Yet, are we going past the Tub School, though it lingers still in high places. We see it in party squabbles, not so much of politics to-day, as of the most esoteric doctrines of faith. We hear great men discussing the question of "prevenient grace," as they would discuss the composition of milk punch, and we hear them mutually anathematize each other on this plain and demonstrable proposition. We call this Diogenism, and of a virulent sort, too. We know that certain men are tabooed by certain other men; that a churchman refuses communion with him who is of no church, or of a different church; and that one Arian thinks dreadful things of another Arian. We call these men Pharisees, who deny kindred with the Samaritans--but we remember who it was that befriended the Samaritans. We know that monks still exist, whose duty to man consists in endless prayers to GOD (in using vain repetitions as the Heathens do); who open their mouths wide, and expect that Heaven will fill them; who hold the active duties of life in no esteem; and separate themselves from their fellows in all the grandeur of religious superiority. We can not see much difference between these men, the Hindoo fakirs, and the unsavory gentlemen of the Grecian tub. They are all of the same genus; but, Heaven be praised! they are dying out from the world of man, as leprosy, and the black plague, and other evils are dying out. True enlightenment will extirpate them, as well as other malaria. If Sanitary Commissions sweep out the cholera, acknowledged Love will sweep out all this idleness and solitary hatred, and make men at last confess that Love and Recognition are grander things than contempt and intolerance; in a word, that real Christianity is better than any form whatsoever of the Diogenic philosophy of hatred.
GOLD--WHAT IT IS AND WHERE IT COMES FROM.
Road-mending is pretty general at this time of the year, and upon roads now being newly macadamized we may pick up a good many differing specimens of granite. On the newly-broken surface of one of them, four substances of which it is composed can be perceived with great distinctness. The more earthy-looking rock, in which the others seem to be embedded, is called felspar; the little hard white stones are bits of quartz; the dark specks are specks of hornblende, and the shining scales are mica. Felspar, quartz, hornblende, and mica are the four constituents of granite. These are among the rocks of the most ancient times, which form a complete barrier to the power of the geologist in turning back the pages which relate the story of our globe. Layer under layer--leaf behind leaf--we find printed the characters of life in all past ages, till at last we come to rocks--greenstone, porphyry, quartz, granite, and others--which contain no trace of life; which do not show, as rocks above them do, that they have been deposited by water; but which have a crystalline form, and set our minds to think of heat and pressure. These lowest rocks are frequently called "igneous," in contradistinction to the stratified rocks nearer the surface, which have been obviously deposited under water. Between the two there is not an abrupt transition; for above the igneous, and below the aqueous, are rocks which belong to the set above them, insomuch as they are stratified; while they belong to the set below them--insomuch as they are crystalline, contain no traces of life, and lead us by their characters to think of heat and pressure. These rocks, on account of their equivocal position, are called metamorphic.