arly before the popular mind. In this way
it may still be serviceable, and ought, I think, to be permitted to
retain its place, as an introduction to systems more defined and
authoritative.

Sec. 2. For the fact is, that in approaching any large mountain range, the
ground over which the spectator passes, if he examine it with any
intelligence, will almost always arrange itself in his mind under three
great heads. There will be, first, the ground of the plains or valleys
he is about to quit, composed of sand, clay, gravel, rolled stones, and
variously mingled soils; which, if he has any opportunity,--at the banks
of a stream, or the sides of a railway cutting,--to examine to any
depth, he will find arranged in beds exactly resembling those of modern
sand-banks or sea-beaches, and appearing to have been formed under such
natural laws as are in operation daily around us. At the outskirts of
the hill district, he may, perhaps, find considerable eminences, formed
of these beds of loose gravel and sand; but, as he enters into it
farther, he will soon discover the hills to be composed of some harder
substance, properly deserving the name of rock, sustaining itself in
picturesque forms, and appearing, at first, to owe both its hardness and
its outlines to the action of laws such as do not hold at the present
day. He can easily explain the nature, and account for the distribution,
of the banks which overhang the lowland road, or of the dark earthy
deposits which enrich the lowland pasture; but he cannot so distinctly
imagine how the limestone hills of Derbyshire and Yorkshire were
hardened into their stubborn whiteness, or raised into their cavernous
cliffs. Still, if he carefully examines the substance of these more
noble rocks, he will, in nine cases out of ten, discover them to be
composed of fine calcareous dust, or closely united particles of sand;
and will be ready to accept as possible, or even probable, the
suggestion of their having been formed, by slow deposit, at the bottom
of deep lakes and ancient seas, under such laws of Nature as are still
in operation.

Sec. 3. But, as he advances yet farther into the hill district, he finds
the rocks around him assuming a gloomier and more majestic condition.
Their tint darkens; their outlines become wild and irregular; and
whereas before they had only appeared at the roadside in narrow ledges
among the turf, or glanced out from among the thickets above the brooks
in white wal