42 MOUNTAINS. 



peaks of the mountains are fitted for the arrest and 

 distillation of the clouds which gather round and over- 

 hang them, making half their mystery and horror ; 

 and their interior is formed into a thousand basins and 

 canals in which the waters are gathered, and by which 

 they are poured out, in streams of life and with voices 

 of gladness, through the plains. By that beneficent 

 working which, " from seeming evil still educes good," 

 the waste of glacier and the wilderness of snow send 

 forth, upon their triumphant paths, the Rhine, the 

 Danube, and the Nile ; and of the apparent desolation 

 of the mountains, are born the beauty, the glory, and 

 the fruitfulness of the earth. 



But, to the eye of science, they present yet another 

 source of interest and gratitude, scarcely less important. 

 Piled up as they are, like huge portions of the central 

 earth, flung out by some antediluvian convulsion, and 

 with their sides laid bare by the violence of tempests, 

 and exhibiting the naked strata of which they are con- 

 structed, they enable us to investigate many of the 

 secrets of that earth on which we tread, and which 

 must, otherwise, remain concealed, within its inaccessible 

 depths. They are like vast warehouses, in which nature 

 has congregated samples of her works for the inspection 

 of science ; like libraries, written by no mortal hand, 

 in which may be read her mysteries, by those whom 

 study has made acquainted with her language. By a 

 careful perusal of their construction, and of the mate- 

 rials of which they are composed, by observation of 

 their various phenomena, and of that of the atmosphere 

 by which they are surrounded, together with the rela- 

 tive influences of each upon the other, we may, at 



