make her any the less lovely. Indeed, if I'd been a man, I should have
cared for her more than ever: it was like turning a child into a woman:
and I really think, as Dan saw her going about with such a pleasant
gravity, her pretty figure moving so quietly, her pretty face so still
and fair, as if she had thoughts and feelings now, he began to wonder
what had come over Faith, and, if she were really as charming as this,
why he hadn't felt it before; and then, you know, whether you love a
woman or not, the mere fact that she's your wife, that her life is sunk
in yours, that she's something for you to protect and that your honor
lies in doing so, gives you a certain kindly feeling that might ripen
into love any day under sunshine and a south wall.

* * * * *

METHODS OF STUDY IN NATURAL HISTORY

XI.

Among the astounding discoveries of modern science is that of the
immense periods which have passed in the gradual formation of our earth.
So vast were the cycles of time preceding even the appearance of man on
the surface of our globe, that our own period seems as yesterday when
compared with the epochs that have gone before it. Had we only the
evidence of the deposits of rock heaped above each other in regular
strata by the slow accumulation of materials, they alone would convince
us of the long and slow maturing of God's work on the earth but when we
add to these the successive populations of whose life this world has
been the theatre, and whose remains are hidden in the rocks into which
the mud or sand or soil of whatever kind on which they lived has
hardened in the course of time,--or the enormous chains of mountains
whose upheaval divided these periods of quiet accumulation by great
convulsions,--or the changes of a different nature in the configuration
of our globe, as the sinking of lands beneath the ocean, or the gradual
rising of continents and islands above it,--or the wearing of great
river-beds, or the filling of extensive water-basins, till marshes first
and then dry land succeeded to inland seas,--or the slow growth of coral
reefs, those wonderful sea-walls raised by the little ocean-architects
whose own bodies furnish both the building-stones and the cement that
binds them together, and who have worked so busily during the long
centuries, that there are extensive countries, mountain-chains, islands,
and long lines of coast consisting solely of their remains,--or the
cou