AND EXTERNAL RESISTANCE. 313 



-estimated at 39 millions of acres, the weight 

 of the atmosphere upon it, ought conse- 

 quently, to press with a force equal to 

 fifteen hundred thousand millions of tons, 

 (1,576,870,000) and the weight upon the whole 

 surface of the world, is estimated to be equal 

 to a globe of solid lead, 60 miles in diameter. 



Whatever reprehension such conceits might 

 merit, if they were merely intended to astonish 

 the ignorant, by an idle display of the wonder- 

 ful powers possessed by natural means, they 

 become absolutely ridiculous, and laughable, 

 when they are maintained as fundamental 

 truths by the wisest of the wise. 



In order that the fanciful consequences which 

 have been so learnedly described, should en- 

 sue, the natural condition of things as it actu- 

 ally exists, must be destroyed, aad an inverted 

 state of it, be fancied and whimmed ; instead 

 of the atmosphere subsisting in a state of equi- 

 librium, it ought to press ^unequally in par- 

 ticular directions ; ipstead of subsisting in 

 open space, it ought to be confined in close 

 vessels ; instead of being denser at bottom 

 than at top, it ought to be denser at top thai* 

 at bottom ; and, finally, instead of moving, as 

 we do in a plenum, we ought to move and to 

 breathe (if I may be allowed the folly of sucfh an 

 expression) in a perfect and a perpetual va- 

 cuum. If this inverted order of nature, and of 



