are awakened from their torpidity by the warm sun of spring. But who tells them in their nightly caverns that the snow has disappeared from the turf where they spent a summer of enjoyment? How do they know that it is now time to exchange darkness for light, and that the aromatic Alpine herbs-their delightsome food-are once more clothing the mountain-ledge with verdure? Their awakening at the right time from their lethargy is as wonderful as their faculty of falling into that deep sleep which carries them so softly over the dreary winter, and changes distress and want into repose and ease. Though buried for months under the snow, winter is to them an unknown season, and, like the animals of warmer climates, their whole active life is spent in pleasure and abundance. Thus Providence has consulted not only their safety but their happiness; and indeed, on examining the whole series of the quadrupeds, we shall find that the chequered scene of their existence inclines to the sunny side.

The sloth, clinging to his branch, will express his satisfaction for hours together by a kind of purring; and even the batsthe emblems of melancholy-may frequently be seen chasing each other in some secluded spot, and merrily piping during their playful evolutions.

The sprightliness of the dolphin is proverbial, and has frequently been celebrated by both ancient and modern poets. His lively troops often accompany, for days together, the track of a ship, and agreeably interrupt the monotony of a long seavoyage. As if in mockery of the most rapid sailer, they shoot past so as to vanish from the eye, and then return again with the same lightninglike velocity. Their spirits are so brisk that they frequently leap into the air, as if longing to enjoy themselves in a lighter fluid.

The leviathan cetaceans likewise love to indulge in sportive humours. A crowd of gregarious sperm-whales may be seen gambolling about on the vast wastes of the Pacific as lightly as the dolphin in the more confined waters of the Mediterranean. They will often swim in long lines, rhythmically sinking and rising as they rapidly proceed in their undulating course, or bask and sleep upon the surface, spouting leisurely, and exhibiting every indication of being at home. Sometimes a peculiarly high-spirited individual will jump ou

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of the water and remain suspended for a moment in the air, as if desirous of exhibiting his colossal size to the astonished seabirds. On falling back again into his congenial element, high foam-crested fountains spout forth on all sides, and great waves spread in widening circles over the sea. Or else he raises his bulky head vertically on high, so that the deceived mariner fancies he sees some black rock looming out of the distant waters. But suddenly the fancied cliff begins to move, and brandishes playfully its enormous flukes in the air, or lashes the waters with such prodigious power that the sound rolls far away like thunder over the deserts of the ocean.

On the icy shores of Spitzbergen, the walrus bellows with delight while basking in the sun, and the sea-caves of Orcadia frequently resound with the joyful bark of the seal. On ascending from the banks of the ocean to the Alpine snows, we meet with similar expressions of happiness among the brute creation. There the timid marmot is seen playing with his comrades; and there, amidst precipices almost inaccessible to man, the chamois sportively push each other with their horns, or gambol about, revelling in their mountain liberty.

In one word, wherever we roam over the surface of the globe, we find that in their wild state the quadrupeds are in the enjoyment of a large share of happiness. They have indeed frequently to suffer from illness, privation, or the persecutions of their enemies, for no created being is exempt from pain; but much more frequently they enjoy the present without being troubled, like man, either by cares for the future, or the remembrance of the past. It is only in the domesticated state that the life of many a poor horse or dog is an uninterrupted chain of misery, to the shame of his barbarous master. When will at length the reign of justice begin also for the animals? When will the precepts of our Divine Redeemer be so universally and deeply engrafted in the breast of man, that he will learn not only to love his brother but to extend his charity to every creature dependent on his power?

CHAPTER XXVIII.

MAN.

Pre-eminence of Man-His Greatness and his Weakness-The Brain of Man-The Telegraphic System of the Nerves-The Optic Nerve-The Organs of Hearing, Taste, Smelling, and Touch-Spinal Nerves-Motile Nerves-Sympathetic Nerves-The Human Hand-Its Harmony with the Intellectual Faculties of Man-Differences in the Limbs of the Ape and Man-Man's Upright WalkHis Privileges and his Duties.

THE star-spangled heavens, the brilliant sun, the magnificent ocean with its constantly-returning tides, the numberless plants which ornament our earth, and the vast hosts of animals that find their subsistence upon her teeming surface, are all most splendid monuments of the Creator's power; but, as far as we are able to probe the secrets of the universe, Man is beyond all doubt the most wonderful, the most perfect of His works. For the stars wander through the heavens unconscious of their own magnificence; the sun knows not that but for him countless beings would sink into night and death; the ocean is blind to the majesty of his rolling waves, and deaf to their awful music; the flower spreads its sweet odours, or enrobes itself in every hue of the rainbow without any conception of its loveliness; the animal's feelings are confined to the present moment with its joys or sorrows: but the eye of man darts into the boundless future and the illimitable past, and the vast range of his mind embraces the universe, and rises from the visible world to the throne of the invisible God-from whose unspeakable goodness, wisdom, and power all those stupendous works have emanated! And it is not only the infinite external world that lies open to the mind of man; he also penetrates into the mysteries of his own being, watches attentively all the movements of his soul, and carries in himself the judge of all his actions, thoughts, and sensations.

A wonderful organ-the brain-is the seat or the instrument of the astonishing mental faculties of man, the link or mediator between our body and our soul, between the material and the immaterial, the external and the internal world. Here resides our memory, which so marvellously resuscitates the past; our fancy, whose constantly-changing pictures enliven and beautify our life; our judgment, which penetrates the mysteries of Nature, and weighs causes and effects; our sensibility, with its multifarious passions and feelings; our will, whose commands flash with electric speed through our whole body, or oppose a strong barrier to our inclinations.

How small is our brain, and yet how immense the sphere of its activity! How many thoughts and pictures, and resolutions and sensations, cross it in the space of a single day! And as on the bosom of the sea, sunshine and shade, and storms and calms, are perpetually alternating, thus also this restless organ, in which so many divine powers and noble aspirations are blended with so many base desires, is the scene of perpetual changes!

And how various its scope and bias in different individuals: in the assassin, planning his midnight murder, so that the blow may not recoil upon himself; or in a Newton, meditating on the laws that govern worlds; in the sober man of business, who carefully shuts out all fancy from his reasonings; or in the poet

Whose eye in a fine frenzy rolling,

Glances from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven!

Who can paint the happiness, the bliss, that finds room in the little human brain; or the nameless sorrow, the comfortless despair, which there takes up its abode?

An organ so wonderfully gifted for the extremes of light and shade may well be called a little world in itself; but as the most costly vases are most liable to injury, thus also a trifle suffices to destroy the faculties of this masterpiece of creation. While wafted along by the full-tide of his successful ambition, or soaring aloft in the highest flight of his fancy, or plunged in his deepest meditations, or fascinating his hearers by the noblest flow of his eloquence-the statesman, the poet, the philosopher, the orator, is suddenly struck with apoplexy; and that masterly policy, that blooming imagination, that profound wisdom, that

sublime power of speech, which raised their gifted possessors so high above the vulgar crowd, are blotted out at once; for though death may delay to strike its victim, yet the mental powers are generally laid low for ever, and the object of universal admiration or envy lives but to be pitied. Thus in the brain, both the strength and the weakness of man appear in their fullest light; and, should his vast superiority over the animal creation, his exalted position as lord of the earth, awaken his pride, the rapidity with which an accident-a blow, a concussion, the rupture of a bloodvessel-may precipitate him from the pinnacle of his intellectual life may well teach him to be humble.

We know with the utmost certainty that the brain is the seat, the physical or material organ, of our intellectual faculties; but the internal mechanism of this admirable laboratory of thought and feeling is totally unknown to us.

We know that from the fishes and reptiles upwards, through the long series of birds and mammalian quadrupeds to man, the brain increases in size and development with the growth of intelligence, but science has not yet been able to sound the depth of its recesses.

The knife of the anatomist shows us no remarkable difference between the brain of the greatest and of the lowest of mankind; the chemist finds in every cerebral organ the same substances; and the microscope sees everywhere the same inextricable labyrinth of delicate fibres and intermingled globules, that unite and separate, and appear and disappear again in a formless mass. In one word, the brain so well conceals its secrets that their discovery seems totally impossible, and man may perhaps sooner be able to fathom the structure of the universe than that of the mysterious instrument of his own thoughts and sensations.

Inclosed in a shell of solid bone, and thus shielded from many dangers, the brain receives the impressions of the external world, or reacts against them through the agency or channel of the nerves-whose delicate filaments, ramifying through the whole body, either transmit its orders or act as faithful messengers of what is going on without. The nerves which communicate external impressions to the brain are called sensitive nerves, and of these the optic nerves command the widest