1. Mark the distinct character of the geological evidence of all the changes, organic and inorganic, to which the island and its inhabitants have been subjected. The evidence rests upon direct observation. The registers are graven as with a pen of iron, and in characters which to be understood have only to be read. The historical period, beyond two decades of centuries, is an utter blank. When Cæsar came into the island, painted savages peopled the land, Druids immolated in thousands their human victims, and, the brief occupation of the invaders past, we are again involved in the darkness of barbarous annals and exterminating wars of unknown tribes. Whence the migrations of its first inhabitants? who were the Cymri that spoke the language of Cwm Llewelyn, and of Cefn y Bêdd? who were the Silures, the Trinobantes, the Cantii, and the Atribates? and whither and what the ever-conflicting lines betwixt the territories of Picts, Celts, and Scots?—questions these that will ever puzzle and disturb the slumbers of the unhappy wight who deals in chronicle lore and archæological history. What now of the oldest civilized states of the old world who gave law, literature, science, art, language, and blood, to all the families of the earth, as the tide of population rolled westward, and the Quadrumana and the Bimana contended for mastery amid the dense aboriginal forests on the banks of the Danube, the Rhine, the Rhone, the Seine, the Thames, the mountains of Cambria and Caledonia? Rome sits in ruined majesty by the waters of the Tiber. Greece knows not, and mourns not, the buried ashes of her mighty dead. Carthage _has_ been blotted out. Tyre has fulfilled her destiny—“a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea.” The shepherd kings of the pyramids have not a name even among men; and Thebes, Luxor, and Carnac, lie as fossils in the desert. What of Babylon and her Tower on the plains of Shinar, that was to reach unto the heavens? and of Nineveh, “a city of three days’ journey” to be compassed? Mounds of earth and rubbish, over which the Arab has pitched his rude tent, and into which the prying antiquary, at the risk of his life, digs for fragments, while the Tigris and Euphrates pursue their heedless course through the waste slimy borders of Uz and Mesopotamia. Thus mark how many illustrious heroes, scholars, lawgivers, who once filled the world with their fame, have, with all their splendid or useful benefactions to their race, passed under the thick cloud of oblivion! The very names of the most noted of them is matter of dispute. And of the multitudes who panted after glory in these ancient days, not an incident in the life of millions has reached the present times.