mate as the Great Dismal, already covering so many square miles of a low level region bordering the sea, and capable of spreading itself indefinitely over the adjacent country, helps us greatly to conceive the manner in which the coal of the ancient carboniferous rocks may have been formed. The heat, perhaps, may not have been excessive when the coal measures originated, but the entire absence of frost, with a warm and damp atmosphere, may have enabled tropical forms to flourish in latitudes far distant from the line. Huge swamps in a rainy climate, standing above the level of the surrounding firm land, and supporting a dense forest, may have spread far and wide, invading the plains, like some European peat-mosses when they burst, and the frequent submergence of these masses of vegetable matter beneath seas or estuaries, as often as the land sank down during subterranean movements, may have given rise to the deposition of strata of mud, sand, or limestone, immediately upon the vegetable matter. The conversion of successive surfaces into dry land, where other swamps supporting trees may have formed, might give origin to a continued series of coal measures of great thickness. In some kinds of coal the vegetable texture is apparent throughout under the microscope; in others, it has only partially disappeared; but even in this coal, the flattened trunks of trees of the genera Lepidodendron, Sigillaria, and others, converted into pure coal, are occasionally met with, and erect fossil trees are observed in the overlying strata, terminating downwards in seams of coal. 113.-The Passage of the Red Sea. HEBER. [REGINALD HEBER, Bishop of Calcutta, was born in 1783, at Malpas, in Cheshire. In 1800 he was entered at Brazenose College, Oxford. His university career was one series of successes. His prize poem of Palestine,' written in 1803, unlike the majority of academical compositions, has taken its rank among our best English poems. In 1807 he took orders, and entered upon the discharge of his duties of parish priest in the family living of Hodnet. Never were the high duties of his sacred office fulfilled with greater zeal than by this most amiable and gifted scholar. His eminence as a preacher, his reputation for the highest talent, must have led to the first preferments in the Church. The Bishopric of Calcutta was offered to him: he twice refused it; but eventually he saw in that appointment a wide career of usefulness, and he sacrificed every other consideration to the prospects which this apostolical mission opened to his view. He embarked for India on the 15th of June, 1823. On the 3rd of April, 1826, he suddenly died at Trichinopoli, having spent the short period of his sojourn in the East in labour such as few men have undergone. Dying thus at the early age of forty-three, his memory is hallowed in India by European and native; and his example will continue to animate many a man with the conviction that the talents which God has entrusted to us find their best and their happiest employment in an unremitting course of endea vour to leave the world better than we found it. Bishop Heber's Journey through India' is one of our most interesting books of travels. There are three volumes of his Sermons; and his Poems, from which we extract the Passage of the Red Sea,' form a volume of themselves.] With heat o'erlabour'd, and the length of way, Oh helpless gods! who saw the curdled blood In sandy surge the rising desert spread. 66 Mark, Israel, mark!"--On that strange sight intent, In breathless terror, every eye was bent; And busy faction's fast increasing hum, And female voices shriek, "They come, they come!" Deck'd in Behemoth's spoils, the tall Shangalla strode. Where, flush'd with power and vengeance, Pharaoh rode! And stoled in white, those brazen wheels before, And still responsive to the trumpet's cry, The priestly sistrum murmur'd-Victory! Why swell these shouts that rend the desert's gloom? On earth's last margin throng the weeping train: Nor bathed a fetlock in the nauseous flood. He comes-their leader comes !-The man of God With limbs that falter, and with hearts that swell, The ancient rocks, the secrets of the world; Yet not from Israel fled the friendly light, Or dark to them, or cheerless came the night. Blazed broad and fierce the brandish'd torch of God. On the long mirror of the rosy wave: While its blest beams a sun-like heat supply, Show'd his dread visage lightening through the storm; With withering splendour blasted all their might, And brake their chariot-wheels, and marr'd their courser's flight. "Fly, Misraim, fly!"—The ravenous floods they see, And, fiercer than the floods, the Deity. "Fly, Misraim, fly!"-From Edom's coral strand Oh! welcome came the morn, when Israel stood Alas, how few!-Then, soft as Elim's well, The virgin timbrel waked its silver sound; |