the past
movements of Europe by those now and recently going on, yet it somehow
grates against my judgment,--perhaps only against my prejudices.

As a change from elevation to subsidence implies some great subterranean
or cosmical change, one may surely calculate on long intervals of
rest between. Though, if the cause of the change be ever proved to be
astronomical, even this might be doubtful.

P.S.--I do not know whether I have made clear what I think probable, or
at least possible: viz., that the greater part of Europe has at times
been elevated in some degree equably; at other times it has all subsided
equably; and at other times might all have been stationary; and at other
times it has been subjected to various unequal movements, up and down,
as at present.

LETTER 492. TO C. LYELL. Down, December 4th [1860].

It certainly seems to me safer to rely solely on the slowness of
ascertained up-and-down movement. But you could argue length of probable
time before the movement became reversed, as in your letter. And might
you not add that over the whole world it would probably be admitted that
a larger area is NOW at rest than in movement? and this I think would be
a tolerably good reason for supposing long intervals of rest. You might
even adduce Europe, only guarding yourself by saying that possibly (I
will not say probably, though my prejudices would lead me to say so)
Europe may at times have gone up and down all together. I forget whether
in a former letter you made a strong point of upward movement being
always interrupted by long periods of rest. After writing to you, out
of curiosity I glanced at the early chapters in my "Geology of South
America," and the areas of elevation on the E. and W. coasts are so
vast, and proofs of many successive periods of rest so striking,
that the evidence becomes to my mind striking. With regard to the
astronomical causes of change: in ancient days in the "Beagle" when I
reflected on the repeated great oscillations of level on the very same
area, and when I looked at the symmetry of mountain chains over such
vast spaces, I used to conclude that the day would come when the slow
change of form in the semi-fluid matter beneath the crust would be found
to be the cause of volcanic action, and of all changes of level. And the
late discussion in the "Athenaeum" (492/1. "On the Change of Climate
in Different Regions of the Earth." Letters from Sir Henry James, Col.
R.E., "Athenaeum,"