" 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 Pyestum, 

 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 proof's of the 

 genius of artists, and power and riches of nations now past away ; with how much 

 deeper feeling of admiration must we consider those grand monuments of nature 

 which mark the revolutions of the Globe ; continents broken into islands ; one 

 land prodnced, another destroyed ; the bottom of the ocean become a fertile soil ; 

 whole races of animals extinct, and the bones and exuviae of one class covered 

 with the remains of another, and upon the graves of past generations the marble 

 or rocky tomb, 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 

 GKEAT CAUSE of all things ! " SIR H. DAVY. 



