features, as it rises, dimly revealed, from the mist and vapour
of an older and ever-older past. It is useless to add century
to century or millennium to millennium. When we pass a certain
boundary-line, which, after all, is reached very soon, figures
cease to convey to our finite faculties any real notion of the
periods with which we have to deal. The astronomer can employ
material illustrations to give form and substance to our conceptions
of celestial space; but such a resource is unavailable to the
geologist. The few thousand years of which we have historical
evidence sink into absolute insignificance beside the unnumbered
æons which unroll themselves one by one as we penetrate the dim
recesses of the past, and decipher with feeble vision the ponderous
volumes in which the record of the earth is written. Vainly does
the strained intellect seek to overtake an ever-receding
commencement, and toil to gain some adequate grasp of an apparently
endless succession. A beginning there must have been, though we
can never hope to fix its point. Even speculation droops her
wings in the attenuated atmosphere of a past so remote, and the
light of imagination is quenched in the darkness of a history so
ancient. In _time_, as in _space_, the confines of the universe
must ever remain concealed from us, and of the end we know no
more than of the beginning. Inconceivable as is to us the lapse
of "geological time," it is no more than "a mere moment of the
past, a mere infinitesimal portion of eternity." Well may "the
human heart, that weeps and trembles," say, with Richter's pilgrim
through celestial space, "I will go no farther; for the spirit of
man acheth with this infinity. Insufferable is the glory of God.
Let me lie down in the grave, and hide me from the persecution
of the Infinite, for end, I see, there is none."