INFLUENCE OF CHEMICAL LAWS. 45 



factories, where many hundred weights of mate- 

 rials are used at one operation, would succeed 

 very indifferently, if at all, were not this last 

 law taken as the guide of all their proceedings. 

 Soda, glass, soap, paint, and a number of other 

 substances, are now prepared in these works on 

 purely scientific principles ; and were it otherwise 

 as, indeed, it used once to be when the laws 

 of chemistry were not known vast losses would 

 in many instances take place from one or other 

 of the materials employed in excess or the con- 

 trary. 



The harmonious regularity and order of the 

 world around us are dependent upon these 

 laws. There is no confusion of substances and 

 elements without a definite purpose, and with- 

 out stability, in nature. Every particle of 

 which this great earth is formed is held bound 

 by the chain of these laws ; they direct its 

 behaviour towards other particles, and the 

 result is that the chemistry of nature, instead 

 of presenting us with a scene of disorder and 

 destruction, appears before us like some beau- 

 tiful structure, every part of which has its 

 appointed place, every stone its niche, every 

 bolt its proper resting-place, while the whole 

 is of exquisite beauty and design. 



When we have enumerated the elements, of 

 many of which every object we behold, as we 



