But all these scientific follies are pure reason, when compared with the theological and social sections of the work. The theology is Atheismthe social economy is made up of truculent tirades, and fierce denunciations against all the wealthy and intelligent classes of society-hypocritical whinings about the sufferings of the poor, and vague hints at an ideal plan of impossible association. In blasphemy, the authors out-do Paine. In abuse of civilization, they transcend the St. Simonists; while in unintelligible jargon, they are altogether pre-eminent.

The whole volume is composed of fragments of exploded theories, utterly destitude of even a method in its madness. It is a sort of stageshow, or exhibition of phantasmagoria, where Swedenborg and the old Hindoos, Democritus and D. Holbach, Plato and Charles Fourier, are made to pass before us in a wild, spectral light, babbling of unintelligible things.

In fine, were it not for the savage attacks on religion, morality, the rights of property, and all social order, in which the very hearts of the authors speak out in that burning language of passion, not to be misunderstood, we should be tempted to regard the whole treatise as a covert satire against infidelity, social reform, materialism, and all philosophies, ancient and modern, in general! It resembles very much, not in its wit (for to the attic salt it makes no manner of pretension,) but in its matter and logic, the notable Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerius, the inimitable scientific satire of Pope and his companions, with this radical difference, that the latter was penned in jest, but the former in sober

earnest.

Throughout the entire book, there is but a single new idea, and that is so wonderful, we beg leave to give it in the author's own words. He is relating the appearance of the spirit-world, during his abnormal state. He says, or is made to say, "I can behold these holy and celestial beauties without becoming disconcerted. I do not hear, but see music! I see it, in the voices of flowers, that speak, yet make no sound," &c.p. 659.

"See music!" At first I deemed the above idea altogether new; but on farther reflection, I am not sure. It reminds me of an anecdote that hath not hitherto appeared in print, which contains, nevertheless, the identical conception.

A certain hunter employed a painter to draw him the picture of an eagle on the wing. The artist accomplished the task assigned him in as perfect a manner as possible. But the sapient hunter flew into a violent passion, and rated the painter soundly, because, in the picture, forsooth, he did not make the eagle scream! The anecdote is likely unknown to the guardians of Mr. Davis. Perhaps they got their idea of seeing music from a little novel entitled the "Yankee in London." When an eminent savant showed Jonathan a certain well-known insect, magnified by a large lens to the size of a hog, which in form the small animal was said very much to resemble, Jonathan, to demonstrate the penetration of his genius, swore that he guessed he heard it grunt!" A quite easy feat for one who can see music.

To conclude our whole critique with a general abstract: The book before us confounds cause and effect; belies sensation; beggars imagination; reduces reason to a dream; exalts vice into virtue; asserts murder to be religion; denounces all that is holy; eulogises all that is mean, base, and degrading; and if there be any absurdity, ever uttered by the lips of folly,

not found in its pages, the fact is owing more to the ignorance than the inattention of the plagiarists, who have proven their indisputable claim to the crowning infamy of being, at once the most unscrupulous and the most silly, of all impostors ever preserved, as specimens of literary and moral monstrosity, in the museum of human history.

THE MUSIC OF HOME.

[This fragment is almost simply a versification of a beautiful passage in that most impres sive of modern books of travel, "Eothen." The author had no need of metrical aid to show himself a poet, a poet in the truest meaning of the word-its creative meaning. Let the reader search for the passage, and see how little had to be done by the presumptuous hand— thus committing "the wasteful and ridiculous excess" of gilding refined gold, and painting the lily.]

JOURNEYING in the desert, the fifth day,
The atmosphere above lay vast and dead;
And the whole earth, within my utmost sight
And keenest listening, was lifeless, still,-
As some dispeopled and forgotten world,
That in the heavens, through light's wasted flood,
Rolls round and round.

The sun, which fiercer grew,
And fiercer, shone more mightily than ever,
Unveiled, unsoftened, down upon my head;
And, as I drooped beneath his fire, and closed
My eyes against the glare surrounding me,
1 slowly fell asleep ;-for how much time,
How many minutes, I cannot declare;
But after a brief while I was awaked,
Gently, as by my wife's hand on my eyes,
With a soft peal of bells,-my native bells-
Church bells: the innocent bells of Marlen-town.
Bells that before had never sounded out
Their melodies beyond the Blaygow hills.
My first impression was, that I still dwelt
A happy loiterer in the clime of dreams;
But I aroused, and drew aside the silk
That veiled my eyes; and, as a thirsty deer
Dips his hot face into some cooling stream,
So plunged I mine bare into the day's light;
And then, indeed, I was enough awake.
But still, those bells, those old, dear Marlen bells,
Rang on; though not for joy, but with a calm,
Mild, quiet, steady clang-ringing for church!
After another while, they died away.
How long a while, nor I, nor any near

Could tell distinctly; but it seemed to me
The sixth part of an hour, at least, had lapsed.
This strange effect, most singular and strange,
I, in a philosophic mood, ascribed

Unto the sun's great heat, the clear, dry air,
And the deep stillness that lay all around.

Methought, my hearing organs rendered tense,
And most susceptible to every sound,
Keenly vibrated to the passing touch

Of some mere memory that swept across
My brain, bewildered in the maze of sleep.
Since my return to England, I am told
That like vibrations have been heard at sea
By sailors, when the equatorial sun
Blazed in the zenith, and their ship, becalmed,
Swung idle in the midst of ocean: then,
In trembling wonder did their charmned ears
List to the chime of their own village bells.

[September,

ON THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY.

THERE is no intelligent or reflecting mind but what has found this to be a subject of frequent and serious meditation. Shall this body rise again, is a question that presents itself with a vivid and intense interest; and for a full and satisfactory answer to which, we naturally seek for all the aids that can be found both in revelation and analogy. The immaterial seems so closely allied to the material, the metaphysical to the physical, that they have been, and still are, regarded by many as indiscerptible; and although all have to admit that the spirit leaves the body, for a time at least, they still look forward to a period, distant perhaps, when the body and spirit shall again be re-united.

In treating this subject, the starting point is to determine two things, viz., what is and what is not-the body either does or does not rise again. To reason at all we must reason on fixed principles; and what we admit in one place must not be denied in another, because it may conflict with either our prejudices or wishes. We know, from the experience of thousands of years, that the body which we call our own, and which lives and moves upon the earth, will, when it ceases to be the tenement of the spirit, return to, or rather resolve itself into its elementary principles, and what is now the visible man, will become invisible matter. The science of chemistry teaches us the exact proportions of each elementary substance that enter into the formation of our bodies; and we find by analysis and comparison, that the same, or nearly the same elements which form the body which we occupy, enter into, in different proportions, nearly the whole material world, and that the same material goes to form other organized bodies; and we find it to be a universal and unfailing law of nature, that the same matter under the same circumstances, forever pursues the same course: for instance, analogy teaches us that the flesh of man and the flesh of the ox is made up of nearly the same gases-the only difference consisting in a slight variation in their proportions of combinations. Now, it will be plain, the above law holding good, that when a decomposition takes place, and each becomes either suddenly or by degrees resolved into its elements, that these elements will each act in precisely the same way, and that the oxygen gas which entered into the formation of the flesh of the ox, which is set free by the decomposition, will be precisely under the same law that the oxygen, set free by the decomposition of the flesh of man, and that they will therefore both be equally under the law that controls the movements or combinations of oxygen in all those substances of which it forms a part. Carrying out this same law, then, in connection with another law of nature, viz., that no particle of matter is ever lost, we will find that the very same gases which compose our present bodies may have, and have formed their respective parts in thousands of other objects and substances. We know that every thing in the material world is constantly demanding something of its fellow-material for its being and wants; and that this constant demand could only be supplied by the changes which are daily and hourly going forward, by which new matter is evolved at the same time that it is taken up. To fully illus trate this, it only requires the history of a little flower: Observe it from

the time its seed is first planted in the earth. It first requires moisture to make it expand and germinate; it then requires the sun to shine upon it, and the dews and rain to water it, and the air to nourish it; and deprived of either, it ceases to grow-to live. As it grows it is constantly appropriating to itself new matter, drawn from the earth, air and water. It becomes, as it were, a little machine put in motion by the sun, and manufactures from the materials which surround it a delicate and beautiful flower.

If these remarks, then, serve to prove this fact, viz., that the same particles which now form our bodies, will hereafter enter into the formation of others, which none can successfully deny, it at the same time will make self-evident the fact, that the moment a body is resolved into its elementary principles, they at once cease to bear any relationship whatever with the form which they had previously entered into, so that the gases which now constitute any specific body will, when it exist, and they in consequence become set free-cease to bear forever f terwards any more relationship to that PARTICULAR body, than if they had NEVER entered into it at all.

ceases to

Did a contrary course ensue, the beautiful system of nature which now exists would be broken up, and the world be filled with useless bodies and substances, while the supplies for new formations would become exhausted, and the world would speedily become uninhabitable to mana barren waste, a ruin, and a blank in the universe of God. Our own daily observation teaches us that our bodies are sustained in the same way that other organized bodies are; and that the same food and the same air which supports life in us, will, and does support life in the animal creation, and that the laws of life are the same in both: that is, both must breathe and receive nourishment, in order that life may be preserved.

The experiment of Lavoisier showed, that an adult man received into his system daily 32 ounces oxygen, (46.037 cubic inches,) which, after uniting with the carbon and hydrogen of certain parts of the body, are given out in the form of carbonic acid gas and the vapor of water.

"At every moment, with every expiration, certain quantities of its elements separate from the animal organism, after having entered into combination with the body, with the oxygen of the atmosphere." Now, we find precisely the same to be true in relation to animals. The horse, for instance, consumes 13 pounds 3 ounces of oxygen daily, which unites in precisely the same way with the carbon and hydrogen of certain parts of his body, and is given out in the same form as from our bodies. What, then, must be the result when both respectively resume their elements? The same common law of nature controls the materials of each, and the oxygen in the one case and the oxygen in the other, are both equally ready to fill their parts in any other form. It necessarily follows, then, that as far as our material organization goes, we are under precisely the same laws as other organized bodies, and that a material restoration of our organized bodies would be inconsistent with the laws of nature, (or the laws of God, for the laws of nature and the laws of God are the same,) as a material restoration of any other organized body which may have at any time existed.

. It is also another wise and beautiful law of nature, that every particle of matter in the universe is appropriated; that there is, nothing idle-no atom but what is fulfilling its part. This law would therefore prove conclusively that no restoration of bodies could take place without a destruction and complete annihilation of very much that has been