of Wales, the silurian district of the north-west of France, the primary rocks of the tributaries of the Elbe, the Hartz mountains, and the gneiss and granites of Sutherland and Caithness—we have all the materials and requisites that are necessary for the silting process of the wealden, its accumulation, and geographical distribution as referred to in its range and extent. The continuity of the coasts of France and England is herein supposed, and, upon geological data, this is a matter of far simpler inference than the framing even of a political constitution that will stand a decade of the years of our fleeting pilgrimage. The vision of Plato’s Atlantis in the great ocean becomes in the geologist’s creed a reality, who believes that a vast continent must have existed on our south and west, all now sunk and whelmed in the deep abyss. A chain of islands would just indicate the positions of the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Carpathians, and the Caucasian ranges, all then overlooking central and eastern Europe, not yet elevated above the waves. “At this period,” says Professor Ansted, “it is most probable that no great east and west subterranean movement had acted on the part of the earth’s crust now above the water in the northern hemisphere, and possibly the first intimation of such a disturbing force, may be traced, though faintly, in the existence of a considerable estuary, in which our wealden beds were deposited. From the condition of the upper Portland beds, we find, that, just at the close of the oolitic period, there were very numerous changes of level induced over a small area in the south-east of England, then, most likely, not far from the coast line of a large continent.” It may seem to many presumptuous, and beyond all the usual latitude of exaggerated description to attempt to dwell thus minutely on physical arrangements, and a vegetable and animal economy, so remote and beyond the sphere of observation. Remarkable enough that our great healing springs of Bath, Cheltenham, Leamington, Tunbridge, and Harwich, are all situated among, or have their origin in, the series of deposits we have been considering. But the judgment, more than the fancy, is employed in studying the geography of the ancient world, in looking out from the heights around, and trying again to unite the waters and the dry land, to recall the vanishing traces of former sea-marks, and from the disinterred remains of the remarkable races that inhabited the island, and swarmed around its coasts, to contemplate the ways and doings of “That Eternal Mind, Who built the spacious universe, and decked Each part so richly with whate’er pertains To life, to health, to pleasure.”