Seventh Edition, Revised and Enlarged.

THE UNSEEN UNIVERSE;

OR

Physical Speculations on a Future State.

BY

BALFOUR STEWART AND P. G. TAIT.

Crown 8vo. 6s.

MACMILLAN AND CO., LONDON.

PARADOXICAL PHILOSOPHY.

From floating elements in chaos hurl'd,
Self-form'd of atoms, sprang the infant world.
No great First Cause inspired the happy plot,
But all was matter, and no matter what.
Atoms, attracted by some law occult,

Settling in spheres, the globe was the result;
Pure child of Chance, which still directs the ball,
As rotatory atoms rise or fall.

I sing how casual bricks in airy climb

Encountered casual horse-hair, casual lime,

How rafters, borne through wondering clouds elate,
Kissed in their slope blue elemental slate.

Oh! happy age when convért Christians read

No sacred writings but the Pagan creed,

Oh! happy age when, spurning Newton's dreams,

Our poets' sons recite Lucretian themes,

Abjure the idle systems of their youth,

And turn again to atoms and to truth!-HORACE SMITH.

Yesterday, when weary with writing, and my mind quite dusty with considering these atoms, I was called to supper, and a salad I had asked for was set before me. 'It seems then,' said I aloud, that if pewter dishes, leaves of lettuce, grains of salt, drops of water, vinegar and oil, and slices of eggs, had been floating about in the air from all eternity, it might at last happen by chance that there would come a salad.' 'Yes,' says my wife, but not so nice and well-dressed as this of mine is.'—KEpler.

In te, Domine, speravi, non confundar in æternum.

London

MACMILLAN AND CO.

MDCCCLXXVIII.