Which occurred to a Husband, while his Wife was in great Agony IN LABOUR. LORD! 1 pray thee, send salvation down, And graciously make good thy promises, For in thy faithfulness is all our hope. Oh! how sad are th' effects of baleful sin! Thousands of years have roll'd their course along, Thy sorrow I will greatly multiply, And in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children;" More anxious than the other. Wife! children! Oh! my torn heart! look up again to him 1 Whose word stands sure, whose gracious word has said, **She shall be sav'd in the hour of childbirth,.... If she is found in faith and charity, And holiness with sobriety." To thee, great God, I lift my anxious pray'r; "Tis just that punishment should follow sin, The pray'r of faith is prevalent with God; WE have before observed the utility of the various motions of the sea in keeping its waters from putrefaction, but of all the motions which are observable in it, that of the tides is the most remarkable, both for its utility and regularity. Probably it was of the tides which the sacred writer spake when he represented Jehovah as having set bounds to the sea and said, Hitherto shall thy proud waves come, and here shall they be stayed.. The importance of the tides to all commercial nations is such, that they have in all ages been much attended to. The cause of them was not so soon known as their use. Ancient navigators took the advantage of them without being able to give a scientific account of their origin. In the same manner our mordern sailors take the advantage of the winds for the purposes of commerce; but very few even think of the cause of them, and even our most profound philosophers are not agreed on this point. Homer is said to be the first profane author who speaks of the tides. Indeed it is not very clear that he alludes to them when he describes Charybdis as rising and retiring thrice in every day. The Greeks, from their situation, had but little opportunity of observing the tides. The conquests and commerce of the Romans afforded better opportunity of acquaintance with them and after some wild conjectures of the earliest philosophers, it became well known in the time of Pliny, that the tides were, în a small degree, under the influence of the sun; but in Went to wear the move! á much VOL. IV. avem dily ovewed doden. xiith book of the Odyssee. To describe the nature of the tides we must observe, that there is a certain depth of the waters of the ocean which would obtain, if they were perfectly at rest; but observation shows that they are constantly varying from this level, and that variation which we call the tides, is regular and periodical. It is found that on the shores of the ocean, and in bays, creeks, and harbours, which communicate freely with the ocean, the waters rise up above this mean height twice a day, and as often sink below it, forming what is called a flood and an ebb, a high and a low water. The whole interval between high and low water is called a tide; the water is said to flow and to ebb; and the rising is called the flood tide, and the falling is called the ebb tide. Thus the sea is observed to flow for about six hours from south to north, so that entering the mouths of rivers, it drives back the river waters towards their sources. After this continual flux of six hours the sea seems to rest for about a quarter of an hour, and then begins to ebb, or retire back again from north to south, for six hours more; in which time the waters sinking, the rivers resume their natural course. After a seeming pause of a quarter of an hour the sea again begins to flow as before: and thus it has always continued to do ever since the creation. It is no wonder that this amazing appearance early excited both the attention and wonder of mankind. The connection betwixt the moon and tides was long observed before the particular manner of the moon's operation was even guessed at. It was found that there was a flux and reflux of the sea, in the space of twelve hours fifty minutes, which is exactly the time of a lunar day. It was observed also, that when the moon was in the meridian, in other words, as nearly as possible over any part of the sea, that the waters flowed to that part, and made a tide there; on the contrary, it was found, that when the moon left the meridian, the sea began to flow back again from whence it came. Thus far the waters of the sea seemed very regularly to attend the motions of the moon. But it appeared, likewise, that when the moon was in the opposite meridian, as far as possible on the other side of the globe, that there was a tide on this side also; so that the moon produced two tides, one by her greatest approach to us, and another by her greatest distance from us in other words, the moon in going round the earth, produced two tides, always at the same time; one on the part of the globe directly under her, and the other on the part of the globe directly opposite., He laid hold Kelper was the first who conjectured that attraction was the principal cause of those appearances; asserting that the sphere of the moon's operation extended to the earth, and drew up its waters. The precise manner in which this is done, was discovered by Newton. of this class of phenomena as the most incontestable proof of universal gravitation, and has given a beautiful and synoptical view of the whole subject; contenting himself, however, with meerly exhibiting the chief consequences of the general principle, and applying it to the phenomena with singular address. But the wide steps taken by this philosopher in his investigation leave ordinary readers frequently at fault: many of |