Outlines of Geology: Being the Substance of a Course of Lectures Delivered in the Theatre of the Royal Institution in the Year 1816

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J. Murray, 1817 - 144 pages
 

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Page 10 - The crush of thunder and the warring winds, Shook by the slow but sure destroyer Time, Now hangs in doubtful ruins o'er its base. And flinty pyramids, and walls of brass, Descend : the Babylonian spires are sunk ; Achaia, Rome, and Egypt, moulder down.
Page 143 - He has not permitted, in his works, any symptom of infancy or of old age, or any sign by which we may estimate either their future or their past duration. He may put an end, as he no doubt gave a beginning, to the present system, at some determinate...
Page 88 - For sublime objects are vast in their dimensions, beautiful ones comparatively small : beauty should be smooth and polished ; the great, rugged and negligent ; beauty should shun the right line, yet deviate from it insensibly ; the great in many cases loves the right line ; and when it deviates, it often makes a strong deviation : beauty should not be obscure ; the great ought to be dark and gloomy : beauty should be light and delicate ; the great ought to be solid, and even massive.
Page 10 - What does not fade ? The tower that long had stood The crush of thunder and the warring winds, Shook by the slow but sure destroyer Time, Now hangs in doubtful ruins o 'er its base.
Page 144 - ... wonders upon their eye; their powers of attention and observation seem to expand with the scene before them; and, while they see, for the first time, the immensity of the universe of God, and mark the majestic simplicity of those laws by which its operations are conducted, they feel as if they were awakened to a higher species of being, and admitted into nearer intercourse with the Author of Nature.
Page i - OUTLINES of GEOLOGY; being the Substance of a Course of Lectures delivered in the Theatre of the Royal Institution by WILLIAM THOMAS BRANDE, FRS, Professor of Chemistry in the Royal Institution, &c.
Page 134 - On such shores, the fragments of rock once detached, become instruments of further destruction, and make a part of the powerful artillery with which the ocean assails the bulwarks of the land: they are impelled against the rocks, from which they break off other fragments, and the whole are thus ground against one another ; whatever be their hardness, they are reduced to gravel, the smooth surface and round figure of which, are the most certain proofs of a detritus which nothing can resist.
Page 10 - But her hour is come, she is wiped away from the face of the earth, and buried in perpetual oblivion. But it is not cities only, and works of men's hands, but the everlasting hills, the mountains and rocks of the earth are melted as wax before the sun ; and their place is nowhere found.
Page 144 - ... of this kind, it is impossible to pursue knowledge without mingling with it the most elevated sentiments of devotion ; — it is impossible to perceive the laws of nature without perceiving, at the same time, the presence and the providence of the Lawgiver : — and thus it is that, in every age, the evidences of religion have advanced with the progress of true philosophy ; and that science, in erecting a monument to herself, has, at the same time, erected an altar to the Deity.
Page 141 - Davy have enlightened this, as well as every other branch of chemistry ; and from them we may deduce a very adequate solution of the problem of volcanoes : for we have only to suppose the access of water to large masses of those peculiar metals which constitute the alcaline and earthy bases, and we are possessed of all that is wanted to produce the tremendous effects of earthquakes and volcanoes ; for what power can resist the expansive force of steam, and the sudden evolution of gaseous fluids,...

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