66 cast themselves without reserve upon the ruler of the great Sclavonic empire. Thus, he tells them, if they cannot command their own destiny as a political body, they may find a new one as individuals of the same race, and have their share in the greatness of that union of all the Sclaves which the atrocities of the stranger will have served to expedite. "Let us begin," he says, to choose freely what we have hitherto endured. As soon as we shall have ceased to bear ourselves as slaves, our master will, in spite of himself, be our brother." Nothing can be more welcome to the Czar than sentiments such as these. To say nothing of the prospects of territorial aggrandizement which they encourage, (a temptation to which Russia was never indifferent,) they offer Nicholas a means of effacing the Gallicizing tendencies of his Polish subjects, and of setting up on his western frontier an effectual barrier against the inroads of the constitutional contagion. witch has brought back from St. Petersburg a matured and settled plan for the redemption of corvées and all other rents and services in kind, and that it will be speedily put in operation. Posen is perhaps even more full of the Russianizing ferment than any other part of Poland. Nicholas thinks he acts the part of a good brotherin-law in preventing Frederick William, by fair means or by foul, from entangling himself in constitutional engagements; and therefore he is glad to alarm and busy him on the side of Posen. The Emperor's agents were extremely numerous and active there, (on behalf of the common interests of the Three Great Powers, as they alleged,) until the cabinet of Berlin took umbrage at their presence and obliged them to withdraw. From that moment, the country began to be agitated with rumors favorable to the designs of Russia. "The Poles ought to look to Nicholas as their deliverer and leader; Nicholas was a Sclave, and none but a Sclave could regenerate all Poland; Nicholas Emperor of the Sclaves would be quite a different personage from Nicholas Emperor of Russia." It was stoutly asserted the other day that the Czar would soon abdicate in favor of his son, and that he intended to erect for himself an independent kingdom, including Poland, and extending from the Bug to the Oder. Ridiculous as was the story, its effect was such that the Prussian ministry thought it necessary to refute it formally in their official journal.-Spectator, 5th Sept. It is only just now they have begun even in Germany to reflect on the peculiar attitude assumed by the Russian government during the massacre of Gallicia. When the Russian soldiers entered Cracow, they were received with delight by the townspeople, because they delivered them from the detested Austrians. Several of the persecuted Gallician nobles obtained refuge in the Russian territory; and the peasants who ventured to pursue them over the frontier were all sent to the mines or executed. The same just policy was observed in the kingdom of Poland; where certain peasants, having attempted, in imitation of their neighbors, to lay hands on some of the landowners whom they ELAND HUNT.-A few elands were observed; chose to consider rebels, were almost instantly put and, these valuable creatures not having been as to death by the authorities. All this has produced frequently met with as we could have wished, we an impression in Austrian Poland highly favorable pursued them, hoping to lay in a good supply of to Russia; the Czar is now exceedingly popular in fat. Gallicia. Four of them fell to our rifles, and we returned Availing himself of these propitious circum- in high spirits. Pearson had a bad fall, his horse stances, Nicholas has taken some bold steps to coming down in rocky ground, but was not matericonciliate his own Polish subjects likewise. The ally hurt, although his gun-stock was broken in German papers were full lately of his visit to half. The scene at one period of the pursuit is Warsaw, where they say he walked about the worthy of description, though words can but inadstreets without an escort. This may be a court equately convey it to the reader's mind. The fiction; but it has had its effect in the quarters for elands were crossing an extensive plain, the horses which it was intended. Certain significant phrases by the side of the huge bulls looking no larger were also seasonably set afloat: the Czar is re- than donkeys; each horseman having selected his ported to have said, that his people of Poland were victim. Intent upon chasing the ponderous creabeginning to put confidence in him, and that he tures, whose sides and dewlaps reeked with perwould make them a great people. The police spiration, we did not perceive the advance of two were enjoined to relax their severity-though it rhinoceroses till they were close upon us, one on was found necessary at the same time to enlarge each side within one hundred yards;-they were the prisons, as there was not room in them for the in a very excited state, while some troops of the numbers arrested. Above all, certain very desira- blue gnoo, quagga, and sassaybie, dashing past, ble reforms were taken into consideration, and increased their astonishment and indignation;seem likely to be accomplished. Among these are they ploughed the soil with their horns, and charged the abolition of the line of custom-houses between through the dust at everything which came near Poland and Russia; a measure which would be them, their ugly heads looking too large for their highly beneficial to the people, and useful in many bodies. It was amusing to see with what utter disways to the government; and a scheme for improv-regard the other animals, conscious of their supeing the relations between the landlord and the rior fleetness, treated the rhinoceroses.-Life in the peasant. It is the Austrian policy to sow enmity Wilderness. between the Gallician peasant and his lord, by retaining and augmenting every means by which the latter can be made to appear to the former in the week in St. Katharine's Dock, has brought the first THE brig Marquis of Chandos, which arrived this character of a harsh taskmaster and public func importation of heef from Russia. She brings 24,822 tionary. Russia is eager to establish the broadest packages from Tavanrog: each package is enclosed contrast in this respect between her own conduct in a tin case, the contents weighing from 8 pounds to and that of Austria. The Augsburg Gazette of 10 pounds each; and the beef is pronounced, by good the 27th August announces, that Prince Paske-judges, to be of excellent quality.-Spect. From the Church of England Quarterly Review. Description of the Skeleton of an extinct Gigantic Van Voorst. sented to us as an object of faith, needs no human ingenuity nor research to make it the more credible: it is quite sufficient that the divine word has revealed it to secure our belief of it; nor is it consistent with faith in the word of God to scrutinize But that word under the plea of verifying it, which is often only a pretext of infidelity: the simple scripIr is not our purpose to undertake an examina-tural declaration that such a fact as the deluge has tion of this splendid volume, the title of which we happened being verification and proof sufficient to have placed before our readers. All whom it render worse than needless the addition of any facts would interest must already know that, like all the to the testimony of revelation. Perhaps, simple other works of the same distinguished anatomist, it faith ends on such subjects whenever critical inneeds no commendation from us, and is beyond the quiry begins; for it would seem to be inconsistent reach of our censure. But we refer to the first with faith to be caring about proofs of those facts, work in its class-to the very highest authority-to as the Scriptures have revealed. We therefore a work the correctness of which we fully admit, in disclaim, at the outset, all intention or desire of order to show that, while we admit the value of all offering a single observation for any such purpose the researches which are making into the natural as the confirmation of our faith in the scriptural achistory of the earth, and acknowledge the bearing count of the deluge: that account is infallible truth, of these researches upon the fossilized remains of a and has no need whatever of human observations former world, we do not admit that these remains and calculations to make it more credible. were deposited before the creation of man; and do there is a peculiarity in the scriptural account of not admit that the strata in which they are found the deluge which seems especially to court inquiry render the Mosaic account of the deluge inadmissi--that account being singularly full and minute in ble; because we maintain that the deluge, as it is its details: therein the dimendescribed by Moses, was most certainly supernatural; while the geologists have most unaccountably assumed that it was brought about by natural causes. The great sagacity and unrivalled precision of Owen have rendered his facts incontrovertible; and we are as certain of the osteology and natural affinities of many of these extinct species as we are of the forms and propensities of living animals. The question, however, still remains-how these fossils acquired their present appearance and position in the earth? Was it by natural-was it by supernatural agency? We assert that the deluge bears, on the very face of things, indubitable proofs of its being brought about by supernatural agency; and this, therefore, will carry with it evidence to decide the other question, and afford the means of showing by what kind of supernatural agency the fossil remains may have been brought into the condition and situation in which they at present appear. The deluge, and its preparatory and concomitant circumstances, is therefore the question to which we shall, in the first instance, direct the attention of our readers; professing, however, to do little more on this occasion than to bring the subject under the consideration of our readers, to suggest thoughts upon it for their reflection and examination, and to supply a few reasons for a more diligent inquiry into some of the circumstances connected with the deluge than has yet been given to them. Great coolness of judgment should, however, be exercised upon it, and much varied and extensive information brought to the consideration THE ARK AND THE DELUGE. "God said unto Noah, Make thee an ark of Gopher-wood: rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch. And this is the fashion thou shalt make it of: the length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits. A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof: with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it. And thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him so did he." Now, this plain statement of a fact, which is pre : sions of the ark are most ac- DIMENSIONS OF THE ARK In contrast with this we place the outline of the it-not a ripple could have been broken against it hulk of a first-rate ship of war-the Nelson, of one-not a breath of wind could have blown upon it, hundred and twenty guns, with the length of two nor could the currents have drifted it; the ark hundred and five feet breadth, fifty-height, floated, and merely floated, on the smoothest watwenty-four. And, also, the outline of the British Queen steam ship, the length of which is two hundred and fortythree feet-breadth, forty-height, twenty-nine. Their sterns would show thus : The Ark. ters, at a time when the ocean was heaving and swelling and rolling onward furiously upon the land at the rate of one hundred and seventy-six feet additional in depth each day for one hundred and fifty days together. Around the ark, however, those ocean waves found a barrier impossible to be passed: it was as if the finger of the Almighty had drawn a line upon the waters around it, and had then said to the ocean what he declared to Job he did once say to it: "Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further; and here shalt thy proud waves be stayed," (Job xxxviii. 11:) and the Psalmist would seem to have alluded to this subject in Psalm xcii., where he says "The floods are risen-the floods lift up their waves: the waves of the sea are mighty, and rage horribly; but yet the Lord who dwelleth on high is mightier;" and certainly his might was shown on this occasion; for, raging as the ocean then did, and as it never since has done, and pouring its mighty body of waters, every succeeding wave gaining in height upon the preceding, the fiat of the Almighty turned them all The Nelson. The British Queen. aside to hasten onward elsewhere to their work and mission of destruction, and the ark remained as motionless and undisturbed as though resting on of the ark had not made such a conclusion inevitadry land. And if the very peculiar construction ble, the purpose for which it was built would have proved that such was the fact; for, had the ark pitched in the least from the swell of the waves, or of the wind, which, from its great length and little rolled at all from side to side under the influence width, it must most distressingly have done, the whole world of animals therein contained could not have kept their footing of very necessity, therefore, a dead calm must have prevailed around the ark during the whole of the one hundred and fifty days that it was floating on the waters. The proportions of these vessels will thus be:The Ark-The breadth is one sixth of the length, and the depth one tenth. The Nelson-The breadth is one fourth of the length, and the depth short of one ninth. The British Queen-The breadth is one sixth of the length, and the depth more than one eighth. Now, as it is clearly impossible that a vessel of the length and breadth of the ark could be otherwise than a floating vessel, designed entirely for perfectly still waters, we have supposed it to be flat-bottomed and straight-sided; both as making it the more buoyant and as giving to it the greatest capacity. It was devoid of all sailing properties; The dimensions of the ark being given, it would had neither rigging nor rudder; its build was sim- not be impossible so to plan out its supposed conply that of a huge float, to all outward appearance struction as to determine with tolerable accuracy wholly at the mercy of the winds and the waves, the quantity of timber it would require. A practiliable to be drifted or driven about according as cal ship-builder would be able, by a close and carecurrents or winds for the time prevailed; but, as ful calculation, to ascertain it with something like we shall show, the ark could not, for a moment, a tolerable approximation to the truth. As to the have been subjected to the influence of either timber itself, it was of no value; but the labor of winds or tides. The extraordinary length of the collecting it together and preparing it must have ark proves, at once, the miraculous power that been very great, and no more was used, we may was, at every moment, in exercise for its preserva- reasonably suppose, than was essentially necessary tion since no vessel of the ark's proportions could for its construction. We have therefore calcunaturally live for an hour in disturbed waters; the lated for the vessel the quantity only of timber that very first wave that rose would inevitably break its seemed indispensable, and have supposed in the back and rend it entirely asunder; nor, with all calculation that the ark was divided into three stoour experience in ship building, would it be possi-ries and was roofed over, and that to two fifths of ble to construct a vessel of the ark's proportions its height it was doubly boarded with a layer of and to navigate it from Dover to Calais in rough asphalte between, and that a portion of the hold weather-the least swell of the ocean, by raising of the vessel was in like manner boarded for the one end and depressing the other, would break it safe keeping of the fresh water; and without dein the middle and cause it to founder; nor could tailing the general plan, or working out the many any possible contrivance or ingenuity of construc- details and measurements of its several parts, our tion prevent this consequence, and the clear and calculation would give about 245,000 cubic feet of just conclusion therefore is, that the ark floated in timber for the complement that would be required: perfectly still waters; and, that whatever might this at fifty feet per load would give 4,900 loads; be the agitation of the great deep when its foun- and as the largest trees would be the easiest worked tains were broken up, or whatever the force of the and were then in the greatest abundance, under currents as the seas kept advancing and gaining on five hundred trees of ten load in each would be the the land, yet must the waters around the ark, and whole quantity needed. However, it would seem for a considerable distance, of necessity have been to be impossible to build the ark without raising a calm and still; not a wave could have rolled near | scaffold around it; this could not be less than fifty feet high, nor less in length when measured round | lately so little was known, there are now known than 1,300 feet, and would probably require 28,000 and classed 100,000!-and it is supposed that this cubic feet, or 600 loads of timber: thus the ut- is scarcely a tenth of the whole number actually most of the builders' needs might not exceed 550 existing. The subject indeed seems exhaustless, btrees. and would appear to defy all our powers to grasp it; the discoveries of to-day overthrow all our calculations and conclusions of yesterday; and did we need anything perfectly to convince us of the worthlessness of all merely human speculations upon such subjects, it would be the difficulties Again: from the dimensions of the ark being so accurately given, we are able to calculate with tolerable correctness its actual capacity, deducting from the 50% Length of 547ft. 47ft. for partitions &c., leaves 500ft. clear space. which surround us at this, the first stage of it. We -Width 917 91. -11 Height.. 54. 4. for joists &c. Then 80 50 500 by 80 by 50=2,000,000 Thus, though the ark occupied a space equal in its external measurements to 547 by 91 by 54 2,687,958 cubic feet, yet the actual internal clear space for stowage would be only 2,000,000 cubic feet. The capacity of the ark being thus ascertained, the next proper subject for inquiry would be, what did it contain? But the question is undoubtedly that one which is the most difficult to answer of all that are connected with the subject, since to answer it aright requires a perfect knowledge of the habits, the size, and the food of every creature that exists of every beast, bird, and reptile that now lives on the earth. Nor would even this knowledge be sufficient; for so multiplied are the variety of the genera in almost all the orders of aves and mammalia, that the most discriminating judgment is necessary to distinguish what was the parent stock-the original species of the whole family; and to this must be added the fullest and most correct information of the kind and the quantity of food every living thing would require for a whole year's subsistence. It is evident that knowledge to this extent is in no man's possession: by possibility the day may come when the greater part of all these facts will be known; but that day is not yet come. Every year, indeed, adds something to our information on the subject-every year new animals are met with, and Fife especially in every new land discovered; but the habits of many that have long been classed are still but very imperfectly known, and our whole knowledge is far too deficient and imperfect for our present purpose, which is to prove what animals must have entered with Noah into the ark. ask the question, for what was the ark prepared? too wonderful for me, I cannot attain to it!'' No direct answer would seem possible to this question: nor, from our dearth of facts, have we any other resource than to surmise and speculate and conjecture. Had but the site of Eden been perfectly known to us, all the probabilities would have tended to direct our attention to the district. where Eden was; for it seems reasonable and natural that the children of Seth should have remained in the neighborhood of their grandfather Adam, and that Adam himself should have wandered no further from Eden than stern necessity compelled him. Of Cain, we are expressly told that he did' withdraw from the neighborhood of his father, to the land of Nod, which was eastward of Eden; and as nothing similar is recorded of Seth or his descendants, that they also went out from the presence of their father, and as we can imagine no mo-tive with them for any distant migrations, it seems. most reasonable to conclude that all Seth's descendants, until Noah's time, did remain in or near to the district of their father Adam, wherever that was.. The site of Eden, therefore, could it be correctly There are many perplexing circumstances, also, ascertained, would greatly aid us to a right deciin connexion with the present location and distribu- sion of this question: but ascertained it probably tion of particular animals, those of the new world never will be, since there seems to be no spot in being almost entirely of different families to those the world answering to the description which the in the old; those in New Holland having not the Scriptures give of it; and if it was not one among slightest resemblance to any found elsewhere- many other purposes of the deluge to destroy, to such for instance as the ornithorhynchus and the make desolate, or to render it impossible to recog3 oppossum; the first named is a quadruped covered nize the site even, of the garden of Eden, yet its with fur and suckling its young; yet it is web-destruction seemed to be an almost inevitable confooted, has a bill like a duck, and is oviparous. In sequence of the deluge; before, therefore, we could vain shall we look for a type of this creature in any other country, and yet other countries have their own peculiar and distinct races as exclusively to themselves. It seems, consequently, hopeless to expect that a subject so extensive and so difficult of attainment should ever perfectly be cleared up: thousands of years have passed away since the ark poured forth its living thousands to replenish the earth, and yet we know not to this day what the ark preserved-all is with us on this subject wild and vague conjecture: the knowledge of the last century would be called ignorance in this; 500 birds were classed by Ray, and 5,000 since by Latham; the once known 5,000 fishes are now increased to 8,000; and of the insects, of which until 3 offer even a rational conjecture as to the locality of Eden, it would seem necessary to consider what changes the flood might or must have produced on the earth's surface. Two agencies were in operation to produce great changes: first, the weight of water, miles in depth upon land that had never before been subjected to a greater pressure than that of the atmosphere; and secondly, the continual current of such an accumulation of oceans that for months together rolled in upon the land. As to the first of these, two consequences would follow from the weight and pressure of the ocean; the earth would be thoroughly saturated, so far as what is called its surface was concerned; from its long continued |