HUGH MILLER. VIL 



lit)jured, rose triumphant over the ignorance and bigotry of 

 the age. The Geological Society of London, which doubt- 

 less sprung from the excitement in the Scottish metropolis, 

 entered on the new field of research with a faltering step. 

 The prejudices of the English, mind had been marshalled with 

 illiberal violence against the Huttonian doctrines. Infidelity 

 and atheism were charged against their supporters j and had 

 there been a Protestant Inquisition in England at that period 

 of general political exitement, the geologists of the north 

 would have been immured in its deepest dungeons. 



Truth, however, marched apace ; and though her simple 

 but majestic procession be often solemn and slow, and her vo- 

 taries few and dejected, yet on this, as on every occasion, she 

 triumphed over the most inveterate prepossessions, and finally 

 took up her abode in those very halls and institutions where 

 she had been persecuted and reviled. When their science 

 had been thus acquitted of the charge of impiety and irreli- 

 gion, the members of the Geological Society left their humble 

 and timid position of being the collectors only of the mate- 

 rials of future generalizationSj and became at once the most 

 successful observers of geological phenomena, and the boldest 

 assei-ters of geological truth. 



Jn this field of research, in whicb the physical as well as 

 the intellectual frame of the philosopher is made tributary to 

 science, two of our countrymen, — Sir Koderick Murchison 

 and Sir Charles Lyell, — have been among our most active 

 labourers. From the study of their native glens, these dis- 

 tinguished travellers, like the Humboldts and the Yon Buchs 

 of the Continent, have passed into foreign lands, exploring the 

 north and the south of Europe, and extending their labours 

 to the eastern ranges of the Ural and the Timan, and to the 

 Apallachians and the Alleghanies in the far west But while 

 our two countrymen were interrogating the strata of other lands, 

 many able and active labourers had been at work in their owil 



