14 TO LITERATURE. 



Lyell, Mantell, Murchison, Phillips, Sedgwick, and others, 

 are as much an honour to letters as to science ; and the 

 study, unquestionably, owes much of its popularity among 

 the educated classes of society, to the intellectual powers of 

 its great masters. It would be invidious to particularise, 

 but the selection of a few striking instances may perhaps 

 be pardoned. There is scarcely a more beautiful or more 

 perfect description than that in which Dr. Buckland* depicts, 

 with his accustomed eloquence, a. Silesian coal-mine with all 

 its splendid scenery of the graceful vegetable forms of the 

 primeval earth. Dr. Mantell,t adopting the image of an 

 Arabian writer, introduces an imaginary being, endowed 

 with superhuman longevity and power of observation ; and, 

 in the person of this fictitious observer, describes the chief 

 geological mutations of our island in a style which combines 

 the most perfect eloquence with an accurate adherence 

 to scientific fact. Sir Charles Lyell J has a passage which 

 forms one of those gems of philosophic truth with which the 

 pages of this admirable writer are so profusely adorned. 

 After noticing the remark of Lord Byron, 



" The dust we tread upon was once alive," 



he observes that the philosopher transcends the poet ; that 

 while the one can only utter the vague exclamation that 

 inanimate matter was once animate, it is the triumph of the 

 other to describe the very form which it assumed when 

 endowed with the faculties of existence. The works of Sir 

 Roderick Murchison abound in the most graphic descriptions 

 of the wild and wondrous regions he has so successfully 

 investigated: those of Professor Phillips display the rare 

 union of severe and minute investigation of facts, and mathe- 

 matical accuracy of deduction, with the most graceful style 

 of composition, and the most attractive charms of sentiment 

 and feeling. A similar tribute is due to Professor Owen, to 

 whose researches, memoirs, and publications, science is so 

 deeply indebted ; who, in his admirable orations-, literally 

 "bids the dry bones live," and invests the technical details 



* Bridgewater Treatise, vol. i. p. 458. 



f Wonders of Geology, fourth thousand, vol. i. p. 409. 



Elements, second edition vol. i. p. 57. 



