Earths from each sun with quick explosions burst,
And second planets issued from the first.
Then, whilst the sea at their coeval birth,
Surge over surge, involv'd the shoreless earth;
Nurs'd by warm sun-beams in primeval caves
Organic life began beneath the waves.' P. 19.

The latter part of this description is unquestionably truein the commencement (we mean of organic or at least animated life) beneath the waves: it is equally consonant with geologic observation and the Mosaic history, which asserts that fishes were created earliest in the order of time. As to the rest, Dr. Darwin is, we believe, the first poct who has deserted the Neptunian theory for the pyritic; and nothing but the novelty of description which it afforded him could have prompted him to such an exchange. The idea of an igneous chaos, and hence the origin of the world from liquid or vitreous fire, is in itself, however, not new: it has been advanced in various modes and at various times ever since the age of Heraclitus, who was contemporary with Socrates, and was afterwards successfully opposed by Lucretius. The igneous system more immediately adverted to, however, is that of Buffon, who has been followed by Dr. Herschel. We cannot here revive the dispute; but shall only state, that, however bold in conjecture, and plausible in a superficial view of the subject, it will not stand the test of chemical geology, as has been already sufficiently proved by M. de Luc and Mr. Kirwan; and that the Mosaic narrative is in this instance as true to fact and experience, as in assigning to fishes an earlier existence than to other animals. The following note is also equally objectionable, and introduced for the express purpose of bending the appearances of nature to our author's own system.

Young Nature lisps, 1.224. The perpetual production and increase of the strata of limestone from the shells of aquatic animals; and of all those incumbent on them from the recrements of vegetables and of terrestrial animals, are now well understood from our improved knowledge of geology; and show, that the solid parts of the globe are gradually enlarging, and consequently that it is young; as the fluid parts are not yet all converted into solid ones. Add to this, that some parts of the earth and its inhabitants appear younger than others; thus the greater height of the mountains of America seems to show that continent to be less ancient than Europe, Asia, and Africa; as their summits have been less washed away, and the wild animals of America, as the tigers and crocodiles, are said to be less perfect in respect to their size and strength; which would show them to be still in a state of infancy, or of progressive improvement. Lastly, the progress of mankind in arts and sciences, which continues slowly to extend, and to increase, seems to evince the youth of human society; whilst the unchanging state of the societies of some insects, as of the bee, wasp, and ant, which is usually ascribed to instinct, seems to

evince the longer existence, and greater maturity of those societies. The juvenility of the carth shows, that it has had a beginning or birth, and is a strong natural argument evincing the existence of a cause of its production, that is of the Deity.' P. 19.

Those of our, readers who are not already acquainted with the doctor's tenets, must be astonished at his ascribing a superiority to the bee, the wasp, and the ant, when put in competition with mankind-a superiority accruing from the right of primogeniture, and greater maturity of powers. We confess ourselves, however, to have been not a little surprised at his conceiving the continent of America to be less ancient than those of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and especially at the proofs on which such conception reposes. The vast height of many of the primary mountains of America and the north of Europe, and the immense quantity of the shells of aquatic animals with which their summits are covered-together with the skeletons of the mammoth, and other enormous animals, which have for immemorial ages become extinct, seem to prove, in direct opposition to our author's conjecture, that here animal life originated, and that this was the quarter first peopled by sentient beings.

The matter of heat, in the language of our author, is general repulsive æther, as the power of gravity is general attrac tive ather; all chemical affinities, &c. being merged in the latter, as so many species of one common genus. There is also another æther, formed from the contractile power of the muscles; and this is denominated the ether of contraction. How much easier is it to create new names, than to communicate new instruction! This, however, being premised, we now present to the reader the poet's theory of the origin of organic life.

"First Heat from chemic dissolution springs,
And gives to matter its eccentric wings;
With strong Repulsion parts the exploding mass,
Melts into lymph, or kindles into gas.
Attraction next, as earth or air subsides,
The ponderous atoms from the light divides,
Approaching parts with quick embrace combines,
Swells into spheres, and lengthens into lines.
Last, as fine goads the gluten-threads excite,
Cords grapple cords, and webs with webs unite;
And quick Contraction with ethereal flame
Lights into life the fibre-woven frame.—
Hence without parent by spontaneous birth
Rise the first specks of animated earth;
From Nature's womb the plant or insect swims,
And buds or breathes, with microscopic limbs.
"In earth, sea, air, around, below, above,
Life's subtle woof in Nature's loom is wove;

Points glued to points a living line extends,
Touch'd by some goad approach the bending ends;
Rings join to rings, and irritated tubes

Clasp with young lips the nutrient globes or cubes;
And urged by appetencies new select,
Imbibe, retain, digest, secrete, eject.

In branching cones the living web expands,
Lymphatic ducts, and convolutent glands;
Aortal tubes propel the nascent blood,

And lengthening veins absorb the refluent flood;
Leaves, lungs, and gills, the vital ether breathe
On earth's green surface, or the waves beneath.
So Life's first powers arrest the winds and floods,
To bones convert them, or to shells, or woods;
Stretch the vast beds of argil, lime, and sand,
And from diminish'd oceans form the land!

"Next the long nerves unite their silver train,
And young Sensation permeates the brain;
Through each new sense the keen emotions dart,
Flush the young cheek, and swell the throbbing heart.
From pain and pleasure quick Volitions rise,
Lift the strong arm, or point the inquiring eyes;
With Reason's light bewilder'd man direct,

And right and wrong with balance nice detect.
Last in thick swarms Associations spring,

Thoughts join to thoughts, to motions motions cling;
Whence in long trains of catenation flow

Imagined joy, and voluntary woe.' P. 20.

There seems to be as much skill required in putting the above phraseology of the natural historian into elegant metre, as in versifying the catalogue of ships in Homer. Darwin, like Pope, has succeeded to admiration: but praise for consummate skill is the whole to which either poet can pretend in the present instance. There is, however, a monotony, a meagre uniformity of cadence, in Darwin, which Pope does not betray; and which, considering the former made the latter his great model and archetypc, is truly surprising. From page to page, and from book to book, his verses all run in couplets, not admitting, perhaps, of twenty exceptions through the entire poem before us; while the couplet itself is as little varied in its pause and cæsura, as the page in the more general flow of its periods. We refer, as an example, to the passage just quoted, in which the same balanced mechanism is continued from the beginning to the end, the accent uniformly falling on either the fourth or fifth syllable of every line, of which the former terminates with a smaller, and the latter with a full, pause. To this remark, the only exception worth noticing is in the following four verses :

Rings join to rings, and irritated tubes

Clasp with young lips the nutrient globes or cubes;

And urged by appetencies new select,

Imbibe, retain, digest, secrete, eject—' r. 23.

in which the latter part of the first is continued into the second, and the accent falls on the eighth, instead of the fourth or fifth, syllable of the third line. In such an arrangement, it is obvious to the dullest ear that there is more mechanism than melody; and, notwithstanding the verbal polish with which it is laboured, the mind becomes speedily fatigued, from the very circumstance of its being speedily fatigued with every thing that is destitute of variety, whatever its intrinsic excellence or general merit.

The two chief points next insisted upon, in the course of the poem, are, that organic life, be its ramifications what they maymucor, vegetation, reptile, quadruped, or man-originated in the same manner, and that every animal and vegetable was at first aquatic.

"Organic Life beneath the shoreless waves
Was born and nurs'd in Ocean's pearly caves;
First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass,
Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass;
These, as successive generations bloom,
New powers acquire, and larger limbs assume;
Whence countless groups of vegetation spring,
And breathing realms of fin, and feet, and wing.
"Thus the tall oak, the giant of the wood,
Which bears Britannia's thunders on the Hood;
The whale, unmeasured monster of the main,
The lordly lion, monarch of the plain,
The cagle soaring in the realms of air,
Whose eye undazzled drinks the solar glare,
Imperious man, who rules the bestial crowd,
Of language, reason, and reflection proud,
With brow erect who scorns this earthy sod,
And styles himself the image of his God;
Arose from rudiments of form and sense,

An embryon point, or microscopic.ens!" r. 26.

To the commencement of this passage is appended the following note.

6

The earth was originally covered with water, as appears from some of its highest mountains, consisting of shells cemented together by a solution of part of them, as the limestone rocks of the Alps; Ferter's Travels. It must be therefore concluded, that animal life began beneath the sea.

Nor is this unanalogous to what still occurs, as all quadrupeds and mankind in their embryon state are aquatic animals; and thus may be said to resemble grats and frogs. The fetus in the uterus has an organ called the placenta, the fine extremities of the vessels of which permeate the arteries of the uterus, and the blood of the fetus becomes thus oxygenated from the passing stream of the maternal ar

terial blood; exactly as is done by the gills of fish from the stream of water, which they occasion to pass through them.

But the chicken in the egg possesses a kind of aerial respiration, since the extremities of its placental vessels terminate on a membranous bag, which contains air, at the broad end of the egg; and in this the chick in the egg differs from the fetus in the womb, as there is in the egg no circulating maternal blood for the insertion of the extremities of its respiratory vessels, and in this also I suspect that the eggs of birds differ from the spawn of fish; which latter is immersed in water, and which has probably the extremities of its respiratory organ inserted into the soft nembrane which covers it, and is in contact with the water.' P. 26.

The latter part of this observation, respecting the chicken in the egg, seems successfully to oppose the general position in the former part, and the point principally laboured by our author, that all animal life began beneath the sea.' It is equally difficult, moreover, to reconcile the Neptunian theory, which our author is now disposed to embrace; viz. that the earth was originally covered with water, with the pyritic theory, or its projection from the sun, in a state of igneous fusion, with which he at first started. Many examples are brought, however, of the transformation of aquatic into aërial or terrestrial

animals.

After islands or continents were raised above the primeval ocean, great numbers of the most simple animals would attempt to seek food at the edges or shores of the new land, and might thence gradually become amphibious; as is now seen in the frog, who changes from an aquatic animal to an amphibious one; and in the gnat, which changes from a natant to a volant state.

At the same time new microscopic animalcules would immediately commence wherever there was warmth and moisture, and some or ganic matter, that might induce putridity. Those situated on dry Jand, and immersed in dry air, may gradually acquire new powers to preserve their existence; and by innumerable successive reproductions for some thousands, or perhaps millions of ages, may at length have produced many of the vegetable and animal inhabitants which now people the earth.

As innumerable shell-fish must have existed a long time beneath the ocean, before the calcareous mountains were produced and elcvated; it is also probable, that many of the insect tribes, or less complicate animals, existed long before the quadrupeds or more complicate ones, which in some measure accords with the theory of Linneus in respect to the vegetable world; who thinks, that all the plants now extant arose from the conjunction and reproduction of about sixty ditferent vegetables, from which he constitutes his natural orders.

As the blood of animals in the air becomes more oxygenated in their lungs, than that of animals in water by their gills; it becomes of a more scarlet colour, and from its greater stimulus the sensorium seems to produce quicker motions and finer sensations; and as water is a much better vehicle for vibrations or sounds than air, the fish,