90 General Reflections on Heai. 
an Itis an idea which has often struck me most foreibly, 
I have often wondered at not seeing it more noticed in 
ba * that heat is the ultimate source of all the grand ex- 
hibitions of Power in the natural world. This is the imme- 
diste agent in producing elasticity; and nearly all the exhi- 
bitions of power in nature arise, either directly or indirectly, 
from clastic eriform matter suddenly expanding itself. Hence 
the winds that roar through the sky and convulse the ocean; 
hence the earthquake and volcano, that shake and rend the 
solid globe ; Hepes the desolating whirlwind that bears the 
tempest on its win 
Bat it is not in thiedé sublime: and dstonishing scenes of 
nature alone, that we become acquainted with the energies of 
this omnipotent agent. Is not every thing great in art, that 
depends on motion, also the offspring of its power? Among 
all the ministers of art, none is to be compared in energy 
‘with the elastic powerof steam. M. Dupin, a distinguish- 
ed member of the French Institute, bas recently a d 
the Pigtthabin forcible illustration of the potency of this agent. 
apa pyramid of Exypt required for its erection, the 
of 100.000 ae a ie twenty years. Its weight is esti- 
a fair calculation, the ‘steam 
petra at work i in 1 England, would constitute a force ad- 
uate to the accomplishment of the same object in con 
beeek To bave raised the pyramid in eighteen hours, at 
the rate at which the Egyptians proceeded, would have te- 
quired 974,000,000 of men; to man the engines in England 
are required hot more ‘than 36,000 hands. By the aid of 
‘the steam engine, therefore, one man can now accomplish 
as mueh labour as could have been performed ‘by 27,055 
Egyptians, aided by such machinery as they could command. 
Until a very recent périod, Lord Bacon seems to have been 
‘the only philosopher, who had fornied any adequate concep- 
tions of the dominion which man would ultimately acquire 
over matter, by studying the laws by which it is controlled. 
His Novum Organum is full of anticipations. of wad the pre- 
ree) Li. de ‘ 
*The idea, howeved, did not scape Black and Foureroy, both of 
whom made forcible of it. 
aa taving access to the work of Dupin, the writer is dependent 
extracts 
or the data on which the canes statements are founded on 
in public Journals. 
