encement of what has advanced or is advancing into magnificence. The
first rude settlement of Romulus would have been an insignificant
circumstance, and might justly have sunk into oblivion, if Rome had not at
length commanded the world. The little rill near the source of one of the
great American rivers is an interesting object to the traveler, who is
apprised as he steps across it, or walks a few miles along its bank, that
this is the stream which runs so far, and gradually swells into so immense
a flood." By the accidental mixing of a little nitre and potash, gunpowder
was discovered. In ancient times, before the days of Pliny, some merchants
traveling across a sandy desert, could find no rock at hand on which to
kindle a fire to prepare their food; as a substitute, they took a block of
alkali from among their heaps of merchandise, and lit a fire thereon. The
merchants stared with surprise when they saw the huge block melting
beneath the heat, and running down in a glistening stream as it mingled
with the sand, and still more so, when they discovered into what a hard
and shining substance it had been transformed. From this, says Pliny,
originated the making of glass. The sunbeams dazzling on a crystal prism
unfolded the whole theory of colors. A few rude types carved from a wooden
block have been the means of revolutionizing nations, overthrowing
dynasties, and rooting out the most hardened despotisms--of driving away a
multitude of imps of superstition, which for ages had been the terror of
the learned, and of spreading the light of truth and knowledge from the
frontiers of civilization to the coasts of darkness and barbarism. "We
must destroy the Press," exclaimed the furious Wolsey, "or the Press will
destroy us." The battle was fought, the Press was triumphant, and Popery
banished from the shores of Britain. The swinging of a lamp suspended from
a ceiling led Galileo to search into the laws of oscillation of the
pendulum; and by the fall of an apple the great Newton was led to unfold
what had hitherto been deemed one of the secrets of the Deity--a mystery
over which God had thrown a vail, which it would be presumption for man to
lift or dare to pry beneath. Had Newton disregarded little things, and
failed to profit by gentle hints, we should perhaps have thought so still,
and our minds would not have been so filled with the glory of Him who made
the heavens; but with these great truths revealed to our understandings,