m, appear as newly-formed continents and islands. Once above the
surface, the work of the corals is at an end; no longer exposed to the
salt water, the emerged portion dies, and then new agencies are called
into play, before its surface can be clothed with vegetable life. The
storms of the ocean and the rising waves gradually deposit on its
surface the sand and mud torn up from the bottom of the sea, and the
sea-weed, too, that is cast upon its tenantless shores soon crumbles
into mould, and unites with the debris of the former polyps. At last,
some seeds from the neighboring lands are driven to its strand, and
there finding a soil united for their growth, soon sprout, under the
influence of a tropical sun, into fresh life, and clothe the ocean isle
with verdure and vegetation.

Then, _last_, man comes, and taking possession of the land, erects him a
house to dwell in, and cultivating the soil he finds, soon converts the
ocean-rescued land into cultivated plains. Islands thus formed are
constantly increased in circumference by the same means as those that
gave them birth; the same agency is ever at work, adding particle on
particle to the rising land. But is it not strange that such simple
means can resist the ever-flowing and roaring ocean--that such simple
animals can uprear a masonry which shall resist the violence of the
waves and defy the power of the breakers? Is it not strange that a
single polyp can form a structure in the bosom of the ocean, which shall
stand, a victorious antagonist to the storm when works of man and other
"inanimate works of nature" would have crumbled into nothing before the
relentless fury of a disturbed ocean? "Let the hurricane tear up its
thousand huge fragments, yet what will that tell against the accumulated
labor of myriads of architects at work day and night, month after
month?" for here organic force is opposed to the raging elements, and
opposing, is victorious.

[From the Dublin University Magazine]

A NIGHT IN THE BELL INN.

Though few men are themselves on visiting terms with their ancestors,
most are furnished with one or two decently-authenticated ghost stories.
I myself am a firm believer in spectral phenomena, for reasons which I
may, perhaps, be tempted to give to the public whenever the custom of
printing in folio shall have been happily revived; meanwhile, as they
will not bear compression, I keep them by me, and content myself with
now and then stating a fact