BOOK OF NATURE LAID OPEN. 99 



any thing better calculated to excite in us lofty and 

 sublime conceptions of the Creator. 



" May not the sea/' in the words of a modern au- 

 thor, " be styled the temple of contemplation? View- 

 ed in all its stages, it exalts and improves the mind- 

 Its level expanse,, when a calm prevails, communi- 

 cates a similar tranquillity to the reflecting breast; and 

 when its billows lift their devouring heads, they sug- 

 gest ideas the most sublime, meditations the most 

 solemn. The very nature of the prospect, boundless 

 and unbroken, presents a sensible argument for eter- 

 nity of duration and infinity of space, more forcible 

 than the subtilest reasoning of metaphysics." 



The ocean, rolling its surges from clime to clime, 

 is, undoubtedly, the most august object under the 

 whole heavens. A spectacle of magnificence and 

 grandeur which fills the mind, and engrosses the 

 utmost stretch of imagination. 



What an immense and mighty assemblage of wa- 

 tery particles rcmst be contained in the great deep, 

 and what a prodigious extent of the earth's surface 

 doth it cover ! Some natural philosophers, indeed, 

 have carried their ideas on this subject so far as to 

 assert, that if the bed of the sea were empty, all the 

 rivers of the world flowing into it, with a continu- 

 ance of their present stores, would take at least eight 

 hundred years to fill it again to its present height. 

 If, then, in a single drop of water, as much only as 

 will adhere to the point of a needle,- a philosopher 

 has computed no less than thirteen thousand globules, 

 what an inconceivable number must there be in the 



