" 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 



Pestum, beautiful in the decay of twenty centuries; or the mutilated frag- 



■ Greek sculpture in the Acropolis of Athens, or in our own museums, 



of the genius of artists, and power and riches of nations now passed 

 .may; witli how much deeper feeling of admiration must we consider those 

 grand monuments of nature which mark the revolutions of the Globe; conti- 



iken into islands, one land produced, another destroyed; the bottom 

 oftheo* a fertile soil; whole races of animals extinct, and the 



d 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 oi life and beauty produced out of chaos and death ; 

 proving the infinite power, wisdom, and goodness of the Okeat Cause of all 

 tilings'" Sir H. Davy. 



