These shall resist the triumph of decay,

When time is o'er, and worlds have pass'd away!

6. "Cold in the dust this perish'd heart may lie,
But that which warm'd it once shall never die!
That spark unburied in its mortal frame,
With living light, eternal, and the same,
Shall beam on joy's interminable years,
Unveil'd by darkness-unassuaged by tears!

7. "Yet, on the barren shore and stormy deep,
One tedious watch is Conrad doom'd to weep;
But when I gain the home without a friend,
And press the uneasy couch where none attend,
This last embrace, still cherish'd in my heart,
Shall calm the struggling spirit ere it part!
Thy darling form shall seem to hover nigh,
And hush the groan of life's last agony!

8. "Farewell! when strangers lift thy father's bier,
And place my nameless stone without a tear,-
When each returning pledge hath told my child
That Conrad's tomb is on the desert piled;
And when the dream of troubled fancy sees
Its lonely rank grass waving in the breeze;
Who then will soothe thy grief, when mine is o'er?
Who will protect thee, helpless Ellenore?
Shall secret scenes thy filial sorrows hide,
Scorn'd by the world, to factious guilt allied?
Ah! no; methinks the generous and the good
Will woo thee from the shades of solitude!
O'er friendless grief compassion shall awake,
And smile on innocence, for mercy's sake!"

9. Inspiring thought of rapture yet to be,
The tears of love were hopeless, but for thee!
If in that frame no deathless spirit dwell,
If that faint murmur be the last farewell,
If fate unite the faithful but to part,
Why is their memory sacred to the heart?

Why does the brother of my childhood seem
Restored a while in every pleasing dream?
Why do I joy the lonely spot to view,

By artless friendship bless'd when life was new?
10. Eternal Hope! when yonder spheres sublime
Peal'd their first notes to sound the march of Time,
Thy joyous youth began-but not to fade.
When all the sister planets have decay'd;
When wrapt in fire the realms of ether glow,
And heaven's last thunder shakes the world below,
Thou, undismay'd, shalt o'er the ruins smile,
And light thy torch at Nature's funeral pile.

THE CHEMISTRY OF COAL.

1. It was once supposed that during the carboniferous epoch luxuriant vegetation was universal, at least over the terrestrial portion of the planet's surface; that the earth was surrounded by an all-pervading shroud of carbonic acid, incompatible with the existence of land animals; that the bright sun and starry host were as yet unrevealed to the denizens of earth, and that the plants which now constitute our coal, grew under conditions very different to any that nature now presents to man's view and comprehension. In order to realize the carboniferous epoch, the young geologist was compelled to imagine an indescribable and universal dismal swamp, with a cellarlike atmosphere, where mighty tree-ferns, club-mosses and horse-tails, conifers and gigantic reeds, flourished and rotted, rotted and flourished, while accommodating earthquakes submerged the vegetation of the day, being equally ready to submerge the ultra-luxuriant and suddenly-developed vegetation of the morrow. Thus we had rapid precipitation of strata, rapid development of vegetable life, and summary operations of all kinds-plants and animals which in our day require a century for their development, shooting up in rank luxuriance in a few days, and months, and years!

2. All vegetables are organized bodies, endowed with certain functions connected with the great mystery of life, which are carried on by means of mechanical and chemical attractions exercised in their various organs. Plants are composed of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, with a little nitrogen, which they separate and combine in their sap and wood, fibre and leaves. As long as the plant lives, its constituents are balanced and connected together, but no sooner does death ensue, than a recomposition of the elements commences. If the plants decompose in the open air, the carbon unites with oxygen and flies off as carbonic acid, the hydrogen combines with oxygen, and departs as watery vapour, and the small

proportion of nitrogen is restored to the atmosphere. But when circumstances exclude the vegetable masses from all contact with the air, when buried in the earth, or covered up under great pressure beneath the sea, a new class of compounds, although consisting of the same elements, are formed, and these are bituminous compounds, such as coal, naphtha, &c. The fermentation which all decaying vegetable matter undergoes is checked, and another species of fermentation ensues with very different results. It has been ascertained that animals entombed in peat change into a kind of spermaceti, and vegetable matter under similar circumstances undergoes an analogous change.

3. Coal, then, is a bituminous mineral, the result of chemical transformation that occurred myriads of ages ago, and which has ever since been buried in the bowels of the earth.

4. Plants derive their nourishment from the elements contained in the air, water, and soil; but the sunshine of heaven, equally necessary to them, and the effect of darkness upon their bright green leaves and resplendent blossoms is well known. It is in the sunshine that the leaf-pores of living plants open to its influence, and in the darkness that they exhale the deadly carbonic acid. Soil, water, and air were as necessary to the vegetation of bygone ages as they now are to the oak of the forest, and analogous functions have no doubt been performed by these agents ever since the first creation of vegetable life. Plants derive their carbon from the atmosphere, and water is the source of the gaseous elements oxygen and hydrogen.

5. Coal, then, is a compound of carbon (an elementary substance which is most abundant in the vegetable creation, and obtained as charcoal from wood), and the volatile elements or gases, hydrogen and oxygen, with a little nitrogen. All coal owes its combustible nature to the hydrogen and carbon, and it is to the hydrogen gas that we owe the flame of our hearth fires: when the hydrogen is consumed the carbon continues to burn without flame.

The inflammability of coal, therefore, must necessarily vary with the relative proportions of carbon and gas.

6. One kind of coal, called anthracite, has been so altered by heat, through its association and contact with ancient volcanic matter, that it approaches very nearly to pure charcoal, having had nearly all its gaseous ingredients driven off. It burns without flame or smoke, and contains about ninety per cent. of carbon. The variety called cannel-coal, on the contrary, contains more than half its weight of gaseous volatile ingredients, and approaches in its composition nearly to bitumen or pitch. The varieties of coal, then, may be arranged in a scale, at one end of which is charcoal, and at the other pure bitumen or asphalt. One is nearly carbon, the other nearly gas.

7. The common gas that lights our streets and houses is nothing more than coal distilled, and in its brilliant light we have an example of the triumph of science, for in the middle of the sixteenth century the streets of Paris were lighted for the first time with fires made of pitch and resin.-W. S. Symonds.

SELF-CULTURE.

1. Self-culture is something possible. It is not a dream. It has foundations in our nature. Without this conviction, the speaker will but declaim, and the hearer listen, without profit. There are two powers of the human soul which make self-culture possible, the self-searching and the self-forming power. We have first the faculty of turning the mind on itself; of recalling its past and watching its present operations; of learning its various capacities and susceptibilities, what it can do and bear, what it can enjoy and suffer; and of thus learning in general what our nature is, and what it is made for.

2. It is worthy of observation, that we are able to discern not only what we already are, but what we may become; to see in ourselves germs and promises of a