t nature nowhere tells us that her arrangements are eternal;
but rather, that decay is stamped with the seal of the Almighty on every
created thing. Change may be one of the great laws of matter and motion,
and yet matter and motion be indestructible. The earth was called into
existence for a specific object, and when that object is accomplished,
we are assured that another change awaits her. But when earth, and sun,
and planets, are again redissolved into their primitive state, their
atoms will still float on the ever-rolling billows of the great ethereal
ocean, to be again cast up, on the shore of time, whenever it pleaseth
Him to say, "Let there be light."

FOOTNOTES:

[50] Prof. Pierce's Address, 1853.

APPENDIX.

Since the author's arrival in New York for the purpose of publishing his
outlines, the third and fourth volume of the Cosmos has been placed in
his hands, containing the latest uranological discoveries and
speculations. It is now more than twenty years since he began to
investigate the subject he has treated of, and fifteen since he first
announced to the world, that he had satisfactory evidence of his theory
being true. Luckily, perhaps, he has been cut off from the great streams
of knowledge; and he may confess that it was with pardonable feelings of
gratification that he discovered in 1853, by the acquisition of the two
first volumes of the Cosmos, that the philosophic mind of Humboldt had
also pondered deeply on the planetary peculiarities of size, density,
distance, inclination of axes and eccentricities of orbits, without
eliciting any satisfactory relations.

From the tenor of the third and fourth volume of this learned summary of
scientific knowledge, it is evident that the question of a medium
filling space is more and more occupying the learned world; but the
author is unable to discover any consistent theory respecting it. The
increasing interest attaching to it, however, is evidently preparing the
world for some radical change in preconceived views. The explanation
given by this present theory to many prominent phenomena, is so totally
contrary to that of the learned world, as to leave it untouched by
anything yet advanced. What the fifth volume of the Cosmos will
contain, is not yet known in this country, neither has the author been
favored with any glimpse of the progress of science as developed before
the British Association; he supposes, however, that he yet stands alone
in