112 THE CHEMISTRY OF CREATION. 



the state of matters within our globe, goes to assure 

 us that the deep chemistry of the earth is on a 

 scale of grandeur to which we are entire strangers 

 on the surface of the planet, and seems to bid us 

 remember upon how frail and uncertain a tenure 

 our lease of this position is held. 



Yet its workings are, and must remain, in a 

 great measure concealed from our eyes. The 

 fairy tales of the East represent the world be- 

 low as a scene of enchanting beauty, a palace 

 adorned with bright and glittering jewels, and 

 with minerals of wondrous structure, and 

 dazzling lustre. If so, such beauties are unr- 

 known to us. All the idea we are able to 

 form of its contents must be drawn from the 

 emitted products with which we are familiar; 

 and these, singular as some of them are, do not 

 justify the conceptions that might be formed of 

 any romantic regions of beauty below the earth's 

 surface. That it is a region of disquiet, a scene 

 of tumultuous agitations, of mighty conflicts 

 between opposed powers of a material kind, 

 we have sufficient evidence to show. For the 

 interior of the planet is for ever reacting upon 

 its exterior, as we have evidence in the earth- 

 quake, the volcano, &c., and by the magnitude 

 and extent of these phenomena we may form 

 some conception of the force of the powers 

 within. But these terrible manifestations of 



