implies that which never did exist, and never will.

[23] "Philosophie Positive," i. p. 56.

[24] "Philosophie Positive," i. p. 99.

[25] Ibid., i. p. 77.

[26] "Philosophie Positive," i. p. 78.

[27] Loc. cit., Preface Speciale, pp. i. ii.

[28] Mr. Congreve leaves out these important words, which show that I
refer to the spirit, and not to the details of science.

IX.

ON A PIECE OF CHALK.

A LECTURE TO WORKING MEN.

If a well were to be sunk at our feet in the midst of the city of
Norwich, the diggers would very soon find themselves at work in that
white substance almost too soft to be called rock, with which we are all
familiar as "chalk."

Not only here, but over the whole county of Norfolk, the well-sinker
might carry his shaft down many hundred feet without coming to the end
of the chalk; and, on the sea-coast, where the waves have pared away the
face of the land which breasts them, the scarped faces of the high
cliffs are often wholly formed of the same material. Northward, the
chalk may be followed as far as Yorkshire; on the south coast it appears
abruptly in the picturesque western bays of Dorset, and breaks into the
Needles of the Isle of Wight; while on the shores of Kent it supplies
that long line of white cliffs to which England owes her name of Albion.

Were the thin soil which covers it all washed away, a curved band of
white chalk, here broader, and there narrower, might be followed
diagonally across England from Lulworth in Dorset, to Flamborough Head
in Yorkshire--a distance of over 280 miles as the crow flies.

From this band to the North Sea, on the east, and the Channel, on the
south, the chalk is largely hidden by other deposits; but, except in the
Weald of Kent and Sussex, it enters into the very foundation of all the
south-eastern counties.

Attaining, as it does in some places, a thickness of more than a
thousand feet, the English chalk must be admitted to be a mass of
considerable magnitude. Nevertheless, it covers but an insignificant
portion of the whole area occupied by the chalk formation of the globe,
which has precisely the same general characters as ours, and is found in
detached patches, some less, and others more extensive, than the
English.

Chalk occurs in north-west Ireland; it stretches over a large part of
France,--the chalk which underlies Paris being, in fact, a continuation
of that of the London basin; it runs through Denmark and Central Europe,
an