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asunder the whole incongruous mass, and cover this continent, like that of Europe, with the ruins of a mighty empire, broken up into kingdoms and states, implacable in mutual hate, embittered by the memory of former ties.

NEW VIEW OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM. (CONTINUED.)

locities of the planets which has been mathematically ascertained to exist, and about which no one at all acquainted with mathematics will now question, disproves your assertion-and without further proof on your part, the sun cannot be considered a progressive body; and your notion about the equal velocity of the planets must

be discarded."

Now it is quite immaterial, as it respects my views of the solar system, whether the Sun is a stationary body, and the planets moving round him in orbits returning into themselves, or he a progressive body, and the planets moving round him in orbits not returning into themselves, as to this particular question. I shall, therefore, proceed at once to show that the planets must have the same velocity, even to a second of time, or their periods would be very different from what they are.

The European mathematicians say, that Mercury performs one period in eighty-seven days twenty-three hours-Venus in 224 days 17 hours. Then, for greater convenience, I will reduce these days or times to hours. Mercury's time will be 2,111 hours, and Venus' 5,393. Now divide the time of Venus by the time of Mercury:

I have said, that the distances of the planets from the I repeat it, gentlemen; if we would avoid this sun, and the velocity they have in their orbits, must be ascertained from physical data, very different from the fearful consummation, we must strive to renew in means now employed. I have also said, that the proour minds the same sentiments which once made gressive motion of the Sun must limit and equalize the Virginia glorious, and which made her glory pre-progressive motion of the planets. But this has been cious to her sons. And said I, that this attempt denied, and the reason given, is, "that the different vewould now be vain? That the spirit of our fathers was no more among us, but gone, with their achievements, to the history of the past? O! gentlemen, can this be so? Can you look thus coldly on that past? Can we, in fancy, summon from the tomb the forms of the mighty dead, and shall not our hearts be kindled, and shall not our spirits burn within us, to emulate those who acted and suffered, that we might be free, honored and prosperous? Where do we find the brave in war, the wise in council, and the eloquent in debate, and Virginia's sons are not among the foremost? Are not the names of Washington and Henry, and Jefferson and Madison, and Marshall and Randolph, all her property? Are not these her jewels; and shall she, unlike the mother of the Gracchi, pine, because others may outshine her in such baubles as mere gold can buy? Can you consent to throw these honors into common stock, and to share your portion in Washington with the French of Louisiana, and the Dutch of New York, and the renegades from every corner of the earth, who swarm their great commercial cities, and call themselves your countrymen and HIS! What fellowship have we with those who change their Here then we have two periods for Mercury and nearly country with their climate? The Virginian is a half of another, while Venus makes one. This is very Virginian every where. In the wilds of the west, plain, very simple, and very easily understood. But I on the sands of Florida, on the shores of the Pa- will now give to Mercury 110,000 miles an hour in his cific-every where his heart turns to Virginia-path, and to Venus 81,000, as it is said to have been every where he worships with his face toward the demonstrated, (and always mathematically, of course,) temple of freedom erected here. To us, to be the real facts, and are so stated in our books, and who remain, it belongs to minister at the altar-to feed so taught in our schools: the flame-and, if need be, to supply the sacrifice. Mercury 2,111 Do this, and Virginia will again be recognized as the mother of nations; as the guide and exemplar of the states that have sprung from her bosom, and been nourished by her substance. False to herself, and to the honor of the common origin, these will desert and spurn her. True to the If we divide the distance Venus moves to make one rememory of the illustrious dead, true to her old renown, her sons, from every realm, shall flock to her as to their tower of strength, and, in her hour of trial, if that hour shall come, shall stand around her, and guard her like a wall of fire.

CONSCIENCE.

Conscience is to the moral nature what common sense is to

2,111) 5,393 (21,171
4,222

1,171

2,111

hours. Venus 5,393 bours. 110,000 miles. 81,000 miles.

232,210,000

5,393,000 43,144

436,833,000

volution, by the distance Mercury moves to make one,
the result shows the error of the mathematicians in
giving different velocities to these two bodies.

23,222)000) 436,752 (000 (1,204,532
232,220
232,220

204,532

By giving the velocities to these two planets, according to our mathematical teachers, Mercury would make but one revolution and part of another only, while Ve

the intellectual. When it is lost, the victim of vice is a speci- nus makes one. Whereas it is well known that Mermen of moral insanity.-Hesperian. cury actually makes two revolutions and nearly half of

VOL. IV.-97

another while Venus is performing one. Now, what is true of these two planets, is true of all the others; and whatever may be the real velocity of Mercury, is certainly the real velocity of all the other planets. Give to Venus the velocity given to Mercury, and then their periods correspond, and all is harmony; but give them different velocities, and the results cannot, by any correct mathematical process, by no conceivable arrange ment of figures or numbers, be made to correspond and harmonize with the real facts as they exist in this our field of creation.

If we take the Earth and Jupiter, similar results will follow. The Earth makes one period in 8,766 hours, and Jupiter in 103,926. Then divide the time of Jupiter by the time of the Earth:

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Here, also, we find that the number of the revolutions
of the Earth, corresponds to a second of time to the real
facts, as they exist in relation to these two planets, in
the system, as it came from the hands of its Creator.
Then what will be the result, if we take the mathema-
ticians for our guide? If we give to the Earth 68,000
miles an hour in her path, she will move in 8,766 hours
596,088,000 miles in making one period; and if we
we give
Jupiter 29,000 miles an hour, he will move in 103,926
hours 3,014,086,000 miles, to complete one of his pe-
riods. Then divide the distance run by Jupiter, by the
distance run by the Earth:

596,088)000) 3,014,086 (000 (533,646
2,980,440

33,646 596,088

596,088

According to the mathematicians, then, the Earth ought to make but five revolutions and a fraction of another, while Jupiter makes one. Thus it is with all the other planets. Here I might say that the whole of the phenomena which we observe among the planets, proves beyond the reach of the mathematician, the infallibility of the data I here present, and that triangulation is an absolute absurdity when applied to the planetary bodies. The mathematicians are not only in error as to the distances of the planets from the Sun-they are most egregiously so as to the different velocities they have given them in their paths.

I have been latterly advised to submit my views to some of the learned in Europe: but why should I do this? Are we destitute of common sense in the United States? Are we still in leading strings? It is true I stand somewhat in relation to the Copernican system, as Copernicus himself did in relation to the system of the Egyptian astronomer; but with this difference, he had the ignorance of an unenlightened age to combat ; whereas I am free to think, and in a land where the human mind is unfettered by either religious or political despotism. Then why appeal to foreigners? Il

have said, the Earth is not more than 5,000,000 of miles from the Sun, nor is Jupiter more than 55,000,000, and that no one planet has a greater velocity in its orbit than another. This can be proved or disproved in the United States. There will certainly be no necessity for us to ask foreign aid.

But the four bodies which exist between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, seem to have excited a very deep interest among the mathematicians of the present age. The phenomena they exhibit to the observers of their positions and motions, are so very different from all the other planets, that some of them agree that their motions, positions, and relative distances, together with the intersection of their orbits, constitutes a state of things entirely inexplicable upon any known principles of science." Olbers and Brewster suppose these bodies to be fragments of an exploded planet, which occupied that region of space at some period of creation. My view of the solar system embraces this opinionand I think I may safely say, that the electro-magnet theory, which I shall now soon present to the learned, will clear up all difficulties respecting these bodies, by showing mathematically why their orbits must necessarily intersect each other, and why their aphelion and perihelium distances are as necessarily so very different from each other, and from all the other planets. It is very certain that the principles upon which the ma thematicians of the last and preceding century based their system, as projection and gravitation, will never solve the difficulties involved in the phenomena exhibited by these bodies.

MUSINGS OF NAPOLEON.

Some lines appeared several months ago in the Messenger suggested by a painting of Napoleon meditating on the rock of St. Helena. An engraving from the same painting gave rise to the following stanzas:

For three-score moons, sepulchral isle,

There lived in thee a thinking manLived, though his light, to fade the while, With the first waning moon began.

And who was he, of mighty name?

He wore the earth's imperial wreathA spur of fire, a crest of flame,

And sword that never knew its sheath.

Tomb of the brave! thy rock-bound beach
Received a wreck: no other isle
His equal saw-then thou can'st teach

How rainbow-like is fortune's smile.

What are his thoughts, 'twere vain to say-
That hov'ring sea-fowl cannot speak;
Nor can the clouds that roll all day,
Nor waves that chafe yon island bleak.

But yet he thinks: does Egypt's coast
Its Delta rise, or fruitless sands-
Aboukir's bay-or Turkish host-
Or are his thoughts on other lands?

Perhaps he thinks of that proud steed,

Who scorned, like him, the Alpine chain,
And bore him, with electric speed,
Down to Marengo's purple plain.

His thoughts may mount the Pyrenees,
And range to seats of Moorish power-
Alhambra's groves of orange trees,

Its gates of brass, and marble tower.

Or does he muse of that proud Czar
Who 'mid war's desolating storm,
The green-house burnt, from Gaul afar,
That might have kept his chaplet warm?

Or does he think how kings did try,

To rock his couch on Elba's steeps, Till trump and drum urg'd on the cry? Ambition dreams, but never sleeps.

Or does he gaze on Belgium's field,

Where England's rose blush'd crimson deep, In Gallic blood-where chargers reeled, And Albion's widows went to weep?

But thought may run in softer moods—

Of France, Rome's king, his empress queenOf lilies, brooks, or olive woods

His old war steed 'mid pastures green;

Or shepherds' crook that rules the glen,
And bugle notes of gondolier,
Of grain reap'd down by rural men,
Or pilgrim songs of muleteer.

Or he may muse on cottage flowers,

That deck some Gallic peasant's home, And vines that curl in summer hours,

Where the proud Seine is wont to roam.

Each hero paints some moral tale,
From Nimrod down to Charles the Swede;
Just as he ranks on glory's scale,

From India's floods to classic Tweed.

But many more to paint, 'tis thine,

Than eastern tribes could ever tell, From Balbec's fame to Mecca's shrine,

Or else from Greece to France la belle.

And this shall last to latest time,

E'en when millennial flowers shall grow,
And holy poets weave their rhyme,
By winding Seine or classic Po.

And weary, sea-sick limbs shall leap,

To find yon isle of deep repose, Where rests the man whose sword could sweep From India's strand to Lapland's snows.

From Scottish glens or Palestine,

Shall pilgrims come-or from PeruAnd on the mound of him recline,

Who hither came from Waterloo.

Can herds of deer their huntsman bind?
Can trembling fawn or swift gazelle
Turn from the hills o'er which they wind,

And crush that huntsman's sounding shell?

Retire, great man-muse o'er the past;

Kneel to the King of Sea and Land:

He wove the chain that holds thee fast; Its links are round his viewless hand.

At Waterloo-'tis thus we read

A chapel stands; on that great day Untouched: turn then devotion's beadThis fact might teach all men to prayOr else thy blood-red sun goes down, Nor leaves one charm of soft twilight, No orange bloom, nor olive crown, Nor evening star-but starless night! But I forget (for fancy's spell,

A moment's space had made me dream,) That death hath not yet tolled thy knell, 'Mid ocean's moan and sea-bird's scream.

H.

BENEFITS OF KNOWLEDGE

ON MORALS.

(A continuation of the reply to the author of the essays on "The Influence of Morals.")

BY A NATIVE of Goochland, VIRGINIA.

When all was pure and spotless, the earth a paradise, and the character of man unstained, virtue with an unflickering lamp lighted the path of duty. Now all has changed. The feelings and passions of the human bosom are perverted. And whether we view man as a poor outcast in the sandy and parched deserts of Arabia-a wanderer on the inhospitable shores of Kamtschatka-a solitary dweller amidst the splendid ruins of antiquity, or a denizen of some crowded and refined metropolis, we find him with a disposition to feel, think, and to act for himself. All other created things follow their appointed order and unvarying course, with no wandering from their orbits--no variations-no changes. The stars twinkle, and the flowers bud and bloom as they did in the earliest period of time. But man has been passing around the whole cycle of vices, ignorance and change. If now and then the philosophers have been sending forth their oracles of wisdom, as their only means of serving and enlightening their race, and of making the dreary path of man's pilgrimage eloquent with the voice of truth, too many have turned aside from the refreshing streams of knowledge, to quench their depraved thirsts with the muddy and unwholesome waters of ignorance and error.

Man is both an intellectual and a moral being. Gifted with the power of acquiring information of the character and condition of eternal objects, of events and facts, and of turning his thoughts towards the investigation of the influences which shape his own conduct, he can also mark out the connexions which exist between different states of things, and follow them to their conclusions. Minerva came all armed and grown up from Jupiter's brain, and was immediately admitted into the assembly of the gods, and made one of the most faithful counsellors of her father. Unlike the fabulous goddess of wisdom, mortals can only acquire

knowledge by incessant toil and labor. Every blessing which is calculated to obliterate the sacred image of the is the reward of exertion. Only through labor comes great Creator, that, in his munificence, he had impressed improvement. A thousand precious jewels are scat-upon man? tered around us. There is good in every thing. The earth, and air, and sea, are rich with instructions to those that learn. Much is within the reach of the human intellect, if it will grasp after it. Much that will raise it high above the mouldering clods of earth. All creation, with its thousand marvels, is before us; and it is only for man to lift the veil, if he would be instructed in a steady course of wisdom and of virtue.

Nothing can be seen in our moral capacities and natures, that renders them unfit to be brought under the influence of knowledge. Man occupies a place in a great system of moral government, in which he bears certain relations to a moral governor, and certain others to the beings with whom he is associated. Arising out of this relationship, there are duties for him to perform. He is endowed with powers and feelings, which, if properly directed, will qualify him for his task. The will, however, is perverse and corrupt, and has a controlling power, in many cases, over the feelings and affections. They, too, in their turn, have a powerful and an overwhelming effect upon his determinations and resolutions. And when the affections and feelings are properly cultivated and directed, the will always partakes of their complexion. The appetites and desires, though depraved, can be controlled, and the result will be seen in the conduct. And the only inquiry for us to make is, whether an improvement of the intellectual faculties, and the knowledge which can be received through the powers of sensation and simple intellect, relating either to external objects or to mental phenomena, to our own actions, or to those of others, and the conclusions which are drawn from our observations, by the powers of reason, are calculated to contribute to man's purity as a moral being?

But there are some who contend, that the flame of knowledge never blazes up except amidst the ruins of morality and virtue. This cannot be its character What is knowledge? Is it an instrument by which man is to be enslaved, and his mind is to be brought under the subjection of wild and crude dogmas? Is it the cultivation of sentiments, which are at variance with human happiness? or of principles which run counter to its interests? Does it familiarize the feelings to scenes of vice, and teach the heart to forget the inspira. tions of virtue, or to forego the pleasures of hope? Does it sing the siren's song-enchanting the hapless listener to destruction? No! This is not knowledge. Go to the monuments of true greatness and learn what it is. Read its history in the record of illustrious actions ; in the works of philanthropists; in the triumphs of the patriot, It has gone through the world as a mighty conqueror, contending with power and embattled hosts; pulling down long established institutions, overthrowing dynasThe mind, whether cultivated or not, has a great ties, rooting out from the human bosom prejudices and influence on the feelings. By our intellect we think bigotry, loosening the bonds of the oppressed, breaking and we plan. It is ever active and restless; now the wand of despotism, opening a vast and wide field of ranging through the world of realities, then sporting in thought and of intellectual enjoyment, in which thou-one of its own creation. The feelings may prompt us sands have reaped unadulterated happiness, and pre-to act, but every scheme of life must receive the sancpared themselves to benefit their race and their country. The tokens of its greatness are scattered every where. The traces of its glorious march are to be seen on land and on sea. It has bound green and never-fading wreaths around the brows of Galileo and Newton, Franklin and Fulton, Locke and Bacon, Howard and Wilberforce. One of the fathers of ancient philosophy beautifully represented truth as the body of God, and light as his shadow. Knowledge is truth. It is light issuing out of moral and intellectual darkness; a development of the mysteries of nature, and of the pheno-human intellect, and to efface from man that noble feamena which are continually bewildering the ignorant, and leading them into errors. It illuminates the pages of religion, and offers to the mind the food which is necessary for the growth, nourishment and health of its faculties. Without it, man, who was made to soar amongst the stars, or to rest in the bosom of his God, and to act a noble and exalted part in that great drama in which all created things appear, whether beautiful flower or noxious weed, the machinations of vile insects,lections, no imagination to paint to them a blissful futuor the works of proud and immortal genius, whether the little speck of creation which is encompassed by our horizon, or the numberless worlds which roll far off in the wide expanse of the universe, will grovel in the dust, and add no illustration of the goodness and great ness of infinite wisdom, to the praises which every other created being will sing. If it be the duty and province of knowledge to refine and expand the faculties, and to give us right conceptions of the works of the physical and moral worlds, what then can be discovered in it

tion of the judgment. For what other purposes was this wonderful machinery of the human mind constructed? Was it formed for nothing? Is it possible that the most wonderful, and the most marvellous of all the works of creation, is a useless appendage to the economy of eternal wisdom? Every creature has its part to perform. The meanest animalcule fulfils its pre-ordered destiny. The annihilation of a single atom would violate the laws and disturb the arrangements of the universe. If it were possible to blot out the

ture of his character, which enables him to think, to reason, and to acquire knowledge, what imagination could picture to itself, the wretched condition to which the human family would be reduced? Moral and accountable beings, with depraved inclinations and unħallowed passions, wandering through the world, like the maniac, with no torch of reason to illuminate their path of duty, no memory to bequeath to them happy recol

rity! The extinction of the light of reason would not alter, in the least, their evil propensities. But the passions would be no less restrained. The noblest works of our race are, at best, poor and evanescent. They are heirs of decay and change. The mouldering relics of the tomb are the bitterest mocks of their futility. What then would man's noblest achievements be, without the light of knowledge to guide him? Frailer than the withered leaf of autumn before the chasing winds; frailer than a bubble floating on a rough and boisterous

honored with the poet's dream, but the ignorant peasants have offered them many a lamb or kid, with libations of wine and honey. It was easy to observe, that the sun exerted a great power over the variations in the temperature and gravity of the atmosphere, and the fertility of the earth. Why should the planetary bodies be excluded from a share of the same dominion? or why not conceive that their influence is as great over the bodies and minds, the actions and fortunes of men, as the rule of the greater lights is over the vast kingdoms of the ocean, the air, and the earth? And as they have no apparent connection with the great changes, it may be their exclusive province to preside over the incidents which occur in the minuter portions of the world. The heavens, the ignorant have often considered as a divine volume, in whose lucid characters the skilful may read the various occurrences of human life. And this propensity to form wrong conceptions of external objects, which is so strong with the ignorant and unlettered, has drawn thousands off from the rightful performance of some of their most important duties; whilst, if they had sifted true knowledge of its dross,

ocean. And, no doubt, the writer on the Influence of Morals would revolt at the shocking idea of erasing from the human constitution its intellectual powers. Why then pursue such a course towards it, as is calculated to dry up its energies? It is a law of nature impressed upon every created thing, that it should be cultivated and improved, if man ever wants to make it subservient to his happiness. The earth must be dressed; the herb of the field must receive the culture of the husbandman; and the moral feelings must be trained up to a course of virtue. Why are the mental faculties to be suffered to run wild? Why are they to remain uncultivated and unexpanded? It would be in vain to search the annals of the human race for a single example of any good resulting from the prostration of the human intellect. It has ever been an expedient, by which tyrants and oppressors have forced submission to their cruel schemes. Ambitious and aspiring men have often taken advantge of the ignorance of the people, to enable them to fulfil their unholy purposes. What else enabled Mahomet to establish his system of religion, which has for ages held in bondage multitudes of human beings? Europe was sunk in the most pro-light would have been thrown around their path and found ignorance and superstition; the people committed the most horrid crimes and disorders; and the ecclesiastics had gained the greatest ascendency over the human mind; when the crusaders precipitated themselves upon Asia, and blackened the pages of history still deeper with the records of crimes and sufferings. Many of the greatest calamities that have befallen the world, have been perpetrated by the arts of delusion.

The sentiments which nations have entertained of man, and of all the mysteries of his nature, of the world and all its wonderful phenomena, as well as of its more ordinary and less surprising works, have uniformly been found to exert a great and lasting influence on their moral conduct, either for good or evil, according as these sentiments have been correct or erroneous. The importance of every duty which we have to perform, is heightened by a knowledge of the laws of the material universe, which are continually operating around us. From the meanest insect on which we tread, up to the planets revolving in their appointed orbits, we have full illustrations of the wisdom and utility of our duties.

Objects of sense always surround us; and the mind is kept in a great degree under the influence of external things. If, therefore, we have wrong conceptions of their characters and their importance, the influence will be felt in shaping our conduct. Hence sprang the wild and injurious theories of astrology. The most obvious impression of men, in a state of barbarism, would be, that the blue expanse was an arch of immeasurable dimensions, studded with brilliant spots, and erected as an ornament of our world. But, as the ignorant always ascribe motion to the immediate impulse given by some living being, this idea would soon be overturned; and as the easiest and simplest solution of the difficulty involved in every such appearance, they suppose life to be inherent in the body which moves. The dialect of every nation bears traces of this belief. Every motion of the air has been conceived to be the breathing of a spirit. To every stream, and glen, and hill, and to every shrub or tree, which the spring has clothed in beauty, has been allotted the vigil of a nymph. The naïad and the fawn have not only been

dispelled the mists of error.

Improvement of the mental energies, and the cultivation of knowledge, necessarily opens a wide field, not only of enjoyment, but of incessant toil and labor also. It affords a boundless field of active and ceaseless employment. And the history of man shows, that when his reasoning and thinking faculties are suffered to remain idle, when his talents are unemployed, he is not only unable to give a good account of his stewardship, but also the animal feelings usurp control, and he comes under the dominion of the vilest and most unruly passions: for, man is an active being. He cannot remain stationary. He must either advance in virtue and improvement, or he must retrograde. And where knowledge is slighted, vicious habits will be formed, to fill up the vacant hours that should have been devoted to useful and innocent thoughts. And it is only by giving right directions to the mental energies, that the moral principles can recover that authority, which, amid the contests of passions, had been obscured or lost; or that each act of the life, and each emotion of the heart, is seen in its relations to the great dictates of truth, and each pursuit of mortals, in its real bearing on the great concerns of a moral being.

Virtue and correct morals are the essentials of human happiness. Without them, man's proudest achievements are nothing; and all of his works will wither up like the herb of the field, pass away like dew on the mountain, and fade from remembrance like the minions of change and chance. But when they are based upon virtue, they are throned above the fleeting things of time, above the bubbles of error and ignorance, and the flower that perishes; above the moon that waxes and then waneth in her course, or the stars which glitter and dazzle and then vanisheth! Where the light of reason is obscured, nations have ever been found wandering down to the dark and unfathomable abysses of crime. The lessons of the past teach nothing else. Of all the rations of antiquity, those only have left us any models of moral excellence worthy of imitation, who have held up high the torch of knowledge. Thousands have passed away, and no bright page is to be found

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