106 SPARKS FROM A GEOLOGIST'S HAMMER. 



with their pinnacled summits, and to the very heart of 

 the earth with their deep-rooted bases. Nature's beauty 

 is as exquisite as it is universal and varied. The complete- 

 ness of nature's attempts at beauty is consummate. Here 

 are no signs of limitation of skill, or taste, or power. 

 Scan the finest work of a human artisan, and beyond a 

 certain limit you detect its imperfections. You gauge 

 and measure the possibilities of his skill. But subject 

 the workmanship of nature to a similar scrutiny, and 3'ou 

 discern an astonishing contrast in the perfection of de- 

 tails. Every minutest line and feature is as exquisitely 

 executed as the principal ones. Apply the microscope, 

 and penetrate deeply the infinitesimal parts; to the ut- 

 most limit of your scrutiny, the same perfection of finish 

 continues; and when you desist from the search for a 

 measure of nature's skill, you leave 3'our task convinced 

 that the same careful and beautiful workmanship contin- 

 ues on and on, down through the ranks of the infinitesi- 

 mals, beyond the power even of reason or imagination to 

 penetrate. 



Lift up your ejes on one of nature's landscapes. We 

 transport ourselves in thought to Switzerland, the land 

 of lakes and glaciers and needled mountain heights.* 

 We seat ourselves upon a shaven lawn. Behind us, in re- 

 treating order, are flower-plots, and trained shrubbery, and 

 proudly ancient oaks; and from the midst of the verdure 

 rises dazzlingly the balconied and majestic chateau of a 

 Rothschild, a banker king. In front of us is a panorama 

 such as no eye can rest upon without a regeneration of 

 heart. The grassy turf descends till it loses itself in the 

 dark forest, on whose tufted summits we look, over whose 



* See the illustrations to the two preceding chapters. 



