No speculative subject excites more intense interest at the present day than the future of the human race, especially in relation to those other planets of the great solar system, within whose stern and changeless laws our earth and all the planet worlds are alike inflexibly bound.

Perhaps we have been over-wearied with merely mundane knowledge, and feel the need, as it were, to search the infinite for new subjects of investigation. Curiosity has been satiated here. We know all about the physical condition of the earth, as it has been existing under many mutations for the last ten millions of years or more; everything has been analysed and discussed and proved and tested in the alembic of science, till there are no more mysteries left of the visible world to excite the imagination, or to stimulate research for some yet undiscovered truth. But there is still one awful and gloomy mystery of the invisible world connected with our race which remains unread. The generations pass in endless succession through the silent gate of death—the wise, the learned, the noble, the good, disappear in the fathomless abyss, and we, standing on the brink in tremour and bewildered fear, await the coming of the Fates—

yet vainly ask of revelation or philosophy for some voice through the silence, some word from the infinite, to tell us if there are other worlds where the soul's energy will find a wider sphere, and the divine intellect still more glorious objects for its splendid powers than it finds on earth.