librarians. The prophecies were in their custody, and are read in all their copies of the Old Testament, as well as in ours. They have made many attempts to explain them away, but none to question their authenticity.

It remains, then, that these are all real predictions, all centring in our Saviour, and in him only, and delivered many centuries before he was born. As no one but God has the foreknowledge of events, it is from him these prophecies must have proceeded; and they show, of course, that Christ was the person whom he had for a great length of time pre-determined to send into the world, to be the great Deliverer, Redeemer, and Saviour of mankind.

BISHOP PORTEOUS.

HYMN BEFORE SUNRISE IN THE VALLEY OF
CHAMOUNI.*

[SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, eminent as a poet, essayist, and philosopher, was born at Bristol in 1772, and died in 1834. He was educated at Jesus College, Cambridge, where he greatly distinguished himself as a classical scholar. His poems, both lyric and dramatic, are replete with beautiful imagery, profound thought, and sublime feeling. His prose works embrace many subjects interesting to mankind-theology, history, politics, literature, logic, and metaphysics.]

HAST thou a charm to stay the morning star

In his steep course? So long he seems to pause
On thy bald awful head, O sovran Blanc !
The Arvé and Arveiron at thy base

Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful Form!
Risest from forth the silent sea of pines,
How silently! Around thee and above
Deep is the air, and dark, substantial, black,
An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it
As with a wedge! But when I look again,
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity!

O dread and silent Mount ! I gazed upon thee,
Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,

* The valley of Chamouni on the north-west of Mont Blanc, is the most celebrated in the Alps for its picturesque sites and the wild grandeur of its glaciers.

Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer I worshipped the Invisible alone.

Yet, like some sweet beguiling melody,

So sweet, we know not we are listening to it,
Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thought,
Yea, with my life and life's own secret joy,
Till the dilating Soul, enrapt, transfused,
Into the mighty vision passing-there,
As in her natural form, swelled vast to Heaven!
Awake, my Soul! not only passive praise
Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears,
Mute thanks and secret ecstasy! Awake,
Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart, awake!
Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my Hymn.

Thou first and chief, sole sovran of the vale!
O struggling with the darkness all the night,
And visited all night by troops of stars,

Or when they climb the sky, or when they sink:
Companion of the morning star at dawn,
Thyself earth's rosy star, and of the dawn
Co-herald! wake, O wake, and utter praise!
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth?
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?

And you, ye five wild torrents, fiercely glad!
Who called you forth from night and utter death,
From dark and icy caverns called you forth,
Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks,
For ever shattered, and the same for ever?
Who gave you your invulnerable life,

Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy, Unceasing thunder and eternal foam?

And who commanded (and the silence came), "Here let the billows stiffen and have rest?"

Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow Adown ravines enormous slope amain—

Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty Voice,
And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!

Who made you glorious as the gates of Heaven
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers
Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet?
God! Let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God!
God! sing ye meadow-streams with gladsome voice!
Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!

Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost! Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest! Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain-storm! Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds! Ye signs and wonders of the elements!

Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise!

Once more, hoar Mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks,
Oft from whose fcet the avalanche, unheard,
Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene,
Into the depth of clouds that veil thy breast--
Thou too again, stupendous Mountain! thou
That as I raise my head, a while bowed low
In adoration, upward from thy base

Slow travelling with dim eyes suffused with tears,
Solemnly seemest like a vapoury cloud
To rise before me. Rise, oh, ever rise!
Rise like a cloud of incense from the Earth!
Thou kingly Spirit throned among the hills,
Thou dread ambassador from Earth to Heaven,
Great hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.

COLERIDGE.

REST AND MOTION.

opposite corners of a figure, as A C. (See under adjacent).

Orbit, (orbis, L.) a circular, or nearly circular path, as of a planet. Parabola, (para, ballo, G.) the curve described by a projectile.

Project, (pro, jacio, L.) to throw forward. Hence also projectile. Tangent, tango, L.) a straight line touching a curve, but not cutting it.

Vertical, (vertex, L.) right up and down; perpendicular to the horizon. Hence also vertically.

THE LAWS OF MOTION.

THREE brief maxims, known as the laws of motion, have embodied, since the days of Sir Isaac Newton, the fundamental principles by which all motion is regulated. They have been expressed in various forms, but have remained substantially unchanged.

I. The first is simply an assertion of the property of inertia. It declares that every body must persevere in a state of rest, or of uniform motion in a straight line, unless compelled to change that state by some force impressed upon it. This has already been sufficiently explained.*

II. The second law may be stated thus:-Every motion, or change of motion, must be proportional to the force impressed, and in the direction of that force. It is important to notice the application of this law to the case of a body acted on by two or more forces simultaneously. If two forces act on a body in the same direction, it is clear that the velocity communicated to the body in that direction will be equal to the sum of the velocities which they would communicate to it by their separate action. If, on the other hand, they act in opposite directions, the result will be equal to the difference between the same velocities, and in the direction of the greater. Thus, if two men pull a boat in the same direction, the one imparting a velocity of six miles an hour, and the other a velocity of four miles an hour, the real velocity of the boat will be ten miles an hour.

* Page 225.

If, however, they pull against each other, the boat will move at the rate of two miles an hour in the direction in which the stronger man pulls.

FIG. 22.

B

Still more important is the case of forces acting on a body in different, but not opposite directions. Suppose two forces acting on the body A, impelling it in the directions AB and A C, as indicated by the arrows. If, in a given time, these forces, by their separate action, D would carry the body A to B and C respectively, then, at the end of that time, the body will be found neither

b

at B nor C, but at D, the opposite angle of the parallelogram ABCD, of which AB and AC are adjacent sides. If each of the forces be such as to produce a uniform velocity, the body will have moved with a uniform velocity along the diagonal A D.

A few examples will render this more intelligible. If a swimmer direct his course right across a river, he will be carried down, ere he reach the opposite bank, exactly as far as a floating log would be in the same time. He will move, like the body A, along the diagonal of a parallelogram, of which one side is the breadth of the river, and the adjacent side is a line marking the distance he has been carried down. His real course will thus be much longer than the breadth of the river, but it will be completed in the same time as if it were the breadth of the river only. If he wishes to swim right across, he must make for a point further up the stream, and the singular result will be, that the space his body passes over will now be less, while the time and effort necessary to accomplish the passage will be much greater than in the former case. Suppose, again, a ball dropped from the top of a tall mast, while the ship is moving rapidly. It falls exactly at the bottom of the mast. It might be supposed, indeed, that the ship would have moved away, so to speak, before the ball could reach the