days; they become qualified merely for the life of worthless drones.

"Immunisque sedens aliena ad pabula fucus."

FIRE CONTINUED.

By the knowledge of this element we are enabled to have what no other creature (except glow-worms and fire-flies) on earth have, viz., light in our dwellings, and also where required in our streets, during the darkness of night.

Extraordinary as the effects already produced by the knowledge and application of this element have been, who can foresee what it may yet effect in the ways of God's good providence towards ameliorating the condition, opening up new channels of profitable employment, and means of support for the vastly-increased and industrious family of mankind?

What has it done already for the more civilized nations? What has it done for all the arts, to which it may be said to have given rise, as well as to useful trades? How

has it strengthened the hands of the industrious, and furnished them with tools for their several employments, as further helps to feeble hands? Truly all our help cometh of God, who hath made heaven and earth.

But of what greater use would the knowledge of this element have proved to the present civilized nations more than it has to the idle and barbarous, but for the further and subsequent discovery of all those mineral stores which the bountiful Creator had laid up in the strata of the earth, especially that most useful of all minerals, iron? And of how little use towards mechanical and other arts, would either of the foregoing have proved without the other? And both together were of little use to those barbarous nations who neglected to apply the knowledge of the one to the smelting and manufacturing of the other. And how could these latter processes and manufactures have been accomplished and carried on to any great extent, without the aid of a third ingredient? How could the furnaces have been heated, or blown in, as it is termed, without fuel for the

fire? This third material, to serve as food for the fire, the Almighty in his infinite foresight had provided beforehand in the primeval forests, in the first instance to be cleared away to make room for future operations, besides having laid up in store, beneath the surface of the earth, an inexhaustible supply of mineralized fuel, called coal, for the use of succeeding generations. That age and generation appears to be the present, which may fairly, above all other ages before it, be termed

SECTION II.-THE IRON AND FIRE AGE.

The greatest of modern inventions appearing to be carried out by the agency of iron and fire. Iron railroads for rapid journeying, and other conveyances, bearing carriages with iron wheels, swiftly propelled by iron locomotive engines, by the agency of fire applied beneath iron boilers filled with water, in effect generating the motive power of steam. Iron ships, also propelled through

application to that most awful of all human purposes, war? Truly may it be called in the present day an "Iron and Fire war."

Warlike weapons made of steel, from iron wrought in the fire; iron artillery, firing off destructive iron shot from four pounds weight each, and upwards; iron mortars, throwing by the same means heavy iron bombs: iron-cased congreve rockets; the two last being hollow and filled with explosive combustibles; besides other explosive missiles. There are iron fire-arms of a smaller size, adapted for hand use, of every description, called firelocks or muskets, carbines, &c., for firing off leaden balls with irresistible force and destructive effect horizontally, thick as hail. The former, called ordnance, exploded or discharged by means of a fusée of wildfire; and the latter, till lately, discharged by means of the spark struck from the sharp collision between the original flint and steel.

By the ever-inventive genius of civilized man, a new method of producing fire by means of lucifer matches and detonating powder, by percussion as well as friction,

having been discovered in these fire and iron times, and the latter rendered applicable, by means of percussion caps to the discharge of small fire-arms, seems likely to supersede in a great measure the use of the oldfashioned flint and steel, as the latter superseded the old match-locks.

The electric telegraph may also be said to be an iron and fire invention differing from common fire, which dreads water; whereas the electric spark having a copper wire conductor, will readily pass through water, and explode a mine of gunpowder placed at the bottom of the sea.

Lastly, fire and water are said to be good servants, but bad masters.

Water once had the complete mastery over the sinful and corrupt, at the deluge. And so long will fire be a good servant to man, as long as sinful man is permitted to be its master, but no longer; for the time, as prophesied, will come when, like a certain arch fiend, it may be loosed out of its present imprisonment, "When the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth

F