98 THE MOUNTAIN. 



is an emanation, and that from which it emanates is also 

 an emanation," the world of effects reflecting the world of 

 causes, as "by the sea, reflected is the sun," too glorious 

 to be gazed at, in their own sphere of, transcendent 

 brightness. 



There is clear and perfect wisdom in the seeming chaos ; 

 and although multiform and diverse, confused and irregular 

 to the uninitiated the world and its fragments appear, still 

 there is a system in them, a meaning that can be read ; the 

 labyrinth has a clue and Daedalus has told the secret. " The 

 wondrous maze is not without a plan." There is an organi- 

 zation, an intelligible order in the arrangement of the mate- 

 rials of the earth and its mountains, and this order is never 

 violated ; for, being the first law of Heaven, it is the last of 

 Earth. 



It would then be a pleasing, an enchanting task to follow 

 the mountain in its progress through the dreams of fabulous 

 geology, when it was a mystery and miracle, why " shells 

 were found on mountain-tops, but not surprising why shells 

 were found at all;" when it was the ceaseless wonder how 

 those " forms," so like the recipient of life, should be where 

 life could never be, the wondrous imagination, with its crea- 

 tive power, having solved all things into strange mimic 

 creatures, a "lusus naturae having sported herself with a 

 useless creation of needless beings." 



What story has the mountain to tell of world-wide geolo- 

 gical cataclysms, of immeasurable flourishings and sportings 

 of earthquakes and volcanoes, long sleeping and silent, but 

 still convenient and useful to geological theorists ? What 

 has the mountain to say of Noah's grand water-spout, of 

 floods of Deucalian, of Ptolemaic and Mosaic systems ? 

 When did this veritable Alleghany actually crack the shell 

 and protrude its spine from that mysterious mundane egg 

 of Egyptian cosmogony ? 



It would surely be a glorious privilege to follow the moun- 

 tain to the dizzy heights of bewildered speculations, of fiery 

 pictures of whirling flame-worlds travelling through celes- 



