considerable quantities, as the extensive classes of fungi. In cafein, a principle extracted from coffee, there is actually a greater amount of it than in most animal substances. Circulation is not found to exist in the lowest class of animals. As for respiration, the leaves of plants so exactly resemble, in their action, the lungs of animals, that they are now familiarly spoken of as respiratory organs.

5. What life is, we know not; what life does, we know well. Life counteracts the laws of gravity. If the fluids of our bodies followed the natural tendency of fluids, they would descend to our feet when we stood, or to our backs when we lay. The cause why they do not may be referred immediately to the action of the heart and vessels; but it is evident that they derive that power from life.

6. Life resists the effects of mechanical powers.— Friction, which will thin and wear away a dead body, actually is the cause of thickening a living one. The skin on a labourer's hand is thickened and hardened, to save it from the effects of constant contact with rough and hard substances.

7. The feet of the African, who, without any defence, walks over the burning sands, exhibit always a thickened covering; and a layer of fat, a bad conductor of heat, is found deposited between it and the extremities of the nerves.-Pressure, which thins inorganic matter, thickens living matter. A tight shoe produces a corn, which is nothing more than hardened skin. The same muscle, that with ease raised a hundred pounds when alive, is torn through by ten when dead.

The body,

8. Life prevents chemical agency. when left to itself, soon begins to decay; the several parts of which it is composed, no longer under the influence of a higher controlling power, yield to their chemical affinities; new combinations are formed; ammonia, hydrogen, and other gases are given off, and nothing remains but dust. This never happens during life.

9. Life modifies the power of heat. Beneath a tropical sun, or within the arctic circle, the temperature of the human body is found unaltered, when examined by the thermometer. Some have exposed themselves to air heated above the point at which water boils; yet a thermometer, placed under the tongue, stood at the usual height of about 98°; and the sailors, who, under Captain Parry, wintered so near the north-pole, when examined in the same way, constantly afforded the same results.

10. Finally, life is the cause of the constant changes that are going forward in our bodies. From the moment that our being commences, none of the materials of which we are composed continue stationary. Food is taken in, and, by the action of what are termed the assimilating functions, becomes part of our composition; while, on the other hand, the materials of which our frame had been built up, being now unfit any longer for the performance of the necessary duties, are expelled from the system.

1. Radiated animals.-Animals whose bodies have a kind of geometrical shape, as the star fish.

2. Cuvier.-A distinguished French naturalist, born 1769, died 1832.

3. Fungi.-An order of plants, including mushrooms, toadstools, &c. 4. Thermometer.-An instrument for measuring heat.

INFLUENCE OF PRINTING.

1. Hero-gods, prophets, poets, priests, are forms of heroism that belong to the old ages, and make their appearance in the remotest times; some of them have ceased to be possible long since, and cannot any more show themselves in this world. The hero as man of letters is altogether a product of these new ages; and so long as the wondrous art of writing, or of ready-writing which we call printing, subsists, he may be expected to continue, as one of the main forms of heroism, for all future ages.

2. Our pious fathers, feeling well what importance lay in the speaking of man to men, founded

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churches and made endowments; everywhere in the civilized world there is a pulpit, that therefrom a man with the tongue may, to best advantage, address his fellow-men. They felt that this was the most important thing; that without this there was no good thing. It is a right pious work, that of theirs beautiful to behold!

3. But now with the art of writing, with the art of printing, a total change has come over that business. The writer of a book, is not he a preacher preaching, not to this parish or that, on this day or that, but to all men in all times and places?

4. Certainly the art of writing is the most miraculous of all things man has devised. In books lies the soul of the whole past time; the audible voice of the past, when the body and substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream. To look at teaching, for instance. Universities are a notable respectable product of the modern ages. Their existence is modified, to the very basis of it, by the existence of books.

5. Universities arose while there were yet no books procurable; while a man, for a single book, had to give an estate of land. That, in those circumstances, when a man had some knowledge to communicate, he should do it by gathering the learners round him, face to face, was a necessity for him. We read of thirty thousand students attending the lectures of one professor in days when books were things all but unknown except to the wealthy few. And thus for any other teacher who had also something of his own to teach, there

was a great convenience opened. So many thousands eager to learn were already assembled yonder; of all places the best place for him was that. For any third teacher it was better still; and grew ever the better, the more teachers there came.

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6. It only needed now that the King took notice of this new fact, and combined the various schools. into one school; gave it buildings, privileges, encouragements, and named it UNIVERSITY, or School of all Sciences; and there was the University, the model of all future universities, which down even to these days, for six centuries now, ⚫ have gone on to found themselves.

7. It is clear, however, that with this simple circumstance, the facility of getting books, the whole conditions of the business from top to bottom were changed. The teacher needed not now to gather men personally round him, that he might speak to them what he knew; print it in a book, and all learners far and wide, for a trifle, had it each at his own fireside, much more effectually to learn it.

8. Doubtless there is still peculiar virtue in speech. There is, one would say, and must ever remain while man has a tongue, a distinct province for speech as well as for writing and printing. In regard to all things this must remain; to universities among others. But the limits of the two have nowhere yet been pointed out, much less put in practice. If we think of it, all that a university can do for us, is still but what the first school began doing-teach us to read. We learn to read