INTRODUCTION. 37 



matic mode of treating the subject in language at once ani- 

 mated and picturesque. 



But thought and language have ever been most intimately 

 allied. If language, by its originality of structure, and its 

 native richness, can, in its delineations, interpret thought with 

 grace and clearness, and if, by its happy flexibility, it can paint 

 with vivid truthfulness the objects of the external world, it 

 reacts at the same time upon thought, and animates it, as it 

 were, with the breath of life. It is this mutual re-action which 

 makes words more than mere signs and forms of thought ; 

 and the beneficent influence of a language is most strikingly 

 manifested on its native soil, where it has sprung sponta- 

 neously from the minds of the people, whose character it 

 embodies. Proud of a country that seeks to concentrate her 

 strength in intellectual unity, the writer recalls with delight 

 the advantages he has enjoyed in being permitted to express his 

 thoughts in his native language ; and truly happy is he, who, 

 in attempting to give a lucid exposition of the great pheno- 

 mena of the universe, is able to draw from the depths of 

 a language, which through the free exercise of thought, and 

 by the effusions of creative fancy, has for centuries past 

 exercised so powerful an influence over the destinies of man. 



LIMITS AND METHOD OF EXPOSITION OF THE PHYSICAJ 

 DESCRIPTION OF THE UNIVERSE. 



I HAVE endeavoured, in the preceding part of my v wor : k, to 

 explain and illustrate by various examples, how the enjoy- 

 ments presented by the aspect of nature, varying as they do 

 in the sources from whence they flow, may be multiplied and 

 ennobled by an acquaintance with the connection of pheno- 

 mena and the laws by which they are regulated. It remains, 

 then, for me to examine the spirit of the method in which the 

 exposition of the physical description of the universe should be 

 conducted, and to indicate the limits of this science, in accord- 

 ance with the views I have acquired in the course of my 

 studies and travels in various parts of the earth. I trust I 

 may flatter myself with a hope that a treatise of this nature 



