176 THE OLD COAL-MEASURES. 



are as clearly under a higher law of progression as are the 

 physical and vital appointments of the globe itself, and 

 to the philosophical conception all great mutations are 

 merely successive stages towards the broader and higher 

 attainment. 



But be this as it may, to our country these Old Coal- 

 Measures have been invaluable : they are the mainspring 

 of her mechanical power and the stay of her commercial 

 greatness, and everything that tends to economise their use 

 or prevent their unnecessary consumption should be hailed 

 as a national advantage. By their aid mankind has gained 

 new triumphs over the powers of nature, and modern 

 civilisation been infinitely accelerated. One cannot, in- 

 deed, reflect for a moment on the utilities of this single 

 formation, without discerning how intimately the most 

 recent period in geology is connected with the most remote, 

 and how all are inseparably woven into one beautiful and 

 harmonious world-plan. Strange, that the mere physical 

 operations of the earth's remotest ages should be so inti- 

 mately associated with the industrial and intellectual opera- 

 tions of the present ! Inexplicable, if creation were not 

 the unfolding of a great moral as well as of a great physical 

 scheme a scheme in which every element and operation 

 in time past as in time present plays an essential part, and 

 from which not a jot or tittle could be abstracted without 

 marring the symmetry and perfection of the whole. 



