344 RELATIVE ANTIQUITY [Ch. XXIV. 



notwithstanding the horizontality of the tertiary formations 

 of that age. 



In order to illustrate the grave objections above advanced, 

 which are aimed at the validity of the whole of de Beaumont's 

 reasoning, let the reader suppose, that in some country three 

 styles of architecture had prevailed in succession, each for a 

 period of 1000 years ; first the Greek, then the Roman, and 

 then the Gothic ; and that a tremendous earthquake was known 

 to have occurred in the same district during some part of the 

 three periods,, a shock of such violence as to have levelled to 

 the ground every building. If an antiquary, desirous of dis- 

 covering the date of the catastrophe, should first arrive at a 

 city where several Greek temples were lying in ruins and half 

 engul plied in the earth, while many Gothic edifices were 

 standing uninjured, could he determine on these data the era 

 of the shock ? Certainly not. He could merely affirm that 

 it happened at some period after the introduction of the Greek 

 style, and before the Gothic had fallen into disuse. Should he 

 pretend to define the date of the convulsion with greater pre- 

 cision, and decide that the earthquake must have occurred in 

 the interval between the Greek and Gothic periods, that is to 

 say, when the Roman style was in use, the fallacy in his reason- 

 ing would be too palpable to escape detection for a moment. 



Yet such is the nature of the erroneous induction which we 

 arc now exposing. For, in the example above proposed, the 

 erection of a particular edifice is not more distinct from the 

 period of architecture in which it may have been raised, than is 

 the deposition of chalk, or any other set of strata, from the geolo- 

 gical epoch to which they may belong. Yet, if on these grounds 

 we are compelled to include in the interval in which the ele- 

 vation of each chain may have happened, the periods of those 

 two classes of formations before alluded to, the deranged and 

 the horizontal, it follows that, even if all the facts appealed to 

 by de Beaumont are correct, his intervals are of indefinite 



extent. He is not even warranted in assertiner that the chain 



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