148 SKETCHES OF CBEATIOK 



fluted stems of gigantic club-mosses, the scarred and pitted 

 trunks of extinct tree-ferns, diversify, by turns, the crayon 

 sketchings of the dusky ceiling. Prostrate, all ! They 

 have stood erect ; the soil has held them by their spread- 

 ing roots, the genial sunlight has warmed them, the vital 

 breeze has fanned their verdant foliage; change, which 

 transforms all things, has swept over them, and graceful 

 fern and giant club-moss, slender reed and arrogant coni- 

 fer, have laid down together in their couch of sediment, 

 and the old sexton, Time, has piled upon them the accumu- 

 lated ashes of a hundred succeeding generations of trees, 

 and herbs, and perished populations. What a store-house 

 of suggestions is here ! The dusty " Catacombs" are less 

 eloquent in their inscriptions ; the vaults of the Pyramids 

 recite a history less full of meaning. To the soul that 

 holds communion with the visible ideas that dwell about 

 him, these rocky walls are vocal with narratives of earth- 

 quake and flood, of nodding verdure and of desolating 

 surge ; these shales are the tombstones of generations, on 

 which are inscribed chronologies whose minutes are the 

 cycles of the Hindoo. Here is the populous abode of 

 world-ideas. Through these dim avenues flit spectres of 

 the ancient thoughts which were once the acting energies 

 of our planet. Here is the real Acheron tian realm. He 

 who has descended to these subterranean halls, and held 

 converse with the forms which here abide, has visited a 

 world and communed with intelligences of which Anchisi- 

 ades had only dreamed. 



Shall we venture to translate the histories recorded upon 

 these rocky leaves ? What were the scenes and events of 

 that epoch of the world when these buried vegetable forms 

 were living, growing organisms, and Nature was storing 

 away for the human race these magazines of fuel ? 



