out a thought about the manner of their growth, or the beauty of their structure. Nature has so clothed the solid mass of earth in its gay dress of green, that the ruder material seldom comes under our observation so as to excite curiosity.

MRS. L.-And it is remarkable that "though the facts which belong to the science of Geology are of such magnitude, and of so extraordinary a nature, no attention was paid to them until comparatively a recent period. In the most remote ages, in every country, men have observed and named the heavenly bodies, and endeavoured to calculate their motions; but the series of events which has reduced the most solid rocks into the state of clay and sand, which has left the spoils of marine animals at a height of 14,000 feet above the level of the ocean, which has elevated mountains and scooped out vallies, seems to have excited little or no interest, till within the last hundred years.

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MATILDA. But do you not apprehend we shall find considerable difficulty in pursuing this study-the terms used in it are in a language quite new to us. When I have casually opened a Geological work, I found it might as well be written in some unknown tongue. Every moment I found occasion to exclaim, What are Schists, and Floetz, and Alluvial Soils, and Calcareous Spars, and all these hundreds of hard names of things I never saw or heard of? neither can we always set off with hammer in hand to seek for them.

MRS. L.-True; but when you cannot go to them, they may come to you. With respect to the difficulties of the study to young persons so entirely ignorant as you are of every thing connected with it, I am aware they are considerable even in the first steps; and it it is the better to get over these difficulties I propose the mode of familiar conversations, rather than giving you treatises and elements to read; which you would probably return to me with a remark that they were obscure and uninteresting, as every thing is which we do not perfectly under

stand. Plainness, not depth, will be my object-I shall describe every substance spoken of, and every term used, in a way that would be very tiresome to scientific ears; and though I shall take care to select my information from the best writers, and as often as I can, give it to you in their own words, I hope there will be no learned Geologist behind the door, to convict us of not pursuing a very philosophical course in our new study.

MATILDA. So pursued, I think I shall much enjoy it. Can you enable us, when we pick up a mineral substance, a stone, or a mass of earth, to satisfy ourselves of what it is, or of what composed? When we look over the beautiful collections of our friends, shall we no longer be obliged to say to every thing, "What is this ?"—and be nothing the wiser when we are told.

MRS. L.-I shall endeavour to do so-even at the risk of sometimes encroaching on the province of Mineralogy, when it may help to elucidate our subject.

ANNE.-Mamma, I feel great inclination towards this stndy-but I have been told it is a dangerous one. I once heard a gentleman say, you cannot study Geology and remain a Christian.

MRS. L.-If gentlemen were always to say what they think, you would soon hear it asserted that you cannot be a Christian and retain your senses. It is not worth your while to listen to the way-side remarks of ignorance and folly. But there is a more serious aspect in which this objection may be placed before you; therefore I am glad you have alluded to it. It is too true, that with this science, as with every other, man has wrought weapons for his own mischief; and taken of the works of God himself, to defeat his counsels and disprove his words. The Anatomist, of all philosophers perhaps the most eminently useful, finds means to take to pieces what he could never put together-traces the effects to their cause, the sensations to their source, and finding every thing in the human structure exactly made for the purpose it is to answer, and answering the purpose for which it is made,

comes to a determination that it was never made at all. The Naturalist, observing how, from the unsubstantial gas the materia of nature resolves itself into the organized vegetable, and passes thence to the frame of the thinking, moving animal, where, having subsisted for a time, it returns again into a aerial fluid, and becomes the invisible thing it was at first-concludes as wisely that the world has made itself. So the Geologist, when by much research he has discovered that the ordinary process of chrystalization might, if it had time enough, compose a rock-and that a certain quantity of materials, properly prepared and jumbled together, with time and space allowed them to perform in, might produce a mass of earth exactly like our own, may, if he pleases, thence assert that the world did make itself of Chaos:- but if he could prove this, which he cannot, he has done nothing to the purpose of his infidelity :-for what is Chaos,-and where did it come from, and who put it there? where did his self-making world find the materials for its work? a first cause and a creator there must still have been, to communicate to matter its properties; even if it were so that to those properties it owes its present form. When God said, "Let there be light," whether the particles of matter he had previously made ready began, at his command, to act upon the laws of nature that have ever since directed them, and so produced the light or whether the Creator produced at one moment the material and the work, and communicated afterwards the laws by which that light is communicated, makes no difference to God's omnipotence-though if in his holy word he has described the latter to have been his method, we are bound to believe it was so. It is impossible that the study of the Creator's works should tend to disprove his existence or controvert his word. It is impossible that man, going to the study of nature with an honest and a humble mind, should there discover that God did not make the world, or that he did not make it in the way he says he did. But the sceptick

goes to these pursuits with no such mind-he has learned beforehand to desire that there should be no God, or that he should not be the sort of God that in his written word he has declared himself: what he desires to find, he carefully searches for; and persuades others and perhaps himself that he has discovered what he wished. The fault is not in the study, but in his own perverted mind.

MATILDA.—But is it true, as I have heard, that the discoveries of the Geologist have proved the world could not have been made so lately as Moses has affirmed— and that therefore the Bible account of the creation cannot be the true one?

MRS. L.-If Geology had proved that, it would but have proved itself mistaken. But I am of opinion that those who love the Bible are little less its enemies than those who hate it, if, on every new discovery in the earth's formation, they stand ready to exclaim, "O that cannot be, because it does not agree with the Bible"for then, if in the issue it should be proved to be so, they have themselves made the truth of scripture to depend on the correctness of the Geologist. It was so when astronomers discovered the motion of the earth round the sun. The too zealous divine immediately exclaimed against the system as infidel and dangerous; because if the sun never moved, the Bible was untrue when it says that at the word of Joshuah it stood still. Now it has been amply proved that the astronomer was right-the sun has never moved-but is the word of God therefore untrue? Does astronomy make infidels or excuse them? And do we not plainly perceive that Moses, writing for the ignorant, and not wishing to instruct them in astronomy, was directed to speak of things as they appeared, knowing that he should thus be understood. And in Geology it will assuredly prove to be the same. Wherever any alledged discovery in the formation of the earth does certainly contradict the Mosaic history, the Christian will at once decide it to be false for the greater authority is better than the less-but before he

pronounces it to be an error, he will consider whether it does really contradict the word of God, or only seems to do so, like the discoveries of the Astronomer. All Geologists are not scepticks, though some have been so-and I should not have introduced the latter to your notice at all, it not being necessary to our study, had I not known that every body now talks about these things; and that whether you study Geology or not, you will hear it continually said in society that somebody has found something to prove the world was not made when Moses says it was-and not understanding what you hear, you will be much more likely to be misled, than if you were previously instructed in the meaning of these assertions. I have myself read much of what has been said on the subject, and have little doubt that all the discoveries of the Geologist confirm, if confirmation were needed, the Mosaical account of the Creation, and the events that succeeded it.

ANNE.-I am quite eager to pursue this study, and to learn something of the wonderful secrets of that creation, in a part of it that is veiled from our eyes, and has hitherto escaped our observation. Doubtless it is as wonderful, as beautiful as the things we are familiar with.

MRS. L.-If possible, more so we cannot, without looking into it, know the half of the wisdom and munificence of God-for in this now hidden mass of earth, we behold his first creation, the beginning, if we may so express ourselves, of his day's work, essential to the production and existence of all the rest: and what it was at first it has continued-for without the internal properties of this mass of earth, the things upon its surface must perish and pass away.

MATILDA. I am in a hurry to begin-but tell us first what you consider to be the utility of this study, in comparison with others.

MRS. L.-I will give you my own opinion in the words of another. "The rank of the several sciences VOL. V.

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