About ninety-six years after the expedition of Cæsar, the adventurous and unprofitable enterprise was resumed under Claudius. In the name of their monarch, two distinguished officers, Aulus Plautius and Vespasian, employed seven years in reducing the country southward of the Thames. They penetrated to St. Alban's and Colchester. Ostorius Scapula extended the province to the banks of the Severn. Here he encountered the Silures of South Wales, the most warlike of the Britons, led by king Caractacus, or Caradoc, eminent among British commanders by signal success, and by defeat manfully endured. He skilfully availed himself of an advantageous position, but was at length defeated, and finally sent prisoner to Rome, A.D. 50. Suetonius Paulinus having obtained the province of Britain, destroyed the sacred seat of the Druids in the island of Mona or Anglesea. In the midst of this warfare, Suetonius learned the alarming intelligence of a general insurrection of the subdued tribes. It had been provoked by the injustice done to the Iceni, and by the atrocious outrages offered to their queen Boadicea. They destroyed the infant colony of Maldon, or Colchester, and in the more flourishing colony of St. Alban's they are said to have put to death 70,000 persons, with all the tortures which revenge could devise. Suetonius soon succeeded in bringing the Britons to a general action in open ground. They were defeated with tremendous slaughter, reported to amount to 80,000. Boadicea poisoned herself.

The emperor Vespasian appointed Julius Agricola to the government of Britain. Agricola carried the Roman arms, through the north-western counties of England, into Scotland, where he joined, by fortified posts, the friths of Forth and Clyde. The Roman dominion reached under Agricola its utmost permanent extent in Britain. The natives were driven into the rugged region beyond the Grampians. For the two centuries which followed, Britain was a Roman province. The Roman cultivation was extended to it in a less degree than to Spain and Gaul. The Roman remains seem rather to indicate the luxury of the military stations of that people, than any desire to adorn their province by civil architecture. The convenience and magnificence of their

roads had a military purpose. In the progressive decline of the Empire, the Roman troops were gradually withdrawn from this island, for the more urgent purpose of protecting the seat of dominion. About the middle of the fifth century Britain was abandoned to her fate, and left, to maintain if she could, a precarious independence.-Mackintosh.

LESSON V.—FRIDAY.

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD.

In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there, I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there for ever; nor would it, perhaps, be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place, I should hardly think of the answer I had before given-that, for anything I knew, the watch might have been always there. Yet why should not this answer serve for the watch as well as the stone? why is it not as admissible in the second case as in the first? For this reason, and for no other, namely, that, when we inspect the watch, we perceive that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose. example, that they are so formed and adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point out the hour of the day; that, if the different parts had been differently shaped from what they are, of a different size from what they are, or placed after any other manner, or in any other order than that in which they are placed, either no motion at all would have been carried on in the machine, or none which would have answered the use that is now served by it. To reckon up a few of the plainest of these parts, and of their offices, all tending to one result. We see a cylindrical box containing a coiled elastic spring, which, by its endeavour to relax itself, turns round the box. We next

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observe a flexible chain, (artificially wrought for the sake of dexure,) communicating the action of the spring from the box to the fusee. We then find a series of wheels, the teeth of which catch in, and apply to, each other, conducting the

motion from the fusee to the balance, and from the balance to the pointer, and, at the same time, by the size and shape of those wheels, so regulating that motion as to terminate in causing an index, by an equable and measured progression, to pass over a given space in a given time. We take notice that the wheels are made of brass, in order to keep them from rust; the springs of steel, no other metal being so elastic; that over the face of the watch there is placed a glass, a material employed in no other part of the work, but in the room of which, if there had been any other than a transparent substance, the hour could not be seen without opening the case. This mechanism being observed and understood, the inference is inevitable, that the watch must have had a maker: that there must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use.

Every indication of contrivance, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater and more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation. The contrivances of nature surpass the contrivances of art, in the complexity, subtilty, and curiosity of the mechanism; and still more, if possible, do they go beyond them in number and variety; yet, in a multitude of cases, are not less evidently mechanical, not less evidently contrivances, not less evidently accommodated to their end, or suited to their office, than are the most perfect productions of human ingenuity.-Paley.

LESSON VI.-MONDAY.

INVENTION OF PAPER AND PRINTING.

Before the Christian era, the leaves prepared from the Egyptian papyrus reed formed the usual writing materials; then parchment was discovered, made of tanned skins of sheep or goats, artificially smoothed and polished. Subsequently to the Christian era, paper was made of cotton. This was a discovery of the Chinese, which was learned from the Bockharians by the Arabians. From the Arabians it

reached Constantinople; and thence it spread to Italy and the rest of Europe. Cotton paper was thinner and more convenient than parchment, but was extremely expensive. The Spaniards were induced, in the year 1200 A. D., to try paper of cotton rags, and thus effected a material saving in expense. Last of all, the Germans, about the year 1300 A. D., succeeded in manufacturing paper of linen rags; and now the article could be supplied not only at a cheaper rate, but also of a much finer and more useful quality.

The art of printing was unquestionably known very early in China, but till the year 1436 A. D., it remained a secret to Europe. It was then discovered by John Gutenberg, a native of Mayence, by his own unassisted invention. In the year 1436 A. D., he made the first experiment at Strasburgh with a printing-press of his own invention; in the year 1440 A. D., he found that it was more convenient to cut the letters separately, and after arranging his type to touch them with ink and then take his impressions; in the year 1450 A. D., he formed a partnership with a rich man of the name of Faust, who advanced all the necessary funds. The partners engaged one Peter Schoffer, a clergyman, very celebrated for his beautiful handwriting, to assist them. It was Schoffer who discovered the art of casting type, and also the composition of metals sufficiently hard to bear the press without any tendency to cut the paper. He also discovered printer's ink. About the year 1455 appeared the first work ever printed with cast and moveable types; this book was a Latin Bible. Gutenberg, however, and Faust disagreed, and in the year 1456 they dissolved partnership. Gutenberg died, two years after, without having received any reward for his labours, though he had devoted all his energies and all his fortune in promoting the interest of science. The appearance of this beautifully printed Bible created great sensation. The monks, long accustomed to earn considerable sums as copyists, were loud in inveighing against the introduction of printing, and one and all accused Faust of having dealings with the Devil. This accusation, monstrous as it appears to us, found general credence, because Faust had kept his art a secret. In the year 1462 Mayence was conquered, and most of Faust's

companions were dispersed, and carried the art of printing with them, widely diffusing it throughout Europe, though Italy was the country where it was chiefly cultivated.

LESSON VII.-TUESDAY.

MATTER ITS ESSENTIAL PROPERTIES.

The properties of matter are essential, or those without which, as far as we know, it cannot exist; and non-essential, or those which, though common to all matter, are not absolutely necessary to its existence. The essential properties are Impenetrability, Magnitude, and Form.

IMPENETRABILITY is that property by virtue of which matter occupies space. The first great axiom of physical science, that no two bodies can occupy the same space at the same time, is the ordinary mode of expressing this property. If three pennies are placed closely together, it is impossible to push another between the two exterior ones, without either increasing the space between them, or pushing out the one already there. When a nail is driven into a piece of wood, it might seem as if the nail and the wood occupied the same space. Not a single particle of wood, however, remains in the space occupied by the nail; so that if the wood is not enlarged, its atoms are more closely compressed to make room for the nail. If a pebble is placed in a tumbler full of water it will cause it to run over. When sugar is put into tea, the tea and sugar together occupy more of the interior of the cup than was occupied by the tea alone. Even a stone thrown into a river causes its surface to rise higher than it was before, and only the great disproportion between the size of the stone and that of the river renders the effect imperceptible. If an inverted tumbler be pressed under water, the impenetrability of the air in the tumbler prevents the water entering it; and if it does rise a little way within the tumbler, this is owing to the compressibility of the air, and not to its penetrability. The impenetrability of air may be strikingly exhibited by placing a receiver or bell-glass over a saucer floating on water, and containing a burning taper. If the receiver is pressed down into the water the saucer will sink with it, and the taper will continue to burn at the bottom