Com] AND SYMBOLS. 57 



and sicken and shiver into their graves. Suddenly a hurricane 

 sweeps across the Pampas from the cold summits of the Andes in 

 the south-west, and in a few days the seeds of the disease are 

 roughly yet effectually expelled by its searching force. Cholera 

 epidemics in this country have usually been attended with great 

 stillness in the atmosphere, by which the operation of causes 

 tending to concentrate the poison was no doubt favoured. 

 Therefore when we hear the stormy wind howling round our 

 houses, or sweeping through courts and closes, let us think of 

 it as one of Nature's most efficient sanitary agents, by which 

 she renovates the air, tainted through stagnation, and destroys 

 the seeds of the pestilence that were growing up for our 

 destruction. BE. 



The Law of Compensation. 



The makers of nice astronomical instruments, when they 

 have put the different parts of their machine together and set it 

 to work, find, as in the chronometer for instance, that it is 

 subject in its performance to many irregularities and imperfec- 

 tions that in one state of things there is expansion, and in 

 another state contraction among cogs, springs, and wheels, with 

 an increase or diminution of rate. This defect the makers have 

 sought to overcome, and, with a beautiful display of ingenuity, 

 they have attached to the works of the instrument a contrivance 

 which has had the effect of correcting these irregularities, by 

 counteracting the tendency of the instrument to change its 

 performance with the changing influences of temperature. This 

 contrivance is called a compensation, and a chronometer that is 

 well regulated and properly compensated will perform its office 

 with certainty, and preserve its rate under all the vicissitudes 

 of heat and cold to which it may be exposed. In the clock- 

 work of the ocean, and the machinery of the universe, order and 

 regularity are maintained by a system of compensations. A 

 celestial body as it revolves around its sun flies off under the 

 influence of centrifugal force ; but immediately the forces of 

 compensation begin to act, the planet is brought back to its 

 elliptical path, and held in the orbit, for which its mass, its 

 motions, and its distance were adjusted. Its compensation is 

 perfect. T. 



