by earthquakes, and by sudden movements from the
bottom of the ocean, have perhaps risen in past times and may rise in
the future to the height of the highest mountains. The geologist will
have the satisfaction of deducing from these prodigious oscillations a
rational explanation of a great multitude of phenomena, but the public
will thereby be exposed to new and terrible catastrophes.

Mankind may rest assured: Laplace has proved that the equilibrium of the
ocean is stable, but upon the express condition (which, however, has
been amply verified by established facts), that the mean density of the
fluid mass is less than the mean density of the earth. Every thing else
remaining the same, let us substitute an ocean of mercury for the actual
ocean, and the stability will disappear, and the fluid will frequently
surpass its boundaries, to ravage continents even to the height of the
snowy regions which lose themselves in the clouds.

Does not the reader remark how each of the analytical investigations of
Laplace serves to disclose the harmony and duration of the universe and
of our globe!

It was impossible that the great geometer, who had succeeded so well in
the study of the tides of the ocean, should not have occupied his
attention with the tides of the atmosphere; that he should not have
submitted to the delicate and definitive tests of a rigorous calculus,
the generally diffused opinions respecting the influence of the moon
upon the height of the barometer and other meteorological phenomena.

Laplace, in effect, has devoted a chapter of his splendid work to an
examination of the oscillations which the attractive force of the moon
is capable of producing in our atmosphere. It results from these
researches, that, at Paris, the lunar tide produces no sensible effect
upon the barometer. The height of the tide, obtained by the discussion
of a long series of observations, has not exceeded two-hundredths of a
millimetre, a quantity which, in the present state of meteorological
science, is less than the probable error of observation.

The calculation to which I have just alluded, may be cited in support
of considerations to which I had recourse when I wished to establish,
that if the moon alters more or less the height of the barometer,
according to its different phases, the effect is not attributable to
attraction.

No person was more sagacious than Laplace in discovering intimate
relations between phenomena apparently v