38 THE YEAR. 



so much as changes its temperature ; for the sun has 

 been bestowing its influence upon the globe since the 

 first day of its creation, and though rational philo- 

 sophy has not yet sufficiently investigated the subject, 

 and it is probably above human investigation, we are 

 not warranted in saying that so much energy shall or 

 must perish, after performing the work of a season. 

 Small wits in modem times, have sought the appro- 

 bation of the thoughtless, by bringing forward the 

 conservation and storing of sun beams, as a matter 

 wherewithal to turn the labours of philosophy into 

 ridicule, in the same manner as similar triflers of an 

 earlier date ridiculed the notion of weighing the earth 

 or the air. But when men ceased from merely con- 

 sidering the particular fact, and followed out the con- 

 nexion of which it formed a part, the weighing of these 

 became operations within the reach of the most ordinary 

 capacity. In the case of air, it was a noble triumph 

 over ignorance, and over the stubbornness of a phi- 

 losophy of names and dogmas. " Magister dixit, 

 ' Natura fugit vacuum /." and instantly " the making 

 of nothing" was believed to be a twin work with " the 

 making of all things" Magister himself, no doubt, 

 meant the actual destruction or annihilation of matter 

 once existing, and not the moving of one piece of it 

 to a distance from another ; but he was not so under- 

 stood : and the water rose in pumps, and smooth sur- 

 faces, from between which the air was excluded, stuck 

 together, just because nature " had a horror at an empty 

 space." But the water would not rise above thirty- 

 two feet in the Grand Duke of Tuscany's long pump; 

 and Galileo was consulted. That excellent and ami- 



