But what are the silent voices of the past saying—for what have the wonderful and mysterious powers of nature for so many ages been labouring? Where, through all the strange mysteries of the past, is the finger of God pointing? To MAN, and the world that is his. Look at all the appropriations of every kind of organic and inorganic matter to such varied and different purposes by our race, and can we divert our minds from contemplating the vast time and the numberless operations which have assisted in the elaboration of the materials necessary for our comforts or our wants? Past and present creations alike show that animals fitted for each peculiar condition of our planet have existed at every period; but of all those classes which have passed away, or of those which exist, there are none which have not been limited in their geographical range, none to which a considerable other portion of this world has not been useless and unserviceable. Is it so with man? The stars of heaven—how many ages old!—tell him the track of the world he lives upon; mysterious magnetism guides the slender needle by which his freighted ships are safely steered from shore to shore; the very lightning is his messenger. The coal and iron of his mighty engines are ages old; the clay of the bricks of which he builds his houses, and the marble of the statues with which he adorns his palaces, have passed through ages of preparation; innumerable and diversified as are the materials of the earth, has he not a use for them all, from the lowermost granites to the uppermost surface-soils?