Well, the same thing is going on everywhere, round every coast of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. Foot by foot or inch by inch, month by month or century by century, down everything MUST go. Time is as nothing in geology. And what the sea is doing the rivers are helping it to do. Look at the sand-banks at the mouth of the Thames. What are they but the materials of our island carried out to sea by the stream? The Ganges carries away from the soil of India, and delivers into the sea, as much solid substance daily as is contained in the great pyramid of Egypt. The Irawaddy sweeps off from Burmah 62 cubic feet of earth in every second of time on an average, and there are 86,400 seconds in every day, and 365 days in every year, and so on for the other rivers. What has become of all that great bed of chalk which once covered all the weald of Kent, and formed a continuous mass from Ramsgate and Dover to Beachy Head, running inland to Madamscourt Hill and Seven Oaks? All clean gone, and swept out into the bosom of the Atlantic, and there forming other chalk-beds. Now, geology assures us, on the most conclusive and undeniable evidence, that ALL our present land, all our continents and islands, have been formed in this way out of the ruins of former ones. The old ones which existed at the beginning of things have all perished, and what we now stand upon has most assuredly been, at one time or other, perhaps many times, the bottom of the sea.

Well, then, there is power enough at work, and it has been at work long enough, utterly to have cleared away and spread over the bed of the sea all our present existing continents and islands, had they been placed where they are at the creation of the world; and from this it follows, as clear as demonstration can make it, that without some process of renovation or restoration to act in antagonism to this destructive work of old Neptune, there would not now be remaining a foot of dry land for living thing to stand upon.

Now, what is this process of restoration! Let the volcano and the earthquake tell their tale. Let the earthquake tell how, within the memory of man-under the eyesight of eyewitnesses, one of whom (Mrs. Graham) has described the fact the whole coast line of Chili, for 100 miles about Valparaiso, with the mighty chain of the Andes-mountains to which the Alps shrink into insignificance-was hoisted at one blow (in a single night, Nov. 19, A.D. 1822), from two to seven feet above its former level, leaving the beach below

the old low water-mark high and dry, leaving the shell-fish sticking on the rocks out of reach of water, leaving the seaweed rotting in the air, or rather drying up to dust under the burning sun of a coast where rain never falls. The ancients had a fable of Titan hurled from heaven and buried under Etna, and by his struggles causing the earthquakes that desolated Sicily. But here we have an exhibition of Titanic forces on a far mightier scale. One of the Andes upheaved on this occasion was the gigantic mass of Aconcagua, which over

looks Valparaiso. To bring home to the mind the conception of such an effort, we must form a clear idea of what sort of mountain this is. It is nearly 24,000 feet in height. Chimborazo, the loftiest of the volcanic cones of the Andes, is lower by 2,500 feet; and yet Etna, with Vesuvius at the top of it, and another Vesuvius piled on that, would little more than surpass the midway height of the snow-covered portion of that cone, which is one of the many chimneys by which the hidden fires of the Andes find vent. On the occasion I am speaking of, at least 10,000 square miles of country were estimated as

having been upheaved, and the upheaval was not confined to the land, but extended far away to sea, which was proved by the soundings off Valparaiso, and along the coast, having been found considerably shallower than they were before the shock.

Again, in the year 1819, in an earthquake in India, in the district of Cutch, bordering on the Indus, a tract of country more than fifty miles long and sixteen broad, was suddenly raised 10 feet above its former level. The raised portion still stands up above the unraised, like a long perpendicular wall, which is known by the name of the "Ullah Bund," or "God's Wall." And again, in 1538, in that convulsion which threw up the Monte Nuovo (New Mountain), a cone of ashes 450 feet high, in a single night, the whole coast of Pozzuoli, near Naples, was raised 20 feet above its former level, and remains so permanently upheaved to this day. And I could mention innumerable other instances of the same kind.*

This, then, is the manner in which the earthquake does its work; and it is always at work. Somewhere or other in the world, there is perhaps not a day, certainly not a month, without an earthquake. In those districts of South and Central America, where the great chain of volcanic cones is situated— Chimborazo, Cotopaxi, and a long list with names unmentionable, or at least unpronounceable-the inhabitants no more think of counting earthquake shocks than we do of counting. showers of rain. Indeed, in some places along that coast, a shower is a greater rarity. Even in our own island, near Perth, a year seldom passes without a shock, happily, within the records of history, never powerful enough to do any mischief.

It is not everywhere that this process goes on by fits and starts. For instance, the northern gulfs, and borders of the Baltic Sea, are steadily shallowing, and the whole mass of Scandinavia, including Norway, Sweden, and Lapland, is rising out of the sea at the average rate of about two feet per century. But as this fact (which is perfectly well established by reference to ancient high and low water-marks) is not so evidently connected with the action of earthquakes, I shall not further refer to it just now. All that I want to show is, that there is a great cycle of changes going on, in which the earthquake and volcano act a very conspicuous part, and that part a

*Not that earthquakes always raise the soil; there are plenty of instances of subsidence, etc.

restorative and conservative one, in opposition to the steadily destructive and levelling action of the ocean waters.

COMPOSITION.-Give an account, in writing, of the effect of rivers in wearing away the surface of the earth, and of earthquakes in elevating it.

THE BRITISH NAVY IN 1741.-Smollett.

Tobias Smollett, an eminent novelist of last century, was born in Scotland, in 1721, and died near Leghorn, in 1771. His novels are, unhappily, disfigured by great coarseness, like all similar writings of his day. He was educated for a surgeon, and as such served on board a ship of the line at the bombardment of Carthagena, a Spanish city on the coast of the Caribbean Sea, in South America. The expedition miserably failed. Smollett describes it in one of his stories-"Roderick Random," from which this extract is taken.

THE change of the atmosphere, occasioned by this phenomenon, conspired, with the stench that surrounded us, the heat of the climate, our own constitutions, impoverished by bad provisions, and our despair, to introduce the bilious fever among us, which raged with such violence, that three-fourths of those whom it invaded died in a deplorable manner; the colour of their skin being, by the extreme putrefaction of the juices, changed into that of soot..

Our conductors, finding things in this situation, perceived it was high time to relinquish our conquests; and this we did, after having rendered their artillery useless, and blown up their walls with gunpowder. Just as we sailed from Bocca Chica, on our return to Jamaica, I found myself threatened with the symptoms of this dreadful distemper; and knowing very well that I stood no chance for my life, if I should be obliged to lie in the cockpit, which by this time was grown intolerable, even to people in health, by reason of the heat and unwholesome smell of decayed provision, I wrote a petition to the captain, representing my case, and humbly imploring his permission to lie among the soldiers in the middle deck, for the benefit of the air: but I might have spared myself the trouble; for this humane commander refused my request, and ordered me to continue in the place allotted for the surgeon's mates, or else be contented to lie in the hospital, which, by the by, was three degrees more offensive and more suffocating than our own berth below. Another, in my condition, perhaps, would have submitted to his fate, and died in a pet; but I could not brook

the thought of perishing so pitifully, after I had weathered so many gales of hard fortune: I therefore, without minding Oakum's injunction, prevailed upon the soldiers (whose goodwill I had acquired) to admit my hammock among them; and · actually congratulated myself upon my comfortable situation : which Crampley no sooner understood, than he signified to the captain my contempt of his orders, and was invested with power to turn me down again into my proper habitation.

This barbarous piece of revenge incensed me so much against the author, that I vowed, with bitter imprecations, to call him to a severe account, if ever it should be in my power; and the agitation of my spirits increased my fever to a violent degree. While I lay gasping for breath in this dreadful abode, I was visited by a sergeant, the bones of whose nose I had reduced and set to rights, after they had been demolished by a splinter during our last engagement; he, being informed of my condition, offered me the use of his berth in the middle deck, which was enclosed with canvas, and well-aired by a port-hole that remained open within it. I embraced this proposal with joy, and was immediately conducted to the place, where I was treated, while my illness lasted, with the utmost tenderness and care by this grateful halberdier, who had no other bed for himself than a hencoop during the whole passage. Here I lay and enjoyed the breeze, notwithstanding which my malady gained ground, and at length my life was despaired of, though I never lost hopes of recovery, even when I had the mortification to see, from my cabin-window, six or seven thrown overboard every day, who died of the same distemper. This confidence, I am persuaded, conduced a great deal to the preservation of my life, especially when joined to another resolution I took at the beginning, namely, to refuse all medicine, which I could not help thinking co-operated with the disease, and, instead of resisting putrefaction, promoted a total degeneracy of the vital fluid. When my friend Morgan, therefore, brought his diaphoretic boluses, I put them into my mouth, 'tis true, but without any intention of swallowing them: and, when he went away, spat them out, and washed my mouth with water-gruel. I seemingly complied in this matter, that I might not affront the blood of Caractacus, by a refusal which might have intimated a diffidence of his physical capacity, for he acted as my physician; Doctor Mackshane never once inquiring about me, or even knowing where I was. When my distemper was at the height, Morgan thought my

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