REVIEWS TILE TESTIMONY OE THE KOCKS. 201 



of his criticism, the impressions of childhood will not be effaced, but like magic 

 ink will appear plainly whenever subjected tocertaiu ordeals. Constant occupation 

 prevented much of the intercourse that would have imparted some of these soften- 

 ing influences ; aud it may be that I continue scarcely more competent to truly 

 estimate Chile and Chilenos than in 1849. Faithfully, however, has the motto 

 been kept before me " nothing extenuate, nor ought set down in malice.'' More 

 than this : next to my own, there is neither land nor people for whose prosperity 

 and happiness I feel such earnest desire ; none whose advancement I would make 

 such efforts to promote. Will these sentiments give me a right to indicate faults ; 

 not as a censor regardless of the pain he inflicts, but as the friend who details errors 

 that they may be the better corrected ; the admirer who desires to perfect the 

 object of his esteem ? On these grounds I ask the indulgence of friends in Chile 

 praying they will ever believe me grateful for their untiring kindness and 

 hospitality. 



G. T. K. 



The Testimony of the Rocks: By H ugh Miller. Boston: Gould 

 and Lincoln, 1857. 



Hugh Miller's melancholy end has naturally stamped upon this work 

 au interest of no ordinary hind. But apart from the adventitious 

 interest with which it is thus surrounded, the intrinsic merit of the 

 work itself, the grandeur of its theme, and its fresh and vigorous 

 thought, garbed in the same picturesque word-painting as of old, 

 may fairly claim for it a high place in the consideration of the think- 

 ing world. The " Testimony of the Rocks " consists of a series of 

 lectures having for their primary argument the high antiquity of 

 the globe, in opposition to that narrow view which the great 

 Chalmers declared to be unsupported by the Mosaic Becord, and 

 which has long been virtually abandoned by many of our most 

 eminent divines — amongst others, by the present venerable head of 

 the Anglican Church itself To use our author's words — 



It is now exactly fifty years since a clergyman of the Scottish Church, engaged 

 in lecturing at St. Andrews, took occasion in enumerating the various earths of the 

 chemist, to allude to the science, then in its infancy, that specially deals with the 

 rocks and soils which these earths compose. " There is a prejudice," he remarked, 

 «' against the speculations of the geologist, which I am anxious to remove. It has 

 been said that they nurture infidel propensities. It has been alleged that geology 

 by referring the origin of the globe to a higher antiquity than is assigned to it by 

 the writings of Moses, undermines our faith in the inspiration of the Bible, and in 

 all the animating prospects of the immortality which it unfolds. This is a false 

 alarm. The writings of Moses do not- fix the antiquity of the globe." 



The bold lecturer on this occasion, — for it needed no small courage in a divine of 



