MACKIE — ON THE BOTTOM-ROCKS. 
159 
amount of sediment wliich, according to our present information, 
can be permanently laid down in our deeper waters, over the range of 
our present seas, would probably not exceed in the aggregate, including 
even our littoral accumulations, a coating of more than three inches 
thick in ten thousand years ; and yet we have at least a minimum 
thickness of upwards of 80,000 feet of consolidated sedimentary rock 
to explain as the result of natural agencies in past time. 
The -whole of nature teems with the sublime and beautiful, whether 
we turn to the starry firmament, with its planets and its suns, its 
comets and its meteors, and its showers of falling stars, the lightning 
and the tempests, to the contemplation of the incomprehensible dis- 
tance of the heavenly bodies, or to the rapidity of their motion. 
But what more sublime than the age of Time t " Ye paint me old ! 
and why V says the Dutch poet : — 
" Ye paint me old ! and why ? 
And doth my speed eld's fi-ozen blood betray 1 
Metliinks the storm-wind is not swifter flighted ; 
The rapid lightning scarce o'ertakes my way. 
Ye think your hm-rying thoughts perchance outmn me : 
Go, race with sunbeams, — when they have outdone me, 
Talk of my age, — I fly more swift than they." 
» * » * » 
" One glance — but one — 
O'er the huge tombs of vanished Time, around ye, — 
Mountams of ruins pUed by me alone : 
I did it : — I smote, yesterday, —to-mon-ow, 
I wait to smite, — your cities, — you ; go, borrow 
Safety and strength, they shall avail you none. 
Eternity was mine, — and still eternal 
I hold my course, — God's being is my stay, — 
I saw worlds fashioned by His words supernal : 
I .saw them fasliioned,— saw them pass away. 
I bear upon my cheeks unfading roses ;" 
» * * * « 
" Take from my front the white locks Folly fancies. 
My hair is golden, and my forehead curled ; 
My youth but sports with ye;u's. Fire are my glances." 
***** 
" But give me too the hom-glass,— ever raining 
Exhaustless streams untired ;— for I am he 
Who pours forth gems and gold, and fruits undraining, 
And treasures ever new, or can it be 
For desolation only ? Do not new drops 
Of dew replace in summer fervour's fallow dew-drops i 
Fresh flowers replace each flower cnish'd by me '? 
