ges of dark
mountain, which, in nearly all ages of the world, men have looked upon
with aversion or with terror, and shrunk back from as if they were
haunted by perpetual images of death, are, in reality, sources of life
and happiness far fuller and more beneficent than all the bright
fruitfulness of the plain. The valleys only feed; the mountains feed,
and guard, and strengthen us. We take our idea of fearfulness and
sublimity alternately from the mountains and the sea; but we associate
them unjustly. The sea wave, with all its beneficence, is yet devouring
and terrible; but the silent wave of the blue mountain is lifted towards
heaven in a stillness of perpetual mercy; and the one surge,
unfathomable in its darkness, the other, unshaken in its faithfulness,
for ever bear the seal of their appointed symbol:

"Thy _righteousness_ is like the great mountains:
Thy _judgments_ are a great deep."

FOOTNOTES

[40] "Surely the mountain falling cometh to nought, and the rock is
removed out of his place. The waters wear the stones: thou washest
away the things which grow out of the dust of the earth; and thou
destroyest the hope of man."--_Job_, xiv. 18, 19.

[41] The _highest_ pasturages (at least so say the Savoyards) being
always the best and richest.

CHAPTER VIII.

OF THE MATERIALS OF MOUNTAINS:--FIRST, COMPACT CRYSTALLINES.

Sec. 1. In the early days of geological science, the substances which
composed the crust of the earth, as far as it could be examined, were
supposed to be referable to three distinct classes: the first consisting
of rocks which not only supported all the rest, but from which all the
rest were derived, therefore called "Primary;" the second class
consisting of rocks formed of the broken fragments or altered substance
of the primary ones, therefore called "Secondary;" and, thirdly, rocks
or earthy deposits formed by the ruins and detritus of both primary and
secondary rocks, called, therefore, "Tertiary." This classification was
always, in some degree, uncertain; and has been lately superseded by
more complicated systems, founded on the character of the fossils
contained in the various deposits, and on the circumstances of position,
by which their relative ages are more accurately ascertainable. But the
original rude classification, though of little, if any, use for
scientific purposes, was based on certain broad and conspicuous
phenomena, which it brought cle