CHANGES THAT HAVE ALREADY OCCURRED IN THE HISTORY OF OUR GLOBE.

THIS is a subject which could not but be interesting to mankind, and in some degree exercise their speculations, at all periods of their history. It is, too, a subject which may fairly be considered as a just topic of inquiry and speculation-though it is one in which the researches of early speculators were not likely to arrive at any satisfactory or even plausible conclusion ;-and, indeed, nothing is more curious, than from any advanced period of human science to look back on the strange opinions, which on almost all subjects have been entertained by men in other respects of the greatest compass of thought, and the finest power of reasoning.

Many of the most accomplished philosophers of ancient times held the opinion that the world was eternal-an opinion founded on the most erroneous ideas of the entire order of nature, and altogether at variance with what we now know to be the fact, that the present form of the earth, has been derived from the remains of one pre-existing—as that too, probably, had its origin in a similar destruction of a previous order of things-and so backwards to an indefinite period, and throughout an inappreciable series of changes. This must now be considered as a fundamental article of human speculation on this subject.

We are greatly indebted to geology for correct views on the topic now under consideration-and it is curious to reflect, how unwillingly its conclusions, founded on the most indisputable data, and accordant as they are with the most luminous ideas of the order of the universe-were admitted, at their first announcement, even by men in other respects of great enlightenment—and accustomed to the freest exercise of their powers of speculation. These philosophers, indeed, exhibited, with respect to this grand change in the order of nature, the same limitation of view which at any of the inferior mutations of human society, is commonly ob

served on the part of those who have been habituated only to one system of things-and who either believe, that that system has always been the same, or that it is the last under which the human race are ever to exist. We have noticed this tendency of the human mind in more than one portion of the text of the present treatise.

2. Perhaps, however, it may still be urged, as it was by the ancient philosophers, that at least the matter of which the earth is composed has been eternal-and it is curious to remark, that whatever may have been, in other respects, the difference between the order of nature which preceded the present, and that with which we are connected, the masses of that former world which we now find making up the present surface, and imbedded in various sizes within its materials, seem to have been in texture and general qualities, almost the same with those of which the present crust of the globe is composed. Yet these masses we know to be but compounds of other more elementary substances, which are capable of being moulded into infinite forms-and carrying back our minds, over the vast extent of past ages preceding the present order of things-and throughout many pre-existing forms of being-the probability at least is, that these elementary substances may have been connected in an indefinite number of forms very different from those, of which we have evidence in the more recent remains, which alone are exposed to our view, and that, in fact, when we thus admit into our consideration, the simple substances of which material nature is composed, we are carried backward in a track to the first beginnings of which we can assign no limitand which, at any rate, shews the futility of the supposition, that the present matter of the system with which we are connected, must necessarily have been the same throughout all the changes which nature has undergone.

3. But, admitting that the present system has sprung from the remains of former arrangements—an admission which, as we have said, must now be adopted by all inquirers—the next question that presents itself respects the antiquity of the order which now exists—and whether we are authorized to believe, that it has only continued for a few thousand years, or whether it has existed for a series of ages over which imagination almost is unable to expatiate.

On this subject, I present the reader with the following passage from the Essay on Revolutions by Chateaubriand :

"If we consider that from the memorable day on which Christopher Columbus arrived on the shores of America, not one of the hordes which wander in the forests of the new world has made a step towards civilization, but that those people were nevertheless far from being in a state of nature at the time they were discovered, it must at once be allowed that the grossest form of government has only been established after ages of barbarism. "What do we perceive then, at the moment when history opens ? Great nations in their decline-corrupted moralsfrightful luxury-abstract sciences—such as astronomy, literature, metaphysics and arts, to attain perfection in which appears to demand the duration of a world. If to this be added the traditions of these nations-the shepherds of ancient Egypt feeding their flocks in abandoned cities, and amidst ruins of some unknown people that once flourished in these deserts-this same Egypt reckoning more than five thousand years since the termination of the Buccolic age, and the erection of the monarchy under its first king Menes down to Alexander---the Chinese founding their history on a calculation of eclipses which go back to the deluge, beyond which their annals are lost in numberless ages---the Indians too affording the phenomenon of a primitive language, the source of all those spoken in the East, and one understood only by the Bramins, though formerly used by a great nation, of which the very name has disappeared from the earth---if all this be considered, I say, the conviction instantly resulting from it must be, that our brief chronology hardly serves to fill the last page of human history."

Without passing any opinion on this very curious subject, we may only remark, that it relates to a point which forms a most legitimate subject of inquiry, as it is also one of the most natural and interesting which can occupy the human mind---and further, that it is a subject on which important lights may reasonably be expected to be thrown, in proportion as the extensive inquiries in which mankind are now engaged shall be carried towards their consummation, and the history of the surface of the globe itself--and of the tribes that inhabit it, shall have been more carefully and comprehensively examined.

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But our chief purpose in this note, is to remark, that whatever may be the age which shall ultimately be assigned to the present form of the earth---and to its rational inhabitants, in whose history chiefly we are interested---and even although it should turn out, that these have existed for a far longer series of ages than we can at present venture to specify, still it must not be concluded, simply from the antiquity of its past history---although the conclusion is very apt to be so drawn---that because the world has already existed for a long time, it has therefore attained to its old age---or is in a very advanced state of its destined progress. This is a very natural error into which human thought, when exercised on this respect, is prone to run---and because men themselves, when they have existed for any considerable length of years, are known to be in the period of their existence approaching to its termination, therefore, concluding from what we familiarly know, to things unknown and yet different from these, we venture to think, that if the world be ancient, it must also have arrived at that state which is not destined for any very lengthened continuance.

But the two ideas are quite distinct---and indeed so distinct, that if it shall appear, on other grounds, that the world and its generations have taken so vast a lapse of ages to arrive at their present infant and very imperfect state of civilization and know. ledge, the proper conclusion is, that in proportion to the length of its infancy and immature acquirement, must be the duration of all the successive stages through which it is destined to advance--and that thus the antiquity of the present system, calculated on its most extended scale, only justifies us in believing that it has yet to proceed through a series of ages, to the vast extent of which the feeble imagination of man can assign no limit.

And that the world is but in this infant state, we venture to consider as established by many phenomena which are obvious to the minds of all inquirers—by the very recent acquaintance which men have attained with the countries of their own planet-and with the various members of that great family of which they are a part by the many savage practices to which they have hitherto been addicted-and the general want of civilization among the greater portion of the tribes that cover the face of this world-by the foolish opinions which in all past times have been adopted by

even those individuals and nations that have attained to the high est degrees of civilization and knowledge-by the want of just conception which still prevails among men respecting their true relation to the system in which they live, and to the objects and duties most connected with their happiness-by the symptoms of a more vigorous youth on which the human race seems to be at present entering-and by the vast extent of acquirement which is evidently within their reach, compared with the scattered and imperfect glimpses of the uses of natural objects-of the best forms of opinion-and of the most useful and excellent political and social institutions, which alone make up their present stock of wisdom.

These are a few hints which will readily be understood and extended by minds of thought and liberality of conception ;-and the more they are expanded and multiplied, the deeper, we are persuaded, will be the conviction, that hitherto the human family has been but emerging from the obscurity of its infant condition— and that vast ages are yet before its successive generations, commensurate with the boundless field of wonders which the existences by which they are surrounded, present to their research.

There can be no presumption in entertaining this opinion of the long ages destined for the duration of our world, provided our conclusions respecting its present infant state, have been cor rectly drawn from actual appearances-and every person must perceive how grand and pleasing is the perspective which this idea opens up to our view-how well fitted to awaken reverential feelings of the purest and highest order-and how calculated to give us alacrity in all our endeavours, since we belong to a race for which, in its future history, such great things are assuredly in reserve.