Weekly national intelligencer., 1851-10-11
NATIONAL lNTELLIGENCER.
NOTES ON NEW BOOKS.

/. TIE Foor- Paints TIE CREAroR or the Asteroh-
pis of Stromness. BY HuGH MILLKR, Boston Gould
& Lincoln, 1851.
2 THE RELsIoS GEoLosr, and its Connected Sciences
By EDwAnD HlrcHcocK, DID,, LII. D., Boston. Phil
lips, Sampson & Co., 1851.
All of our readers who take even the slightest in
teIest in modern geological research are familiar
with the authors whose works we have quoted
above. The first named, indeed, has probably done
more to popularize his favorte science than any
extant writer and in SO doing has not delracted
aught from the purely scientific character of his
publications. There is beauty freshness, and
an earnestness in his style which sufficiently evince
that he is no ordinary man. and which forced Dr.
Buckland to declare that he had never been so much
astonished in all his life by the powers Of any man,
as he had been by the geological descriptions OF Mr..
MnLER-descrip,ions which made him ashamed
of the comparative meagerness and poverty OF
his own" as found in his celebrated Bridgewaier
Treatise and Sir Roderick Murchison, with an
ingenious admiration Of genius, wherever found,
which does him honor great as that which ne
awards to another, confesses that Hugh Miller's
papers on geology are written in astyle SO beau
iiful and poetical to throw plain geologsts like
himself in the shade" When our Scottish geolo-
gist was, as he describes himself :" slim loose
jointed boy, fond Of the pretty intangibtes of ro-
nance, and of dreaming when broad awake" ne
was put to work in quarry, opened on the shore
of Cromarly Bay, in that old red sandstone de-
posiie which he has since rendered "classic
ground " TO every geologist by his important dis
coveries and graphic descriptions of its fossil re-
MAINS Previously to this he had been wont to
play truant from the parish school, in order to
der among the rocks and woods, where he delighted
to read curious books and con over the old
traditionary stories of his native country. Such
are the circumstances which have determined and
controlled the destiny of the man had he never
been apprenticed to the quarry, he had never been
a devotee of the "stony science !" had he not been
in his youth day dreamer and curious reader, ne
had lacked that fancy, clear, vivid, and rich, as
well as the wide range of literary illustration which
impart such zest and vigor to his productions. lie
style, c'est Fhonsme, says the French adage, and
we know Of no author whose style shows more
Of the man than Mr. Miller's
The name of EDWARD HITcHcocK, the venera-
BILE president of Amherst college, is household
word y among his countrymen, and no euogium Of
ours is needed to add augh to his well-earned and
wel-established reputation among American men
of science.
The time has gone by when, in imitation OF
Bishop Watson, it is any longer safe 10 compare
the geologist to gnat mounted on elephant, and
laying down theories to the internal structure and
constitution of the qyadruped from the phenomena
of its hide. To the geologist this visible earth be-
comes temple in which, like that structure the
ancient prophet speaks Of, the stone crieth out of
the wall, and the beam out of the timber answers !"
and he is the appointed hierophant in this, the tenn
pie Of nature, and it is his function to read the mys
terious heroglyphs inscribed on each stone and
stratum that compose the mighty structure. En-
gagged in pursuit as animating as that which
cheered Belzoni amid the catacombs of Egypt, the
geologst, armed with spade and torch, has pene-
trated the graves in which for ages have lain en-
tombed the remains of monsters more hideous
and inform " Than the sacred crocodile-creaures
whose very type is lost, fantastic and uncouth in
size and shape. Guided by an acumen and sus-
tanned by patience great as that which finally
enabled Champollion TO decpher the rosetta stone,
by which to read the secret cipher in which was
treasured up the lore of ancient Egypt. the geolo
gist has learned TO trace not only the Footprints
of the Creator" impressed on mountains of granite
and tie everlasting hills, but each delicate touch and
moulding of His plastic hand, as daaIerreotyped in
the flower that bloomed on pre-Adamite world,
or the shell that glistened in the :" dark unfahomed
caves " of the prmeval ocean. Like the dervse
of Balsora, of whom read in Oriental fable, the
eyes of the geologst have been anointed with that
mysterious salve which opens them to behold the
hidden treasures of the universenot only its mine
raj wealth, Of gold silver, precious stones,
but the treasures of that science and true wisdom
which the wise man of Israel pronounces " more
to be desired than gold yea, than much fine gold,
and more "precous than rubies."
Geology, says Sir ]. F. w. Herschel, in the
magnitude and sublimity of the objects of which
it treats undoubtedly ranks next to astronomy in
the scale of the sciences; and this magnitude and
sublimty /" it has acquired within very recent
period, so that it is eminenly modern science.
Still it is undeniabe that some of the ancient philo-
sophers and writers seem to have had vague intima-
tions Of the origin and cause Of many geological phe
nomena. Pythagoras taugh hatexisting were
sufficient to account for those changes in the earth's
surface which result from the wearing away OF the
coasts and the formation Of alluvial deposites by
currents and waves of the sea and the geographer
Strabo says :" it is proper to derive our explana-
ton Of the phenomenon the earth's surface from
things which are obvious, such as deluges, EARTH
auakes volcanic erupiions, and sudden upheavas
of the land beneath the sea-" Moreover, if there
be any truth in the hypothesis Of those modern
specialists on geological science, who would have
us believe that animated existence has not been
created on the earth, but developed from it by a
self-nherent energy they have been forestalled by
Epicurus, as every schoolboy knows who has pc
rused Fenelons Lives of the Ancient Philosophers.
In fact, the Greek philosophers knew much more
concerning certain departments Of physical re-
search than is commonly attributed to them-a
misapprehension due in great degree to their
studied depreciation by Lord Bacon, and TO the
subsequent and overshadowing authority of his own
great name. 1t is evident that Bacon formed his