GEOGRAPHICAL EVOLUTION 357 



It is during this quiet process of decay and removal that 

 all the distinctive minor features of the land are wrought 

 out. When first elevated from the sea, the land doubtless! 

 presents on the whole a comparatively featureless surface. 

 It may be likened to a block of marble raised out of the 

 quarry rough and rude in outline, massive in solidity and 

 strength, but giving no indication of the grace into which 

 it will grow under the hand of the sculptor. What art 

 effects upon the marble block, nature accomplishes upon 

 the surface of the land. Her tools are many and varied 

 air, frost, rain, springs, torrents, rivers, avalanches, 

 glaciers, and the sea each producing its own characteristic 

 traces in the sculpture. With these implements, out of the 

 huge bulk of the land she cuts the valleys and ravines, 

 scoops the lake-basins, hews with bold hand the colossal 

 outlines of the mountains, ' carves out peak and crag, crest 

 and cliff, chisels the courses of the torrents, splinters the 

 sides of the precipices, spreads out the alluvium of the 

 rivers, and piles up the moraines of the glaciers. Patiently 

 and unceasingly has this great earth-sculptor sat at her 

 task since the land first rose above the sea, washing down 

 into the ocean the debris of her labour, to form the ma- 

 terials for the framework of future countries; and there 

 will she remain at work so long as mountains stand, and 

 rain falls, and rivers flow. 



II. THE GROWTH OF THE EUROPEAN CONTINENT. 



Passing now from the general principles with which we 

 have hitherto been dealing, we may seek an illustration of 

 their application to the actual history of a large mass of 

 land. For this purpose let me ask your attention to some 

 of the more salient features in the gradual growth of 

 Europe. This continent has not the simplicity of structure 

 elsewhere recognisable; but without entering into detail 

 or following a continuous sequence of events, our present 

 purpose will be served by a few broad outlines of the con- 

 dition of the European area at successive geological periods. 



It is the fate of continents, no less than of the human 

 communities that inhabit them, to have their first origin 



