N the discoveries of Captain Speke, the - world has finally the solution of a queson which has occupied monarchs, poets, nd geographers, from time immemorial; nd what Alexander the Great and Ptolmy Philadelphus in vain essayed, has een demonstrated in our age by one hose perseverance must ever command ar admiration and respect.

Homer has described the Nile as a ream descending from heaven. Virgil pears to have fancied that it had its igin far in Asia. Pliny imagined that it rang from a mountain in Lower Maurinia. The general impression, however, I later years, has been, that the mysterias and beneficent river, the holy Nile of

lakes among the mountains of the Moon, a few degrees north of the equator.

It has been personified in several statues, particularly in a very noble one of black marble, now in the Vatican. He (the Nile, personified) is distinguished by his large cornucopia, by the sphynx couched under him, and by the sixteen little children playing around him. By the sixteen children are understood the several risings of the Nile every year as far as to sixteen cubits. The black marble is said to be in allusion to the Nile's coming from Ethiopia. The waters flow down from under his robe which con

ceals his urn, to denote that the head of this river was impenetrable.

The Nile was venerated by the ancient Egyptians, and when its annual rising commenced they strewed its surface with lotus flowers, and performed various rites in honor of its mysterious powers and preternatural attributes.

Captain Speke has clearly shown us that the river has its origin in the head waters of Lake N'yanza, about 3° south of the equator. He describes its outlet from the lake as the most interesting sight he had seen in Africa. Here the river is about 400 or 500 feet wide, and breaks over falls about twelve feet deep.

He says: "The roar of the waters, the thousands of passenger fish leaping at the falls with all their might, the Wasoga and

Womando fishermen coming out in boats

and taking post on all the rocks with rod and hook, hippopotami and crocodiles lying sleepily on the water, the ferry at work above the falls, and cattle driven down to drink at the margin of the lake, made in all, with the pretty nature of the country, -small hills, grassy-topped, with trees in the folds, and gardens on the lower slopes, —as interesting a picture as one could wish to see."

He thus sums up his observations: "I saw, without any doubt, that old Father Nile rises in the Victoria N'yanza. Comparative information assured me that there was as much water on the eastern as on the western side of the lake-if any thing, rather more. The most remote waters, or top head of the Nile, is the southern end of the lake, situated close on the third degree of south latitude, which gives to the Nile the surprising length, in direct measurement, rolling over thirty-four degrees of latitude, of above two thousand three hundred miles.

"Now, from the southern point round by the west to where the great Nile-stream issues, there is only one feeder of any im

portance, and that is while from the southe by the east to the rivers at all of any i traveled Arabs, one from the west of the jaro to the lake whe second degree, and als south latitude, there a plains, and the country Unyamûézi; but they great rivers, and the c ily watered, having o nels and rivulets, that make long marches in when they went on neys.'

Thus it has been left fruitful in events, to 1 so long hung over th celebrated stream. Ar truly thank Captain S fuls, and trust that, er Americans and Europe: posts all along its bank finally reveal to us all tral Africa.

T is not less interesting than instructive

discoveries made in science and elsewhere, have sprung not so much from deliberate inquiry as from accidental observation. As the traveler sometimes becomes hunter, not because he sets out for the chase or is on the lookout for game, but because the game starts up unexpectedly along his pathway and tempts him irresistibly to the pursuit, so the student, or even the daylaborer, has often turned out a splendid discoverer, in consequence of some unwonted and happy combination of circumstances, which arrested his attention and suggested the presence of a hitherto unknown principle; and which gave hints enough as to its real nature and value to awaken new interest and spur to thorough study. Everybody is familiar with the story that Sir Isaac Newton, happening,

while sitting under a t

incident into a train of ended in his announci and universal law of g be the greatest achieven in the sphere of scien This account, though cause it seemed to detra the dignity of Sir Isaac's has, after careful exami tent authority, been a strictly true. But it is that the discovery of a dynamic, electricity, by 1768, was greatly due to cumstance. He had be upon the legs and spine view of obtaining, if pos

* Speke's "Africa," publish

the presence and influence of atmospheric electricity. Failing utterly in this, and probably afflicted with feelings of disappointment, he was in the act of removing the parts of the frog, when these coming into contact with different metals (iron and copper), became lively with muscular activity; thus showing him by chance, and to his infinite surprise and delight, the very signs of the presence of electricity, which he had been at great pains to induce from another source, and had looked long and anxiously for in vain. He now began a new series of experiments, and soon the news of their success and strangeness startled the whole civilized world. The ponds were fished for frogs, until this innocent race of animals was well-nigh exterminated, such was the curiosity of everybody to witness their fantastic jerkings and kickings and almost jumpings, in obedience to Galvani's currents. The additional investigations of Volta and the construction of his celebrated "pile" immediately followed, and all the rest, by a multitude of others and of the most extensive kind, came in due time. To so slight a circumstance, and so accidental, are we indebted for one of the grandest triumphs of this or any age! Think of it! In that frog's legs, and the copper hook upon which they hung, and the rude iron bar near by, the imaginative student can see the first small but wonderful battery, out of which, as ten thousand blossoms spring up from some ever fruitful germ, run a countless number of telegraphic wires, which belt the earth in every direction, and are the news-carriers to all lands; and also that other countless number of medicinal wires which are to-day winding themselves around, oh! how many patients, infusing into their diseased forms new currents of vigor, health, and life!

Again: it was mere accident, viz., the opening of a hole in a piston-rod, by which cold water flowed into a cylinder of steam beneath, that taught Capt. Thomas Savery, an engine-builder, a new, quick, and effective method of condensation, and led to gigantic improvements in the application of steam to every branch of industry.

The art of making glass, we are told by Pliny. 66 was accidentally discovered by

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some merchants, who were traveling with nitre. They stopped near a river issuing from Mount Carmel, and not finding any thing to rest their kettles on, they used some of their pieces of nitre for that purpose. The nitre, gradually dissolving by the heat, mixed with the sand, and a transparent matter flowed, which was, in fact, glass."

The silver mines of Potosi were found by a lad, who, while helping himself up the mountain side, chanced to pull up a small shrub, and seeing specks of glittering ore dangling among its roots, he picked them out, and, struck with their beauty, carried them home, not knowing what they were. Not long afterward, thousands of mines branched out to the right and left, up and down, from this little one so fortuitously opened, until the huge mountain was literally honeycombed, and the treasuries of the old world were filled with its despoiled

wealth.

Without multiplying illustrations, enough have been adduced to show how often apparent accidents-which, however, the Christian rightly names happy Providences have been prolific of the most magnificent and far-reaching results in the domain of science.

The same thing is true in the sphere of invention and the arts. When, sometimes, there seems to be an exception, i. e., when the discoverer has been able to frame a pretty clear conception of the path he is to follow, as was the case with Columbus, it will still be found, upon closer inspection, that he reached not the object aimed at, but another kindred and generally a greater one. The renowned Genoese sailor himself did not succeed in realizing the conception and fond anticipations with which he weighed anchor and committed his fortune to the seas. It was his purpose, by steering Westward, to mark out a passage to the spice islands and golden coasts of the East Indies. The knowledge of such a passage, it was justly thought, would throw the commerce of the world into a new channel, and be productive of the largest benefits to the maritime States lying along the Atlantic. This passage was precisely what he did not

find; and though, after coming upon land, he searched for it in vain among the West India islands and along the South American coast, through many stormy and disastrous scenes, he yet died under the illusion that it would show itself to some more fortunate navigator, and without knowing that he had stumbled, as it were, into the illustrious achievement of discovering an altogether New World.

Two points of instruction grow out of these facts.

First: a proper consideration of them ought both to moderate our expressions about the essential dignity, the glorious greatness of human nature; and to lower the proud, self-adulatory style with which science often puts forward her claims. When we see her votaries, with unseemly haste and unblushing egotism, marshalling their "facts" (too often falsely so called) against well established theological truths and the sacred edicts of inspiration, let us look back to their accidental successes and ask

"Upon what meat doth this our Cæsar feed, That he hath grown so great?"

The proudest masters of science are indeed mindful of all that a happy arrangement of circumstances, formed without any agency of their own, and the labors of others, have done for them, and are therefore exceedingly modest in their pretensions. Sir Isaac Newton used to say, "that he saw further than other men only because he stood upon the shoulders of the giants who had worked before him;" and again, "that light finally dawned out of a subject upon him, not so much from his possessing any original superiority, as from his keeping the subject longer and more earnestly than others before his mind." His was an example which might oftener be profitably, and, in the end, creditably imitated.

Second: the above facts teach us that the highest attainments lie very near and open to the close and thoughtful observer. The world is full of the richest gifts for him who walks through it rightly using his eyes and ears. The difficulty with a majority of mankind is, that their minds

terly unworthy scheme blind them to wonderf would otherwise be clea or, aspiring to do some neglect the best material at hand, for their und searching the distant h around for something b is said that Raphael had through Europe for mo serve to enable him to vas a perfect conception and child, when, at last, own home discouraged, h upon the very scene whic such pains to turn fro everywhere else. A pe under an arbor holding another of her children some trifling offering. T up a barrel-head that lay at his feet, and sketched unwittingly presented. I was finished afterward on pictures. It is indeed t of genius, that it is alwa the suggestions and mear formances in the things daily surrounded. The c blunder through golden o remain a dolt to the last. with apparently nothing aid it, will be continually and fruitful realms of kn ing wise upon accidents, stacles, and braiding a wr fame for his own brow, w ly striving for it.

THE chief secret of con suffering trifles to vex o dently cultivating an U small pleasures, since very are let on long leases.

MINDS, like growing frui as time advances; but n estranged from what is like fruits prematurely pl into a semblance of ripenes

MEN talk of victory as i thing fortunate. Work is