it was left there, uncomprehended and barren, till our century. During
all that time it was calling from the clouds to man's dazzled eye and
deafened ear. It pervaded the air he breathed, the ground he trod and
the frame which constituted him. It bore his will from brain to hand,
and guarded his life, through the (so-called) spontaneously acting
muscles of the thorax, during the half or third of his life during
which his will slumbered. At length its call was hearkened to
intelligently. Franklin made it articulate. Its twin Champollions came
in Volta and Galvani. Its few first translated words have, under a
host of elucidators, swelled to volumes. They link into one language
the dialects of light, motion and heat. The indurated turpentine of
the Pomeranian beach speaks the tongue of the farthest star.

The sciences, like the nations and like bees, as they grow too large
for their hive are perpetually swarming and colonizing. Not that
colonization is followed, as in the case of the similitude, by
independence. Their mutual bonds become closer and closer. But
convenience and (so to speak) comfort require the nominal separation.
So electricity sets up for itself; and chemistry, the metropolis,
swells into other offshoots. So numerous and so great are these that
the old alchemists, unlimited range through the material, immaterial
and supernatural as they claimed for their art, would rub their eyes,
bleared over blowpipe and alembic, at sight of its present riches. The
half-hewn block handed down by these worthies--not by any means

Like that great Dawn which baffled Angelo
Left shapeless, grander for its mystery,

but blurred and scratched all over with childish and unmeaning
scrawls--has been wholly transformed. Chemistry no longer assumes to