THE LAPSE OF TIME. 1 17 



the same ; from another point of view, out of the utmost 

 regularity of alternation, never producing the same 

 thing, or presenting the same aspect twice. We think 

 that the stage has been essentially altered, because in 

 the days of that immeasurable past we did not strut 

 upon it. We are unable to fathom the depth of our 

 own insignificance, and are unwilling to believe in a 

 march of time, compared with which the span of our 

 own lives seems so contemptible. In the depths of the 

 ocean the formation of chalk is said to be going on at 

 this very day. Probably there is no time known to the 

 geologist at which the formation of chalk has not been 

 going on in the depths of the ocean; but its older 

 layers have been altered by chemical and mechanical 

 forces, by fire, by pressure, and by other means. 



We know that chalk and limestone do not form in 

 the open air. If we find them piled up in enormous 

 hills and mountains high above the level of the sea, and 

 far from its coasts, we know that they did not grow in 

 that position; that once their proud crests and ridges 

 lay low in an ocean bed. They could not have been 

 formed on a sudden, or rapidly, or by any other than 

 the slow steps of infinitesimally small successive accu- 

 mulations : for we find them filled throughout with the 

 evidences of life, shells and sponges, and corals of ex- 

 quisite beauty and delicacy, generations after generations 

 of which must have had time to build up their beautiful 

 fabrics. Many things may be hastened ; you may 

 quicken the growth of many; but you can't hurry 

 a sponge. Every foot and inch of a chalk cliff, of a 



