THE MOUNTAIN. 97 



tinguish the distant lines, or fix where the earth ceases and 

 the heavens commence. 



The poet and painter are here presented with a boundless 

 field, as the element of beauty seems alone to have been re- 

 cognized and consulted in its creation. Let the artist then 

 bathe his soul forever in this river of enchantments and 

 play like an exstatic child in this sea of heavenly forms. 

 Descending from this ethereal element, the "dread power" 

 of beauty, the economist or utilitarian finds immeasurable 

 reservoirs of wealth and power in mineral resources ; whilst 

 the savan finds also a field of endless study and contempla- 

 tion, exhaustless depositories of organic forms, rocks teem- 

 ing with fossils, leaves of the miraculous volume filled with 

 the eventful history of a planet struggling into being, into 

 peace, order, beauty, and light, from war, chaos, brutality, 

 and darkness. 



The elaborate scientific details of the history of the geo- 

 logical genesis and exodus of the mountain is not the 

 chapter proposed to be indited here. To the sphere of the 

 special geologist, whose end is the stern and severe induc- 

 tions of science alone, this belongs, a world of rich and 

 inspiring visions, a universe of grand and gorgeous sug- 

 gestions, eloquent with the music of " starry spaces and long 

 thousands of years." The mountain dissolved, like Cleopa- 

 tra's pearl, would be a drink for a whole sanhedrim of geo- 

 logical gods. It would seem, in one aspect, a very small 

 page of a very vast volume, being an insignificant fragment 

 or protuberance on a globe twenty-five thousand miles in 

 circumference ; yet to comprehend it with clear intelligence, 

 to illuminate it with perfect scientific precision, would be to 

 read all the secrets of Nature, make vocal the silent and in- 

 finite, give the key to open the mysteries of eternity, and 

 explain the riddle of the Universe to the soul. Its true 

 story would be the philosophy of creation, its true song the 

 beatitude of humanity. 



A part is related to the whole, and to apprehend it fully, 

 would be to apprehend the whole ; for " every natural part 



i) 



