THE AVOXDEUS 01-- THE SHORE. 13 



lasting truth ; and now they have conquered ; 

 the facts which were twenty years ago denounced 

 as contrary to Revelation, are at last accepted 

 not merely as consonant with, but as corrobo- 

 rative thereof; and sound practical geologists, 

 like Hugh Miller, in his " Footprints of the 

 Creator," and Professor Sedgwick, in the inval- 

 uable notes to his " Discourse on the Studies of 

 Cambridge," are wielding in defence of Chris- 

 tianity the very science which was faithlessly 

 and cowardly expected to subvert it. 



But if you seek, reader, rather for pleasure 

 than for wisdom, you can find it in such studies, 

 pure and undofiled. 



Happy, truly, is the naturalist. He has no 

 time for melancholy dreams. The earth becomes 

 to him transparent; everywhere he sees signifi- 

 cances, harmonics, laws, chains of cause and 

 effect endlessly interlinked, which draw him 

 out of the narrow sphere of self-interest and 

 self-plca.>ing, into a pure and wholesome region 

 of Folenin joy and wonder. He goes up some 

 Snowdon valley ; to him it is a solemn spot 

 (though unnoticed by his companions), where 

 the ptag's-horn club-moss ceases to straggle 

 across the turf, and the tufted alpine club- 



