e joined
the Baptist Church, and was settled over congregations at Newark and at
Sing Sing, until, through his means, the Society for Meliorating the
Condition of the Jews was founded, and he became its missionary. He
wrote several books, which display considerable learning and an amiable
and honorable temper. The most popular of his productions is one
entitled "Joseph and Benjamin," designed to illustrate the points of
difference between the Jews and Christians.

_SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANIES._

MR. PAINE'S HYDRO-ELECTRIC LIGHT.--All the past eras that are marked by
especial characteristics and glories must yield before our own, the AGE
OF DISCOVERY, which bequeaths to the new generations so many
applications of steam and electricity, so many inventions in all the
arts, and such vast enterprises undertaken and accomplished for the good
of mankind. These, as the _Tribune_ eloquently says, are the immortal
monuments of our times, and dwarf earlier performances into a very
inferior position. What are the pyramids to a line of steamships? What
is there in Homer or Plato worthy to be mentioned on the day when
Professor Morse sets up his telegraph, and mightier than Jupiter, the
cloud-compeller, with the lightnings of Heaven flashes intelligence from
Halifax to New Orleans, as rapidly as the behests of the mind reach the
fingers? How petty and narrow seem the ambition and desires of Alexander
or Napoleon when the bold and prophetic genius of Whitney, dealing with
continents and nations as with parishes and neighborhoods, stretches his
iron road around half the globe and shows you, moving forward and
backward over its rails, the flux and reflux of a world's commerce and
intercourse, a sublime tide of benefits and universal relations! What
poet, what artist, what philosopher, what statesman, has equalled in
grandeur these conceptions of science, or the splendid results which
have followed their practical realization? Not one. And the reason of
this is plain. These things are filled with the spirit of future
centuries, while our Art, Literature, Statesmanship, Philosophy, are
either mere dead relics of the past, or the poor makeshifts of a
present, not yet equal to the business Providence has given it to
perform.

It is claimed for Mr. Paine that he has found out the means of producing
the greatest revolution which physical science can well be supposed to
make in the business and comfort of society. As far as we apprehend