SEPTEMBER. 329 



world, and behold how wonderfully the coun- 

 tries where our faith was nurtured, where our 

 liberties where generated, where our philosophy 

 and literature, the fountains of our intellectual 

 grace and beauty, sprang up, were as distinctly 

 walled out by God's hand w T ith mountain ram- 

 parts from the eruptions and interruptions of 

 barbarism, as if at the especial prayer of the early 

 fathers of man's destinies, I am lost in an exult- 

 ing admiration. Look at the bold barriers of 

 Palestine ! see how the infant liberties of Greece 

 were sheltered from the vast tribes of the un- 

 civilized north by the heights of Haemus and 

 Rhodope ! behold how the Alps describe their 

 magnificent crescent, inclining their opposite 

 extremities to the Adriatic and Tyrrhine Seas, 

 locking up Italy from the Gallic and Teutonic 

 hordes till the power and spirit of Rome had 

 reached their maturity, and she had opened the 

 wide forest of Europe to the light, spread far 

 her laws and language, and planted the seeds of 

 many mighty nations ! 



Thanks to God for mountains! Their co- 

 lossal firmness, seems almost to break the cur- 

 rent of time itself; the Geologist in them 

 searches for traces of the earlier world, and it 



