THE brilliant discoveries which have rendered the last half century so remarkable a period in the world's history, are not only valuable as elements of social progress, but as sources of the most exalted pleasure. Chemistry, which had for hundreds of years been rudely cradled in the mysterious processes of the alchemist, toward the close of the last century began to assume a higher character than that of a miracle-working gold seeker, and the relations of various substances, and the laws which govern them, came to be investigated with the eye of a new philosophy and the incentive of a truer principle. Watt and Black, Lavoisier and Gay Lussac, Hales, Franklin, and Priestley, and their contemporaries, in their several departments, developed laws unknown to science, and left for their successors the bases, and, in some cases, the perfected platforms upon which they could labor with still greater success. Lord Bacon observes that the discoveries and inventions of the alchemists "are well represented in the fable of the old man who left an estate to his children, buried, as he said, in his vineyard, which, therefore, they fell to dig and search for with great diligence; whereby, though they found no gold in substance, yet they received an abundant vintage for their labor. So assuredly has the search and stir to make gold produced a great number of fruitful experiments."

GEOLOGY, of the economic sciences the last which enlisted the earnest attention of learned inquirers, has perhaps suffered for the want of some such stimulus. Had the search for gold been made in the sands of the streams, or the fissures of the rocks, or the depths of ravines, no matter how impracticably stubborn in refusing to yield the auriferous prize, or had the search been made with a philosophical spirit in those regions where gold finds its proper repositories, Geology would not have waited until the close of the

*The Old Red Sandstone; or, New Walks in an Old Field. By Hugh Miller. Boston: Gould & Lincoln, 1851, cloth, 12 mo, pp. 260. The Foot-Prints of the Creator; or, The Asterolepis of Stromness. By Hugh Miller, author of "The Old Red Sandstone." Boston: Gould, Kendall & Lincoln, 1850, cloth, 12 mo, pp. 337.

eighteenth century for its first distinct recognition among the sciences, or for its superior claims as a practical science of the highest value. Had even the fruitless and disastrous searches for coal, in regions where coal cannot be obtained except by reaching a possible carboniferous antipode, been made with a philosophical eye, facts might have been accumulated of an important character, as a substratum, at least, upon which the richer alluvium of the expanding stream might have been deposited. But no such aids and no such influences took their sponsorial places at the altar of geological science.

Toward the close of the last century, Werner in Saxony, and Hutton in Scotland, seized the trifling materials which had been slowly drifted along, and the Saxon Professor, with a partial field of observation in his own district, boldly and eloquently uttered his doctrines of the earth, and gave the first great impetus to inquiry into the physical structure of the globe. Hutton, residing in another district of a very marked character, perfectly irreconcilable with the generalizing theories of the Wernerian school, founded upon the fields of his own observation an opposing system-Werner advocating the Neptunian or aqueous, and Hutton the Vulcanian or igneous theory. Other philosophers entered the field, and the discussions arising from these speculations required, in a province which is eminently one of actual observation, the discovery of facts, which, to apply the words of Bacon, "they fell to dig and search for with great diligence; and so assuredly the search and stir to make [theories] produced a great number of fruitful experiments."

At the present time Geology enlists the profoundest study of some of the master minds of the age. It is but as yesterday that Cuvier deciphered the hieroglyphs of the Paris basin, and would have read as rapidly and accurately the "Foot-Prints" in the Old Red Sandstone of Stromness, or Cromarty, or Balruddery, as Champollion when he deciphered the history of an Egyptian Apis or prince in the iconography and paleography of a subterranean hecatomb. To day, an Agassiz takes the shattered frag

ments of a fossil from the Old Red Sandstone, and assigns them their place in the scale of organisms, almost as readily as he would the tibia or the femur of a skeleton of one of the existing species of animals. Buckland, Murchison, Lyell, Bakewell, Silliman, and many others, are witnesses of the treasures not less than the exalted pleasures of Geology.

Observers and students in this field are becoming more numerous, and were their number multiplied a hundred-fold, they would be too few. The exploration of this country is as yet but just begun, while British America, Spanish and Southern America have been scarcely touched. Even in England and Scotland there is yet room for extended and laborious, and to be well repaid research. Partial explorations have been made in Europe, while Africa, Asia, and New Holland are yet fields comparatively unknown to the geologist. The treasures which the next twenty-five years will reveal will but partially exhaust the amount of pleasure to be enjoyed by the practical explorer and student.

Pollok has beautifully said:

"Abundant, and diversified above

All number, were the sources of delight;
As infinite as were the lips that drank;
And to the pure, all innocent and pure;
The simplest still to wisest men the best.
One made acquaintanceship with plants and flowers,
And happy grew in telling all their names.
One classed the quadrupeds; a third the fowls;
Another found in minerals his joy.
And I have seen a man, a worthy man,
In happy mood conversing with a fly;
And as he through his glass, made by himself,
Beheld its wondrous eye and plumage fine,
From leaping scarce he kept for perfect joy."

The geologist, as he trudges along with his basket, his hammers, and chisels, cracking the nodule or breaking off the angles of a stone lodged in the fence of some busy farmer, may appear to be engaged in a strange and unmeaning employ. ment. But such an accidental blow may reveal to the eye a new organism, unmonographed in the archives of science, and unknown to our present existences. That specimen may be a key to a new class of facts-may supply a link in creation, or may, with its stony tongue, still speak, after the lapse of an unknown period, of the infinite mind of the Creator. Just so near as we humbly and reverently approach the Divine presence, with the confidence and the eye of faith, so clearer do we read His perfections, and His goodness, whether in the starry radiance of the azure sky, the dealings of Providence in his moral government, or whether we descend to the remotest periods of the past of our earth, and from under

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the superimposed and luminous folios of a thousand generations of extinct sentient beings, carve out with hammer and chisel the still distinct and instructive lessons gleamed from the 66 FootPrints" of the Moray or Cromarty Friths.

We know that infidelity, driven from its seat which it had usurped among the stars, like Lucifer cast down from heaven, has sought to lodge itself in the chair of the Geologist. But as the pretended philosophy of a progressive development from an electrized atom of mud turns over its stony volumes, and finds that it is confronted with the undeniable pastexistence of beings of a high development, from which, as Mr. Miller observes, a "theory of degradation" may with equal plausibility be framed, it will find that its lodgment is but a temporary season for possible repentance before it is consigned to that "central fire" of which it is its own witness: in the words of Pollok:

"Perplexed exceedingly why shells were found Upon the mountain tops; but wondering not Why shells more found at all-more wondrous still!"

'Geology, of all the sciences," says Miller, (Old Red Sandstone, p. 31,) "addresses itself most powerfully to the imagination, and hence one main cause of the interest which it excites. Ere setting ourselves minutely to examine the peculi. arities of these creatures, it would be perhaps well that the reader should attempt realizing the place of their existence, and relatively the timenot, of course, with regard to dates and eras, for the geologist has none to reckon by, but with respect to formations. They were the denizens of the same portions of the globe which we ourselves inhabit, regarded not as a tract of country, but as a piece of ocean, crossed by the same geographical lines of latitude and longitude. Their present place of sepulture in some localities, had there been no denudation, would have been raised high over the tops of our loftiest hills—at least a hundred feet over the conglomerates which form the summit of Morvheim, and more than a thousand feet over the snow-capped Ben Wyvis. Geology has still greater wonders. I have seen belemnites of the Oolite-comparatively a modern formation -which had been dug out of the sides of the Himalaya Mountains, seventeen thousand feet over the level of the sea. But let us strive to carry our minds back, not to the place of sepulture of these creatures, high in the rocks-though that I shall afterwards attempt minutely to describe--but to the place in which they lived long ere the saurian [lizard] fishes of Burdie House had begun to exist, or the corallines of the mountain limestone had spread out their multitudinous

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arms in a sea gradually shallowing, and out of which the land had already partially emerged.”

While Geology inspires in this eminent degree the "pleasures of imagination," men who have been "perplexed exceedingly," with some of the facts of the science, have made incontinent drafts upon imagination, in order to fill out the blanks in their theoretical systems. The development of man from a monad to a bull-frog, and from the bull-frog to the monkey, and from the monkey to the man, through the several links of the ascending scale, may be a pretty theory for a mind that can be content to trace back its origin to such a parentage; but sure it is to our apprehension, that the lion's mane has been well shaken from the successor of one species, by the author of the two volumes which suggest these passing thoughts.

Of these works, and of the author and his personal narrative, much might be said, but it is not our design to "review," in the short compass of a magazine article, so fruitful and bold a theme as that presented by Mr. Miller, the proper discussion of which would require a technicality unwelcome to the general reader. But to the author too much of praise cannot be given, for the great value of his discoveries in the geological field nor of admiration for the contribution he has made to the department of theologics. The purity and elegance of style, and the beauty and felicity of illustration, have commanded the high encomiums of Sir David Brewster and of Professor Agassiz, not less than of the best thinkers and critics of this country and of Europe; and these two works will survive as among the most remarkable contributions to natural science of the present fruitful period.

The personal history of the author is the first, and an instructive chapter in the "Old Red Sandstone." Mr. Miller was the son of a seafaring man, who was lost at sea when Hugh was five years of age; and when old enough to earn his subsistence, he was sent to work in a stone quarry. Year after year he toiled at this laborious occupation; but, with a habit of observation, and that superiority of spirit, which leads the true man to make even the humblest occupation the opportunity for intellectual improvement and noble enjoyment, he turned his attention to the fossils and curious markings in the sandstone it was his fortune to dig, and upon which he has now engraved his own name not less lastingly than have the Asterolepis or the Ptericthys Milleri, of the formation which he has so truthfully brought to light. Having no guide, no instructor, and no books, he says, "I had to grope my way as I best might, and find out all its wonders for myself. But so slow was the process, and so much was I

a seeker in the dark, that the facts contained in these few sentences were the patient gatherings of years." The records of science scarce show another example of such perseverance on the part of a mere lad, in exploring an entire new field, under such circumstances. After ten years explorations, he discovered a fact unknown to science, that this sandstone "was richly fossiliferous; and ten more passed before he could assign them their exact place in the scale. His labors have been well repaid, and the patient, persevering, observing boy of the stone quarry, is now known not less honorably as one of the most accurate of scientific writers and the most eminent geologists of the day, than he is for his acute and convincing reasoning, and his masterly advocacy of the truth, not only of the Mosaic record, but of the Gospel. Look up, O toiling laborers and learn that you may achieve if you will!

We cannot close our notice of this rich addition to the literature of science and theology, better than by quoting the words of our author, in the conclusion of Chapter V. of the "Old Red Sandstone."

"We cannot catechise our stony ichthyolites as the necromantic lady of the Arabian Nights did the colored fish of the lake which had once been a city, when she touched their dead bodies with her wand, and they straightway raised their heads and replied to her queries. We would have many a question to ask them if we could--questions never to be solved. But even the contemplation of their remains is a powerful stimulant to thought. The wonders of Geology exercise every faculty of the mind-reason, memory, imagination; and though we cannot put our fossils to the question, it is something to be so aroused as to be made to put questions to one's self. I have referred to the consistency of style which attained among these ancient fishes--the unity of character which marked every scale, plate, and fin of every various family, and which distinguished it from the rest; and who can doubt that the same shades of variety existed in their habits and their instincts! We speak of the infinity of Deity--of his inexhaustible variety of mind; but we speak of it until the idea becomes a piece of mere common-place in our mouths. It is well to be brought to feel, if not to conceive of it-to be made to know that we ourselves are barrenminded, and that in Him "all fullness dwelleth." Succeeding creations, each with its myriads of existences, do not expand Him. He never repeats Himself. The curtain drops, at his command, over one scene of existence full of wisdom and beauty; it rises again, and all is glorious, wise, and beau

THE desire of obtaining wealth by a single stroke, with little or no exertion beyond the effort of asking the ideal goddess Fortune to give it, is so prevalent among the great bulk of mankind, that it may be termed perfectly natural. But to indulge in what is perfectly natural may also be to indulge in what is as perfectly foolish, and, therefore, in this, as in the thousand other cases in which men blindly mistake their wishes for their wants, the realization of the desire, startling as the assertion may seem, proves nothing else but a curse in the majority of instances. Unearned wealth rarely confers the happiness men imagine it must necessarily do; its gathering together has called forth no energies of mind or of body, and its spending affords as little corresponding pleasure. Frequently does it induce in its foolishly envied possessor a most offensive pride, a hard heart, a squandering hand, a cankering indolence, a miserably effete life, in which mental and physical gifts are degradingly prostrated. An individual may indeed say-and frequently does -that were he blessed with a bountiful gift of unearned wealth, he would dedicate his whole life to do good with it; he would cause it to minister not merely to his own gratification, but make it a dispenser of happiness to the brotherhood of man. Alas! the experience of the world testifies to the fallacy of this genial theory, for the reality is, that nothing is more common than that the man who, when poor, and living on the scanty earnings of his industry, was noted for being a cheerful benefactor of his race, so far as his very limited means allowed him, and who was ever kind and 6

warm-hearted, experiences, as soon as the curse of unearned wealth has fallen upon him, a woful change indeed. He becomes, as it were, by the magic stroke of a malevolent enchanter's wand, intensely selfish, stony-hearted, deaf to all claims on his benevolence, and even on his justice, and of course, in a corresponding ratio, grows supremely unhappy. The reason is, the man's nature has undergone a complete and fearful change : a moral leprosy of the most deadly nature has infected his very soul. Analogous to this, is the well-known fact, that unfeigned, devoted patriots have very frequently proved cruel tyrants, when once possessed of unlimited power themselves.

Seldom does the acquirer of unearned money spend it properly; rarely does he afterwards achieve deeds worth recording. Weariedly does he drag through his allotted length of days, begrudged by many, scorned by some, pitied by the tolerant, despised (perhaps) by himself. Oh! dark and fearful is the curse of unearned money, yet few there be who will believe this, and those few are for the most part the very beings who have experienced it. They know but too well how preferable was the time when they jingled the few hardly earned shillings in their pockets, and dined with infinite relish on a crust of bread and cheese under a hedge, to that in which they joylessly sat down to a splendid banquet under the

gorgeous roof of their own palatial residence, bought with unearned money! Sweet is it to earn money by the sweat of brow and brain, and a happy privilege is it to spend the same in a worthy way; but bitter is unearned money after

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When once the feverish, corroding passion of obtaining unearned wealth has won a powerful ascendancy, the subject is ready to embrace with uncalculating ardor the wildest and most absurd schemes which temptingly hold forth hopes of speedy aggrandizement. In fact, the more impracticable they are on the very face of them, the more evident their reckless perversion of truth, the grosser their dazzling lies, and the more palpable the veil under which they seek to hide their real object (that of fleecing the weak dupes who invest their little capital in them)--so much the more eagerly, blindly, madly, do people seem to support them!—Any well-devised speculation, promising speedy, or, in other words, unearned riches, is pretty sure to "take." No matter how often the transparent bubble has burst; how many thousands of wretches have been reduced through it from happiness and comfortable circumstances to the depths of misery and despair; how frequent soever the warnings given of the almost invariable result of yielding to the influence of the greedy whirpool—all is vain for preventing a constant succession of fresh victims, each as confident and full of baseless hope as the predecessor whose disappointment has so lately gleamed as a beacon light, seen, but unregarded. Surely it must indeed be true that

"The pleasure is as great

Of being cheated, as to cheat!"

Of all speculations of this description, those entitled lotteries are the oldest, and still perhaps the most popular. Even at this day, many young men, who once had well regulated minds, who never would have dreamed of any wild or reprehensible scheme of unearned aggrandizement, had not the alluring poison of lottery prospectuses been insidiously poured upon them, prove none the less thoughtless, none the less eager to embrace the propositions of the needy adventurers across the seas, none the less extravagantly hopeful against hope itself, and, finally, none the less do they experience the disastrous consequences invariably attendant on embarkation in such schemes. Every purchaser of a ticket is sure he shall win a wondrous prize-he demonstrates that assumed certainty to his own perfect satisfaction by abstruse calculations of singular ingenuity and foresight; and he will count the faithfal friend who exposes to him the reality in prospect, as an uncharitable enemy. The number of giddy fools who thus annually rush into the fowler's snare is far more than the public may be

themselves, and what credit do they give your warning voice? You are a malevolent being-1 cloud before their sun! Unearned wealth is already within their reach, and you would prevent them grasping it! The prizes blazoned forth in capitals upon paper alone fill their imagination, to the exclusion of every other object, and to the complete annihilation of the most obvious promptings of common sense.

The present El Dorado is California. The excitement concerning it is subdued, perhaps, in tone, but undiminished in reality. During the past two years, thousands and tens of thousands of adventurers, in haste to get rich, have left their little certainties in different lands, for the gigantic uncertainties of California. Many, of whom much better might have been expected, have done this, stimulated by the marvelous stories which unknown and unresponsible newspaper correspondents have sent of the doings at the "diggings." How many thousands are at this moment on their way from our own shores, it is impossible to estimate. But we know that all, as they go, enthusiastically sing—

So now the Golden Age is come,
The Golden Country lies before us :
We leave the plough, we quit the loom,
And merrily we sing in chorus-

"The Golden Country lies before us." Great numbers inevitably perish, through the fearful dangers of sea and land, ere the Golden Country is reached; and, when there, the survivors discover that no man can possibly stand a regular day's work at gold-seeking, unless he possesses herculean strength, and has been trained to manual labor. They find that they must constantly work in the stream-their lower limbs and arms perished with the intensely cold water, whilst their backs are blistered with the sun. They find that the three grand necessaries of life -food, clothes, and shelter—are Utopian impossibilities at the " diggings." They find that mortal diseases are rife from the swamps, and that rattle snakes are far more plentiful than pennyloaves. They find that subtle Indians are con tinually making raids in industrious search of white men's scalps. They find that their own comrades plunder them, in preference to working themselves. They find that their very nature is changed; and that, like Ishmael, their hand is against every man, and every man's hand is against them. They find that if, by dint of incessant toil and extraordinary success, they have scraped together a bagful of the precious ore, they must pillow their heads upon it at night, and deze, rather than sleep, with a bowie knife be