Observe, legitimate geology does not aver that this process of development has yet been satisfactorily explained, nor does it fail to admit that there are many difficulties, paleontological and physiological, in the way of its final explanation; but it regards the fact of progression as undeniable, and ascribes it, as it ascribes all other phenomena, to the will of the Creator operating through the medium of natural law. And it is this idea of law, in contradistinction to a belief in creational interferences and interventions, that has impressed its mark most perceptibly on the reasonings of modern philosophy. To the thought of our forefathers, creative interference was direct, and as occasion might require; to modern thought creative energy operates through law; and this law fixed, enduring, and ascertainable. According to the olden belief, the Deity was invested, as it were, with human attributes, changeable in method, provisional in action, and open to external influence; according to the newer philosophy, the work of creation is carried on by fixed and ascertainable methods, perfect in their appointments, and because perfect, enduring and unchangeable. Both views might be alike reverential but the latter carries along with it more spiritual and more exalted conceptions. To believe that the whole operations of nature are held in concert by great pre-ordained laws-the incidents of to-day with those of the remotest eras-is surely a nobler view of creation and its divine Architect than that which provides only for present purposes and special requirements. And the more this idea of natural law can be made to pervade modern thought, the more will its influence be felt and appreciated in morals as well as in philosophy. So long as the human mind believes in the physical efficacy of confession, humiliation, and repentance, so long will itteebly resist the temptations to error; but let it once be convinced that certain consequences must inevitably follow from certain acts, and that there is indeed in the order of creation "no variableness, neither shadow of turning" and you provide it with one of the strongest incentives to reason and resistance. So far as confession and repentance concern the individual mind, the effect is undoubtedly wholesome; but so far as they relate to general law (which rules for the whole, ard not for the individual), it would be reversing all philosophical views of the enduring order of nature to suppose that they could be instrumental either in producing change in physical laws, or in procuring exemption from their effects. I am aware that it has been attempted to fix on geology, as the main promoter of this idea of natural law, the ban and odium of materialism. That some geologists entertain materialistic views, just as other men who know nothing of geology believe similar doctrines, is by no means improbable; but if there be any such, let it be clearly understood that our study disclaims their reasonings and ignores their principles. Instead of being conducive to such opinions, geology, more perhaps than any other of the natural sciences, is calculated to impress men with convictions of divine intelligence and design. Our forefathers drew their evidences chiefly from the living world around them; the modern theologian obtains through geology a wider field and more abundant material. The inanimate rock now tells its tale as eloquently as the living organism, and the rocky crust carries back the arguments through cycles compared with which the appointments of the present are but as the moments of yesterday. Our forefathers passed over the earth's crust as a mass merely of rocks and minerals; the modern inquirer, on the other hand, has his observation turned aside at every step by the organism which it emtombs, and his thoughts are hallowed by the reflection that beneath him lie myriads of life-forms which were the objects of God's care thousands of ages before his own race was called into existence. Another and most important feature with which modern thought has been impressed by science is the idea of incessant progression. Ignorant of the physical and vital progress revealed by geology, our forefathers regarded the world, with 1866. F all its garniture of plants and animals, as a thing accomplished. To them it presented a mere stereotyped round of decay and reproduction-the same now as it had been, and as it would continue to be in future ages. Instead of looking forward to its onward and upward progress, they dreaded its termination and predicted its end. Modern philosophy, on the other hand, which has traced a progress in the past and perceives no decline in the forces of nature, looks confidently forward to newer and higher developments-physical, vital, and intellectual. As the life of the present excels the life of the past, so the fair and logical inference is that the life of the future will excel that of the present. As the march in the past has been ever onward and upward, so that in the future will be onward and upward still, and man himself partake of the same progression. As higher and higher forms have appeared in the past, so science believes in the appearance of higher and higher forms in the future. Nor can this idea of irresistible progression fail to affect the general tone and character of modern belief, or cease to impress with the conviction that everything physical, vital, intellectual, and moral is passing, and must pass on to other and higher aspects. Nothing stands still truth alone is eternal; and in the search for this truth, and under the conviction of incessant progression, how futile the attempt to bind by olden creeds and human dogmas the ever-ascending and ever-expanding attributes of the human intellect! Such is a hasty glance at some of the topics on which modern thought has been more especially influenced by the teachings of geology. Nor is it the mere correction of this or that belief, but the removal of all the opinions that have been founded upon or flow from these beliefs. In this way the influence of our science extends beyond the limits I have indicated, and its effects may yet be traced in quarters where at present it is least suspected. And if it be the truth it teaches, the sooner its influence can be accelerated and extended the better. To timid minds who dread the effects of these newer views, the history of the Galilean astronomy may become a source of encouragement; to the ignorant who misapprehend them the rapid dissemination of our science will soon suffice to explain; and to the intolerant who condemn, the progress of recent years may surely carry the conviction how lightly falls their reproach, and how unavailing their opposition. As geology seeks only for truth, so it dreads no blame. Its field of observation is our planet; its functions the reading of that planet's history. It may err in its interpretations, but the facts remain intact; and the higher knowledge of another day may make clear what the information of the present is unable to explain. As we have no creeds to restrict, so we have no dogmas to defend; and as we have all learned how liable we are to err in our interpretations, so we have ceased to be intolerant. In this way, and over and above the influence of its teachings on modern thought, the history of geology, like that of astronomy, is pregnant with useful lessons to other departments of human inquiry. In offering these brief remarks I have been desirous, first, to show the higher connections of our science as an incentive to further research; and secondly, to remove misapprehension as to the real bearings and tendencies of its teachings. We cannot be always in the field, and our discoveries without their higher bearings would lose half their significance. We cannot sit quietly by and hear our reasonings misapprehended, without feeling we are untrue to ourselves, and condoning the ignorance and error of the offenders if we leave them unnoticed. The Reviewer. Romances and Minor Poems. By HENRY GLASSFORD BELL. London: Macmillan and Co. VERSE has never been to the author of this book an all-engrossing pursuit; it has scarcely even been a passionately followed amusement, for art and wit, at least, have shared in his devotions. He has always been a lover of poetry and an appreciator of poets, and he has a keen perceptive critical faculty. But he has seldom laboured the products of his own Muse above the amateur point. Vers de société of a high class he has produced, and some few pieces stamped with the mint-mark of Parnassus; but he has not, on the whole, given his heart to the perfecting of the educts of his fancy. He has many of the potencies of a poet, and great facility of execution in many styles; but it seems a versatility of talent rather than of genius, a vivacity of the imagination rather than a vital necessity of the soul, which induces him to flash his ideas into verse. many a writer with less power, by concentration of energy and wise decidedness of mind, has gained a firmly fixed niche in the galleries of poetic reputation. It is partly matter of regret that these "Romances and Minor Poems," which are so full of the insight of the poet, have been subjected to the oversight of a mind enjoying its productiveness more than the unity and perfection of its productions. But Henry Glassford Bell is somewhat of the school of Praed, Lockyer, &c., men whose genius flows on them at intervals as a source of selfenjoyment and as an ingredient in social life. Sometimes he seems as if he had caught the echo of Thackeray, with a little of the intonation of Leigh Hunt. We should hesitate to place him among those authors of volumes of verse for whom there is reserved a perennial fame, though we do think that many pieces in this volume will live among our Elegant Extracts," "Poetical Readers," and "Books on Elocution," with the effect of recalling the memory of the gifted occupant of the second seat of sheriffdom in Lanarkshire. Those who do not know the facts may perhaps be gratified by being told the following few dated events of the author's career. He is the son of James Bell, a distinguished Scottish advocate, and was born at Glasgow, 1805. He studied at Edinburgh University, and was called to the bar in 1832. He instituted and edited the Edinburgh Weekly Literary Journal. He published, in 1830, a "Life of Mary, Queen of Scots," of which 60,000 copies have been sold, and issued a volume of poetry previously to this one, and bearing the title, "Summer and Winter Hours." He became sheriff-substitute of Lanarkshire in 1839, and is known withal as one of the best critics and lecturers on literature and the fine arts in the West of Scotland. The two sonnets which follow will show him as a worker in those delicate cameos of poetry, and possessed of skill in the production of capital artistic effects by his labour : 66 "LOVE UNRETURNED. She said she did not love me; yet her look My hand in hers, or laid her own in mine;— My hopes poor mariners that ne'er return;- That would not show what had before lain hid;- "THE DEATH OF MARK ANTONY. "Of many thousand kisses the poor last "So breathing out his soul he died: the thought That hallowed death was love-the crown of life; Of Rome's loud triumph round his blazoned car, With tremulous radiance lighting him to death; The virtue of such end, which doth outlive Lovers of Shakspere will gladly avail themselves of these verses for their scrap-books. They are a tercentenary poem on Stratfordon-Avon at night : "Twenty-seven paces in front, And barely eleven deep, "The merry gossips of Stratford There cometh not a sound. - "If you knock you will get no answer,— For the sake of one who was living there Three hundred years ago. "He was born in the upper chamber, Had playmates down the street; They noted at school, when he read the lesson, "His father, they say, was a glover, "And then he left old Stratford, And nobody missed him much, "But somehow it came to be whispered, "The best folks scarcely believed it, And dreamily shook their head,- "Whose arrows were brightening apace "So his birthplace came to be famous, And the ground where his bones were laid, And to Stratford, the thriving burgh, Nations their pilgrimage made. 'They saw the tenantless dwelling, They saw the bare flat stone; But the soul that had brightened the world "And they learned the sacred lesson, The simplest and the lowliest, May have God's best work to do." Here is a capital pair of companion portraits of the poetic and the prosaic temperaments contrasted : |