And rock and sea the pauseless spheres,

In endless swiftness onwards whirl.*

MICHAEL.

And each the other storms outstorm,+
From sea to land, from land to sea;

* "Another thing in the element, not less to be admired, is the constant round which it travels, and by which, without suffering adulteration or waste, it is continually offering itself to the wants of the habitable globe. From the sea are exhaled those vapours which form the clouds. These clouds descend in showers, which, penetrating into the crevices of the hills, supply springs; which springs flow in little streams into the valleys, and there uniting, become rivers; which rivers, in return feed the ocean: so there is an incessant circulation of the same fluid, and not one drop probably more or less now than there was at the creation."-Paley's Natural Theology.

Paley, however, seems strangely to overlook the agency of capillary attraction in the formation of springs and the circulation of water.

"Throughout these infinite orbs of mingling light,

Of which yon earth is one, is wide diffused

A spirit of activity and life,

That knows no term, cessation, or decay,

But active, steadfast and eternal still,

Round all, a chain enfrenzied form

Of deep pervading energy. The wasting levin flames before

The path on which the thunders play;

Guides the fierce whirlwind, in the tempest roars,
Cheers in the day, breathes in the balmy groves,
Strengthens in health, and poisons in disease;
And in the storm of change that ceaselessly
Rolls round the eternal universe, and shakes
Its undecaying battlements, presides,
Apportioning, with irresistible law,

The space each spring of its machine shall fill :
So that when waves on waves tumultuous heap
Confusion to the clouds, and fiercely driven;
Heaven's lightnings scorch the uprooted ocean fords,
Whilst to the eye of shipwrecked mariner
All seems unlinked contingency and chance;
No atom of this turbulence fulfills

A

vague and unnecessitated task,

Or acts but as it must and ought to act."

SHELLEY.

"What, but God,

Inspiring God, who boundless spirit all,
And unremitting energy pervades

Adjusts, sustains, and animates the whole."

THOMSON.

But still thine angels,* Lord adore,

+Thy day that sweetly glides away.‡

*Boten signifies a messenger, or ambassador, and corresponds to the Greek Aggelos, Lat. Angelus.

Angel is understood to be properly a name of office, not referring to the nature of the person employed, but to his agency; and it may be said perhaps with little risk, that if the word messenger, envoy, or delegate, be mentally substituted by the reader for angel, when the title occurs, the passage would lose nothing by the change."-Calmet's Dictionary of the Bible.

It may be remarked, that the early bishops were termed the " Angels' of their respective churches, and that the term minister, to this day, means indifferently an envoy or a pastor. + Wandeln, signifies progress without much exertion, lounging.

A strictly literal translation of this exquisite, but alas unapproachable chorus, may possibly be acceptable to the reader :

RAPHAEL.

The sun, after the olden manner, chimes into the emulous chaunt of the brother spheres, and his forewritten journey, he completes with a gait of thunder. His aspect gives strength to the angels, even if no one is able to fathom him. The inconceivably lofty works are glorious as on the first day.

GABRIEL.

And swift, inconceivably swift, the gorgeousness of the earth wheels itself round and round; it alternates the brightness of Paradise with deep awful night. The sea foams up in broad streams to the deep foundation of the rocks, and rock and sea are hurried away in the eternal swift course of the spheres.

THE THREE IN CHORUS.

Strength from the sight the angels gain,

Whilst none to fathom Thee have

MICHAEL.

power,

And storms are boisterous in their rivalry from sea to land, from land to sea, and raging form round about everything a chain of the deepest working. There a flashing desolation flames before the path of the thunderbolt, but still thy messengers, Lord, adore the sweet gliding away of thy day.

THE THREE IN CHORUS.

The sight gives strength to the angels, whilst no one can fathom thee, and all thy lofty works are glorious as on the first day.

The completion of his fore-ordained journey by the sun, does not seem to me to mean the daily sunset, a signification which would poetically degrade the sun by making it subordinate to the earth, besides being astronomically incorrect, but to that gigantic progression known to exist, though by us dimly traced, and as yet unmeted, which the sun makes through Day and night fill the third and fourth lines of the second stanza. Raphael does not represent the sun as striking into the chorus of the bodies which revolve round him, but of the BROTHER SPHERES, i.e. other suns, so called fixed stars, but whose real condition is set forth by Humboldt in his Kosmos as follows:

space.

"The view of the heaven inlaid with stars, the relative position of the stars and nebulous spots, as also the distribution of these luminous masses, the charms of the landscape, if I may here make use of the expression, presented by the firmament at large, will depend, in the course of milleniums relatively on the proper actual motions of the stars and nebulæ, on the

And all thy lofty works remain,

As glorious as in time's first hour.

translation of our solar system in space, on the bursting out

of new stars, and on the disappearance or sudden diminution in intensity of light in old stars. These statements seem to bring sensibly before us the vastness of the motions which in infinitely small divisions of time, go on incessantly like an eternal clock-the time-piece of the universe. If we imagine, as in a vision of the fancy, the acuteness of our senses preternaturally sharpened even to the extreme limit of telescopic vision, and incidents compressed into a day or an hour, which are separated by vast intervals of time, everything like rest in spacial existence will forthwith disappear. We shall find the innumerable host of fixed stars, commoved in groups in different directions; nebulæ drawing hither and thither, like cosmic clouds; the milky way breaking up in particular parts, and its veil rent: motion in every point of the vault of heaven, as on the surface of the earth in the germinating, leaf-pushing, flower-unfolding organums of its vegetable covering.

In the aggregate life of nature, organic as well as sidereal, Being, Maintaining and Becoming, are alike associated with motion."

The first stanza I understand to relate to the sun as a glorious part of the universal whole.

The second, to the earth as a part of the solar system, obeying the laws of which the sun is the centre.

The third, to the earth as an integral body, under the influence of laws peculiar to itself.

The chorus, as drawing the whole system of the universe into the Deity.