A SPIRIT-CALL AT MIDNIGHT.

Tis midnight! The busy, beating heart of the Great City is stilled; the ever-throbbing pulse of daily life is motionless; the fevered minds of the million are steeped in the Lethe of sleep, and darkness rests upon the homes alike of the dead and the living, Let us unlatch the casement of our study-the laboratory of our mental toil-and gaze abroad into the gloom. The fresh air waves our aged locks with the freshness of a summer morning, and stirs the thin grey hairs that time

[PRICE TWOPENCE.

Love-the early and the ardent, purified from the clay and dross of earth-again careers through the blue courses of our veins. One, who held our soul in thrall-who holds it now, forgiven, but not forgotten-will soon be at our side. We made a compact that, though by Destiny our forms and fates should be divided, our thoughts and souls should meet at midnight. She hath long since passed away, but the solemn vow is rigidly preserved, and annually, on that isthmus of time which unites night with morning, we mingle our heart-breathings, and hold sweet converse of the past. Blest vision ! trusty truth-teller of the immortal essence within us! even now thou shouldst be here. Thou art!

Dreams, visions, ecstasies, that roll over the tide of has left upon our furrowed brow, with a touch of gentle loving-human thought in ceaseless billows, vibrating with Eolian ness. It is midnight, when to waking souls the past gushes back upon the memory with a torrent's force. Faces and forms that we have loved and lingered over start forth from the dusky canopy of night in visible reality before us. How often have we exclaimed, in our early aspirations at a time like this, What bliss would it be to gaze even on the shadows of those we love!" and here-roused from their deep sleep of years, as by the wand of a potent necromancer-lo! we behold them.

melody the tense chords of the weary heart, and sunning dim and clouded eyes with a vision of bygone happier days, stay with us, yet a little, in this lower sphere, and enable us to snatch aside the mystic curtain of futurity, that we may behold the golden islands afar off, wherein our mundane pilgrimage may end, and whereon our tired limbs may find an eternal resting place. Thou who lovest and hath loved, as the aspiring intelligence only can love, bear with us in our wander

ings, and let us be thine-thine for ever! Teach us the creed that will outlive the cold tenement in which our bodies are clothed, and imbue us with a keen perception of the poetry that is everywhere above and around us. Steep our hearts in the flood of the beautiful, and win us back to the worlds of light. Obedient spirit, thou hast heard and hearkened to our prayer! We hear and listen.

THE WORLDS ABOVE US.

E know that the earth which we inhabit is a globe of somewhat less than 8,000 miles in diameter, being one of a series of eleven which revolve at different distances around the sun, and some of which have satellites in like manner revolving around them. The sun, planets, and satellites, with the less intelligible orbs termed comets, are comprehensively called the solar system; and, if we take as the utmost bounds of this system the orbit of Uranus (though the comets actually have a wider range), we shall find that it occupies a portion of space not less than three thousand six hundred millions of miles in extent. The mind fails to form an exact notion of a portion of space so immense; but some faint idea of it may be obtained from the fact that, if the swiftest race horse ever known had begun to traverse it, at full speed, at the time of the birth of Moses, he would only as yet have accomplished half his journey.

It has long been concluded amongst astronomers that the stars, though they only appear to our eyes as brilliant points, are all to be considered as suns, representing so many solar systems, each bearing a general resemblance to our own. The stars have a brilliancy and apparent magnitude which we may safely presume to be in proportion to their actual size, and have been made to ascertain the distance of some of the stars; the distance at which they are placed from them. Attempts and it has been calculated that the distance of the double star

"There is, if rightly understood, a poetry equally around the starry dome which is now our canopy, and the blue mould of a cheese-crust; and, in the bloom of the peach, the microscope has shown forth a treasury of flowers and gigantic forests, in the depths of which the roving animalculæ find as secure an ambush as do the lion and tiger in the gloomy jungles of Hindostan. In a drop of liquid crystal, the water-wolf chases his wounded victim till it is changed to crimson with his blood. Ehrenberg has seen monads in fluid the 24,000th part of an inch in size, and in one drop of water he has counted 500,000,000 creatures, the population of the whole globe. Then, by the power of the telescope, we roam into other systems-see world beyond world, through infinite extent, profusely stattered o'er the blue expanse ;' behold orbs so remote as to reduce to a mere span the distance between us and the Geor-á á of the constellation of the Centaur cannot be less than gium Sidus, and revel in all the gorgeous splendour of rings, and moons, and nebula-the poetry of heaven. Is there not an exquisite romance in the closing of the barometrical blosons; of the white convolvulus and the anagallis or scarlet mpernal, of the sunflower and the leaves of the diona and nimosa? Yea; in all that thou seest there is poetry, harmony, nd beauty."

CONSOLATION-If we go at noon-day to the bottom of a deep pit, we shall be able to see the stars which, on the level ground, are invisible. Even so, from the depths of grief-worn, wretched, seared, and dying-the blessed apparitions and tokens of Heaven make themselves visible to our eyes.

SUPERSTITIONS OF SCOTCH FISHERMEN. The reader may, probably, be familiar with the old Norse belief, so poetically introduced in the "Pirate," that whoever saves a drowning man must reckon on him ever after as an enemy. It is a belief still held by some of our northern fishing communities. We have oftener than once heard it remarked by fishermen, as a strangely-mysterious fact, that persons who have been rescued from drowning regard their deliverers ever after with a dislike bordering on enmity. We have heard it affirmed, too, that when the crew of some boat or vessel have perished, with but the exception of one individual, the relatives of the deceased invariably regard that one with a deep, irrepressible hatred. And in both cases the elicited feelings of hostility and dislike are said to originate not simply in grief, embittered envy, or uneasy ingratitude, but in some occult and supernatural cause. There occurs to us a little anecdote, strikingly illustrative of this kind of apotheosis (shall we call it ?) of the envious principle. Some sixty years ago there was a Cromarty boat wrecked on the rough shores of Eathie. All the crew perished, with the exception of one fisherman; and the poor man was so persecuted by the relatives of the drowned, who even threatened his life, that he was compelled, much against his inclination, to remove to Nairn. There, however, only a few years after, he was wrecked a second time, and, as in the first instance, proved the sole survivor of the crew. And so he was again subjected to a persecution similar to the one he had already endured, and compelled to quit Nairn, as he had before quitted Cromarty.-North British Review.

twenty thousand millions of miles. If we suppose that similar intervals exist between all the stars, we shall readily see that the space occupied by even the comparatively small number visible to the naked eye, must be vast beyond all powers of conception.

The number visible to the eye is about three thousand; but, when a telescope of small power is directed to the heavens, increased in proportion to the increased power of the instrua great number more come into view, and the number is ever ment. In one place where they are more thickly sown than elsewhere, Sir William Herschel reckoned that fifty thousand hour. It was first surmised by the ancient philosopher, Demopassed over a field of view two degrees in breadth in a single critus, that the faintly white zone which spans the sky under the name of the Milky Way, might be only a dense collection of stars too remote to be distinguished. This conjecture has been verified by the instruments of modern astronomers, and some speculations of a most remarkable kind have been formed in connection with it. By the joint labours of the two Herschels, the sky has been "gauged" in all directions by the telescope, so as to ascertain the conditions of different parts with respect to the frequency of the stars. The result has been a conviction that, as the planets are parts of solar systems, so are solar systems parts of what may be called astral systems-that is, systems composed of a multitude of stars bearing a certain relation to each other. The astral system to which we belong is conceived to be of an oblong, flattish form, with a space wholly and comparatively vacant in the centre, while the extremity in one direction parts into two. The stars are most thickly sown in the outer parts of this vast ring, and constitute the Milky Way. Our sun is believed to be placed in the southern portion of the ring, near its inner edge, so that we are presented with many more stars, and see the Milky Way much more clearly, in that direction, than towards the north, in which line our eye has to traverse the vacant central space. Nor is this all. Sir William Herschel, so early as 1783, detected a motion in our solar system with respect to the stars, and announced that it was tending towards the star a, in the constellation Hercules. It is, therefore, receding from the inner edge of the ring. Motions of this kind, through such vast regions of space, must be long in producing any change sensible to the inhabitants of our planet, and it is not easy to grasp their general character; but grounds have, nevertheless, been found for supposing that not only our sun, but the other suns of the system, pursue a wavy course round the ring from west to east, crossing and

recrossing the middle of the annular circle. "Some stars will
depart more, others less, from either side of the circumference
of equilibrium, according to the places in which they are
situated, and according to the direction and the velocity with
which they are put in motion. Our sun is probably one of
those which depart furthest from it, and descend furthest into
the empty space within the ring." According to this view, a
time may come when we shall be much more in the thick of the
stars of our astral system than we are now, and have, of course,
much more brilliant nocturnal skies; but it may be countless
ages before the eyes which are to see this added resplendence
shall exist.
The evidence of the existence of other astral systems, besides
our own, is much more decided than might be expected, when
we consider that the nearest of them must needs be placed at
a mighty interval beyond our own. The elder Herschel,
directing his wonderful tube towards the sides of our system,
where stars are planted most rarely, and raising the powers of
the instrument to the required pitch, was enabled with awe-
struck mind to see suspended in the vast empyrean astral
systems, or, as he called them, firmaments, resembling our own.
Like light cloudlets to a certain power of the telescope, they
revolved themselves, under a greater power, into stars, though
these generally seemed no larger than the finest particles of
diamond dust. The general forms of these systems are various;
but one at least has been detected as bearing a striking resem-
blance to the supposed form of our own. The distances are
also various, as proved by the different degrees of telescopic
power necessary to bring them into view. The farthest
observed by the astronomer were estimated by him at thirty-
five thousand times more remote than Sirius, supposing its
distance to be about twenty thousand millions of miles. It
would thus appear, that not only does gravitation keep our
earth in its place in the solar system, and the solar system in
its place in our astral system, but it also may be presumed to
have the mightier duty of preserving a local arrangement
between that astral system and an immensity of others, through
which the imagination is left to wonder on and on without
limit or stay, save that which is given by its inability to grasp
the unbounded.

The two Herschels have, in succession, made some other most remarkable observations on the regions of space. They have found within the limits of our astral system, and generally in its outer fields, a great number of objects which, from their foggy appearance, are called nebula; some of vast extent and irregular figure, as that in the sword of Orion, which is visible to the naked eve; others of shape more defined; others, again, in which small bright nuclei appear here and there over the surface. Between this last form and another class of objects, which appear as clusters of nuclei with nebulous matter around each necleus, there is but a step in what appears a chain of related things. Then again, our astral space shows what are called nebulous stars; namely, luminous spherical objects, bright in the centre and dull towards the extremities. These appear to be only an advanced condition of the class of objects above described. Finally, nebulous stars exist in every stage of concentration, down to that state in which we see only a common star with a slight bur around it. It may be presumed that all these are but stages in a progress, just as if, seeing a child, a boy, a youth, a middle aged and an old man together, we might presume that the whole were only variations of one being.

Now, mechanical philosophy informs us that the instant a mass begins to rotate, there is generated a tendency to fling off its outer portions; in other words, the law of centrifugal force begins to operate. There are, then, two forces acting in opposition to each other, the one attracting to, the other throwing from, the centre. While these remain exactly counterpoised, the mass necessarily continues entire; but the least excess of the centrifugal over the attractive force would be attended with the effect of separating the mass and its outer parts. These outer parts would then be left as a ring round the central body, which ring would continue to revolve with the velocity possessed by the central mass at the moment of separation, but not necessarily participating in any changes afterwards undergone by that body. This is a process which might be repeated as soon as a new excess arose in the centrifugal over the attractive forces working in the parent mass. It might, indeed, continue to be repeated, until the mass attained the ultimate limits of the condensation which its constitution imposed upon it. From what cause might arise the periodical occurrence of an excess of the centrifugal force? If we suppose the agglomeration of a nebulous mass to be a process attended by refrigeration or cooling, which many facts render likely, we can easily understand why the outer parts, hardening under this process, might, by virtue of the greater solidity thence acquired, begin to present some resistance to the attractive force. As the solidification proceeded, this resistance would become greater, though there would still be a tendency to adhere. Meanwhile the condensation of the central mass would be going on, tending to produce a separation from what may now be termed the solidifying crust. During the contention between the attractions of these two bodies, or parts of one body, there would, probably, be a ring of attenuation between the mass and its crust. At length, when the central mass had reached a certain stage in its advance towards solidification, a separation would take place, and the crust would become a detached ring. It is clear, of course, that some law presiding over the refrigeration of heated gaseous bodies would determine the stages at which rings were thus formed and detached. We do not know any such law, but what we have seen assures us it is one observing and reducible to mathematical formulæ.

If these rings consisted of matter nearly uniform throughout, they would probably continue each in its original form; but there are many chances against their being uniform in constitution. The unavoidable effects of irregularity in their constitution would be to cause them to gather towards centres of superior solidity, by which the annular form would, of course, be destroyed. The ring would, in short, break into several masses, the largest of which would be likely to attract the lesser into itself. The whole mass would then necessarily settle into a spherical form by virtue of a law of gravitation; in short, would then become a planet revolving round the sun. Its rotatory motion would, of course, continue, and satellites might then be thrown off in turn from its body in exactly the same way as the primary planets had been thrown off from the sun. The rule, if we can be allowed so to call it, receives a striking support from what appear to be its exceptions. While there are many chances against the matter of the rings being sufficiently equable to remain in the annular form till they were consolidated, it might, nevertheless, be otherwise in some instances; that is to say, the equableness might, in those instances, be sufficiently great. Such is proOf nebulous matter in its original state, we know too little bably the case with the two rings around the body of Saturn, to enable us to suggest how nuclei should be established in it. which remain a living picture of the arrangement, if not the But supposing that, from a peculiarity in its constitution, condition, in which all the planetary masses at one time stood. nuclei are formed, we know very well how, by virtue of the It may also be admitted that, when a ring broke up, it was law of gravitation, the process of an aggregation of the neigh-possible that the fragments might spherify separately. Such bouring matter to those nuclei should proceed until masses, more or less solid, should become detached from the rest. It is a well-known law in physics that, when fluid matter collects towards or meets in a centre, it establishes a rotatory motion. See minor results of this law in the whirlwind and the whirlpool-nay, on so humble a scale as the water sinking through the aperture of a funnel. It thus becomes certain that when we arrive at the stage of a nebulous star, we have a rotation on an axis commenced.

seems to be the actual history of the ring between Jupiter and Mars, in whose place we now find four planets, much beneath the smallest of the rest in size, and moving nearly at the same distance from the sun, though in orbits so elliptical, and of such different planes, that they keep apart.

The nebular hypothesis, as it has been called, obtains a remarkable support in what would at first seem to militate against it-the existence in our firmament of several thousands of solar systems, in which there are more than one sun. These