impalpable dust, covering the decks of vessels, and darkening the atmosphere many hundred miles distant at sea. The eye can trace nothing of structure-not even of granular form-and while clothes, rigging, and every crevice is filled and discolored with the organic nebulæ, it is not until the highest microscopic powers are applied, that it becomes resolvable and demonstrated to be a system of living creatures, moving through space, and fulfilling their destiny! The views of nature thus opened up are boundless and infinite, in either terms of the scale, ascending or descending. The immensity of things on the one side, and their minuteness on the other, carry them equally beyond the reach of direct observation, and the intervention of means must in both cases be provided, ere they can become the subjects of human perception and examination. But what is it to me, some will reason, if there lie within the depths of space myriads of rolling worlds, when I see them not, and whose revolutions can in no way affect my condition on earth? These rocks around are but obstacles in my way, or stones for which I have no regard, as I can apply them to no useful purpose. I know that every blade of grass, every leaf in the forest, every drop of water, every grain of sand, teem with living creatures. And, in the air I breathe, systems more, beyond the ken of human view "both when we wake and when we sleep," revel in the irresponsible enjoyment of sentient existence. Science, viewed in this light, and calculated upon the rule of mere statistical enumeration, may be reckoned as utterly valueless, and knowledge as but a term for MATERIALISM. But neither astronomy nor geology will permit our speculations thus to terminate. A principle of causation is involved in both, and to trace this through a chain of sequences and effects, whether in the great or little, in the remote or near, is the one grand aim of philosophy. If I can perceive no bounds to the vast expanse in which natural causes operate, and can fix no border or termination of the universe; and if I am equally at a loss to discern things in their elements, and to discover the limits which terminate the subdivisions of organic matter, my inquiries will not here cease. The mind will not be satisfied so to close and to shut up the thesis propounded. I am compelled to advance onward, even as the objects recede from the view, or expand in magnitude beyond the grasp of comprehension. The soul is filled with the dea of immensity, as it familiarizes itself to the thought of the highest mountains of the earth being but specks on its surfacehe terraqueous globe as an atom compared with the sun--the sun itself dwindling to a star from some point in the distant fields of space—and even all the systems that sparkle in the clearest sky only as faint streaks of light, or not discernible even for millions of years after their creation, in the systems that replenish and shine in the still remoter void. Speculations, lofty as these, do leave something behind-something nobler than arithmetical calculation—and knowledge becomes SPIRITUALIZED by them. The same result follows, when we descend in the scale of nature toward the other limit, when we perceive a like gradation from minute bodies to others incomprehensibly more minute, and are led as far below sensible measures of perception, as we were before carried beyond them, until vision is lost in utter vacuity and obliteration of all organic form. But the more attenuated and fragile the structure, the more the manifestation of Omnipotence and superintending care. If from microscopical observation we discover animals, thousands of which scarce form an atom perceptible to unassisted sense-each of which are endowed with a system of vessels, and fluids circulating in those vessels-if we can trace the propagation, nourishment, and growth of these animals-observe their motions, capacities of action, limits and conditions of existence-all this through countless millions and multiplications of tribes and generations-and, finally, after their term of being ended, now find them entombed in rocks, and elaborated into useful minerals;-knowledge thus pursued becomes again the handmaid of RELIGION, and terminates in the conviction, that we live in a universe over which the eye of Omniscience and love has been ever wakeful and predominant. The telescope leads to one verge of infinity, the microscope brings us to another; and in the discoveries of both there is the firmest assurance, that as nothing is too distant and vast for the Creator's control, so nothing is too minute for His wise and fatherly care. CHAPTER VI. THE TERTIARY SYSTEM. THE TERTIARY SYSTEM forms the last great subdivision of the rocky strata of the earth-the last in the creative, as well as geographical, distribution of organic and inorganic matter-antecedent to the human epoch. All the European and partly Asiatic chains of mountains were again farther elevated toward the close of the preceding period. Europe itself assumed a more distinetive shape and contour, a bolder coast-line, higher plateaux, deeper and more extensive lakes. Great Britain was rounded into form, settled upon new foundations, and already stood out, in her western and northern belt of granitic and primary rocks, the empress of the ocean. In thus recalling the features of the old world, and marking the configuration of a newer state of things, geology furnishes indubitable evidence upon which to establish these and other more general conclusions. The physical geography of the globe is inseparably connected with the series of changes we have been contemplating. The elevation, small and isolated as it appears, of the formation termed the wealden, supplies a key by which to measure the rivers and deltas of our own island. The chalk, forming at the time the bed of the ocean, remained for a period in undisturbed repose, as evidenced by the hollows and erosive action seen on its surface. Then a series of convulsive movements, over a vast area, are indicated by the disrupted and altered position of the strata, when the bottom of the sea was lifted up, and its whole marine fauna completely changed. The secondary era passed away the new tertiary arrangements, animate and inanimate, from henceforth commence. Thus rolls on the mighty course of time. A continent is the ift of one age: half a globe is shattered and wasted in the next. ll living things become extinct and entombed in this quarter: in hat, there are new and more abundant creations. The face of ature is again redolent with beauty life, profusion, and enjoyment are everywhere abounding. "Look down on earth. What seest thou? Wondrous things, Terrestrial wonders that eclipse the skies. Nor can the eternal rocks His will withstand What leveled mountains, and what lifted vales! High through mid air, here streams are taught to flow- Here plains turn oceans; there vast oceans join, Through kingdoms, channel'd deep from shore to shore." The geological district upon which we now enter, embraces London as nearly the center of its range, from which in every direction, along every line of railway, sections of the tertiary deposits are laid open: cabinets of conchology are to be met with in every pit for forty miles around; and what facilities to visit and examine them all with the speed of the wind. Not a spot but may be reached at a wish, sections more than can be numbered are in every locality, and in half the time one makes the ascent of Schehalion, he has taken the circuit of several counties. London! what can it be likened or compared to? Nothing is so unlike as a simile, and we need not try to describe this emporium of the world by a comparison. It is not Rome nor Thebes, nor Nineveh, nor Babylon, but more than them all in the stirring activities of mere animal existence-more boundless in wealth-more dominant in conquests-more all-embracing in commerce; as deep in its sins, arrogant in its pride, haughty in its supremacy, as Queen City of the nations. About twelve hundred souls are week added to that dense mass of human beings. As many, every nearly, are every week blotted from the sum of mortal existence. No metropolis on this mundane scene ever stood in a similar relation to all other nations and cities of the world, whose every wish, for weal or woe, so affected the destinies of all the families of men. A part of every one of them is therein concentrated. Not a tribe but has its representative. Not a specimen or production of human skill but is borne thither. Genius, wit, industry, ingenuity, are in all their most beautiful creative efforts indelibly embalmed; and were that mighty pile to be ingulfed in the bosom of the waters, out of which its foundations were recently lifted up, the genus homo would, in all its entireness, be conserved together the type and wonder of our own geological epoch. This city, too, contains everything else that the world contains. A specimen of every living thing is here; and things which cannot live, but pine and die away from their native haunts, have been carefully preserved and skillfully arranged for the inspection of the curious. The kaleidoscope, in all its phantasmagoria of change and infinite diversity of hues, can display nothing half so various as the realities of nature; and types of the entire modern era, from the extinct Dodo to the recently-discovered Moas of Wanganui, are before you in all their diversified forms, from the misshapen and fantastic to the loveliest of earthly creations. When Adam gave names to the creatures of the field, they are simply said to have been "brought unto him to see what he would call them;" every tree pleasant to the sight grew out of the ground; and Eve, Milton beautifully represents "went forth among her fruits and flowers, To visit how they prosper'd, bud and bloom, Her nursery; they at her coming sprung." Here are all things once more assembled, and as the tree of knowledge no longer bars from the tree of life, we can innocently search into all the mysteries, and see all the qualities and shapes, of every earthly object. Nor is London less privileged and distinguished by its geological treasures and multifarious condition of things beneath. The capital stands on the tertiary Eocene strata, or last of the rocky series of the island. The pre-Adamic arrangements all here cease, the boundaries betwixt the old and the new world are here drawn. The age of HUMANITY dawns. And, interred in the deposits immediately below, lie the last of a series of monsters which preceded man's introduction upon the stage, and between whom and all his race an unequal war of merciless extermination must have prevailed. The reasoning animal, indeed, at once the most helpless and most potent of nature's offspring, could but ill have |