us will keep it with our children and our children's children, and will leave books that will be regarded as friends as long as the English language lasts, and in whatever regions of the earth it may be spoken. It is very pleasant to think in what distant parts of the earth it is spoken, and that in all those parts these books which are friends of ours are acknowledged as friends. And there is a living and productive power in them. They have produced an American literature, which is coming back to instruct us. They will produce by and by an Australian literature, which will be worth all the gold that is sent to us from the diggings. American books have of late asserted very strongly their right to be reputed as our friends, and we have very generally and very cordially responded to the claim. I refer to one book now - Mrs. Stowe's "Dred," though I did not mean to notice any contemporary book at all-for the sake of certain passages in it which I think that none that have read them can have forgotten. They are those in which the authoress describes the effects which were produced upon a very simple-hearted and brave negro - whose whole life had been one of zealous self-devotion to some white children, but who had had no book-teaching whatsoever by the stories which were read to him out of the Old and New Testaments. We are told with great simplicity and with self-evident truth, how every one of these stories started to life in his mind, how every person who is spoken of in them came forth before the hearer as an actual living being, how his inmost soul confessed the book as a reality and as a friend. No lesson, I think, is more suited to our purpose. It shows us what injury we do to the Book of Books when we regard it as a book of letters, and not as a book of life; none can bear a stronger witness to us how it may come forth as the Book of Life, to save all others from sinking into dryness and death. I have detained you far too long in endeavoring to show you how every true book exhibits to us some man from whose mind its thoughts have issued, and with whom it brings us acquainted. May I add this one word in conclusion?-that I believe all books may do that for us, because there is one Book which, besides bringing into clearness and distinctness a number of men of different ages from the creation downwards, brings before us one Friend, the chief and centre of all, who is called there the Son of Man. From his Lectures. M etc. MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY (1806-1873) ATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY, one of the greatest scientific investigators of America, was born in Spottsylvania County, Virginia, January 14th, 1806. He was educated for the United States naval service, and after serving his apprenticeship at sea was stationed at Washington for a number of years as superintendent of the Hydrographical Office and National Observatory (1844-61). During this period he practically invented the science of Meteorology. He says in one of his letters that his first idea of the laws governing the circulation of air and water was given him by the passage in Ecclesiastes, "All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full," The modern signal-service system grew out of his work, and his investigation of the bed of the Atlantic Ocean made it possible to lay the Atlantic Cable successfully. His most noted work, “Physical Geography of the Sea," was published in 1855. It sustained, and perhaps increased, his already great reputation for discoveries, which had brought him honor from the principal governments and learned societies of the world. At the beginning of the Civil War he "went with his State" and became a Commodore in the Confederate navy. After the close of the war he spent several years in Mexico and Europe, returning to become professor of Physics in the Virginia Military Institute at Lexington, where he died February 1st, 1873. THE THE SEA AND ITS SUBLIME LAWS HE inhabitants of the ocean are as much the creatures of climate as are those of the dry land; for the same Almighty Hand which decked the lily and cares for the sparrow, fashioned also the pearl and feeds the great whale, and adapted each to the physical conditions by which his providence has surrounded it. Whether of the land or the sea, the inhabitants are all his creatures, subjects of his laws, and agents in his economy. The sea, therefore, we may safely infer, has its offices and duties. to perform; so may we infer, has its currents, and so, too, its inhabitants; consequently, he who undertakes to study its phenom |