WASTE.

A LECTURE DELIVERED AT THE BRISTOL INSTITUTION,

FEBRUARY 10, 1863.

O the student of Final Causes there are no facts in nature that on a first view present more difficulties than those which belong to decay and destruction. Fertile lands in a very few hours overspread by a desolating inroad of the sea, on the retreat of which, if ever it does withdraw, there is left for a time a sandy, stony desert; plants of exquisite organisation springing above the soil and dying undeveloped; forests and prairies consumed by fire; myriads of animals, multitudes of human beings perishing in full life and strength: these and many like facts are at first sight startling. The mighty, ever-teeming mother Earth-is she thwarted by some malignant power in her schemes of beneficence? or, by some blind law of productiveness, does she go on for ever throwing off her wonderful progeny, careless, when they have left her bosom, whether they live or die, or what ultimate destiny awaits them?

But we will not now ask questions. Let us survey in detail a few of the phenomena of waste, and either when they are under our eyes, or when we are recalling them, some obvious enquiries will suggest themselves.

Among the fragile forms of the animated world around us, one is so used to the sight of destruction, that the questions alluded to are. almost less likely to arise than when, by some accidental circumstance, we become aware of decay among objects which had seemed to be fixed and enduring. I shall not easily forget the impression made upon me one day, when I stood for the first time in a scene of savage

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grandeur, which is, I dare say, well known to many of this audience -the upper region of the Mer de Glace. It was the early morning; some golden light had just begun to shoot into the deep indigo of the sky above the mountains in the east; and while I was endeavouring to grasp the more salient points of that wonderful scene, fearing lest some essential element of its sublimity might be overlooked, my attention was caught by sounds of crashing, unlike the solemn peals with which distant avalanches announce their descent, and I asked the guide what was the cause of those sounds. He told me, with the indifference of a person to whom that which I enquired about was a matter of daily routine, that it was only the breaking and falling down of masses of rock in the mountains. And there, assuredly, as I looked up towards the rugged peak of the Charmoz, and observed attentively the different slopes, I could see masses of stone continually tumbling down; -small enough in the distance, but quite discernible ;-and every few seconds or so, the sound was repeated. Now the obvious thought that arose was,-if those sounds, or, rather, the causes of them, were always going on, was not that mountain falling away piecemeal, and destined to leave its giant limbs in the valleys, which would, in time, be no longer valleys, but plains? The peaks and the ridges looked so broken and jagged and splintery against the sky, that, with that sound constantly in one's ears, it was difficult to avoid expecting that they might snap off before our eyes;-forgetful for a moment of the vast dimensions of what looked like needles and sword-blades. I know not whether those peaks and ridges have really had any of their lines and angles altered since they were first accurately observed; but we may be certain that, whether their chief features have changed or not within the records of human generations, those everlasting hills are everlasting only to the bodily eye of man, that cannot see changes on so large a scale, and that they are surely wasting and crumbling to decay.

But any one who has observed the moraine of a glacier might interpose,-Surely it is not necessary to strain the eyes to the mountains themselves, when, immediately at their feet, proofs of destruction or disintegration are visible in blocks of granite, some of immense size, either still resting on the ice, or left on the sides of the ice-river along which the glacier once descended, but from which it has of late years withdrawn, leaving, however, these proofs of its gigantic powers both of support and of conveyance.