112 ABOUT THE WEATHER. 



nothing to do with our subject. I must of course confess, 

 that so far as questions of natural science are concerned, 

 we cannot look upon the Bible as any authority, and 

 therefore believe that, in that passage, it addressed itself 

 to a very circumscribed condition of humanity in an 

 ignorant and uneducated century. We believe now, most 

 certainly, that we know whence the wind comes and 

 whither it goes. 



It is next requisite that we should state more definitely 

 what we understand by Weather. The chief point I have 

 already mentioned. In our regions it is the wind which, 

 changing according to its various directions, brings us 

 clouds and sunshine, warmth and cold, rain and snow, 

 calm and storm, and through all these, impresses upon the 

 general character of the season the individual peculiarities 

 which we call weather. All these different phenomena, 

 and, above all, the wind, are merely alterations, various 

 conditions of combination, rest and motion of the subtile 

 matters which surround us, and which we name the 

 atmosphere. When, in the clear night, we go out and 

 look upward at the stars, our eyes perceive no boundary 

 between us and those celestial fires. We, indeed, fancy 

 that an invisible something surrounding us, must extend 

 uninterruptedly to those shining worlds, the light of which 

 appears to stream so unobstructedly upon us. But it is 

 not so. If we could ascend to them, we should arrive 

 at the limit of the atmosphere before we had left behind 

 us a portion of our journey worth speaking of. The poets 

 well name this the aerial ocean, and the adventurous 

 mortals who fly through it, aerial navigators. It surrounds 

 our globe as a thin fluid layer and shares its adventures. 

 With it, it flies through the space of the universe, in its 

 course round the sun ; with it, in equal velocity, it turns 



