reason, except to bring the piece to a
close, begins to struggle with May. When
he has struggled sufficiently all over the stage,
he drags May up a platform covered with
whity-brown canvas—no attempt has been
made to paint it—to represent rocks, and
throws her among some revolving towels,
representing water. He has no sooner done
so than he is attacked by George, who throws
him after May among the towels. Then George
springs in among the towels himself, and
brings May to the shore not in the least wet,
she having probably dried herself with the
towels; and then, when Chaffer, bobbing up
his head, is shot by Bob Oates, George and May
join hands and declare their happiness to be
complete. The scenery was an affront even to
Mr. Whelks. Mr. Whelks in the East deserves
better things of those who, in catering for his
amusement, thrive upon him remarkably well.

FORCE AND MATTER.

EVERYTHING which we behold around us may
be classed into two grand categories; namely,
agents, and things which are acted on by those
agents. Wherever we look or turn we behold
or we feel MATTER; which would be a dead
inert unchanging substance, were it not set
in motion, transformed, and vivified, by the
never-ceasing influences of FORCE. It is
Almighty Force, combined with Wisdom and
Benevolence, which has moulded the universe
into its present state of beauty and regularity.
It is the force of chemical affinity which causes
the iron to rust, and the leaf to rot, and the
rock to crumble into fertile soils. It is the
vibrating force of radiation which causes the sun
to illumine and the fire to warm us. But for
the force of gravitation, the apple, detached
from its parent bough, would still hang where
it was, suspended in mid-air, waiting for a hand
to stretch forward and take it.

The existing state of things is therefore
entirely brought about by the combination of
agents and of objects acted on. The hand which
holds this pen is merely matter directed by a
guiding mental force. However marvellously
that matter may be organised, however wonderful
and mysterious may be the origin and derivation
of that force, one thing is certain—that in
every act and motion we have force impressing
and influencing matter. We have the worker
and the material; the operator and the subject;
the master proceeding according to law, and the
passive unresisting slave. All which constitute
the majors and the minors both of the visible
and the invisible worlds. Force, and its
modifications, is the mighty problem which occupies
the profoundest intellects of the day.

Travel in imagination to the vast and
magnificent region of South America called Brazil.
Penetrate the thick forests with which its soil
is densely covered, and you will fall upon groups
of numerous slaves busily excavating the earth,
breaking fragments off the rocks, and agitating
the morsels in bowls of water. From time to
time, a small pebble, apparently worthless, is
carefully picked out and put aside. Hunting
for this pebble, and nothing else, is the constant
employment of the workmen—for the pebble is
no less than the diamond, which acquires its
value and brilliancy solely through the labours
of the lapidary. He cuts all its facets one by
one, and so brings out the luminous treasures
which the rough stone held concealed.

The diamond is the image both of the human
mind, and of the subjects on which it brings
itself to bear. Continued efforts elicit light. And,
as the diamond is capable of being polished and
perfected only through the instrumentality of its
own proper dust, so are learning and science
the results of the friction and contact of many
minds, each labouring to help the other to
attain greater clearness, translucency, and
faultlessness. This premised, we are reminded that
we may call the substance of bodies matter,
while force comprises the diverse causes which
produce, in bodies, diverse manifestations, and
are incessantly modifying their conditions and
their properties.

Matter, then, is the substance of bodies—that
part of bodies which manifests itself to our
senses. By studying it, we discover that it is
made up of little bits, of excessive minuteness,
which are called molecules, or atoms. Bodies,
therefore, consist of more or less considerable
agglomerations of material atoms; which atoms
are grouped together without actually touching
each other, leaving between them intervals or
interstices, called by philosophers "pores."
Would you have this constitution of matter
acquire in your eyes the full truth of evidence?
You have only to increase, in thought, those
intervals indefinitely, at the same time
transforming the molecules into so many worlds.
You have then before you a planetary system;
each molecule has become a planet, each interstice
measures millions of leagues in length and
breadth. But the whole system, in its integrity,
is nothing but a sort of enormous body whose
different portions form one whole. There is the
same relation between the exiguity of the
ultimate particles of matter and the interstices
which separate them, as there is between the
planets and the interplanetary spaces. A group
of molecules, and portion of a body, may be
regarded as a world. Exactly as the heavenly
bodies revolve in their orbits round each other,
without ceasing to keep together, so do the
molecules of matter oscillate around their
respective positions, without staying beyond
certain limits. It is liberty restrained by law.

Professor Tyndall, in like manner, tells us that
imagination must help us to understand the
constitution of solid bodies; because the motion
of their molecules, communicated by heat,
however intense it may be, is executed within
limits too minute, and the moving particles are
too small, to be visible. In the case of solid
bodies, while the force of cohesion still holds
them together, we must conceive a power of
vibration, within certain limits, to be possessed
by the molecules. We must suppose them
oscillating to and fro; and the greater the