me, I hardly dare lay any plans. I am a drop of water in the ocean. I am ashamed, in your presence especially, of the ridiculous figure I make in the world."

Micromegas replied, "If you were not a philosopher, I should fear that I might add to your affliction, by informing you that life in our planet is seven hundred times longer than in yours. I have been in worlds where life was a thousand times longer than in my native planet, and have found myself still in the region of complaint. But there are some men of sense every where, who accommodate themselves to their situation, and return thanks to the Author of nature. Under a system of admirable uniformity, he hath filled the universe with variety. For example, all thinking beings differ, yet each resembles the rest in the gift of thought and desire. Matter exists every where, yet in each globe it has peculiar properties. How many of these properties do you compute in the matter of your planet?" "If you speak of the properties," said the Saturnian, "without which, this globe could not remain such as it is, we reckon three hundred, as extent, impenetrability, mobility, gravitation, divisibility, and so on." "This small number," replied our traveller, " appears sufficient to answer the purposes of the Almighty, in the creation of your little habitation. Every where his wisdom is admirable; every where differences are visible, but every where proportion is equally manifest. Your globe is small, and your inhabitants are so likewise, you have few sensations, your matter has few properties. All this is the work of Providence. Of what color does your sun appear on examination?" "Of a yellowish white," said the Saturnian," and when we divide one of his rays, we find that it contains seven colors." "The color of our sun is reddish," returned the Sirian, " and we reckon thirty-nine primitive colors. There is not one sun among all that I have approached, which resembles the rest, as, among you, every man's face differs from his neighbour's." After several questions of this sort, he inquired how many existences, essentially different, were known to the Saturnians. was told, that the number was limited to thirty, comprehending God, space, matter, beings possessed of extension and sensation, &c. The Sirian, who came from a globe where three hundred were known, and had discovered three thousand others, in the course of his travels, astonished the philosopher of Saturn, prodigiously, by the extent of his knowledge. At last, after imparting to each other a little of what they knew, and a great deal of which they knew nothing, after reasoning together during one revolution of the sun, they resolved to keep each other company in a short philosophical excursion.

He

Our two philosophers were just on the point of launching into the atmosphere of Saturn, with a very pretty apparatus of mathematical instruments, when the mistress of the Saturnian, who had discovered what was going on, came, in tears, to remonstrate with her lover. She was a pretty little brunette, only four thousand feet in height, and charming as an angel, notwithstanding her diminutive figure. "Ah! cruel one!" cried she, "after I had resisted your suit fifteen hundred years, and only begun to return your affection, within the last century, you run away from me, to travel with a giant of another world. You love nothing but knowledge, you never had any regard for me, you are no true Saturnian; if you were, you would never desert me. Where are you going? what do you seek? Our five moons are less wandering, and the ring which surrounds our planet is less changeable than you. Alas, my happiness is gone for ever. I shall never love any body else." The philosopher embraced her, and, in spite of his philosophy, shed some tears. The lady fainted, and, on her recovery, to console herself for her loss, accepted the addresses of a young petit-maître.

Next

Meanwhile, our two philosophers began their journey, by springing on the ring which encircles the planet Saturn. they visited his moons. A comet happening to pass very near the last of these, they leaped upon it, with their servants and their instruments. After accompanying its flight for about an hundred and fifty millions of leagues, they encountered Jupiter's satellites, and soon after, Jupiter himself. Here they concluded to stop, and having landed, remained on this planet a year. During this period, they made many interesting discoveries, which I think it most prudent, on the whole, to say nothing about. On quitting Jupiter, they traversed a space of an hundred millions of leagues, and skirted along the planet Mars, which, as we all know, is five times smaller than our little globe. Seeing its diminutive size, our philosophers were afraid that they should not be able to find a suitable place there to rest themselves, and continued their journey, like travellers who disdain to stop at a little village inn, and push on to the next town. But they had reason to repent of their imprudence afterwards; for a long time elapsed before any thing appeared in sight. At last they perceived a little glimmering, which turned out to be our earth. To confess the truth, it appeared very pitiful, in the eyes of people who had just come from Jupiter. Fearing, however, that they should have cause to repent a second time, they resolved to disembark. In order to do this, they ran down the tail of the comet, and finding an aurora borealis in readiness, boldly com

mitted themselves to it, and landed on the northern coast of the Baltic sea, the fifth of July, seventeen hundred and thirty-seven.

After reposing a while, their servants cooked a couple of mountains for their breakfast. When they had finished their meal, they set about examining the country, going at first from North to South. The ordinary paces of the Sirian and his people were about thirty thousand feet in length. The pigmy native of Saturn followed him, all out of breath; but he was obliged to take a dozen steps, for each of the other's strides. Figure to yourself a little short-legged cur trotting after a captain of grenadiers. As these strangers walked very fast, they made the tour of the earth and returned to the place from which they had set out, in thirtysix hours after crossing the Mediterranean sea, which they hardly noticed, and the other little pond, which, under the name of the Great Ocean, surrounds our mole-hill. The dwarf was never more than half leg deep, and the other scarcely wet his ankle. They did all they could, in going and returning, to discover whether this globe was inhabited. They stooped, lay down, and felt about every where, but their eyes and their hands were not proportioned to the size of the little beings who crawl about here, and they perceived nothing, which could make them suspect that we and our brethren had the honor to exist.

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The dwarf, who was somewhat hasty in his judgments, decided that there were no living creatures on the earth. The reason he gave, was that he had seen nobody. Micromegas politely represented, that this reasoning was inconclusive. "For," said he, your little eyes cannot distinguish certain stars of the fiftieth magnitude, which I see very clearly; do you therefore conclude that these stars do not exist?" " But," said the dwarf, "I have felt very carefully." "But," replied the other, "your perceptions are obtuse." "This world," said the dwarf," is so badly constructed, so irregular, and of such a ridiculous shape, that it is a perfect chaos. Look at these brooks; not one of them runs straight. See these ponds; they are neither round, square, nor oval, nor, in fact, of any regular shape. And then these little projections, which roughen the surface of the ground, and scratch the soles of my feet! (This is the style in which he spoke of our rivers, seas, and mountains.) Consider the form of this planet; how flat it is towards the poles, how obliquely it revolves around the sun, so that the regions near the poles must be barren wastes. In fact, one reason why I think this globe uninhabited is, that men of sense would not stay here." It may be," said Micromegas, "that the people who dwell here are not over

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burdened with sense. But I must confess, that I cannot imagine this world was made for nothing. Every thing here appears to you irregular, because in Saturn and Jupiter, every thing is made by rule and line. This world may have a plan, which seems to you confusion, because you cannot comprehend it. In the course of my travels, I have constantly met with variety."

The Saturnian replied, and the dispute would never have ended, if Micromegas, in the heat of the discussion, had not accidentally broken the thread of his diamond necklace. The diamonds fell to the ground; they were pretty little stones of different sizes, the largest of which weighed about four hundred pounds, and the smallest fifty. The dwarf picked up some of them; and perceived, on bringing them near his eyes, that owing to the manner in which they were cut, they were excellent microscopes. He selected a small one, of an hundred and sixty feet in diameter, which he applied to his eye, and Micromegas chose one of twenty-five hundred feet in diameter. They found them excellent, but could not at first discover any thing. At last, the Saturnian saw something scarcely perceptible in the waters of the Baltic. It was a whale. He took it up, very dexterously, with his little finger, and putting it on his thumb-nail, showed it to the Sirian, who could not help laughing a second time, at the excessive littleness of the inhabitants of our globe. The Saturnian was now convinced that this world was inhabited, and immediately concluded that its population consisted of whales; and as he was very fond of reasoning, he began to consider from whence so little an animal derived its power of motion, whether it had ideas, will, free agency. Micromegas was much embarrassed. He examined the animal very patiently, and the result of his investigation was, that there was no reason to believe it possessed of a soul. The two travellers were disposed to conclude that there was no such thing as mind in our world; when they discerned, by the aid of the microscope, something larger than a whale floating on the waves of the Baltic. We know, that at this very time, a company of philosophers was returning from the polar circle, where they had been to make observations. The newspapers said that their vessel was cast on the coast of Bothnia, and that they saved themselves with difficulty; but we cannot always, in this world, see the inside of the cards. I am going to relate the true state of the case, without adding any thing of my own, which is no small merit in an historian.

[To be continued.]

ORIGINAL POETRY.

WYOMING.

"Dites si la nature n'a pas fait ce beau pays pour une Julie, pour une Claire, et pour un St. Preux; mais ne les y cherchez pas."

Rousseau.

THOU Com'st in beauty on my gaze at last,
"On Susquehannah's side, fair Wyoming,"
Image of many a dream in hours long past,
When life was in its bud and blossoming,
And waters, gushing from the fountain spring
Of pure enthusiast thought, dimmed my young eyes,
As by the poet borne, on unseen wing,

I breathed, in fancy, 'neath thy cloudless skies,
The Summer's air, and heard her echoed harmonies.

I then but dreamed,-thou art before me now

In life, a vision of the brain no more:

I've stood upon the wooded mountain's brow,

That beetles high thy lovely valley o'er,

And now, where winds thy river's greenest shore,

Within a bower of sycamores am laid,

And winds, as soft and sweet as ever bore

The fragrance of wild flowers through sun and shade,

Are singing in the trees, whose low boughs press my head.