enshrines an ever-living soul-"an embryo God;" a soul like your own, noble in its origin, powers and destiny. His mind immortal as its Author, has gone forth, and from the material Universe, has gathered a universe of his own; a world of thought, as wonderful as that system which surrounds him; of thought, all living like itself, his spirit endowed with almost creative power, has formed and peopled it. What a being that mind of yours is! Are you not conscious of what I tell you? How often, when the curtains of night have been drawn around you, and you have closed your eyes, but not to sleep, have images of the past, and thoughts of the future, occupied that part of you which thinks; when the sports of the day have been renewed with heightened pleas ure; companions seemed dearer to you than ever; and you have been as interested and delighted, as you ever were in beholding the most beautiful scenery of earth. This is what I mean by an internal world. I presume you have sometimes seen, in your rambles in the field or forest, tall trees, stripped of their bark, and perhaps riven throughout the whole extent of their huge trunks. You knew that such could only be the effects of lightning. But did you ever see its splintered-fire, bursting from the cloud, strike some distant tree or spire? Now, let loose from its dark magazine, and almost before another now, the object wrapped in flame? What can outstrip the lightning? Nothing, do you say? Yes, you possess that which can leave the winged arrows of Heaven far behind. Do you ask what it is? I answer, thought. When you saw that bolt descending, did you not think of some giant oak, which you had often passed, and as often admired, on your way to school; or of the dwelling of a neighbor whom you loved, situated in that direction, which might be injured or destroyed? Did not the accounts which you had heard or read,

I

of loss of property and life, flash upon your mind, and all this, before the loud, sharp thunder betokened the stroke? How many times, think you, your mind could travel from earth to heaven and return, before the lightning reached its destined mark? In a clear evening, do you not sometimes fix your eye upon a distant star, that shines away up in the blue sea of space? Doubtless you do, and as you continue gazing, and begin to realize that the "lucid point," is not "a needle's puncture, to let God's glory through," but a vast world, which, "Perhaps illumes some system of its own,

With the strong influence of a radiant sun;"

and as a vast chronometer* of Heaven, poised and propelled by God's own hand, gilded with living light, beats ages in its ceaseless swing. Do not your thoughts fly up, where your eyes can scarcely see? But did you ever wait for them to make their journey there? You readily answer "no;" and yet the very light that meets your eye and apprises you of that star's existence, though flying at the rate of one hundred and ninety-three thousand miles in a single second, may have "left its far-fountain, twice-three years ago."

Perhaps your thought, escaping the visual bound even of the far-seeing telescope, embarked from that far island in the noble Archipelagof of God, to travel on as near as thought can go, to that incalculable Centre around whom all systems wheel to Him, "with whom is neither parallax nor shadow of change." How wonderful is thought! What a birthright is mind; a birthright "created in God's own image." Take this from man, and he becomes a brute; deprive him of sen

* A time measurer, as a clock.

+ Literally, chief sea; in a general sense, "sea of many isles;" employed in this latter sense here, calling the stars, islands.

+ Variation.

sation, and he is superior in nothing, to the trailing vine or the green rush. Take care of yourself, then. Self? What is worthy of the name, but mind? Take such a being, thus gloriously endowed. Give him gesture, an expressive coun. tenance and a voice; the voice of an infant or a dog; let him cry, moan, whine, yelp, growl, or bark, or even give him the melodious throat of the nightingale, or the volubility of the magpie, and bid him let his feelings forth through such a medium. Could he do it? Can you do it? What mockery!

Having concluded what I intend to say upon the subject of intelligence and reason, some one may inquire, (I hope you will not, reader,) what connection there is between these possessions and language. Suppose a dog can compare, and an elephant calculate, what bearing have these processes upon the subject of which your book purports to treat? It is certainly far from encouraging, to have such questions propounded at so late a period; but the explanation is easily made. If the animate world possesses nothing but instinct, then there is nothing upon which to predicate an intelligent language among brutes; if man is endowed with nothing superior to mere animal intelligence, then both the dog and his master would employ a medium of communication, differing, it is true, as the organs employed, but precisely similar in extent, and every important particular. But we have seen that while the language of the infant and the brute are identical, the language of the man is as much superior to that of all other animals, as his powers are nobler; as much more complex, as he, himself is more elevated in the scale of being.

CHAPTER VII.

Language of animated nature—This is a world of language— Tabular view-Antennal language-Illustrations-Language of gesticulation-Its importance-Defects in modern systems of instruction-Power of gesticulation-Not subject to rule— Anecdote of Curran.

Let us now proceed to talk of the language of animated nature, as being any means by which one individual furnishes another with ideas.

Always living in a world of life and emphatically a world. of language, and having, from earliest infancy been inured to the multitude of sounds that are ascending day and night from myriads of living things, they have become almost a part of our being, and excite no particular attention.

Hence it is, that the most graphic delineations of nature are generally the production of those, who, escaping for a while, the murky atmosphere and discordant din of the city, enjoy a new existence, as they inhale the fresh, free breath of heaven, sweeping [the rocky hills and verdant dells of the country. But if we had sprung into being upon some planet where there was no language, and were placed in the most secluded spot of this living world, at midnight, how tumultuous would be the feelings which these voices would awaken, even then, as each wave of sound struck upon our unaccustomed ear!

The glow-worm trimming its signal lamp in the dewy grass; the hidden snake that stays your step with its warning rattle; the bright-eyed viper beneath the stone-heap, or the noisy geese by the pool, that talk almost English* to you as

* Hissing; our language is noted for the recurrence of sibilants,

you pass; the cicada playing a merry tune upon his triangle; the ant's silent expression of its feelings, and the dying dolphin's hues; the lion's bristling mane, and the panther's flashing eye; the bird's soft madrigal, and the cricket's roundelay, ringing loud and clear from the hearth-stone; the angry bassnote of the captured bee, and the lazy hum of the sleepy flies; the tiger's rumbling growl; the vulture's scream; the squirrel's chirrup, and "mousie's" piping voice, are naught but so many varieties of a possession which is as universal as social being itself. Naught but so many displays of infinite Wisdom, and all are LANGUAGE-as strictly so, as the babelsounds in the market, the low whispers of lovers, or the thrilling tones, flushed check, lighted eye and expressive gesture of the orator; differing in manner, differing in quality, differing in extent, but in nature, essentially the same.

Language is susceptible of one grand division; viz: Natural and Artificial; the former, the language of animal feeling and intelligence; the latter, peculiarly of human thought and human reason; the one has been molded and modified by the skill of the creature; the other is originally adapted to the wants of its possessor by the wisdom of the Creator; in fine, the one partakes of the nature of its possessor, ever improving, and ever susceptible of improvement; the other limited, and without a possibility of expansion.

Natural language in a general sense, is possessed alike by the horse and his rider, by the insect and its tormentor, and as such we will now contemplate it. Artificial language is peculiar to the man, and though the parrot may be taught to sing "Hail Columbia," and the magpie to wish you an apposite "good morning, sir," yet it is a mere mechanical operation, unintelligent in itself considered, as the creaking of a cart-wheel; divested of feeling, intelligence, every thing which