Con

Cotopaxi has propelled by ejection from the sea to the summit of Etna, would exert a pressure of 300 atmospheres; but the fluid lava is nearly three times heavier than water. sequently, when this lava flows over the margin of the terminal cone, its pressure at the level of the plain will equal the force of 900 atmospheres, while its force at the bottom of the crater itself will equal to the pressure of 1800 atmospheres. The weight of this pressure on every square yard or surface will therefore be equal to more than 40,000 tons. is exerted in all directions at once. "Now we know that the pressure of liquids Consequently each square yard of the vault which supports the volcano is subjected to a force acting from below upwards, which is 283 times greater than the machines of Saint-Germain. In the crater alone, the total force which is solely employed in sustaining the column of lava at the level of the orifice is equal to is a force of more than twenty-one thousands 53,262,500 times that of these machines. This

its crater, blocks of ten cubic yards, weighing about thirty tons, to a distance of nine miles. Stones eight pounds in weight were thrown six miles by Vesuvius, namely, to Pompeii. Sir William Hamilton observed stones to be thrown so high above the mountain-tops, that they occupied eleven seconds in falling, which gives a hight of two thousand feet, and an initial velocity of three hundred and fifty feet in a second. At a violent eruption in Teneriffe, in 1798, the mountain threw out stones so high that twelve or fifteen seconds were counted during their descent, giving consequently from two thousand five hundred to three thousand six hundred feet, and an initial velocity of from three hundred and eighty to four hundred and eighty feet per second. The pressure of a whole column of lava, which should overflow the crater of Teneriffe, would (according to D'Aubuisson) be equal to one thousand atmospheres, or, as we have enumerated in the above table, one thousand and nine atmospheres.

"Man is small and feeble, but full of pride," says M. Quatrefages, "and he always takes himself as the unit, and as a term of comparison. He measures the globe and the universe by his own stature, and the infinite powers of nature by his own forces. In his eyes, Etna, that blow-hole which is scarcely perceptible upon our planet, which is about 24,000 miles in circumference, is a gigantic mountain, and he starts back in amazement at the forces which are required to upheave it. It is not very difficult, however, to convince one's self that in volcanic phenomena the energy of the cause is fully in harmony with the greatness of the effects.

"Let us then, by way of illustration, inquire what relation exists between the forces employed at the present day by industrial science, and those which slumber within the crater of Etna. Let us suppose and the assumption is by no means exaggerated that this crater is five hundred yards in diameter, and that it penetrates below the earth to a depth equal to the hight of the mountain.

"The magnificent steam-engines which exhaust the air on the atmospheric line of St. Germain (near Paris) have a four hundred horse power. They act under a pressure of six atmospheres, and their pistons present a surface of more than three square yards. In approximate calculations like this, the pressure of an atmosphere on a surface whose extent we know, may be regarded as equal to the weight of a column of water of the same base, and of eleven

yards in hight. Consequently the total effect produced by the machines of Saint-Germain may be represented by a weight of about 150 tons.

"A column of water raised from the level of

of millions of horses.

"Hitherto we have supposed that the steamengine was in perfect working order, and that the lava rose casily to the margin of the crater. In the steam-engine the safety-valves become clogged, and are no longer available at the right moment; innumerable causes, some of which still unknown, bring about the sudden evaporation of too large a quantity of water. In this case the boilers burst, and, rending the most solid walls, throw the fragments far around them. Under circumstances such as these, masses of fused metal weighing two tons have been projected to a distance of 250 yards. Now volcanoes have also their explosions, or, more correctly speaking, their eruptions are to a certain extent one continuous explosion, and the preceding remarks will show how extensively powerful must be their action.

"To appreciate completely the forces which are put in action, it will be necessary to add the pressures that we have already calculated, also the tumultuous liberation of vapors and gases, and the frightful degree of tension to which these elastic fluids must be subjected at a temperature capable of liquefying the hardest rocks. It would be necessary to multiply the upward pressure resulting from these combined forces not merely by the surface of the crater, but by the extent of the bore, which may perhaps embrace the entire central elevation; and we should then obtain numbers representing a force of which nothing would be able to give us any adequate idea, if the mountain itself did not exist as a monument of this formidable power.'

Let us assume that the pressure of steam necessary to raise felspathic lava five miles may be taken in round numbers although this immense pressure is consias two thousand atmospheres. Then,

* Rambles of a Naturalist, vol. ii. p. 171.

derable, yet it seldom or ever had been | tion. On their scarred sides the courses brought into mechanical action by human of primeval lava-streams can be continucreatures. Only of late years have we ously traced-fiery streams that seethed found any approach amongst men to such and swelled long before man walked the figures. Messrs. Hopkins and Fairbairn, earth. All these marks of a world-old at the request of the British Association incandescence have a special interest for for the Advancement of Science, accumu- the geologist; but they possess also a lated pressures equal to those of the highest higher interest seldom adverted to- an mountains, arriving even at the pressure interest for the believer in revelation, an a column of water of thirty-three miles. intense interest for every expectant of "a Were such a pressure as this in action, new heaven and a new earth, wherein and were it unrelieved by volcanic rents, dwelleth righteousness." To one who it would lift up large tracts of solid land; should be unacquainted with the forces and it may even now be operating in this and frequency of volcanic phenomena, it manner. To such a force we may attri- would seem a strange thing to prophesy bute the uplifting of the western coast of that this ocean-girded globe shall be finally South-America in 1822, when, through a consumed by fire. But to one well inspace of one thousand miles in length, the formed upon these points nothing will aplevel of land and sea was altered, and the pear more probable than that "the earth, ground was in many places permanently and all the works therein, shall be burned raised. Thus, too, entire provinces have up." One hour's relaxation of the rebeen raised gradually and continuously, pressing power of the Omnipotent-one as, for example, a portion of Scandinavia. upraising of his finger from off the subConsiderable islands have lifted themselves dued springs of irrepressible force-and up from the bottom of the sea, and have immediately, from ten thousand rents of afterwards vanished as rapidly as they the cleft and riven earth, would burst appeared. We have no space to enume- forth innumerable fires, and the solid rate the recorded instances of the appear- masses composing the exterior envelope ance and disappearance of some volcanic of the globe would become molten seas; islands, and of the permanence of others." the mountains would indeed flow down The number of these islands would surprise the unprepared reader, as in the instance of the Aleutian islands, and the Azores, where, in 1757, nine new islands were formed in less than a twelvemonth. In the very bosom of the opposing elements rise up the hearths and fountains of fire, and the quenching waters flow into the very furnaces which have once raged with terrific flames, while the liquid masses of lava have rolled down in fiery streams to meet their natural foe, and have only paused and failed when they had advanced far into the drowning depths of the ocean.

Such are some of the more unquestionable tokens of the agency of fire in the elevation and alteration of large portions of our earth. Many of the largest volcanoes appear to have burnt themselves out, and now stand like blasted and scathed monuments of ancient combus

at his presence, as when the melting fire burneth, the fire causeth the waters to boil." "The bills would melt lik wax at the presence of the Lord ;" and it would then be acknowledged, in a sense infinitely more terrific than was conceived of old

"For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains." (Deut. 32: 22.) Having, then, plain prognostications of the future from far-spreading and desolate fields of lava and cinders and ashes, from the once flaming beacons of lofty mountains, and from cities and villages and vineyards buried under the heavy clouds of ejected ashes, we may well repeat and apply the inference of an apostle: "Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness ?"

From Titan.

ILLUSTRATIVE SKETCHES OF THE REIGN OF HENRY VIII.

The friar disappears. A neighbor of the new opinions, who has seen him come and go, takes his place, and then begins an argument. One says: "My father's faith shall be my faith." And the other, hot and foolish, answers: "Thy father was a liar and is in hell, and so is my father in hell also. My father never knew Scripture, and now it is come forth."

I MUST now take my reader below the surface of outward events to the undercurrent of the war of opinions, where the forces were generated which gave to the time its life and meaning. Without some insight into this region, history is but a dumb show of phantoms; yet, when we gaze into it with our best efforts, we catch but fitful images and fleeting pictures. In palace and cottage, in village The slide again moves. We are in a church and metropolitan cathedral, at the village church, and there is a window board of the Privy Council, or in the road-gorgeously painted, representing the va side ale-house, the same questions were rious events in the life and death of discussed, the same passions were agitated. Thomas à Becket. The King sits on his A mysterious change was in process in throne, and speaks fiercely to his four the minds of men. They knew not what knights. The knights mount their horses it was-they could not control its speed and gallop to Canterbury. The Archor guide its direction. The articles and bishop is at vespers in the quire. The the settlement of 1536 were already buried | knights stride in and smite him dead. under the froth of the insurrection. New Then follows the retribution. In the standing-ground was to be sought for, only in its turn to slip away as it seemed to be gained. And the teachers and the taught, the governors and the governed, each separate human being, left to his own direction, was whirled along the rapids which formed the passage into a new era. A few scenes out of this strange time have been preserved for us in the records. They may pass one by one before us like the pictures in a magic slide.

The first figure that appears is a "friar mendicant, living by the alms of the king's subjects, forming himself to the fashions of the people." He is "going about from house to house, and when he comes to aged and simple people he will say to them: "Father or sister, what a world this is! It was not so in your father's days. It is a perilous world. They will have no pilgrimages. They will not we should pray to saints, or fast, or do any good deeds. O Lord! have mercy on us! I will live as my forefathers have done. And I am sure your fathers and friends were good, and ye have followed them hitherto. Continue ye as ye have done, and believe as they believed.'"

great central compartment of the window the haughty prince is kneeling naked before the shrine of the martyr, and the monks stand round him and beat him with their rods. All over England in such images of luminous beauty the memory of the great victory of the clergy had been perpetuated. And now the particular church is Woodstock, the court is at the park, and day after day, notwithstanding the dangerous neighborhood, in the church aisles groups of people assemble to gaze upon the window, and priests and pardoners expatiate with an obvious application on the glories of the martyr, the Church's victory, and the humiliation of the King. Eager ears listen; eager tongues draw comparisons. A groom from the court is lounging among the crowd, and interrupts the speakers somewhat disdainfully; he says that he sees no more reason why Becket was a saint than Robin Hood. No word is mentioned of the profanity to Henry; but a priest carries the story to Gardiner and Sir William Paulet. The groom is told that he might as well reason of the King's title as of St. Thomas's: forthwith he is hurried off under charge of heresy to the Tower;

and, appealing to Cromwell, there follows | teach them or preach to them, but " a storm at the council-table.

gave

his time and attention to dicing, carding, We are next at Worcester, at the Lady bowling, and the cross waster." In their Chapel, on the eve of the Assumption. desire for spiritual food they applied to There is a famous image of the Virgin the rector of the next parish, who had there, and to check the superstition of come occasionally and given them a serthe people, the gorgeous dress has been mon, and had taught them to read the taken off by Cromwell's order. A citizen New Testament; when suddenly, on of Worcester approaches the figure: Good Friday, "the unthrifty curate en"Ah, Lady," he cries, "art thou stripped tered the pulpit, where he had set no foot now? I have seen the day that as clean for years," and "admonished his parishmen had been stripped at a pair of gal-ioners to give no credence to the newlows as were they that stripped them." Then he kisses the image, and turns to the people and says: "Ye that be disposed to offer, the figure is no worse than it was before," " ""having a remorse unto her." The common treads close upon the serious. On a summer evening a group of villagers are sitting at the door of an ale-house on Windermere; a certain master Alexander, a wandering ballad-singer, is "making merry with them." A neighbor Isaac Dickson saunters up and joins the party.

"Then the said Isaac commanded the said minstrel to sing a song he had sung at one Fairbank's house in Crossthwaite, in the county of Westmoreland, in the time of the rebellion, which song was. called Crummock,' which was not convenient, which the said minstrel utterly denied. The said Isaac commanded the said minstrel again in a violent manner to sing the song called 'Cromwell,' and the said minstrel said he would sing none such; and then the said Isaac pulled the minstrel by the arm, and smote him about the head with the pommel of a dagger, and the same song the minstrel would not sing to die for. The third time the said Isaac commanded the minstrel to sing the same song, and the minstrel said it would turn them both to anger, and would not. And then did Isaac call for a cup of ale, and bade the minstrel sing again, which he always denied; then Isaac took the minstrel by the beard and dashed the cup of ale in his face; also, he drew his dagger and hurt master Willan, being the host of the said house, sore and grievously in the thigh, in rescuing of the said minstrel."

Again, we find accounts of the reception which the English Bible met with in country parishes.

A circle of Protestants at Wincanton, in Somersetshire, wrote to Cromwell complaining of the curate, who would not

fangled fellows which read the new book." "They be like knaves and Pharisees," he said; "they be like a dog that gnaweth a marry-bone, and never cometh to the pith, therefore avoid their company; and if any man will preach the New Testament, if I may hear him, I am ready to fight with him incontinent;" and "indeed," the petitioners said, "he applyeth in such wise his school of fence so sore continually, that he feareth all his parishioners."

So the parish clerk at Hastings made a speech to the congregation on the faults of the translation: It taught heresy, he said; "it taught that a priest might have a wife by God's law. He trusted to see the day that the book called the Bible, and all its maintainers and upholders, should be brent."

Here, again, is a complaint from the parishioners of Langham in Essex, against their village potentate, a person named Vigourous, who with the priests oppressed and ill-used them.

"Upon Ascension-day last past did two maidens sit in their pew or school in the church, as all honest and virtuous persons use to do in matins time, saying their matins together upon an English primer. Vigourous this seeing was sore angry, in so much that therefore, and for nothing else, he did bid the maidens to avoid out of the church, (calling them) errant whores, with such other odious and spiteful words. And further, upon a time within this year, one of Vigourous's servants did quarrel and brawl with other children many, whom he called heretics; and as children be light and wanton, they called the said servant again Pharisee. Upon this complained Robert Smyth of our town to Vigourous, saying that it was against reason that the great fellow his servant should quarrel and fight with children. Whereupon Vigourous said to his servant: 'See that thou do cut off their

So went the world in England, rushing forward, rocking and reeling in its course. What hand could guide it! Alone, perOn both sides the same obstinate Eng-haps, of living men, the King still belish nature was stirred into energetic hate.