EXTERNAL CHARACTERS. 233 



standing, and looking upon the expanse of waters, 

 curling in pleasant waves, and wafting into port the 

 richly-loaded vessels from the opposite hemisphere. 



The animals, the plants, the mud, the broken 

 stones, the water of the springs and rills, and some 

 of the wearing of the rocks, and the formation of 

 little patches of meadow in the turns of the moun- 

 tain gullies, and larger ones in the valleys at its base, 

 are all explainable by causes that can perform their 

 action in the present state of the mountain, and at 

 the present elevation. But, though all these were 

 removed, the substantial character of the mountain 

 would be very little altered ; and the taking of them 

 away would, in fact, be nothing but digging and 

 clearing away those ruins which, in the course of 

 ages, have concealed and disfigured a little, and but 

 a little, of the mountain itself. 



Even the dells and gullies, to say nothing of the 

 larger valleys, and the basins and hollows of large 

 dimensions, all of them with only a small portion 

 of water in them, and many of them with none, 

 cannot have been formed by water above the sea- 

 mark, any more than the ocean can, by its tides and 

 currents, have formed its own bed. Nobody will 

 contend that there is any natural action at the sur- 

 face of the earth that can build up solid inorganic 

 matter, whatever there may be to cast it down. But, 

 although the casting down may have done a great 

 deal (though much less than is supposed), it is just 

 as impossible to imagine a surface power capable of 

 scooping out all the hollows, as it is to imagine one 

 capable of elevating all the hills and mountains. 



Let any one take the map or the model, or, better 

 still, go to the place of any of the considerable rivers 

 in Britain, that have wide valleys, with mountains, 

 or even hills of rock, at the sides ; and then let him 

 ask himself whether, in the nature of things, the 

 water of the river could have made that valley. 

 Take the valley of the Severn, from Plynliramon 

 U 2 



