but by violent and definite
physical action; such as the filling up of the Lac de Chede by landslips
from the Rochers des Fiz;--the narrowing of the Lake Lucerne by the
gaining delta of the stream of the Muotta-Thal, which, in the course of
years, will cut the lake into two, as that of Brientz has been divided
from that of Thun;--the steady diminishing of the glaciers north of the
Alps, and still more, of the sheets of snow on their southern slopes,
which supply the refreshing streams of Lombardy:--the equally steady
increase of deadly maremma round Pisa and Venice; and other such
phenomena, quite measurably traceable within the limits even of short
life, and unaccompanied, as it seemed, by redeeming or compensatory
agencies. I am still under the same impression respecting the existing
phenomena; but I feel more strongly, every day, that no evidence to be
collected within historical periods can be accepted as any clue to the
great tendencies of geological change; but that the great laws which
never fail, and to which all change is subordinate, appear such as to
accomplish a gradual advance to lovelier order, and more calmly, yet
more deeply, animated Rest. Nor has this conviction ever fastened itself
upon me more distinctly, than during my endeavour to trace the laws
which govern the lowly framework of the dust. For, through all the
phases of its transition and dissolution, there seems to be a continual
effort to raise itself into a higher state; and a measured gain, through
the fierce revulsion and slow renewal of the earth's frame, in beauty,
and order, and permanence. The soft white sediments of the sea draw
themselves, in process of time, into smooth knots of sphered symmetry;
burdened and strained under increase of pressure, they pass into a
nascent marble; scorched by fervent heat, they brighten and blanch into
the snowy rock of Paros and Carrara. The dark drift of the inland river,
or stagnant slime of inland pool and lake, divides, or resolves itself
as it dries, into layers of its several elements; slowly purifying each
by the patient withdrawal of it from the anarchy of the mass in which it
was mingled. Contracted by increasing drought, till it must shatter into
fragments, it infuses continually a finer ichor into the opening veins,
and finds in its weakness the first rudiments of a perfect strength.
Bent at last, rock from rock, nay, atom from atom, and tormented in
lambent fire, it knits, through the fusion, t