till the flow reaches and passes into the great equatorial current on the west coast of Africa. If this description of the flow of waters in the Atlantic is correct, is it not reasonable to suppose that an eddy or comparatively still place will be created in a central part of the ocean? If we take a basin of water, scatter on the surface chaff, bits of cork, or other light substances, and then create a circular current by a stream of air or a whirling motion, we shall see the floating substances gather in comparative stillness on a central part of the surface. This is exactly the case with the Atlantic. A vast surface, south of the Azores, south and east of Bermuda, north of the tropic of Cancer, northwest of the Cape Verde Isles, and west of the Canaries, is known as the "Sargasso Sea," and is at all times covered with floating sea-weed. This gulf weed (Fucus natans) is so thickly matted over the surface of the water, "that the speed of vessels passing through it is often much retarded." "When the companions of Columbus saw it, they thought it marked the limits of navigation, and became alarmed. Columbus first found this weedy sea in his voyage of discovery; there it has remained to this day, and certain observations as to its limits, extending back for fifty years, assure us that its position has not been

altered since that time."

We cannot follow our philosophical writer in his most interesting and thoroughly convincing account of the currents of the ocean, without greatly exceeding our limits. He shows that the current of the Gulf Stream is about four miles an hour at the Florida Capes, three off Cape Hatteras, and that it becomes slower and slower as it moves north, and increases in width. He claims that, instead of the New England coast, the Nantucket Shoals, and the Banks of Newfoundland turning the course of the stream, it runs where we find it, entirely from other causes. "The Gulf Stream is bound over to the North Sea and the Bay of Biscay, partly for the reason, perhaps, that the waters there are lighter than those of the Mexican Gulf; and if the Shoals of Nantucket were not in existence it could not pursue a more direct route." The stream has its entire breadth, its northern and southern edge, some distance further north in September than in March; vibrating to and fro, with the different seasons, like the pendulum of a clock. The benign influence of the Gulf Stream is seen in the heat that it conveys across the Atlantic to the British Isles and the west of Europe; and were it not for this heat "the soft climates of both England and France would be as that of Labrador, severe and icebound." To the same cause is owing the mild climate of the Orkney and Shetland Islands, Faroe, and Iceland, one branch of the

Gulf Stream going into the Arctic Ocean, and as far east as the Polar basin of Spitzbergen. The caloric taken away by the Gulf Stream leaves the climate of the West India Islands and our southern coast cooler, and more salubrious; the surplus heat being carried to a higher latitude. The surface water is from three to four degrees, and some distance below the surface forty degrees hotter when it leaves the Gulf of Mexico, than when it comes into the Caribbean Sea from the cast.

"Taking only the difference in surface temperature as an index of the heat accumulated there, a simple calculation will show that the quantity of specific heat daily carried off by the Gulf Stream is sufficient to raise mountains of iron from zero to the melting point, and to keep in flow from them a molten stream of metal greater in volume than the waters daily discharged from the Mississippi River. Who, therefore, can calculate the benign influence of this wonderful current upon the climate of the South?"

Here we see that beautiful compensation that is exhibited in all the laws of Nature. The Caribbean Sea is like an enormous steam boiler; the fuel, or source of heat, the tropical sun; the Gulf of Mexico is a distributing reservoir; the Gulf Stream the escape pipe; and this piece of machinery takes the surplus heat of the islands and shores of the Mexican Gulf and our southern coast, and distributes it with a lavish hand on the shores of Great Britain, Orkney, Shetland, Faroe, and far-off Iceland. Regions otherwise uninhabitable from the extreme heat, are made salubrious; and lands in far-off northern climes become temperate, smiling, and fruitful. It has been said-and truly, if such a contingency could happen-that if the land forming the Isthmus of Darien should be broken down by any convulsion of nature, the equatorial current from Africa would flow through into the Pacific, the Gulf Stream would cease, and Great Britain and the Northern Isles change their climates. for those of Labrador and Greenland, and soon cease to be habitable regions. But this contingency will never happen. The Almighty never leaves his work in a precarious condition. The Caribbean Sea is a steam boiler that was not made by mortal man. The barriers were built by Him who "holds the sea in the hollow of his hand."

As practical and satisfactory as is the account of the physical geography of the sea, the explanation of the currents, and the general economy of the ocean, perhaps the most interesting chapters of the work are those that treat of the atmosphere. In these we learn why there is "a rainy season in Oregon, a rainy and dry season in California, another at Panama, two at Bogota, none in Peru, and one in Chili." There is nothing more clear than the demonstration of the cause of the Rainless Regions. A portion of western Peru, lying

on the Pacific slope of the Andes, never has any rain. Here the wind blows all the time in one direction, the "Southeast trades." Commencing on the coast of Africa, as the trade-winds move to the northwest across the Atlantic, they become heavily charged with vapor. Arriving on the shore of Brazil, the winds rise up gradually with the ascent of the land. A more elevated region is necessarily colder, and this increasing coldness, or lower temperature, operates on the moist atmosphere like the pressure of the hand upon a wet sponge. The vapor becomes condensed into drops and falls in rain. Passing over the vast plains and valleys of the land drained by those immense streams, the Amazon and the Rio de la Plata, a great quantity of rain falls, and we see the results in innumerable rivers, and several of enormous magnitude, one the largest in the world. Finally, the winds "reach the snow-capped Andes, and here is wrung from them the last particle of moisture that that very low temperature can extract." On reaching the summit of those lofty mountains they "tumble down as cool and dry winds on the Pacific slopes beyond." They meet with no evaporating surface, and no temperature colder than they were subjected to on the mountain tops until they reach the ocean, and, consequently, they have no moisture that can be extracted on the Pacific slope of the Andes. Were the winds here to blow a part of the year from other directions, the land would receive some rain. In the same way the wet and dry seasons of India and Southern Asia are accounted for, the monsoons and the trades blowing at different seasons in different directions. The average depth of water that falls in rain in a year on the entire earth is stated to be about thirty-seven inches; but in some places there is more than eighteen feet. On some parts of the Pacific such a vast quantity of rain falls that sailors can frequently dip it up quite fresh from the surface of the ocean. One of the most rainy regions is on the west coast of Patagonia, the Pacific slope of the Andes, and the ocean adjacent. As the northwest trade-winds approach the coast, the precipitous, lofty, and snow-covered Andes subject the vapor-bearing gales to such a sudden change, going from a comparatively high to a very low temperature, that the water is condensed and poured down in rain in vast quantities. "Captain King found the astonishing fall of water here of nearly thirteen feet in forty-one days; and Mr. Darwin reports that the sea-water along this part of the South American coast is sometimes quite fresh from the vast quantity of rain that falls." Mr. Maury very appropriately calls the atmosphere an immense "engine." He says "the South Seas themselves, in all their vast inter-tropical extent, are the boiler for it, and the northern hemisphere is its condenser." Our philosopher

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says that "upon the proper working" of this engine or machine depends the well-being of every plant and animal that inhabits the earth; and that, therefore, the management of it, or its movement, or the performance of its offices, cannot be left to chance. They are, we may rely upon it, guided by laws that make all parts, functions, and movements of the machinery as obedient to order as are the planets in their orbits." We shall refer to the book itself for the causes, the springs of action, and the prevailing course of the “wind in his circuits" "round about the world." We do not wish, nor could we if we chose to, extract all the ideas or choice bits of this volume in a brief review of it. To the comprehension of a child is it shown "why the sea is salt," why Lake Superior is fresh, why the Dead Sea, the Great Salt Lake, the Aral and the Caspian Seas are impregnated with saline particles like the ocean itself. An epitome of the book, to give a clear idea of its contents, would almost necessarily be as voluminous as the work itself, for the treatise, in its style and substance, is a model of condensation. Never obscure, never running off into reflections, rhapsodies, and speculations not pertinent to the subject, there is no ground lost, but one condensed chain of facts, arguments, and deductions. The entire work is eminently hopeful and religious, showing the Christian philosopher in every page. That we have in our naval lieutenant a diligent seeker after truth, a man of great comprehension of mind, an original thinker, and one who has as much genius in exploring the depths of philosophical research as Franklin, Herschell, or Humboldt, is already appreciated by the few, and, ere another generation has passed, will be acknowledged by the country and the world.

ART. VI.-EDMUND BURKE.

THE great men of the world are not to be considered the exclusive property of the nations in which they are born, nor of the age which witnessed and received the earliest profit of their actions. Much more is this true of those men who, springing from the middle and lower classes, are not ashamed of their relationship to the masses, but labor with unswerving devotion for the rights of our common humanity. Such men are frequently misunderstood in their own day, and partially forgotten in the age following; but as the years

roll on Truth gives them resurrection; then they live on forever, and receive the homage of the nations.

The fearless soldiers who form the front ranks, and receive the fresh, vigorous charge of the enemy, sacrificing their lives in the onset of the battle, are honored with scarcely a decent burial, while those who shout the victory are crowned with laurel. All great reformations, all triumphs of noble principles, have their precursors; men of noble minds and superior parts, whose actions often suffer an eclipse in the brightness of the period which they have ushered in. So it was with the Reformation of which Luther is the representative in the world's eye. No one would detract from his position in that triumph of religious truth, nor from his world-wide renown; but his dearest admirers are now writing the biographies of the Reformers before the Reformation.

The heart of the age in which we live is throbbing with a true endeavor to restore to humanity its rights; and, notwithstanding its many eccentricities, some of which seem to verge on madness, it is doing right nobly. We do well to honor our present leaders. But there are some names almost forgotten in this relation who deserve a passing recognition, if not a perpetual remembrance. One of these names we have placed at the head of this article. There may be persons who will be surprised to see the name of Edmund Burke on a roll of the prophets; they have heard and thought of him as a great statesman, an illustrious orator, a writer of singular and varied powers. He was all these, and much more; he was an eminent philanthropist. The true question to ask of any man, the question by which the future will judge him, is not the extent of his endowments, but the use, the consecration he has made of them. Do they center on himself, or go beyond self and identify him with the cause of humanity?.

We purpose considering the labors of Mr. Burke in this light, selecting him not as a man of capacious mind, capable of communicating the results of his wisdom in the most captivating and convincing manner, but as a man of a large, warm heart. Deeply sensitive to every attempt to infringe on the rights of man, he was equally bold in their defense; always eloquent, his tongue seemed touched with live coals when pleading the cause of humanity. All nations, and parties, and sects were the same to him when their rights as men were disregarded or endangered. He could no more be silent over the wrongs of India than his own beloved Ireland. Reared a Protestant, and ardently attached to the State Church, none ever pleaded more eloquently for Christian justice toward the Dissenters and Catholics. It is not to be presumed that a pubFOURTH SERIES, VOL. X.-7