NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATIOX. 27 



motion, are sot into a coupled revolution in ellipses. 

 Next, centrifugal force comes into play, flinging off por- 

 tions of the rotating masses, which become spheres by 

 virtue of the same law of attraction, and are held in orbits 

 of i-evolution round the central body by means of a com- 

 position between the centrifugal and gravitating forces. 

 All, we see, is done by certain laws of matter, so that it 

 becomes a question of extreme interest, what ai-e such 

 laws? All that can yet be said, in answer, is, that we see 

 certain natural events proceeding in an invariable order 

 under certain conditions, and thence infer the existence of 

 some fundamental arrangement which, for the bringing 

 about of these events, has a force and certainty of action 

 similar to, but more precise and unerring than those 

 arrangements which human society makes for its own. 

 benefit, and calls laws. It is remarkable of physical laws, 

 that we see them operating on every kind of scale as to 

 magnitude, with the same regularity and perseverance. 

 The tear that falls from childhood's cheek is globular, 

 through the efficacy of that same law of mutual attraction 

 of particles which made the sun and planets round. The 

 rapidity of Mercury is quicker than that of Saturn, for 

 the same reason that, when we wheel a ball round by a 

 string and make the string Avind up round our fingers, 

 the ball always flies quicker and quicker as the string is 

 shortened. Two eddies in a stream, as has been stated, 

 fall into a mutual revolution at the distance of a couple 

 of inches, through the same cause which makes a pair of 

 suns link in mutual revolution at the distance of millions 

 of miles. There is, we might say, a sublime simplicity 

 in this indifference of the grand regulations to the vast- 

 ness or minuteness of the field of their operation. Their 

 being uniform, too, throughout space, as far as we can 

 scan it^ and their being so unfailing in their tendency to 



