ing your
life, that is wonderful."

"Our art almost compels us to look industriously around the world, and
it is as if the miner were driven by a subterraneous fire. One mountain
sends him to another. He never ceases his scrutiny, and during his
whole life is gaining knowledge from that wonderful architecture, which
has so curiously floored and wainscotted the earth under our feet. Our
art is very ancient and extended. It may indeed, like our race, have
migrated with the sun from the East toward the West, from the middle to
the extremities. It has been obliged everywhere to combat with other
difficulties; and as necessity continually urges the human spirit to
wise inventions, so the miner can increase his knowledge and ability,
and enrich his home with youthful experience."

"You are well nigh inverted astrologers," said the hermit; "as they
ceaselessly regard the sky, wandering through its immeasurable spaces,
so do you turn your gaze to the earth, exploring its construction.
Astrologers study the forces and influences of the stars, while you are
discovering the forces of rocks and mountains, and the manifold
properties of earth and stone strata. To them the higher world is a
book of futurity; to you the earth is a memorial of the primeval
world."

"This connexion is not without its meaning," said the old man; "these
shining prophets play perhaps a chief part in that old history of the
wonderful creation. Men perhaps in the course of time will learn to
understand them better, and to explain them by their operations, and
inversely. Perhaps also the great mountain-chains exhibit the traces of
their former ways, and perhaps they desired to support themselves
without foreign aid, to take their own way to Heaven. Many raised
themselves boldly enough that they might become stars, and therefore
must now be deprived of the fair green vesture of the lower regions.
They have therefore gained nothing, except the power of influencing the
weather for their fathers, and of becoming prophets for the lower
world, which now they protect, and now deluge with tempests."

"Since I have dwelt in this cave," the hermit answered, "I have been
accustomed to reflect more on ancient times. I cannot describe how
attractive such meditations are, and I can imagine the love which a
miner must cherish for his trade. When I look upon these strange old
bones, which are collected in such great numbers here; when I picture
to myself the savage peri