THE TWO GREAT SCULPTORS. 105 
and shrinking of the earth. We shall not speak of 
these to-day, but put them aside as belonging to the 
rough work of the statuary yard. But when once 
these large masses are put ready for water to work 
upon, then all the rest of the rugged wrinkles and 
gentle slopes which make the country so beautiful are 
due to water and ice ; and for this reason I have called 
them " sculptors." 
Go for a walk in the country, or notice the land- 
scape as you travel on a railway journey. You pass 
by hills and through valleys, through narrow steep 
gorges cut in hard rock, or through wild ravines up 
the sides of which you can hardly scramble. Then 
you come to grassy slopes and to smooth plains across 
which you can look for miles without seeing a hill ; 
or, when you arrive at the seashore, you clamber into 
caves and grottos, and along dark narrow passages 
leading from one bay to another. All these hills, 
valleys, gorges, ravines, slopes, plains, caves, grottos, 
and rocky shores have been cut out by water. Day 
by day and year by year, while everything seems to 
us to remain the same, this industrious sculptor is 
chipping away, a few grains here, a corner there, a 
large mass in another place, till he gives to the coun- 
try its own peculiar scenery, just as the human sculp- 
tor gives expression to his statue. 
Our work to-day will consist in trying to form some 
idea of the way in which water thus carves out the 
surface of the earth, and we will begin by seeing how 
much can be done by our old friends the rain-drops 
before they become running streams. 
Everyone must have noticed that whenever rain 
