Again, before we could enjoy the pleasures of feeling, an extensive system of organization required to be arranged. A system of nerves, originating in the brain and spinal marrow, and distributed, in numberless minute ramifications, through the heart, lungs, bowels, blood-vessels, hands, feet, and every other part of the body, was requisite to be interwoven through the whole constitution of the animal frame, before this sense, which is the foundation of all the other sensations, and the source of so many pleasures, could be produced. Wherever there are nerves, there are also sensations; and wherever any particular part of the body requires to exert a peculiar feeling, there the nerves are arranged and distributed in a peculiar manner, to produce the intended effect. And how nicely is every thing arranged and attempered, in this respect, to contribute to our comfort! If the points of the fingers require to be endowed with a more delicate sensation than several other parts, they are furnished with a corresponding number of nervous ramifications; if the heel require to be more callous, the nerves are more sparingly distributed. If feeling were equally distributed over the whole body, and as acutely sensible as in the membranes of the eye, our very clothes would become galling and insupportable, and we should be exposed to continual pain; and if every part were as insensible as the callous of the heel, the body would be benumbed, the pleasures we derive from this sense would be destroyed, and the other organs of sensation could not perform their functions in the manner in which they now operate. So that in this, as well as in all the other sensitive organs, infinite Wisdom is admirably displayed in executing the designs of Benevolence.

In order that we might derive enjoyment from the various aliments and delicious fruits which the earth produces, a peculiar organization, different from all the other senses, was requisite to be devised. Before we could relish the peculiar flavour of the pear, the apple, the peach, the plumb, or the grape, the tongue, the principal organ of taste, required to be formed, and its surface covered with an infinite number of nervous papilla, curiously divaricated over its surface, to receive and These convey to the soul the impressions of every flavour. nerves required to be guarded with a firm and proper tegument or covering, to defend them from danger, and enable them to perform their functions so long as life continues; and at the same time, to be perforated in such a manner, with a multitude of pores, in the papillary eminences, as to give a free admission to every variety of taste. It was likewise ne

cessary, that these papillary nerves should be distributed in the greatest number, in those parts of the organ to which the objects of taste are most frequently applied; and hence we find, that they are more numerous on the upper than on the lower parts of the tongue; and, therefore, when we apply highly-flavoured substances to the under part, we are not so sensible of the taste, till we remove them to the upper surface. A variety of veins, arteries, glands, tendons, and other parts with which we are unacquainted, are also connected with this useful organ. When we consider how frequently these delicate organs are used, during a length of years, it is matter of admiration how well they wear. While our clothes wear out

in the course of a year or two, while the hairs of our heads turn grey, and are nipt asunder at the roots, and while age shrivels the most beautiful skin, these delicate nervous papillæ last longer than instruments of iron or steel; for the sense of taste is generally the last that decays. For the bestowment of this sense, therefore, and the pleasures it conveys, we have abundant reason to admire and adore the Wisdom and Goodness of our Almighty Creator.

Finally, that we might be regaled with the scent of flowers, and the aromatic perfumes of spring and summer, and that none of the pleasures of nature might be lost, the organ of smelling was constructed to catch the invisible odoriferous effluvia which are continually wafted through the air. For this purpose it was requisite that bones, nerves, muscles, arteries, veins, cartilages, and membranes, peculiarly adapted to produce this effect, should be arranged, and placed in a certain part of the body. As the bones of the head are too hard for this purpose, the nerves of smelling required to have a bone of a peculiar texture, of a spongy nature, full of little holes, like a sieve, through which they might transmit their slender threads or branches to the papillous membrane which lines the cavities of the bone and the top of the nostrils. The nostrils required to be cartilaginous and not fleshy, in order to be kept open, and to be furnished with appropriate muscles to dilate or contract them as the occasion might require. It was likewise requisite, that they should be wide at the bottom, to collect a large quantity of effluvia, and narrow at the top where the olfactory nerves are condensed, that the effluvia might act with the greatest vigour, and convey the sensation to the brain. By means of these and numerous other contrivances, connected with this organ, we are enabled to distinguish the qualities of our food, and to regale ourselves on those invisible effluvia which are incessantly flying off from the ve

getable tribes, and wafted in every direction through the atmosphere.

Of all the senses with which we are furnished, the sense of smelling is that which we are apt to consider as of the least importance; and some have even been ready to imagine. that our enjoyments would scarcely have been diminished, although its organs had never existed. But, it is presumptuous in man to hazard such an opinion in reference to any of the beneficent designs of the Creator. We know not what relation the minutest operations, within us or around us, may bear to the whole economy of nature, or what disastrous effects might be produced, were a single pin of the machinery of our bodies broken or destroyed. The exhalations which are, at this moment, rising from a putrid marsh in the centre of New Holland, and hovering in an invisible form, over that desolate region, may be forming those identical clouds which, the next month, shall water our fields and gardens, and draw forth from the flowers their aromatic perfumes. The sense of smelling may be essentially requisite to the perfection of several of the other senses; as we know that the sense of feeling is inseparably connected with the senses of seeing, hearing, and tasting.Let us consider, for a moment, some of the agencies which require to be exerted when this sense is exercised and gratified. Before we could derive pleasure from the fragrance of a flower, it was requisite that a system of the finest tubes, filaments, and membranes should be organized, endowed with powers of absorption and perspiration, furnished with hundreds of vessels for conveying the sap through all its parts, and perforated with thousands of pores to give passage to myriads of odoriferous particles, secreted from the internal juices. It was also requisite that the atmosphere should be formed, for the purpose of affording nourishment to the plant, and for conveying its odoriferous effluvia to the olfactory nerves. The rains, the dews, the principle of heat, the revolution of the seasons, the succession of day and night, the principle of evaporation, the agitation of the air by winds, and the solar light,--all combine their influence and their agencies in producing the grateful sensation we feel from the smell of a rose. So that the sense of smelling is not only connected with the agency of all the terrestrial elements around us, but bears a relation to the vast globe of the sun himself; for an energy exerted at the distance of ninety-five millions of miles, and a motion of 200,000 miles, every second, in the particles of light, are necessary to its existence; and consequently, it forms one of the subordinate ends for which that luminary was created :—and, being related

to the sun, it may bear a certain relation to similar agencies which that central globe is producing among the inhabitants of surrounding worlds.

Thus it appears, that the various senses of man, as well as the external objects which contribute to their gratification, are the results of Infinite Wisdom and Goodness, and calculated to promote the happiness of sensitive and intelligent beings.

But, before any one of these senses could perform its functions, it required to be united with a most wonderful system of organization. The heart required to be endowed with an immense degree of muscular power, and to be set in action in the centre of this complicated system-hundreds of arteries required to be bored, and ramified, and arranged, to convey the blood to its remotest extremities, and hundreds of veins to bring it back again to its reservoir-thousands of lacteal and lymphatic tubes to absorb nutriment from the food, and convey it to the circulating fluid-thousands of glands to secrete humours that are noxious or redundant from the mass of blood, and emunctories to throw them off from the system -hundreds of muscles for moving the different members of the body, and for conveying the whole corporeal frame from place to place-hundreds of fine cords infinitely ramified over the whole body, to convey sensation to all its parts, and thousands of millions of perforations to be made in the skin, through which the insensible perspiration might continually flow. To support this fine and delicate system of vessels, hundreds of bones of diversified forms, and different sizes, and connected together by various modes of articulation, required to be constructed and arranged, and nicely adapted to their peculiar functions; and hundreds of tendons and ligaments, to connect these bones with the muscles, and with every other part of the animal frame. This machine required to be preserved in constant action, whether we be sleeping or waking, sitting or standing, in motion or at rest. The heart required to give ninety-six thousand strokes every twenty-four hours, to send off streams of the vital fluid through hundreds of tubes, and to impel the whole mass of blood through every part of the body every four minutes. The lungs required to be in constant play, expanding and contracting their thousand vesicles, at least twenty times every minute, to imbibe the oxygen of the atmosphere, and to transmit its enlivening influence to the circulating fluids-the stomach to be dissolving the food, and preparing it for the nourishment of the body—the liver and kidneys to be drawing off their secretions-the lacteals to be extracting nutritious particles, to be conveyed, by the

absorbent vessels, into the mass of the blood--and the perspiration, which might otherwise clog the wheels of the whole machine, to be thrown off incessantly through millions of pores. All this curious and delicate machinery, constructed of the most flabby sustances, required to be put in motion, and to be preserved in action every moment, before we could contemplate the beauties of a landscape, be delighted with the sounds of music, or inhale the fragrance of a rose.

It is worthy of notice, that, in the construction and arrangement of these numerous and complicated parts and functions, there is not a single instance, that any physiologist can produce, in which pain is the object of the contrivance. Of all the thousands of adaptations which Infinite Wisdom has contrived, there is not one but what has for its object, the communication of pleasure to the sentient being in which it is found.—If a number of small muscles are connected with the eye, it is for the purpose of rendering that organ susceptible of a quick and easy motion in every direction, to meet every exigence. If the arteries are furnished with numerous valves, opening only in one direction, it is intended to prevent the blood from returning by a wrong course, and endangering the whole structure of the animal machine. If a joint is formed to move only in one direction, as the joints of the fingers, it is intended to prevent those inconveniences which would inevitably have been felt, had it been capable of moving in every direction. If another kind of joint is constructed so as to move in every direction, it is intended to enable us to perform, with facility, those movements and operations which would otherwise have been either impossible, or have been attended with the greatest inconvenience and pain. There are certain parts connected with the human frame, whose precise use cannot be accurately determined, but this is owing to our limited knowledge of the various functions which are requisite to be performed in this complicated machine. In no instance whatever can it be shown, that the infliction of pain is the object of any one part or function of whose use we are uncertain ;— and it is conformable to the dictates of the soundest reason to conclude, that, since every part, whose use we can ascertain, is adapted to communicate pleasure, every other part, throughout every branch of the animal system, is calculated to produce a similar effect.

It is true, indeed, that pain is frequently felt in the different members which compose our corporeal system; but this is not owing to its original construction, but to the derangement which its parts receive, either from internal disease or from