12 GLAUCUS; OR, 



the coal seam and the diluvial cave could not 

 be a " Deus quidam deceptor," and that the facts 

 which the rocks and the silt revealed were sa- 

 cred, not to be warped or trifled with for the 

 sake of any cowardly and hasty notion that they 

 contradicted His other messages. When a few 

 more years are past, Buckland and Sedgwick, 

 Lyell and Jamieson, and the group of brave men 

 who accompanied and followed them, will be 

 looked back to as moral benefactors to their 

 race ; and almost as martyrs, also, when it is re- 

 membered how much misunderstanding, obloquy, 

 and plausible folly they had to endure from well- 

 meaning fanatics like Fairholme or Granville 

 Penn, and the respectable mob at their heels, 

 who tried (as is the fashion in such cases) to 

 make a hollow compromise between fact and the 

 Bible, by twisting facts just enough to make them 

 fit the fancied meaning of the Bible, and the 

 Bible just enough to make it fit the fancied 

 meaning of the facts. But there were a few 

 who would have no compromise ; who labored 

 on with a noble recklessness, determined to 

 speak the thing which they had seen, and 

 neither more nor less, sure that God could 

 take better care than they of His own ever- 



