352 THE YOUNG AMERICAN.

time by earthquakes, from continually deranging the axis of the earth. The census of the popular- tion is found to keep an invariable equality in the sexes, with a trifling predominance in favor of the male, as if to counterbalance the necessarily in~ creased exposure of male life in war, navigation and other accidents. Remark the unceasing efiort throughout nature at somewhat better than the ac- tual creatures: (amelioration in nature, which alone permits and authorizes amelioration in mankind. The population of the world is a conditional popu- lation; these are not the best, but the best that could live in the existing state of soils, gases, ani- mals and morals: the best that could yet live; there shall be a better, please God. This Genius or Destiny is of the sternest administration, though rumors exist of its secret tenderness. It may be styled a cruel kindness, serving the whole even to the ruin of the member ; a terrible conmiunist, re- serving all profits to the community, without divi- dend to individuals. Its law is, you shall have everything as a member, nothing to yourself. For Nature is the noblest engineer, yet uses a grinding economy, working up all that is wasted to-day into to-morrow’s creation ;—-not a superfluous grain of sand, for all the ostentation she makes of expense and public works. It is because Nature thus saves and uses, laboring for the g'eneral, that we poor

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