440 



SIR CHARLES LYSOUL 



changes, he will regard every fact collected respecting 

 the cause in diurnal action as affording him a key to the 

 interpretation of some mystery in the past Events which 

 have occurred at the most distant periods in the animate 

 and inanimate world will be acknowledged to throw light 

 on each other, and the deficiency of our information re- 

 specting some of the most obscure parts of the present 

 creation will be removed. For as, by studying the external 

 configuration of the existing land and its inhabitants, we 

 may restore in imagination the appearance of the ancient 

 continents which have passed away, so may we obtain 

 from the deposits of ancient seas and lakes an insight 

 into the nature of the subaqueous processes now in opera- 

 tion, and of many forms of organic life which, though 

 now existing, are veiled from sight. Rocks, also, pro- 

 duced by subterranean fire in former ages, at great depths 

 in the bowels of the earth, present us, when upraised by 

 gradual movements, and exposed to the light of heaven, 

 with an image of those changes which the deep-seated 

 volcano may now occasion in the nether regions. Thus, 

 although we are mere sojourners on the surface of the 

 planet, chained to a mere point in space, enduring but for 

 a moment of time, the human mind is not only enabled to 

 number worlds beyond the unassisted ken of mortal eye, but 

 to trace the events of indefinite ages before the creation 

 of our race, and is not even withheld from penetrating 

 into the dark secrets of the ocean, or the interior of the 

 solid globe; free, like the spirit which the poet described 

 as animating the universe, 



ire per omnes 



Terrasque, tractusque maris, ccelumque profundum.* 



4 " To go through all lands, and the tracts of the ocean, and the bound* 

 less heaven." 



