space, and as now we inhabit it--a great and marvellous globe, every
grain of which has an unfathomable story in it. Philosophers have
laboured long at the story of the earth; and their revelations have
tended to settle it, in a form not unlike the following:--

Originally, within the space bounded by the orbit of Uranus, a gaseous
matter was diffused at a high temperature. By laws, the origin of
which we have not yet traced, the condition of the diffused heat was
changed, and the particles of the gaseous matter, condensed and
agglomerated by attraction, into a series of planets, of which our
earth is the third in point of size. That the earth has undergone vast
changes, is evident to the most superficial geological student. We are
only able to investigate the crust of the earth, with all our
ingenious boring instruments: but even in this crust we may trace a
gradual change, and recognise the silent operations of nature in ages
never counted by man. According to the popular theory, the earth must
have been sixty times as large as its present size, and have cooled to
its present dimensions, retaining still, in its unfathomable bowels, a
burning heat. The conclusions of geologists, after long and patient
examination, are, that certain rocks mark the age of the world--that,
in fact, the crust of the globe consists of a certain number of
strata, each belonging to a certain era, as the rings of a tree tell
its years of growth. The more they test this theory, the more certain
are they that the history of our globe may be accurately read in the
strata which compose its crust. "A granitic crust, containing vast and
profound oceans, as is proved by the extent and thickness of the
earliest strata, was the infant condition of the earth. Points of
unconformableness in the overlying aqueous rocks, connected with
protrusions of granites, and other similar presentments of the
internal igneous mass, such as trap and basalt, mark the conclusions