e
to accumulate from generation to generation, and possibly from century
to century. Nay, I know not but thousands of years will roll away before
the slow movements of these far distant orbs shall so accumulate as to
give us the data whereby the resolution may be absolutely accomplished.
But shall we fail to work because the end is far off? Had the old
astronomer that once stood upon the watch-tower in Babylon, and there
marked the coming of the dreaded eclipse, said. "I care not for this;
this is the business of posterity; let posterity take care of itself; I
will make no record"--and had, in succeeding ages, the sentinel in the
watch-tower of the skies said, "I will retire from my post; I have no
concern with these matters, which can do me no good; it is nothing
that I can do for the age in which I live,"--where should we have been
to-night? Shall we not do, for those who are to follow us, what has
been done for us by our predecessors? Let us not shrink from the
responsibility which comes down upon the age in which we live. The great
and mighty problem of the universe has been given to the whole human
family for its solution. Not by any clime, not by any age, not by any
nation, not by any individual man or mind, however great or grand, has
this wondrous solution been accomplished; but it is the problem of
humanity, and it will last as long as humanity shall inhabit the globe
on which we live and move.

* * * * *

No, here is the temple of our Divinity. Around us and above us rise sun
and system, cluster and universe. And I doubt not that in every region
of this vast empire of God, hymns of praise and anthems of glory are
rising and reverberating from sun to sun, and from, system to system,
heard by Omnipotence alone, across immensity, and through eternity.

[Footnote 63: An astronomer, and a favorite lecturer on the science; a
native of Kentucky.]

* * * * *

WRITERS ON NATURAL HISTORY, SCENERY, &c.

=_William Bartram, 1739-1813._= (Manual, p. 490.)

From the "Travels through the Carolinas," &c.

=_253._= SCENES ON THE UPPER OCONEE.

At this rural retirement were assembled a charming circle of mountain
vegetable beauties.... Some of these roving beauties stroll over the
mossy, shelving, humid rocks, or from off the expansive wavy boughs of
trees, bending over the floods, salute their delusive shade, playing on
the surface; some plunge their