“Everything belonging to the earth, whether in its primitive state, or modified by human hands, is submitted to certain and innumerable laws of destruction, as permanent and universal as those which produce the planetary motions. The operations of nature, when slow, are no less sure; however man may for a time usurp dominion over her, she is certain of recovering her empire. He converts her rocks, her stones, her trees, into forms of palaces, houses, and ships; he employs the metals found in the bosom of the earth as instruments of power, and the sands and clays which constitute its surface as ornaments and resources of luxury; he imprisons air by water, and tortures water by fire to change, to modify, or destroy the natural forms of things. But in some lustrums his works begin to change, and in a few centuries they decay and are in ruins; and his mighty temples, framed, as it were, for divine purposes, and his bridges formed of granite, and ribbed with iron, and his walls for defence, and the splendid monuments by which he has endeavoured to give eternity even to its perishable remains, are gradually destroyed; and these structures which have resisted the waves of the ocean, the tempest of the sky, and the stroke of the lightning, shall yield to the operation of the dews of heaven, of frost, rain, vapour, and imperceptible atmospheric influences; and as the worm devours the lineaments of his mortal beauty, so the lichens and the moss, and the most insignificant plants, shall feed upon his columns and his pyramids, and the most humble and insignificant insect shall undermine and sap the foundations of his colossal works, and make their habitations amongst the ruins of his palaces, and the falling seats of his earthly glory.”[1]