poetry. 8. How weak are the creations of romance when viewed beside the discoveries of science. One affords matter for meditation, and gives rise to thoughts of a most ennobling character; the other excites for a moment, and leaves the mind vacant or diseased. The former, like the atmosphere, furnishes a constant supply of the most healthful matter; the latter gives an unnatural stimulus, which compels a renewal of the same kind of excitement to maintain the continuation of its pleasurable sensations. 1 MEM'-NON. The famous vocal statue of Memnon, in Egypt, was said to utter, when it was struck by the first beams of the rising 2 sun, a sound like the snapping asunder of a musical string; an historical fact, but LESSON XIV. THE EXTENT OF CHEMICAL ACTION. 1. It is evident that in all chemical phenomena we have the combined exercise of the great physical forces and evidences of some powers which are, as yet, shrouded in the mystery of our ignorance. The formation of minerals within the clefts of the rocks, the germination of seeds, the growth of the plant, the developments of its fruit and its ultimate decay, the secret processes of animal life, assimilation, digestion, and respiration, and all the changes of external form which take place around us, are the result of the exercise of that principle which we call chemical. 2. By chemical action plants take from the atmosphere the elements of their growth; these they yield to animals, and from these they are again returned to the air. The viewless atmosphere is gradually formed into an organized being, which as gradually is again resolved into the thin air, and all through chemical processes. The changes of the mineral world are of an analogous character, but we can not trace them so clearly in all their phenomena. 3. An eternal round of chemical action is displayed in nature. Life and death are but two phases of its influences. Growth and decay are equally the result of its power. NINTH MISCELLANEOUS DIVISION. ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCH-YARD.-THOS. GRAY. ten. ["Gray's Elegy" is generally conceded to be one of the most finished poems ever writ It supposes the poet to be musing in a country church-yard at the close of a tranquil summer's day, when the scene calls up a train of reflections upon the character and occupations of the "rude forefathers of the peaceful hamlet" who sleep beneath him. Reflecting that they shall wake no more at morn to pursue their daily avocations, he passes in review before him the industrious, contented, unambitious life they led, while both their virtues and their crimes were circumscribed by the humble lot in life which Providence had assigned them. The poet then fancies some one, after years had passed away, inquiring into his fate, and he puts into the mouth of "some hoary-headed swain" a simple relation of the little that might then be told of his, the poet's, humble history; and this is followed, in the last three verse, by his own epitaph. The artist has pictured every scene described, as it is supposed to have arisen in the mind of the poet.] 1. THE curfew tolls the knell of parting day; 2. Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, |