Di quibus imperium est animarum, Umbræque silentes, Et Chaos, et Phlegethon, loca nocte silentia late, Sit mihi fas audita loqui; sit, numine vestro Pandere res alta terrâ et caligine mersas. VIRGIL. n. vi. 264. Ye Mighty Ones, who sway the Souls that go Amid the marvels of the world below! Ye, silent Shades, who sit and hear around! Chaos! and Streams that burn beneath the ground! All, all forgive, if by your converse stirred, INTRODUCTION. WE Of the Palatiological Sciences. E now approach the last Class of Sciences which enter into the design of the present work; and of these, Geology is the representative, whose history we shall therefore briefly follow. By the Class of Sciences to which I have referred it, I mean to point out those researches in which the object is, to ascend from the present state of things to a more ancient condition, from which the present is derived by intelligible causes. The sciences which treat of causes have sometimes been termed ætiological, from airía, a cause: but this term would not sufficiently describe the speculations of which we now speak; since it might include sciences which treat of Permanent Causality, like Mechanics, as well as inquiries concerning Progressive Causation. The investigations which I now wish to group together, deal, not only with the possible, but with the actual past; and a portion of that science on which we are about to enter, Geology, has properly been termed Palæontology, since it treats of beings which formerly existed.' Hence, combining these two notions, Palatiology appears to be a term not inappropriate, to describe those speculations which thus refer to actual past events, and attempt to explain them by laws of causation. Such speculations are not confined to the world of inert matter; we have examples of them in inquiries concerning the monuments of the art and labor of distant ages; in examinations into the origin and early progress of states and cities, customs and languages; as well as in researches concerning the causes and formations of mountains and rocks, the imbedding of fossils in strata, and their elevation from the bottom of the ocean. All these speculations are connected by this bond,--that they endeavor to ascend to a past state of things, by the aid of the evidence of the present. In asserting, with Cuvier, that · Πάλαι, ὄντα, 2 Πάλαι, αἰτία. "The geologist is an antiquary of a new order," we do not mark a fanciful and superficial resemblance of employment merely, but a real and philosophical connexion of the principles of investigation. The organic fossils which occur in the rock, and the medals which we find in the ruins of ancient cities, are to be studied in a similar spirit and for a similar purpose. Indeed, it is not always easy to know where the task of the geologist ends, and that of the antiquary begins. The study of ancient geography may involve us in the examination of the causes by which the forms of coasts and plains are changed; the ancient mound or scarped rock may force upon us the problem, whether its form is the work of nature or of man; the ruined temple may exhibit the traces of time in its changed level, and sea-worn columns ; and thus the antiquarian of the earth may be brought into the very middle of the domain belonging to the antiquarian of art. Such a union of these different kinds of archæological investigations. has, in fact, repeatedly occurred. The changes which have taken place in the temple of Jupiter Serapis, near Puzzuoli, are of the sort which have just been described; and this is only one example of a large class of objects;—the monuments of art converted into records of natural events. And on a wider scale, we find Cuvier, in his inquiries into geological changes, bringing together historical and physical evidence. Dr. Prichard, in his Researches into the Physical History of Man, has shown that to execute such a design as his, we must combine the knowledge of the physiological laws of nature with the traditions of history and the philosophical comparison of languages. And even if we refuse to admit, as part of the business of geology, inquiries concerning the origin and physical history of the present population of the globe; still the geologist is compelled to take an interest in such inquiries, in order to understand matters which rigorously belong to his proper domain; for the ascertained history of the present state of things offers the best means of throwing light upon the causes of past changes. Mr. Lyell quotes Dr. Prichard's book more frequently than any geological work of the same extent. Again, we may notice another common circumstance in the studies which we are grouping together as palætiological, diverse as they are in their subjects. In all of them we have the same kind of manifestations of a number of successive changes, each springing out of a preceding state; and in all, the phenomena at each step become more and more complicated, by involving the results of all that has preceded, modified by supervening agencies. The general aspect of all these trains of change is similar, and offers the same features for description. The relics and ruins of the earlier states are preserved, mutilated and dead, in the products of later times. The analogical figures by which we are tempted to express this relation are philosophically true. It is more than a mere fanciful description, to say that in languages, customs, forms of Society, political institutions, we see a number of formations super-imposed upon one another, each of which is, for the most part, an assemblage of fragments and results of the preceding condition. Though our comparison might be bold, it would be just, if we were to assert, that the English language is a conglomerate of Latin words, bound together in a Saxon cement; the fragments of the Latin being partly portions introduced directly from the parent quarry, with all their sharp edges, and partly pebbles of the same material, obscured and shaped by long rolling in a Norman or some other channel. Thus the study of palatiology in the materials of the earth, is only a type of similar studies with respect to all the elements, which, in the history of the earth's inhabitants, have been constantly undergoing a series of connected changes. But, wide as is the view which such considerations give us of the class of sciences to which geology belongs, they extend still further. "The science of the changes which have taken place in the organic kingdoms of nature," (such is the description which has been given of Geology,) may, by following another set of connexions, be extended beyond "the modifications of the surface of our own planet." For we cannot doubt that some resemblance of a closer or looser kind, has obtained between the changes and causes of change, on other bodies of the universe, and on our own. The appearances of something of the kind of volcanic action on the surface of the moon, are not to be mistaken. And the inquiries concerning the origin of our planet and of our solar system, inquiries to which Geology irresistibly impels her students, direct us to ask what information the rest of the universe can supply, bearing upon this subject. It has been thought by some, that we can trace systems, more or less like our solar system, in the process of formation ; the nebulous matter, which is at first expansive and attenuated, condensing gradually into suns and planets. Whether this Nebular Hypothesis be tenable or not, I shall not here inquire; but the discussion of such a question would be closely connected with |