474 Reviews— Hugh Miller's Landscape Oeology. 



The author remarks that Geology, like all the teachings of Nature, 

 will be found to be fraught with Poeti-y, and he urges that it is 

 possible to convey sorue poetic expression of past time as well as of 

 modern agents in the delineation of both mountains and rocks. He 

 points out the position of blocks in a torrential stream, with their 

 plane sides sloped gently towards the current ; and to the shapes 

 and altitudes of boulders on a hill slope. Artists, he says, as a rule 

 look upon rocks as in themselves rather expressionless objects, but 

 he urges that much expression may be given to them when attention 

 is paid to their texture, structure, and colour. He would "make 

 the varying aspects and colouring of rocks the object of special 

 studies — not forgetting that it is possible to find varying expression, 

 and, so to speak, a different handwriting, or perhaps hidden ciphers, 

 in the same rock from day to day." In these and other remarks he 

 endeavours to show that Geology taken in connexion with the 

 physical aspect of the country may be studied as an exercise for the 

 imagination. 



He would wish the artist to " open his mind to ideas of strange 

 vicissitude and awful age in connexion with rocks and mountains," 

 though the mountains be depicted "not as rent and torn by dis- 

 rupting forces from within, but as wasted and sculptured by the 

 forces of * denudation ' at work without." 



In this way Mr. Miller maintains that some acquaintance with 

 Geology would be to the Landscape-painter what a knowledge of 

 History is to the painter of historical subjects. It would help and 

 inspire him in giving expression to his subject. 



It is often urged that Geology, dealing for the most part with 

 pre-human periods, can yield little material for poetic minds. The 

 author himself observes, " Ruins are pregnant with human asso- 

 ciations ; rocks have none." But Geology blends its History with 

 that of Man and many associations may be called up, directly or 

 indirectly, in the imprints of the past upon the present. 



Referring to the Scenery of Scotland Sir Archibald Geikie has 

 remarked that if the Geologist " can only present his results in 

 simple and intelligible guise, they will be found in no degree to 

 lessen the charm of the scenery. He cannot diminish the romance 

 that hangs like a golden mist over the country ; on the contrary, 

 he reveals another kind of romance, different indeed in kind but 

 hardly less attractive, wherein firth and fell, mountain and glen, 

 glow with all the fervour of a poet's dream." The same writer 

 adds, " Let me, however, assure him [the reader] at the outset that 

 if the human associations of the land are uppermost in his mind 

 as he wanders through it, my sympathies are wholly with him." 

 A Geology made easy for Landscape Artists is still a desideratum. 

 There is need of a work that would simply describe types of rock- 

 structure and the relations between various rocks and the form of 

 the ground. Mr. Miller has in the little book before us discussed 

 his subject in such, choice language and in so poetic a spirit, that 

 we are led to hope that he may supplement his flea by some more 

 practical guide for the use of the Landscape-painter. 



