effects dependent upon the recurrence or permanency of the conditions which produce them, is the most universal of the laws of nature. It governs all natural phenomena in their various phases, all organic processes, all the productions of man's industry.... Rational agriculture, in contradiction to the spoliation system of farming, is based upon the principle of restitution."

The natural mode of maintaining the land in a state of enduring fertility would be, however, to restore yearly to its surface the vast quantities of valuable materials which we now cast into our rivers, not only to be lost, but to become the sources of miasma and disease.

The state of that gigantic hot-bed of death which now festers in the midst of our metropolis, has irresistibly roused the attention of the nation to one aspect of the question; that to which we have briefly adverted is no less important, and demands the most earnest study of scientific men, as a question at once of profound difficulty and of the gravest national moment, for "the laws revealed by the study of the natural sciences will determine the future intellectual and material progress of countries and nations; every individual is personally interested in the questions connected with their application."

But to revert for a moment to the subject of "expiration." It will be asked how the vast streams of carbonic acid incessantly generated in the dense habitations of man can ever be dispersed so as to reach that vegetation which they are destined to feed and stimulate; and further if, as chemists tell us, this gas is half as heavy again as air, while an admixture of three or four per cent with our atmosphere is fatal to human life, why does it not fall as a heavy pall upon the localities where it is generated, converting them into so many scenes of desolation and death?

There is an innate property of all gaseous bodies, termed their diffusion, which obviates completely this otherwise inevitable result, and in which we recognize one of the most striking and beneficent provisions for the maintenance of the equilibrium of nature.

The property of diffusion consists of an irresistible tendency in all gases to intermingle, until the uniform and homogeneous mixture of the whole is effected, in spite

of their relative specific gravities, even carbonic acid being able, in this way, to ascend into an atmosphere of hydrogen, full twenty times lighter than itself, while, conversely, the hydrogen descends, until a perfect mingling of the two gases is accomplished, from which they exhibit no tendency to separate. "Gases diffuse into one another in velocities inversely proportional to the square root of their densities."

It is impossible to overrate the vast importance of this law in the economy of nature. Its first and most palpable result is the exact uniformity of the composition of the atmosphere, a condition evidently essential within small limits, to the wellbeing of all forms of life, while an equally direct effect of its operation is the removal of the vast supplies of carbonic acid generated by the various forms of combustion, and of the enormous volumes of watery vapor which perpetually rise from the surface of all seas, lakes, streams, and moist lands, and which, if not speedily dispersed in this manner, would form a noisome layer of fog upon the earth, rank with the seeds of decay and destruction, instead of the balmy vapors which nourish and refresh vegetation.

Having thus described the chief relations which obtain between the two great kingdoms of animal and vegetable life, and the manner in which their organisms derive a large portion of their substance from the soil, we shall, in conclusion, briefly refer to the vast cycle of changes through which the crust of the earth itself is, and for countless ages has been, passing; one consequence of which has been the production of that very soil upon which the present denizens of the globe subsist.

There was doubtless an era when there was no soil, and when rocks far older than the Plutonic masses, which now thrust their heads through superincumbent deposits of limestone, sandstone, and other strata, stood in the naked grandeur of their primitive forms on the first crust of the globe. Then water was created, and these first rock-forms were gradually furrowed by streams and ground down by ocean tides, and the detritus spread out in the hollows of the land to form the first approach to soil. "The amount of such denudation is to be exactly measured by the quantity of the mechanically-formed aqueous rocks, and, as our present lands

show us, vast sheets of sandstones and clays, thousands and thousands of feet in thickness, hundreds and thousands of square miles in superficial extent; and as every particle of these enormous masses of rock is the result of the erosion of previously existing rock, it follows that the amount of denudation which has affected the older or lower rocks is something inconceivably great." (Beete Jukes.)

But there are other processes, beside the merely mechanical one of erosion, to which we owe some of the most extensive geological formations. The great strata known as the Coral Rag attain the extraordinary thickness of several thousand feet, and are wholly composed of the remains of ancient coral reefs, while it is more than probable that a yet more extensive series of limestone beds is entirely compacted from the débris of minute infusorial animalcules.

Now, the depths of the ocean are crowded with living organisms, destined, it would seem, in no slight degree, to exercise functions compensatory of that vast process of degradation by which the higher portions of our earth are ever being worn down and sifted out over the surface of the land and the bed of the sea. The countless myriads of the shell-fish infusoriæ and coral polypes are incessantly abstracting from the waters which they tenant, the various mineral constituents held in solution therein, and again building them up into masses which rival in

magnitude the most enormous deposits of past eras. Witness, for instance, the series of coral reefs, which stretch in an unbroken line across the Pacific for more than three thousand miles, rising from an ocean of unfathomable depth, yet whose entire bulk is the work of innumerable minute and microscopic animals.

May not these at some future period of our earth's history, occupy one of the great" areas of elevation," and so be upraised from their ocean beds, to form dry and habitable land, which, in its turn, will again be disintegrated and dissolved, only again to undergo the same transformations-while these wondrous revolutions occupy cycles of time perhaps as gigantic as those by which astronomers have taught us to count the periods of the heavenly bodies, if we can indeed apply the word to numbers, of which the human mind can, in reality, form no definite conception whatever?

We might fortify the position we have asserted, by an almost indefinite multiplication of illustrations, each revealing fresh wonders in the mutual relation of all parts of the natural world; but space forbids: and, did it permit us to pursue the subject into its minutest ramifications, the accumulated weight of instances could scarcely add strength to the conviction, that Infinite Wisdom and equal Beneficence rule supreme in all the kingdoms of the natural as well as of the moral world.

THE

ROYAL

OF

ENGLAND.

Queen Victoria is looked upon as the first Lady of the world. As the sovereign of a powerful Empire, as a Queen revered and beloved by her subjects, as a woman and a mother, she is regarded as a model

Queen Victoria was born May twentyfourth, 1819. Her father was Edward Duke of Kent. Her mother was Victoria Maria Louisa, daughter of the Duke of Saxe-Cobourg. Just twenty months after his marriage, and just eight months after the birth of Victoria, her father the Duke of Kent died. This event turned the eyes of all England to Victoria as their future Queen, though yet an infant child. The

result has formed a great chapter in English history.

An English gentleman who was familiar with her childhood and youth, says: "When I first saw the pale and pretty daughter of the Duke of Kent, she was fatherless. Her fair, light form was sporting in all the redolence of youth and health, on the noble sands of old Ramsgate. It was a summer day, not so warm as to induce languor, but yet warm enough to render the favoring breezes from the laughing tides, as they broke gently upon the sands, agreeable and refreshing. Her dress was simple: a plain straw bonnet, with a white ribbon round the crown, a colored muslin frock, looking gay and cheerful, and as pretty a pair of shoes on as pretty a pair of feet as I ever remember to have seen from China to Kamtschatka. Her mother was her companion, and a venerable man, whose name is graven on every human heart that loves its species, and whose undying fame is recorded in that eternal book where the actions of men are written with the pen of Truth, walked by her parent's side, and doubtless gave those counsels, and offered that advice, which none was more able to offer than himself for it was William Wilberforce. When Victoria was fifteen years of age, there was a lad of the same age, a relative of the family, on the mother's side, who often associated with her, in her studies and her sports. In those early years a strong attachment grew up between them; and it could not be concealed that Victoria looked upon Prince Albert with more than ordinary affection. When she had attained her eighteenth year, the year of her legal majority, her birth-day was celebrated with the utmost splendor. The bells rang merry peals of joy; the nobility of the empire gathered around the princess, with their congratulations, and St. James' palace was decked with splendor, such as was never seen before. Prince Albert was also there, with throbbing heart, among the first to congratulate Victoria upon the happy event.

death, and that she was Queen of England. That day she assembled her first Privy Council. Upwards of one hundred of the highest nobility of the realm were present. It was an imposing and affecting scene. The pen and the pencil have in vain endeavored to do it justice. In the midst of the scarred veterans of war, grayhaired statesmen, judges of the Court, dignitaries of the Church, stood this youthful maiden, with her fragile and fairy form, pale and pensive, and yet graceful and queenly, in her childlike loveliness. And when the herald announced, "We publish and proclaim that the high and mighty Princess, Alexandrina Victoria, is the only lawful and rightful liege lady, and by the grace of God, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Defender of the Faith," the timid and lovely maiden, overwhelmed by the scene, threw her arms around her mother's neck, and wept with uncontrollable emotion. And when her uncle, the Duke of Sussex, her father's younger brother, was about to kneel at her feet to kiss her royal hand, as he took the oath of allegiance, she gracefully placed an affectionate kiss upon his cheek, and with tears streaming from her eyes, exclaimed: "Do not kneel, my uncle, for I am still Victoria, your niece."

In a few days she made her first appearance, as Queen, before the Parliament of Great Britain, the most august assemblage in the world. Statesmen, nobles, ambassadors from foreign courts, thronged the chamber. Victoria entered, not with tall, commanding figure, but as a gentle, sylphlike, fairy child, to win all hearts to tenderness and love. She ascends the throne, and every eye is riveted upon the youthful Queen. With a clear though tremulous voice, she reads her first address to the statesmen who surround her, so distinctly as to make herself heard to the very farthest part of the House of Lords.

The marriage with Albert soon followed. The nation approved of the match; and two youthful hearts, drawn together amidst the splendors of a palace by mutual love, were united in the most sacred and delightful of ties. Such espousals seldom occur within the frigid regions of a court. This union has been highly promotive of the happiness of both of the illustrious pair. They are universally respected and beloved, and dwell together in the spirit of harmony and affection, which is rarely experienced by those whose fortune it is to dwell in the cold and cheerless regions of elevated rank and power. But few of the cares of government rest upon Victoria. The able counselors who surround her, guide the affairs of state in her name. She has little to do, except to attend to the etiquette of the Court, to present herself as the conspicuous pageant on a galaday, and to give her signature to those acts of Parliament which are supported by those friends in whom she reposes confidence. The romance of the coronation, and of the bridal scene, has long ago passed away. The lovely maiden Queen, who arrested all eyes, and won all hearts, is now an affectionate wife, an amiable woman, a care-worn mother. With matronly dignity she cherishes the children who have clustered around her. With exemplary fidelity, she discharges her duties as Queen, as wife, as mother; and she is worthy of the respectful affection she receives from her subjects; for there are few who have ever been seated upon a throne who are more meritorious in character than Queen Victoria. The accidents of birth have placed her where she

Of Prince Albert, the honored and bo loved consort of the Queen, there is but one opinion. His amiable private character and domestic traits have ministered unspeakably to the happiness of the Queen, and contributed to that most happy and illustrious example of domestic purity and peace which has won for the Royal Family of England the respect of the civilized world. His exquisite tact and discretion. in reference to the exciting political questions and solicitations by which he has been surrounded, are remarkable. Not a word or look of his has ever yet compromised the independence and impartiality of the throne. The bitterest partianship has found nothing to condemn in the course of the prince. Yet has he not been an idle or indifferent spectator of the active life around him. The charitable, the commercial, and the social movements and interests of the nation have strongly attracted him, and have found in him a wise and efficient patron. The great characteristic event of our era, the International Exhibition at the Crystal Palace, is distinctly traceable to his original suggestion, as well as its final realization to his perseverance and energy of character. Happy in his family, liberal in views, and unostentatiously benevolent in his feelings, his influence has been signally favorable to morality and religion.

Eight children have been added to the happy circle of the Royal Family, whose unbroken good health, admirable order, and amiable dispositions have contributed to render the Royal Family one of England's brightest treasures, and most useful and honorable traits among the nations.

A LETTER from Rome, of second November, states that the Tiber has overflowed its banks, and that the Ghetto and all the streets near the stream were flooded. The shops are shut up, and the inhabitants have taken refuge in the upper stories of their houses, where provisions are brought to them by boats. The Pantheon is completely surrounded by water.