views. Although the natural
modesty of his disposition was excessive, approaching even to timidity,
he indulged in the most bold and sweeping generalizations, and he
inspired all his scholars with a most implicit faith in his doctrines.
Their admiration of his genius, and the feelings of gratitude and
friendship which they all felt for him, were not undeserved; but the
supreme authority usurped by him over the opinions of his
contemporaries, was eventually prejudicial to the progress of the
science; so much so, as greatly to counterbalance the advantages which
it derived from his exertions. If it be true that delivery be the first,
second, and third requisite in a popular orator, it is no less certain,
that to travel is of first, second, and third importance to those who
desire to originate just and comprehensive views concerning the
structure of our globe. Now Werner had not travelled to distant
countries; he had merely explored a small portion of Germany, and
conceived, and persuaded others to believe, that the whole surface of
our planet, and all the mountain chains in the world, were made after
the model of his own province. It became a ruling object of ambition in
the minds of his pupils to confirm the generalizations of their great
master, and to discover in the most distant parts of the globe his
"universal formations," which he supposed had been each in succession
simultaneously precipitated over the whole earth from a common
menstruum, or "chaotic fluid." It now appears that the Saxon professor
had misinterpreted many of the most important appearances even in the
immediate neighborhood of Freyberg. Thus, for example, within a day's
journey of his school, the porphyry, called by him primitive, has been
found not only to send forth veins or dikes through strata of the coal
formation, but to overlie them in mass. The granite of the Hartz
mountains, on the other hand, which he supposed to be the nucleus of the
chain, is now well known to traverse the other beds, as near Goslar; and
still nearer Freyberg, in the Erzgebirge, the mica slate does not mantle
round the granite as was supposed, but abuts abruptly against it.
Fragments, also, of the greywacka slate, containing organic remains,
have recently been found entangled in the granite of the Hartz, by M. de
Seckendorf.[98]

The principal merit of Werner's system of instruction consisted in
steadily directing the attention of his scholars to the constant
relations