1 8 MEMOIR OF WERNER. 



man faculties, and, confining itself to the modest task 

 of observing the globe as it actually exists, has pe- 

 netrated into its bowels, and, in some degree, ex- 

 plained its anatomy. It has henceforth taken its 

 place among the subjects of positive knowledge, and, 

 what is very remarkable, it has done so without losing 

 any thing of its marvellous character. The objects 

 which it has been enabled to see and to touch, — the 

 truths which it has daily brought under our eyes, — 

 are even more admirable and surprising than all that 

 the most prolific imagination had ventured to con- 

 ceive. 



This happy reformation was commenced by two 

 celebrated men, Pallas and Saussure ; and it was 

 completed by Werner. With him commences the 

 most remarkable epoch of the science of the earth, 

 — an epoch indeed which he himself may be said to 

 have filled ; for he had the good fortune to witness, 

 during his own lifetime, the universal prevalence of 

 his ideas and views, although they were so novel in 

 their character and foreign to the previous notions 

 of most naturalists. He has left as many inheritors 

 of his methods and doctrine as there are observers 

 in the world ; and wherever mines are wrought, or 

 the history of minerals taught, some distinguished 

 man is to be found, who accounts it an honour to 

 have been his pupil. Entire academies * have been 

 formed and distinguished by his name, as if they had 



* See Account of Wemerian Natural History Society 

 at the end of this memoir. 



CSl 



