instrument was invented is not certainly known; though it is believed that Drebell, a Dutchman, who had one in 1621, was either the inventor or an early improver of it. By means of this optical contrivance we perceive a variety of wonders in almost every object in the animal, the vegetable, and the mineral kingdoms. We perceive, for instance, that every particle of matter, however minute, has a determinate formthat the very scales on the skin of a fish are all beautifully interwoven and variegated like pieces of network, which no art can imitate—that the points of the prickles of vegetables, though magnified a thousand times, appear as sharp and well polished as to the naked eye-that every particle of the dust on a butterfly's wing is a beautiful and regularly organised feather-that every hair of our head is a hollow tube, with bulbs and roots, furnished with a variety of threads or filaments-and that the pores in our skin, through which the perspiration flows, are so numerous and minute, that a grain of sand would cover a hundred and twenty-five thousand of them. We perceive animated beings in certain liquids, so small that fifty thousand of them would not equal the size of a mite; and yet each of these creatures is furnished with a mouth, eyes, stomach, blood-vessels, and other organs for the performance of animal functions. In a stagnant pool, which is covered with a greenish scum during the summer months, every drop of the water is found to be a world teeming with thousands of inhabitants. The mouldy substance which usually adheres to damp bodies exhibits a forest of trees and plants, where the branches, leaves, and fruit can be plainly distinguished. In a word, by this admirable instrument we behold the same Almighty hand which rounded the spacious globe on which we live and the huge masses of the planetary orbs, and directs them in their rapid motions through the sky— employed, at the same moment, in rounding and polishing ten thousand minute transparent globes in the eye of a fly, and boring and arranging veins and arteries, and forming and clasping joints and claws for the movements of a mite ! un-dis-mayed...not frightened Kosc-i-us-ko toc-sin ......alarum bell vol-leyed ......in volleys, from ...... .sympathising ...powerful Leuc-tra ..(the battle-field Oh! sacred Truth! thy triumph ceased a while, Warsaw's last champion from her height surveyed, "Oh, Heaven!" he cried, "my bleeding country save! He said, and on the rampart-heights arrayed Low murmuring sounds along their banners fly, In vain, alas! in vain, ye gallant few! Strength in her arms, nor mercy in her wo! Dropped from her nerveless grasp the shattered spear, Closed her bright eye, and curbed her high career ;— Hope, for a season, bade the world farewell, And Freedom shrieked-as KOSCIUSKO fell! The sun went down, nor ceased the carnage there: Tumultuous murder shook the midnight airOn Prague's proud arch the fires of Ruin glow, His blood-dyed waters murmuring far below; The storm prevails, the rampart yields a way; Bursts the wild cry of horror and dismay ! Hark! as the smouldering piles with thunder fall, A thousand shrieks for hopeless mercy call! Earth shook-red meteors flashed along the sky, And conscious Nature shuddered at the cry! Departed spirits of the mighty dead! Friends of the world! restore your swords to man, PRESSURE OF WATERY FLUIDS. All the particles of fluids are so connected together that they press equally in every direction, and are equally pressed upon each particle presses equally on all the particles that surround it, and is equally pressed upon by these. It equally presses upon the solid bodies which it touches, and is equally pressed upon by those bodies. From this, and from their gravity, it follows, that when a fluid is at rest, and left to itself, all its parts rise or fall so as to settle at the same level, no part standing above or sinking below the rest. Hence, if we pour water or any other liquid into a tube or pipe bent double like a U, it will stand at the very same height in both limbs. Nor does it make any difference if one limb is wider than the other. Generally, and in every case, if there be two tubes or limbs of a tube connected together, however different their width may be, a fluid poured into them will stand at the same level, and thus a portion of fluid, however small, will resist the pressure of a portion, however large, and balance it. From these considerations two most important conclusions follow. The one is, that water, by being confined in pipes or close channels of any kind, will rise to the height from which it came, that is, as high as its source; and upon this principle depend all the useful contrivances for conveying water by pipes, in a way far more easy, cheap, and effectual than those vast buildings called aqueducts, by which the ancients carried their supplies of water in artificial rivers over arches for many miles. The other is not less true, but far more extraordinary, and indeed startling to our belief, if we did not consider the reasoning upon which it is founded; it is, that the pressure of the water upon any object is not at all in proportion to the bulk of the water, but only to the size of the surface on or against which it presses, and its own height above that surface; in other words, that any quantity of water, however small, may be made to support any quantity, however great. This principle is called the Hydrostatical paradox; paradox signifying something which, though true, appears, when first considered, to be untrue We are at first startled by the apparent impossibility of the statement. But when we come to examine it more closely, we find it to be accurately true; for the small tube in the case just mentioned may be made ever so narrow, and to hold ever so little water, while the wide tube communicating with it may be made ever so large, and may hold ever so much water; and the level at which the water stands in both tubes will be the same. Every thing thus depending upon the height and the surface, and nothing upon the bulk of the fluid, we may easily perceive what mischief may be done by a very small quantity of water, if it happens to be applied or distributed so as to stand high, in however thin a body or column, and to spread over a wide but confined and shallow space. This may be easily tried with a hogshead of water, or any other liquid, by fixing a small strong pipe in the bung-hole, and pouring water through it; when the water rises in the pipe to a sufficient height (and this will be more or less according to the strength of the barrel) the barrel will burst, although but a very small quantity of water may have been poured into the pipe. The same effect may be produced naturally, by the rain falling into and filling some long narrow chink that may have been left in the walls of a building, or may be made by its decay in the course of time; and whether the chink be equally wide throughout, or vary in its size, and whether it be straight like a pipe, or crooked, makes no difference; provided it is water-tight, so as to get full of the rain, the pressure will always be in proportion to its perpendicular height, and not to its length if it winds. The same process in nature may produce the most extensive devastation; it may cause earthquakes, and split or heave up mountains. Suppose in the bowels of some mountain there should be an empty space of ten yards square and only an inch deep on an average, in |