HUGH MILLER. XIX. 



only in their tombs. And yet, ere we go, it were well, perhaps, to in- 

 dulge in some of those serious thoughts which we so naturally associate 

 with the solitary burying-ground and the mutilated remains of the de- 

 parted. Let us once more look around us, and say whether, of all men, 

 the geologist does not stand most in need of the Bible, however much he 

 may contemn it in the pride of speculation. We tread on the remains of 

 organized and sentient creatures, which, though more numerous at one 

 period than the whole family of man, have long since ceased to exist : the 

 individuals perished one after one ; their remains served only to elevate 

 the floor on which their descendants pursued the various instincts of their 

 nature, and then sunk, like the others, to form a still higher layer of soil ; 

 and now that the whole race has passed from the earth, and we see the 

 animals of a different tribe occupying their places, what survives of them 

 but a mass of inert and senseless matter, never again to be animated by 

 the mysterious spirit of vitality, — that spirit which, dissipated in the air, 

 or diffused in the ocean, can, like the sweet sounds and pleasant odours 

 of the past, be neither gathered up nor recalled ! And 0, how dark the 

 analogy which would lead us to anticipate a similar fate for ourselves ! 

 As individuals, we are but as yesterday ; to-morrow we shall be laid in 

 our graves, and the tread of the coming generation shall be over our 

 heads. Nay, have we not seen a terrible disease sweep away, in a few 

 years, more than eighty millions of the race to which we belong ? and can 

 we think of this, and say that a time may not come when, like the fossils 

 of these beds, our whole species shall be mingled with the soil, and when, 

 though the sun may look down in his strength on our pleasant dwellings 

 and our green fields, there shall be sUence in all our borders, and desola- 

 tion in all our gates, and we shall have no thought of that past which it 

 Is now our delight to recall, and no portion in that future which it is now 

 our very nature to anticipate? Surely it is well to believe that a widely 

 different destiny awaits us ; that the God who endowed us with those 

 wonderful powers which enable us to live in every departed era, every 

 coming period, has given us to possess these powers for ever ; that not 

 only does he number the hairs of our heads, but that his cares are ex- 

 tended to even our very remains ; that oiir very bones, instead of being 

 left, like the exuviae around us, to form the rocks and clays of a future 

 world, shall, like those in the valley of vision, be again clothed with 

 muscle and sinew ; and that our bodies, animated by the warmth and 

 vigour of life, shall again connect our souls to the matter existing around 

 us, and be obedient to every impulse of the will. It is surely no time, 

 when we walk amid the dark cemeteries of a departed world, and see 

 the cold blank shadows of the tombs falling drearily athwart the way, — 

 it is surely no time to extinguish the light given us to shine so fully and 

 80 cheerfully on our own proper path* merely because its beams do not 



