of the water, as long as the air within it is capable of supporting combustion. On this principle the use of the divingbell depends. The impenetrability of air on an extensive scale is shown by the desolating effects of the hurricane, which is one of its natural effects. Impenetrability does not admit of degrees. A pebble occupies less space than a huge block of stone, and a drop of water less than the ocean, and the bubble floating on its surface less than the atmosphere which surrounds it. But the pebble, the drop of water, and the bubble, occupy space as truly as the block of stone, the ocean, or the atmosphere. They are, therefore, equally impenetrable. MAGNITUDE is included in the idea of impenetrability. We cannot conceive of a body occupying space, without supposing it to have a certain size, in other words, it has magnitude. Magnitude is either of one, two, or three dimensions. Magnitude of one dimension has length only, as the distance between any two points. Magnitude of two dimensions has length and breadth. Of this, the surfaces of bodies furnish examples. Magnitude of three dimensions has length, breadth, and thickness. All bodies, however minute, have these three dimensions.

FORM OF FIGURE.-The different proportions existing between the length, breadth, and thickness of bodies, give rise to the innumerable varieties of form.

LESSON VIII.-WEDNESDAY.

TO THE MUMMY IN BELZONI'S EXHIBITION.

And thou hast walked about (how strange a story!)
In Thebes' streets, three thousand years ago,
When the Memnonium was in all its glory,
And time had not begun to overthrow
Those temples, palaces, and piles stupendous,
Of which the very ruins are tremendous.

Speak! for thou long enough hast acted dummy,
Thou hast a tongue-come, let us hear its tune;
Thou'rt standing on thy legs, above-ground, muminy!
Revisiting the glimpses of the moon;

Not like thin ghosts, or disembodied creatures,
But with thy bones and flesh, and limbs and features.

Tell us-for doubtless thou canst recollect

To whom we should assign the Sphinx's fame? Was Cheops or Cephrenes architect

Of either pyramid that bears his name? Is Pompey's pillar really a misnomer?

Had Thebes a hundred gates, as sung by Homer ?

Perchance that very hand, now pinion'd flat,
Has hob-a-nobbed with Pharaoh, glass to glass;
Or dropp'd a halfpenny in Homer's hat,

Or doff'd thine own to let Queen Dido pass;
Or held, by Solomon's own invitation,
A torch at the great temple's dedication.

I need not ask thee if that hand, when arm'd,
Has any Roman soldier maul'd and knuckled,
For thou wast dead and buried, and embalm'd,
Ere Romulus and Remus had been suckled:-
Antiquity appears to have begun

Long after thy primeval race was run.

Since first thy form was in this box extended,

We have above-ground seen some strange mutations; The Roman empire has begun and ended,

New worlds have risen-we have lost old nations;
And countless kings have into dust been humbled,
While not a fragment of thy flesh has crumbled.

Didst thou not hear the pother o'er thy head,
When the great Persian conqueror, Cambyses,
March'd armies o'er thy tomb with thundering tread,
O'erthrew Osiris, Orus, Apis, Isis,

And shook the Pyramids with fear and wonder,
When the gigantic Memnon fell asunder?

If the tomb's secrets may not be confess'd,
The nature of thy private life unfold:-

A heart has throbb'd beneath that leathern breast,
And tears adown that dusky cheek have roll'd:-
Have children climb'd those knees, and kiss'd that face?
What was thy name and station, age and race?

Statue of flesh,-immortal of the dead!

Imperishable type of evanescence!

Posthumous man, who quitt'st thy narrow bed,
And standest undecay'd within our presence,
Thou wilt hear nothing till the judgment morning,
When the great trump shall wake thee with its warning.

Why should this worthless tegument endure,
If its undying guest be lost for ever?
O! let us keep the soul embalm'd and pure,

In living virtue, that, when both must sever,
Although corruption may our frame consume,

The immortal spirit in the skies may bloom.-Horace Smith.

LESSON IX.-THURSDAY.

ENGLISH HISTORY-ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD.

From times beyond the records of history, it is certain that continual changes were taking place in the position and condition of the various tribes that peopled the northern districts of Europe. Into this great basin the successive waves of Keltic, Teutonic, and Sclavonic migrations were poured; and here, through hundreds of years, were probably reproduced convulsions, terminated only by the great outbreak which the Germans call-" the wandering of the nations."

The testimony of contemporaneous history assures us, that, about the middle of the fifth century, a considerable movement took place among the tribes that inhabited the western coasts of Germany and the islands of the Baltic sea. Pressed at home by the incursions of restless neighbours and the urgency of increasing population, or yielding to the universal spirit of adventure, Angles, Saxons and Frisians crossed a little-known and dangerous ocean, to seek new settlements in adjacent lands. Familiar as we are with daring deeds of maritime enterprise, who have seen our flag float over every sea and flutter in every breeze that sweeps over the surface of the earth, we cannot contemplate, without astonishment and admiration, these hardy sailors, swarming on every point, traversing every ocean,

sweeping every estuary and bay, and landing on every shore which promised plunder, or a temporary rest from their fatigues. The wealth of Gaul had already attracted fearful visitations, and the spoils of Roman cultivation had been displayed before the wandering borderers of the Elbe and Eyder, the prize of past and incentive to future activity. Britain-fertile and defenceless; abounding in the accumu lations of a long career of peace; deserted by its ancient lords; unaccustomed to arms; and accustomed to the yoke -at once invited attack, and held out the prospect of a rich reward, and it is certain that at that period there took place some extensive migration to the shores of England.

In the time of Strabo the products of the island-corn, cattle, gold, silver and iron, skins, slaves, and a large description of dog-were exported by the natives, no doubt principally to the neighbouring coasts. As early as the time of Nero, London, though not a colony, was remarkable as a mercantile station, and, in all probability, the great mart of the Gauls. There cannot be the least doubt that an active communication was maintained throughout by the Keltic nations on the different sides of the Channel, and similarly as German tribes gradually advanced along the lines of the Elbe, the Weser, the Maes, and the Rhine, occupying the countries which lie upon the banks of those rivers, and between them and the sea, it is reasonable to suppose that some offsets of their great migrations reached the opposite shores of England.

LESSON X.-FRIDAY.

ABSURDITY OF ATHEISM.

I will imagine only one case more, on which you would emphatically express your compassion, though for one of the most daring beings in creation,—a contemner of God, who explodes His laws by denying His existence. If you were so unacquainted with mankind, that such a being might be announced to you as a rare or singular phenomenon, your conjectures, till you saw and heard the man, at the nature and the extent of the discipline through which he must have advanced, would be led toward some

thing extraordinary. And you might be led to think that the term of discipline must have been very long; since a quick train of impressions, a short series of mental gradations, within the little space of a few months and years, would not seem enough to have matured such a portentous heroism. Surely, the creature that thus lifts his voice, and defies all invisible power within the possibilities of infinity, challenging whatever unknown Being may hear him, and may appropriate that title of Almighty which is pronounced in scorn, to evince His existence, if He will, by His vengeance, was not as yesterday a little child that would tremble and cry out at the approach of a diminutive reptile.

But, indeed, it is heroism no longer, if he know that there is no God. The wonder then turns on the great process by which a man could grow to the immense intelligence which can know that there is no God. What ages and what lights are requisite for THIS attainment! This intelligence involves the very attributes of Divinity, while a God is denied. For unless this man is omnipresent, unless he is at this moment in every place in the universe, he cannot know but there may be in some place manifestations of a Deity, by which even he would be overpowered. If he does not know absolutely every agent in the universe, the one that he does not know may be God. If he is not himself the chief agent in the universe, and does not know what is so, that which is so may be God. If he is not in absolute possession of all the propositions that constitute universal truth, the one which he wants may be, that there is a God. If he cannot with certainty assign the cause of all that he perceives to exist, that cause may be a God. If he does not know everything that has been done in the immeasurable ages that are past, some things may have been done by a God. Thus, unless he knows all things, that is, precludes all other Divine existence by being Deity himself, he cannot know that the Being whose existence he rejects does not exist. But he must know that he does not exist, else he deserves equal contempt and compassion for the temerity with which he firmly avows his rejection, and acts accordingly. And yet, a man of ordinary age and intelligence may present himself to you, with the avowal of being thus