HISTORY OF SLIEVE LEAGUE 63 



think of the ages represented by the quartzite of those 

 craggy precipices below, then of the time when the 

 region lay beneath the waters in which the coal jungles 

 spread over a large part of Ireland. We try to realise 

 how these jungles sank foot by foot beneath the sea, 

 how sand and silt were heaped over them, and how, in 

 course of ages, this submerged area was once more 

 upraised into land. But we fail to form any adequate 

 conception of the lapse of time required for the long 

 succession of changes that followed. We only know 

 that, slowly and insensibly, by the fall of rain, the 

 beating of wind, the creeping of ice-fields, and the 

 surging of the ocean, hollow and glen have been carved 

 out, hill after hill has emerged, like forms from a block 

 of marble under the hand pf a sculptor, that ravines 

 have been cut out here and crags have been left there, 

 until, at last, the whole landscape has been wrought 

 into its present forms. 



We look once more down the face of the precipice, 

 now lit up by the advancing sun, and, though every- 

 where upon its ruined surface we mark how 



c Nature softening and concealing, 

 Is busy with a hand of healing ' 



crusting the bare rock with golden lichen, or hiding its 

 rawness under a cover of richly tinted weather-stains, 

 we none the less perceive the sure signs of constant and 

 inevitable decay ; we recognise the working of the same 

 forces that have sculptured the whole landscape, far as 

 well as near; and we feel awed in presence of this 

 revelation of the continuity of law and of the potency 

 even of the unregarded operations of nature when they 



