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the deliberations of a storm-cloud when hovering over a spot and preparing to discharge a bolt to the earth. A question of considerable complexity must first be settled. Imprimis, it must determine which is the loftiest point at its disposal; and this, in cases where the cloud is of great extent and the objects beneath it are numerous and of pretty equal altitude, as in the spires and chimneys of a city or the trees of a forest, must render the work of selection a task of some nicety. In the next place, the decision on this head must be controlled by the inquiry whether the object to be favoured is the best, or the least interrupted, conductor at hand; for if a more perfect one should offer its services, then the electricity must weigh the advantages of an easier path against the claims of more elevated objects, and, after coming to a fair conclusion, must act according to the equities of the case. But, thirdly, it must also take into account whether the route selected will upon the whole prove the briefest as well as the best. Hence, therefore (without alluding to other important points), it will be seen that there is much matter for meditation; and if a cloud had to stand balancing the inducements here and the impediments there-the advantages of this route and the difficulties of that-we might expect it to consume a week in making up its mind where to strike. The electricity must, in fact, feel its way in advance, and absolutely mark out the course it is about to take before the explosion occurs. The entire route of the lightning, as Sir W. Snow Harris observes, is not left to accident, but is already 'fixed and settled before the discharge takes place.'

But though these and other perplexing questions are all solved in an instant, and with unerring sagacity, by the fiery bolt, yet it has cost men a prodigious amount of controversy to decide on the precise merits of the thunder-rod. What reader will not recall, for instance, the charming fray which arose about the superiority of pointed to knobbed conductors? Rarely has science been concerned in a more diverting fracas. What fun Butler would have made of our electricians, as he did of their predecessors of the Royal Society in his Elephant in the Moon! What savage wipes Swift would have given them had they existed when his Academy of Lagado was invented. Indeed, except for the gravity of the interests involved in lightning conductors, the dispute respecting points and knobs might be supposed to be prophetically satirized in the Lilliputian controversy between the Big-Endians' and the 'Little-Endians.' Franklin, as is well known, maintained that rods with sharp extremities were the correct thing. Some of our British savans stoutly affirmed that they must be rounded at the top to ensure our habitations

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against tela fabricata manibus Cyclopum. The fray assumed a political significance. Franklin was an American, and America had revolted! His Majesty George III. entered into the controversy with his usual blundering patriotism. He who gloried in being the last man in his dominions to yield to rebel pretensions was the last man to submit to rebel philosophy. As the struggle between the rival electricians grew furious, his Majesty watched it with considerable anxiety. He waited its issue as he might have done the result of the famous naval duel between the Chesapeake and the Shannon. The memorable little anecdote which is related touching the royal pertinacity, carries with it such a stinging moral, that it ought never to be forgotten either by kings or philosophers. Alluding to this controversy, his Majesty told Sir John Pringle, the President of the Royal Society, that the English electricians must not let those rascally Americans beat them.' 'Please, sire,' said Sir John, who had himself voted in favour of points, we cannot alter the laws of nature.' King George, however, was not the man to give in to nature if she sided with his alienated subjects. The palace of St. James had been fitted up with sharpened rods at a time when their revolutionary tendencies were unperceived. In his contempt for the Franklinian philosophy, his Majesty ordered them to be removed, and resolved to brave all risks by crowning the building with rounded conductors! Had he lived in a country where a bit of tyranny might have been safely practised, who knows but that he would have issued an edict prohibiting points, and ordering his subjects, as a test of their loyalty, to peril themselves by erecting knobs? We are almost disposed to believe that when the dispute was at its height his Majesty would have allowed his kingdom to be blistered with thunder-bolts from end to end, rather than have succumbed to the science of the insurgents.

Prejudices of a different stamp have frequently been displayed in reference to these safety rods. Frederick the Great allowed them to be affixed to his barracks, arsenals, and powder magazines, but nothing could induce him to employ them at his palace of Sans Souci. At Sienna, the citizens were thrown into a state of consternation when their cathedral, which had been repeatedly smitten, was armed with one of these contrivances. The act was held impious, and the rod was denounced as a 'heretic rod. Fortunately, a thunder-storm of sufficient severity to brush up the memory of the oldest inhabitant soon afterwards occurred: a flash struck the tower, but instead of doing damage in imitation of its predecessors, it was conveyed away so harmlessly that the orthodoxy of the scheme was completely established, and the rod was received into the bosom of the holy catholic church.

The object then of a conductor is to provide a route for the lightning, in traversing which it will meet with the least possible resistance. It should be elevated above the building to be protected, in order that it may avert, as far as practicable, a descent upon any other portion of the edifice. It should be a good transmitter of electricity, and for this purpose copper is the most eligible of metals. It should be of sufficient diameter to carry a good cargo of lightning without melting under its fiery load; and Sir W. Snow Harris is of opinion that a rod three-quarters of an inch in diameter would withstand the heating effect of any discharge which has yet come within the experience of mankind. It should also be continuous, for it must be remembered that whilst brazen walls are perfectly porous to the electric fluid, space is a barricade which it can only pass by violent means, and non-conducting objects are barriers which must be dislodged by a furious explosion. Spite, too, of his Majesty George III., the rod must terminate in a point, in order that it may begin to 'drain off' the electricity from a cloud (to the extent of its ability) as soon as a charged mass of vapour comes within hail of the apparatus; for when a slight break is made in the conductor-and a very slight one it must be a stream of sparks will be seen to flash across the interval for hours together, if the storm-clouds continue to pass so long. Rods, indeed, are really sewers for the lightning, as much as spouts are channels for the rain; and though, of course, it cannot be pretended that a tempest capable of shrouding the whole of Yorkshire would be subdued as it approached from the ocean by a few conductors stationed on the east coast, yet these would certainly deliver the West Riding from many a bolt, and if sufficiently numerous would disarm the vapour of its virulence before it could get amongst the clothiers and wool-merchants of that district. In fact, clouds have been tapped of their electrical contents, as was done by Dr. Lining and M. Charles; and Arago suggests, that if captive balloons, furnished with wires, were sent up to attack the enemy in his own native skies, it would be possible to dissipate the most violent thunder-storms,' and to preserve the vine districts from the terrible ravages which hail inflicts.

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For full practical directions, however, respecting the construction of thunder-rods, we must refer the reader to the pages of Sir W. Snow Harris, to whose skilful labours in this particular. the navy of our country is immensely indebted. It is enough to say that whatever discrepancies of opinion exist on minor points of detail, the general efficacy of conductors has been signally and repeatedly demonstrated. Vessels without rods have been struck and damaged, whilst others properly supplied have escaped

Deadly Powers of Lightning.

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in the same harbour. Ships duly armed have been hit without sustaining the slightest injury. Buildings once subject to periodical attacks now bid defiance to the fiercest flashes and to the surliest rumblings of the storm. A curious calculation made by Arago will show that this simple implement is one of the most beneficent gifts which science has proffered to man. Referring to the conductors erected by Beccaria on the Valentino palace at Turin, he concludes from the number of sparks darting across certain gaps in the apparatus, that each rod transmitted a quantity of fulminating material capable of killing 360 men in an hour! There being seven points on the roof, he inferred that this one edifice took from the clouds in the short space of sixty minutes as much lightning as would have sufficed to kill upwards of 3000 persons. Conjectural as this estimate must be, Mr. Crosse's observations on the torrents of electricity poured from a mere fog, when no tempest was on foot, afford it no mean corroboration. All honour then to the invention which can shield the gallant ship at sea and the stately building on shore with equal effect from the deadly bolt-which can guide the hissing shaft from the sky and bury it deep in the soil a powerless and extinguished thing-which can strip the burdened cloud of its perilous freight and carry its lightnings in silent and unseen streams to the troubled earth-and which, plucking the fiery sting from the spirit of the storm, can leave it to pursue its course, muttering a few empty menaces, or dissipating its wrath in idle, harmless fulminations.

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ART. III.-The Book of Mormon, an Account, written by the hand of Mormon, upon plates taken from the plates of Nephi, wherefore it is an abridgment of the record of the people of Nephi, and also of the Lamanites; written to the Lamanites, who are a remnant of the House of Israel; and also to Jew and Gentile: written by way of Commandment, and also by the spirit of prophecy and revelation. Written and sealed up and hid up unto the Lord that they might not be destroyed, &c., &c., &c. Translated by JOSEPH SMITH, JUN. Fifth European Edition. Stereotyped. Liverpool: F. D. Richards. London: sold at the Latter-Day Saints' Book Depôt, Jewin-street, 1854.

LITTLE more than thirty years ago it would have been difficult to convince any ten persons of the possibility of a new religion, and a prediction of the rise of Mormonism would have been received with an incredulous smile. The world was then supposed to be finally settling down into a state of quiet preparation for the advent of the millennium. The mighty events which had signalized the close of the last century and the beginning of the present, culminating with the overthrow of the first Napoleon, had created in mankind a great appetite for peace and quietness, and Europe was turning her swords into ploughshares, determined henceforth to cultivate the soil on which her riotous blood had been so profusely poured. Revelation-mongers were acutely demonstrating, with the pertinacity and dogmatism of Dr. Cumming himself, that the world was experiencing the effects of the last of the Vials, that her week's work was nearly done, and the eve of her destined and glorious sabbath rapidly approaching; while poets, politicians, and preachers all united to assure us that the busy and fitful drama which had enlisted the energies, the hopes, the fears, of so many generations, was nearly played out, and that henceforth human progression was destined to advance with stately and unimpeded steps towards the goal of universal good. But the wish was father to the thought.' The events of history travel in a wider circle than any which the human imagination can describe, and our unwisdom does not see that the goal may be only the starting-point for a new race. There was to be further testimony to the wise man's aphorism, 'the thing which is, is that which shall be.' Men had mistaken the end of an act for the fall of the curtain, and while they were rejoicing over the finished triumph-Father Time-like an old nonconformist preacher-only turned his hour-glass and began again!

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Foremost among the questions which then seemed to have

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