tiger and the crocodile dart: the rein-deer runs ; but never gallops: the armadillo walks swiftly; but can neither run nor leap: while the great ant-eater climbs much better, than it can walk.

IV.

Man has the power of imitating almost every motion, but that of flight. To effect these, he has, in maturity and health, sixty bones in his head; sixty in his thighs and legs; sixty-two in his arms and hands; and sixtyseven in his trunk. He has, also, 434 muscles in the structure of his body. His heart has sixty-four pulsations in a minute; 3,840 in an hour; and, therefore, 92,160 in a day. There are also three3 complete circulations of his blood in the short space of an hour.

In respect to the comparative speed of animated beings and of impelled bodies, it may be remarked, that size and construction seem to have little influence: nor has comparative strength: though one body, giving any quantity of motion to another, is said to lose so much of its own. The sloth is by no means a small animal; and yet it can travel only fifty paces in a day: a small worm crawls only five inches in fifty seconds; but a lady-bird can fly twenty million times its own length, in less than an hour. An elk will run a mile and a half in seven minutes; an an

Cheselden.

2 M. Peirson, in a paper on muscular motion, after several observations on the relative heat and pulsation of animals in different latitudes, says, that men in our climate pulsate seventy-two times in a minute, cows forty-eight, and horses thirty-six. But in Russia, and Lapland, men pulsate only from forty-five to fifty in a minute. All excess either of heat or of cold produces a diminution of the powers of pulsation.

3 Rohault.

1

telope a mile in a minute: the wild mule of Tartary has a speed even greater than that: an eagle can fly eighteen leagues in an hour; and a Canary falcon can even reach 250 leagues in the short space of sixteen hours. A violent wind travels sixty miles in an hour; sound 1,142 English feet in a second.

We are unable to investigate the mechanism, by which stars are guided in their courses1: but we have the power to calculate the velocity, which severally distinguish satellites, planets, and comets: the two last of which have double motions; and the first a treble one. The fixed stars, too, have motions, as well as a visible increase and decrease of brilliancy. The double, triple, and quadruple, stars move round their relative centres of gravity; and the smaller ones revolve round the larger ones, after the manner of satellites. This is the case in respect to the double stars in Leo, Bootes3, Hercules, the Serpent*, and the Virgin5.

the sun.

1 That heat is one of the causes of motion is evident from the circumstance, that all the planets have orbitular velocities, in proportion to their proximity to The power of attraction may, however, be doubted, with no charge of arrogance. For a comet eclipsed the moon in 1454; and another passed near the satellites of Jupiter in 1770; and produced no change or fluctuation in the relative motions either of the earth, the moon, Jupiter's satellites, or of the comets themselves.

Since the Christian era, four comets have passed between Jupiter and Mars; sixteen between Mars and the earth; seventeen between the earth and Venus; forty between Venus and Mercury; and twenty-two between Mercury and the Sun. Now, if the law of attraction prevailed to the extent, and in the manner, Newton supposes, the motions of all those bodies must have been affected; and that too in a very sensible manner.

The Georgium Sidus travels in its orbit 15,546 miles in an hour; Saturn 22,050; and Jupiter 29,866. Pallas 40,930; Ceres 40,932; Juno 41,170; and Vesta 44,202. Mars 55,166; the Earth' 68,092; Venus 80,062; and Mercury 109,452. The comet of 1680, when in its perihelion, moved not less than 1,240,108 miles in an hour; and light travels at the still more astonishing rate of eleven millions of miles in a minute.

Motion is one of the most effective demonstrations of a Sovereign Power. It is detected in the succession of the seasons; in the changes, observable in all the visible creation; and in the circulation of nutritive juices in animal bodies: while the heart, from the first to the last moment of life, is in a state of perpetual action.

Of all the subjects that can engage the intellect of man, motion is the most inexplicable. For whether it is contemplated in the progress of time; in the march of events; or in the impregnation, birth, growth, death, and corruption of animated bodies: whether it is observed in the gliding of rivers; the phenomena of the winds, or the periodical flux and reflux of the tide: in the Aurora Borealis ; in meteors; in the gravitating power of planets, suns, and systems; or in the mysterious circulation of galvanic, electric, and magnetic fluids, the subject involves such a combination of power, as at once to astonish and confound the mind. If a person put a large bar magnet to a glass-case, in which are five hundred magnetic needles, they will all revolve with astonishing rapidity, till

Arcturus is supposed to have the same velocity.

2 This comet is supposed, when in its aphelion, to be 13,000,000 miles from

the sun.

VOL. I.

BB

the magnetical influence is removed. Thus planets may be set in motion. There is a presiding influence, by which they revolve; and as long as that influence continues to operate, so long will their motion continue. When it ceases to operate, the planets will cease to move; and become fixed: sustained in their relative positions, by the power, in equilibrio, of attraction and repulsion. No Being but the One can give the impulse; nor can any Being, but the One, conceive the manner, in which that impulse can be given. For height;-width;-length;and depth;-infinity';-eternity;-omnipresence;—all are more easy of conception than the first origin of motion.

V.

Thus throughout all Nature we see the constant prevalence of activity. It meets us every where. The mind of man, too, is in perpetual action. It advances, or it retrogrades: it is never stationary. And during the last forty years it has made an ascent so aspiring, that unless the laws are simplified with skill, and modified with the greatest possible degree of circumspection and ability, such scenes are likely hereafter to ensue, as appal my very soul to contemplate!

It is strange that while geology, chemistry, astronomy, and indeed all the sciences are advancing with steps like the strides of giants, the science of legislation,the most important of them all,-should creep, and crawl, and move its huge length along, as if it were oppressed with the weight of an hundred thousand nightmares!

Greece seems to have excelled in jurisprudence, as much as in the elegant arts: but at Rome, though many laws

were borrowed from Greece, the progress occupied a period of many centuries:-and till the compilation of the Justinian code, which reduced the whole system of law to three principles 1, viz. those of living honourably, hurting no one, and rendering every one his own; scarcely one person in forty thousand knew what he had to do, and what he had to avoid.

In Britain the great foundations of the laws are of Saxon origin, modelled and digested by Alfred. Then came the feudal system, not long after the conquest: then the code of Theodosius, and the pandects, institutes, constitutions and supplement of Justinian 3 were intro

1 Honeste vivere, alterum non lædere, suum cuique tribuere. Inst. i. 3.

2

Many writers have supposed that the feudal system is, comparatively, of recent origin. It is certain, however, that it prevailed among the Cimbri and Teutones, who invaded Italy during the time of the republic; and Alexander Severus gave lands to his soldiers, on condition of receiving military

service.

As the Celtic nations extended their emigrations, they extended their system, till it became the general polity of the western world: the chiefs of every army allotting a large portion of the conquered lands to their chief officers, who divided their allotments into smaller portions to their subalterns, and most useful and meritorious soldiers. Upon receiving these lands, each party bound himself, and his heirs, by an oath of fealty, to do service: and in case of treachery or non-performance, the lands were to revert to the heirs of the original lord.

This system, though it had prevailed for several centuries through almost every part of Europe, (though not in the vigour it afterward sassumed), was not fully adopted in this country, till some time after the Norman conquest.

3 The value of this code is considerably lessened by the compilers having ingrafted upon the edicts the rescripts of the emperors; so that the student is insulted with a necessity of perusing the sentiments of Caligula, Domitian, Commodus, and Caracalla.

The introduction of this code was long resisted by the nobility and people