‘‘ If we look with wonder upon the great remains of human works, such 
as the columns of Palmyra, broken in the midst of the desert; the temples 
of Pestum, beautiful in the decay of twenty centuries; or the mutilated 
fragments of Greek sculpture in the Acropolis of Athens, or in our own 
museums, as proofs of the genius of artists, and power and riches of nations 
now past away; with how much deeper feeling of admiration must we con- 
sider those grand monuments of nature which mark the revolutions of the 
_ Globe; continents broken into islands ; one land produced, another destroyed ; 
the bottom of the ocean become a fertile soil ; whole races of animals extinct, 
and the bones and exuvize of one class covered with the remains of another; 
and upon the graves of past generations—the marble or rocky tombs, as it 
were, of a former animated world—new generations rising, and order and 
harmony established, and a system of life and beauty produced out of chaos 
and death; proving the infinite power, wisdom, and goodness of the GREAT 
Cause of all things!”—Sir H. Davy. 
