ESSAY ON FRIENDSHIP, DELIVERED AT THE PANTHEON, EDINBROUGH, April 12, 1792. BY R. CUMMING. NOT noisy war, which fires the hero's soul, Nor meek-ey'd Peace, nor commerce, source of wealth, Nor gold, nor pow'r, boast of th'ambitious great, As once when here* the laurel due entwin'd Not wealth nor pleasure e'er could court her hence, Can once allure her from her sacred fane, Too pure to mix with vice, th'invidious mind Alluding to a former poetical debate in the Pantheon. ↑ R. Ferguson. Her heav'nly beauties ne'er with pleasure view'd, The sordid miser's callous frozen soul; The pow'r of Friendship on the human mind As move harmonic. Hence this living flame This heav'nly principle is not that pow'r Excites that pleasure which must ever rise From unity of hearts without reserve, From mutual confidence and conscious worth. TO BE CONTINUED. THE ocean is one of the grandest spectacles which nature presents to the human eye. Its size, its perpetual motion, its saltness, its various productions, and its general utility to man, all claim our attention: accordingly, it has been the subject of philosophical research from the remotest period. " As the earth is full of the riches of Jehovah, so is the great and wide sea, wherein are things innumerable, both small and great beasts: there go the ships: there is that leviathan (whale) whom thou hast made to play therein. These all wait upon thee: that thou mayest give them their meat in due season. That which thou givest them they gather thou openest thy hand, they are filled with good." Such were the reflections of the Hebrew monarch, when he contemplated the works of Jehovah in the deep. The great naturalist, Buffon, supposed the land and sea to be nearly equal upon the surface of the globe; but in this he was evidently mistaken, for whoever looks over any accurate map of the world, will see that the ocean is greatly superior, in extent, to the earth. Buffon calculated, indeed, upon the existence of a vast southern continent; but the voyages of Captain Cook have demonstrated, that the south pole is destitute of land. The proportion of water to land has been reckoned as three to one: but we doubt whether this is giving to the ocean its due extent four to one seems to us to be nearer the existing fact. This immense body of waters is known to be diffused round both the old and new continent to the south; and it is highly probable that they surround them to the north, but the ice in those regions has stopped our inquiries. The ocean indeed is one extensive sheet of water, and no one part of it is divided from the rest, yet geographers have distinguished it by different VOL. IV. R names; as the Atlantic or Western Ocean; this divides Europe and Africa from America, and is about three thousand miles in width. The Pacific Ocean, or South Sea; this is ten thousand miles over, and divides America from Asia. The Indian Ocean, which divides the East Indies from Africa, and is about three thousand miles wide. There are many other smaller divisions, which, as we are not writing upor geography, we shall not mention. Almost all the rivers of the earth terminate in the sea, but so vast is this general receptacle of waters, that it is not apparently increased by their tribute, nor diminished by their failure : it still continues the same. Indeed, what is the quantity of water in all the rivers and lakes in the world compared to the ocean? Buffon makes an estimate of their comparitive contents, which greatly shews their disparity. He supposes the sea to be, on an average, a quarter of a mile in depth, and reckons it eighty five millions of square miles in extent. This measurement will produce above twenty one millions of cubic miles of water; vast and prodigious indeed! And yet this is far short of facì; for Buffon did not think the sea to be so large as it really is. The river Po, which is a thousand feet broad and ten feet deep at its mouth, and runs at the rate of four miles an hour, will take twenty-six days to discharge one cubit mile of water. From the quantity of ground which the Po, with all its influent streams, covers, he supposes that all the rivers in the world furnish about two thousand times that quantity of water. In the space of a a year, therefore, they will have discharged into the sea above twenty six thousand cubic miles of water: so that it requires eight hundred years before they have discharged as much water as the sea at present contains! How sublime is that image of the prophet, who describes Jehovah as holding the ocean in the hollow of his hand! the opinions of philosophers Some have contended that the Various and opposite have been concerning the original size of the sea. whole earth was at first covered with water, except one single mountain ; and that the sea had been gradually decreasing and the land growing ever since. According to these, the time may arrive when the earth will become one vast dry and parched desart; of which Arabia Deserta is only a faint type. They have recourse to the supposed vegetative nattire of stone to convince us that the quantity of earth is continually increasing, and consequently, that the surface of the sea is diminishing in extent. They assert, also, that all that quantity of moisture, which is imbibed by plants, is lost to the general mass of waters, being converted into earth by the putrefaction of vegetables. They bring forward facts of the sea having left its ancient shores, of bays and harbours being choked up, of towns and cities that once were famous seaports being now miles, or even leagues, within land; even many mountains, say they, give evident proof of having been in a submarine state. Thus would they persuade us that the moisture of the globe is perpetually lessening, that though it may be a benefit to mankind in a certain state of its progress, yet that the latter generations of men will be gradually patched and scorched to death |