who have reared their huts amidst the wreck. He enquires the history of the scene before him. He is informed that the city, once distinguished by splendor, by beauty, by every arrangement and provision for the security, the accommodation, the happiness of its occupiers, was reduced to its existing situation by the deliberate resolve and act of its own lawful sovereign, the very sovereign by whom it had been erected, the emperor of that part of the world. "Was he a ferocious tyrant ?”—“No,” it is the universal reply. “He was a monarch pre-eminent for consistency, forbearance, and benignity."-"Was his judgment blinded or misled by erroneous intelligence as to the plans and proceedings of his subjects?""He knew every thing but too well. He understood with undeviating accuracy: he decided with unimpeachable wisdom."--" The case, then," cries the traveller, "is plain: the conclusion is inevitable. Your forefathers assuredly were ungrateful rebels; and thus plucked down devastation upon their city, themselves, and their posterity.

The actual appearance of the globe on which

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we dwell, is in strict analogy with the picture of our hypothetical city.

The earth, whatever may be the configuration, whatever may have been the perturbation or the repose of its deep and hidden recesses, is in its superior strata a mass of ruins. It is not of one' land, or of one clime, that the assertion is made; but of all lands, but of all climes, but of the earth universally. Wherever the steep front of mountains discloses their interior construction; wherever native caverns and fissures reveal the disposition of the component materials; wherever the operations of the miner have pierced the successive layers, beneath which coal or metal is deposited: convulsion and disruption and disarrangement are visible. Though the smoothness and uniformity which the hand of cultivation expands over some portions of the globe, and the shaggy mantle of thickets and forests with which nature veils other portions hitherto unreplenished and unsubdued by mankind, combine to obscure the vestiges of the shocks which our planet has experienced; as a fair skin and ornamental attire conceal internal fractures and disorganizations in the human frame: to the eye of the contempla

tive enquirer exploring the surface of the earth, there is apparent many a scar testifying ancient concussion and collision and laceration; and many a wound yet unhealed, and opening into unknown and unfathomable profundity.

I propose to bring forward, in the first place, such facts as may suffice to establish the preceding representation of the existing state of the globe; and afterwards to notice some conclusions to which they direct us. The facts will be supported by the testimony of writers eminent for scientific research. It is however to be distinctly remembered, that, while I am thus availing myself of the labours of any individual, his theoretical views of geology rest wholly apart from my subject, and are in no respect to be considered as adopted by me. I am concerned only with the facts; and am responsible only for my application of them.

Among geological writers, there are some who have honourably employed themselves in displaying the clear and decided support, which a scientific examination of the structure of the earth renders to the Mosaic history. Another class is distinguished by hostility to Revelation. The

arguments, by which authors of the latter description endeavour to substantiate their antiMosaical theories, are commonly of the chronological kind. As the Canon Recupero, according to the representation of Brydone, having discovered in a well near Mount Etna seven successive layers of lava, with beds of vegetable mould interposed between them; and having calculated, from the thickness of the bed of mould accumulated on the lava by which Herculaneum was overwhelmed, that each of those beds must have required for its formation a period of two thousand years; inferred that the eruption by which the lowest of those lavas was ejected must have raged eight thousand years before the epoch assigned by Moses for the creation: so these geologists affirm that the order of certain successively incumbent strata which they have detected, the nature of those strata, and the regularity with which beds of shells and other substances are deposited and arranged in them, demonstrate that less than additional myriads of years must have been insufficient for the production of the phenomena. Now, to persons who may be in danger of being staggered by such confident asser

tions, it may be useful to recollect, and analogically to apply, the following circumstances respecting the strata in the Etnæan well. In the first place, there is abundant reason to be convinced that the state of facts differs radically from the representation, differs so radically, as wholly to destroy the argument founded on the representation; and that the supposed beds of mould are severally not mould requiring twenty ages for the accumulation*, but volcanic ashes capable of being deposited to the existing thickness in the compass of half an hour; nay, that several alternations of lava and of ashes might be included within a single eruption. In the second place, that the calculations made by Mr. Brydone are extravagantly absurd, and that beds of lava may speedily be transformed into an expanse of plenty, are facts proved by the most desirable of all

* Dolomieu specifically affirms that no vegetable mould exists between these beds of lava; and that Recupero positively denied having ever expressed a doubt of the truth of the Mosaic chronology of the globe, and declared his extreme surprise at Mr. Brydone's assertions respecting him. Kirwan, Geological Essays, p. 103. 106. Ponces, 471, 472.