who was
required to execute his functions in the presence of ladies. If I say
that his coat had been brushed, his tail newly curled, and that his air
was a little more than usually "solemnized," as Captain Poke described
it in a decent whisper, I believe all will be said that is either
necessary or true. He placed himself behind a foot-stool, which served
as a table, smoothed its covering a little with his paws, and at once
proceeded to business. It may be well to add that he lectured without
notes, and, as the subject did not immediately call for experiments,
without any apparatus.

Waving his tail towards the different parts of the room in which his
audience were seated, the philosopher commenced.

"As the present occasion, my hearers," he said, "is one of those
accidental calls upon science, to which all belonging to the academies
are liable, and does not demand more than the heads of our thesis to
be explained, I shall not dig into the roots of the subject, but limit
myself to such general remarks as may serve to furnish the outlines of
our philosophy, natural, moral, and political--"

"How, sir," I cried, "have you a political as well as a moral
philosophy?"

"Beyond a question; and a very useful philosophy it is. No interests
require more philosophy than those connected with politics. To
resume--our philosophy, natural, moral and political, reserving most of
the propositions, demonstrations, and corollaries, for greater leisure,
and a more advanced state of information in the class. Prescribing to
myself these salutary limits, therefore, I shall begin only with nature.

"Nature is a term that we use to express the pervading and governing
principle of created things. It is known both as a generic and a
specific term, signifying in the former character the elements and
combinations of omnipotence, as applied to matter in general, and in
the latter its particular subdivisions, in connection with matter in
its infinite varieties. It is moreover subdivided into its physical and
moral attributes, which admit also of the two grand distinctions just
named. Thus, when we say nature, in the abstract, meaning physically,
we should be understood as alluding to those general, uniform, absolute,
consistent, and beautiful laws, which control and render harmonious,
as a great whole, the entire action, affinities, and destinies of
the universe; and when we say nature in the speciality, we would be
understood to speak of the