settled cast of incredulity on their countenances.
the full force of the lamentation of the peet.

Truths would you teach, to save a sinking land,
All shun, none aid you, and few understand.

I felt

As I had occasion to pass daily to and from the buildingyard, while my boat was in progress, I have often loitered unknown near the idle groups of strangers, gathering in little circles, and heard various inquiries as to the object of this new vehicle. The language was uniformly that of scorn, or sneer, or ridicule. The loud laugh often rose at my expence; the dry jest; the wise calenation of losses and expenditures; the dull but endless repetition of the Fulton Folly. Never did a single encouraging remark, a bright hope, or a warm wish, cross my path. Silence itself was but politeness, veiling its doubts, or hiding its reproaches. At length the day arrived when the experiment was to be put into operation. To me it was a most trying and interesting occasion. I invited many friends to go on board to witness the first successful trip. Many of them did me the favour to attend, as a matter of personal respect; but it was manifest that they did it with reluctance, fearing to be the partners of my mortification, and not of my triumph. I was well aware, that, in my case there were many reasons to doubt of my own success. The machinery was new and ill made; many parts of it were constructed by mechanics unaccustomed to such work and unexpected difficulties might reasonably be presumed to present themselves from other causes. The moment arrived in which the word was to be given for the vessel to move. My friends were in groups on the deck. There was anxiety mixed with fear among them. They were silent, and sad, and weary. I read in their looks nothing but disaster, and almost repented of my efforts. The signal was given, and the boat moved on a short distance, and then stopped, and became immoveable. To the silence of the preceding moment now succeeded murmurs of discontent, and agitation, and whispers, and shrugs. I could hear distinctly repeated, I told you it would be so, it is a

foolish scheme; I wish we were well out of it. I elevated myself upon a platform, and addressed the assembly. I stated that I knew not what was the matter; but if they would be quiet, and indulge me for half an hour, I would either go on, or abandon the voyage for that time. This short respite was conceded without objection. I went below, examined the machinery, and discovered that the cause was a slight mal-adjustment of some of the work. In a short period it was obviated. The boat was again put in motion. She continued to move on. All were still incredulous: None seemed willing to trust the evidence of their own senses. We left the fair city of New-York; we passed through the romantic and ever-varying scenery of the highlands; we descried the clustering houses of Albany: we reached its shores; and then, even then, when all seemed achieved, I was the victim of disappointment. Imagination superseded the influence of fact. It was then doubted if it could be done again; or, if done it was doubted if it could be made of any great value."

THE MUSIC OF NATURE.

NATURE seems to have mingled harmony in all her works. Each crowded and tumultuous city may properly be called a temple of Discord; but wherever Nature holds undisputed dominion, Music is the partner of her empire-the lonely voice of water," the hum of bees, the chorus of birds; nay, if these be wanting, the very breeze that rustles through the foliage, is music. From the music of Nature, Solitude gains all her charms; for dead silence-such as that which precedes thunderstorms--rather terrifies than delights the mind:

On earth t'was yet all calm around,
A pulseless silence, dread, profound-
More awful than the tempest's sound!

Perhaps it is the idea of mortality thereby awakened, that makes absolute stiliness so awful.

We cannot bear

to think that even Nature herself is inanition; we love to fell her pulse throbbing beneath us, and to listen to her accents amid the still retirements of her deserts. That solitude, in truth, which is described by our poets, as expanding the heart and tranquillizing the passions, though far removed from the inharmonious din of worldly business, is yet varied by such gentle sounds as are most likely to make the heart beat in unison with the serenity of all surrounding objects; thus Gray

Now fades the glimmering landscape on my sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,

Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds.

Even when Nature arrays herself in all her terrors, when the thunder roars above our heads, and man, as he listens to the sound, shrinks at the sense of his own insignificance even this, without at all derogating from its awful character, may be termed a grand chorus in the music of Nature.

Almost every scene in the creation has its peculiar music, by which its character as cheering, melancholy, awful, or lulling, is marked and defined. This appears in the alternate succession of day and night. When the splendour of day has departed, how consonant with the sombre gloom of night is the hum of the beetle, or the lonely, plaintive voice of the nightingale. But more especially, as the different seasons revolve, a corresponding variation takes place in the music of Nature. As winter approaches, the voice of birds, which cheered the days of summer, ceases; the breeze, that was lately singing among the leaves now shrilly hisses through the naked boughs; and the rill, that but a short time ago murmured softly as it flowed along, gushes headlong in a deafening torrent.

It is not therefore in vain that, in the full spirit of prophetic song, Isaiah has called upon the mountains to break forth into singing," the forests, and every tree thereof." Thus we may literally be said to "find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks ;" and as we look

upward to the vault of Heaven, we are inclined to believe,

These wild, fantastic islands of the northern seas, which often come floating into the broad Atlantic, carrying in their atmosphere the chill of the arctic winter, are objects of wonder and interest. There was one singular circumstance connected with these icebergs, that puzzled Philosophers, and made it difficult to account for their formation. They were invariably found to be composed of fresh water. The northern whalers and navigators have ever been in the practice of replenishing their water casks by extending spouts or flexible hose to the crevices of the iceberg, from whence small rills of the finest water are continually trickling.

The discoveries of Parry and modern navigators, WOL. IV.

5

however, leave little doubt on the subject of the formation of icebergs. There are two kinds of ice found at sea-one formed of salt water, which is loose and friable, abounding in flakes or disconnected crystals, and forming the large fields of ice spreading over immense portions of the sea;-the other, the icebergs, formed of solid rock ice, of a bluish cast, transparent and pure. There is no doubt that icebergs are formed on the coasts of islands and continents, by the melting of the pure snow and ice into a deluge of water, which rushing in fresh and gelid streams into the bays and indentations of the ocean, displaces the salt water, and freezes by itself. Year after year adds to these accumulations, which may be centuries in their formation. Meanwhile the waves of the sea are not idle at the base of the crystal mountain; they eat their way into the foundation, until the superincumbent mass plunges into the sea, and sails away before the wind into the Atlantic, where, by the action of the sun, it assumes strange and fantastic shapes in the course of decay.

The specific gravity of the icebergs is so much less than that of water, that one tenth part of the bulk rides above the sea, so that an iceberg 2000 feet high, (as many of them are when they are first launched upon their final voyage,) will appear but 200 feet above the surface.

Masses have been seen assuming the shape of a Gothic Church, with arched windows and doors, and all the rich drapery that an Arabian tale would scarcely dare describe. Crystal of the richest blue tables, with one or more feet, and often immense flat-roofed témples, supported by round transparent columns, float by the astonished spectators."-Family Magazine.

Christianity is not only a living principle of virtue in good men, but affords this further blessing to society, that it restrains the vices of the bad; it is a tree of life, whose fruit is immortality, and whose very leaves are for the healing of the nation.-Andrew Fuller.