138 THE BANK ACCOUNTANT. 



mains of the departed. Let us once more look round 

 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 indi- 

 viduals 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 oh, how dark the analogy which would 

 lead us to anticipate a similar fate for ourselves ! As 

 individuals we are but of yesterday ; to-morrow we shall 

 be in our graves, and the tread of the coming generation 

 shall be over our heads. Nay, have we not seen a ter- 

 rible 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 silence in 

 all our borders, and desolation 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 



