PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION OP THE UNIVERSE. 43 



2. A rapid review of the known phsenomena of the uni- 

 verse, under the form of a general view of nature. 



3. The influence of the external world on the imagina- 

 tion and feelings. This, in modern times, has acted as a 

 powerful incitement to the study of the natural sciences, 

 through the instrumentality of animated descriptions of dis- 

 tant regions, descriptive poetry (a branch of modern litera- 

 ture), of landscape painting when it seizes the characteristic 

 physiognomy of vegetable or of geological forms, and by 

 the cultivation and arrangement of exotic plants, in well- 

 contrasted groups. 



4. The history of the contemplation of nature, or the 

 progressive development of the idea of the Cosmos, with the 

 exposition of the historical and geographical facts which 

 have led to the systematic connection of the phsenomena as 

 they are thus presented. 



The higher the point of view from which all the 

 phsenomena are to be regarded in this study, the more 

 necessary it is to circumscribe it within its just limits, 

 and to distinguish it from all analogous and auxiliary 

 ones. The physical description of the universe is founded 

 on the contemplation of all the material creation (whether 

 substances or forces) co-existing in space. For man, as an 

 inhabitant of the earth, it may be ranged under two leading 

 divisions ; the telluric and the celestial. I will pause a few 

 moments on the first of these, (or on that portion of the 

 science of the Cosmos which concerns the Earth,) in order 

 to illustrate the independence of the study, and the nature 

 of its relation to general physics, descriptive natural history, 

 geology, and comparative geography. An encyclopaedic 

 aggregation of these would no more constitute the telluric 



