recisely those on which the signs and brands of these earth agonies
have been chiefly struck; and there is not a purple vein nor flaming
zone in them, which is not the record of their ancient torture. What a
boundless capacity for sleep, and for serene stupidity, there is in the
human mind! Fancy reflective beings, who cut and polish stones for three
thousand years, for the sake of the pretty stains upon them; and educate
themselves to an art at last (such as it is), of imitating these veins
by dexterous painting; and never a curious soul of them, all that while,
asks, 'What painted the rocks?'

(_The audience look dejected, and ashamed of themselves._)

The fact is, we are all, and always, asleep, through our lives; and it
is only by pinching ourselves very hard that we ever come to see, or
understand, anything. At least, it is not always we who pinch ourselves;
sometimes other people pinch us; which I suppose is very good of
them,--or other things, which I suppose is very proper of them. But it
is a sad life; made up chiefly of naps and pinches.

(_Some of the audience, on this, appearing to think that the
others require pinching, the_ LECTURER _changes the
subject._)

Now, however, for once, look at a piece of marble carefully, and think
about it. You see this is one side of the fault; the other side is down
or up, nobody knows where; but, on this side, you can trace the evidence
of the dragging and tearing action. All along the edge of this marble,
the ends of the fibres of the rock are torn, here an inch, and there
half an inch, away from each other; and you see the exact places where
they fitted, before they were torn separate; and you see the rents are
now all filled up with the sanguine paste, full of the broken pieces of
the rock; the paste itself seems to have been half melted, and partly to
have also melted the edge of the fragments it contains, and then to have
crystallised with them, and round them. And the brecciated agate I first
showed you contains exactly the same phenomena; a zoned crystallisation
going on amidst the cemented fragments, partly altering the structure of
those fragments themselves, and subject to continual change, either in
the intensity of its own power, or in the nature of the materials
submitted to it;--so that, at one time, gravity acts upon them, and
disposes them in horizontal layers, or causes them to droop in
stalactites; and at another, gravity is entirely