OF GEOLOGICAL DYNAMICS. 131 



" bodies is not a being pulled this way and that, 

 " as is imagined (by the Newtonians) ; they go 

 " along, as the ancients said, like blessed gods," 

 could satisfy a " thorough-going Huttonian 

 uniformitarian," or could fulfil the conditions 

 imagined by Lyell as a foundation for a theory 

 of under-ground heat. As to the sun, we can now 

 go both backwards and forwards in his history, 

 upon the principles of Newton and Joule. A large 

 proportion of British popular geologists of the 

 present day have been longer contented than other 

 scientific men, to look upon the sun as Fonte- 

 nelle's roses looked upon their gardener. 1 " Our 

 " gardener,'' say they, " must be a very old man ; 

 " within the memory of roses he is the same as he 

 "has always been ; it is impossible he can ever die, 

 " or be other than he is." 



1 Kant's Physischc Geographic (Collected Works, vol. vi., 

 Leipzig, 1839). 



K 2 



