"Those upon the coast of the Bay of Biscay have overwhelmed a great number of villages, which are mentioned in the records of the middle age and, even at present, in the single department of Landes, they threaten no fewer than ten with almost inevitable destruction. One of these, named Mimigan, has been in danger for the last fifteen years from a sand-hill of more than sixty feet in perpendicular height, which obviously continues to advance.

"In the year 1802, the pools overwhelmed five farm-houses belonging to the village of St. Julian. They have long covered up an ancient Roman road, leading from Bourdeaux to Bayonne, which could still be seen about thirty years ago, where the waters were lower than they are now. The river Adour, which is known to have formerly passed Old Boucat to join the sea at Cape Breton is now turned to the distance of more than 2400 yards.

"Mr. Bremontier, who made several extensive works to stop the progress of these downs, estimated it at sixty feet yearly and in some places at seventy two feet. According to this calculation, it would require two thousand years to enable them to arrive at Bourdeaux: and, on the same data, they have taken somewhat more than four thousand years to reach their present situation.

"The Turbaries, or peat-mosses, which have been formed so generally in the northern parts of Europe by the accumulation of the remains of sphagnum and other aquatic mosses, afford another mean of estimating the time which has elapsed since the last retreat of the sea, from our present continents. These mosses increase in height in

proportions which are determinate in regard to each. They surround and cover up the small knolls, upon which they are formed; and several of these knolls have been covered over within the memory of man. In other places, the mosses gradually descend along the valleys, extending downward like the glaciers: but these latter melt away every year at their lower edges, while the mosses are not stopped by any thing whatever in their regular increase. By sounding their depth down to the solid ground, we may form some estimate of their antiquity: and it may be asserted respecting these mosses, as well as respecting the downs, that they do not derive their origin from an indefinitely ancient epoch.

"The same observations may be made in regard to the slips or fallings, which sometimes take place at the bottom of all steep slopes in mountainous regions, and which are still very far from having covered these over. But, as no precise measures of their progress have hitherto been applied, we shall not insist upon them at any greater length.

"From all that has been said, it may be seen, that nature every where distinctly informs us, that the commencement of the present order of things cannot be dated at a very remote period*.

3. With the language of nature and with the general traditions of all nations, the evidence, afforded by what I have called a moral proof, will still be found exactly to accord.

(1.) As all the nations upon the face of the earth, which possess any records or ancient traditions, unanimously declare, that an universal

Essay on the theory of the earth. 31, 32. p. 135-149.

deluge once took place, and that society recommenced from the epoch of that grand revolution : so every account which has come down to us of the progress of civilization, with its concomitant arts and sciences, tends to demonstrate the comparative newness of social order and thence incidentally its commencement from some remarkable epoch of no stupendously remote antiquity.

On the supposition, that the general deluge really took place, and that a single family alone was preserved in the midst of surrounding destruction; it is easy to conceive, what in lapse of time would be the almost certain consequence ofsuch an event. For a season, mankind would remain together, and would industriously preserve and cultivate that knowledge which had been saved from the wreck of a former world. But, ere long, increase of numbers would produce emigration: and emigration would take place in every direction from the central spot, which was first inhabited. Those who remained together in the originally established society, and those who had the good fortune to plant themselves in rich and fertile countries, retaining the arts and sciences derived from their antediluvian forefathers, would gradually form civilized and well politied communities. But those, who emigrated in small bodies, and who plunged into the depths of trackless forests or fixed themselves in hopelessly barren districts, would soon sink. in o a state of ignorance and barbarism: for, either the labour of clearing the ground would so occupy them as to preclude much cultivation of mind, or an adoption of the pastoral or hunting life would prove equally unfavourable to the pre

servation and diffusion of knowledge. Thus, by the very necessity of things, mankind would in a short time be distributed into the two classes of the civilized and uncivilized.

Yet so great are the advantages of knowledge and union, that, although barbarous nations may often have made successful inroads into the territories of civilized nations, there is a natural tendency in civilization to spread itself and in the end to prevail over and exterminate barbarism. Hence, after a certain number of years, civilization gradually extending and barbarism gradually contracting its limits, the inevitable result must be the universal diffusion of the light of knowledge. I mean not to say, that various impediments may not, from time to time, obstruct the progress of civilization, or that once civilized nations may not occasionally retrograde to at least comparative barbarism: but this I will venture to say, that, in the natural course of things, civilization on the whole must ever be in a state of increase, and barbarism on the whole must ever be in a state of decrease.

(2.) With this view of the matter, all history, down to the present time, perfectly agrees.

Many tribes and nations now exist in the variously graduated state of barbarism, from defective civilization down to absolute brutal savageness. Not more than some fifteen or sixteen centuries ago, the ancestors of the highly polished and civilized Europeans were still in the barbarous state, though they had emerged from the condition of complete savages. At a still more distant period, even after every allowance has been made for Grecian vanity, many of the

nations, which touched upon the various Hellenic republics and colonies, were, in the strictly proper sense of the word, barbarians. If we carry our researches yet farther back, we find the forefathers of the Greeks themselves in the very same barbaric condition as that, with which they afterwards indiscrimately reproached all their neighbours. In short, whenever the character of a very ancient lawgiver is delineated, the reclamation of his people either from savage or from barbarous life never fails to be insisted upon as a leading feature of his character. while such is the unvaried tenor of history and Yet, tradition, it is always acknowledged, that civilization has from the very earliest times, prevailed in the East: nor is it less acknowledged, that the east was the aboriginal cradle of the human race immediately after that terrible revolution which stands more or less distinctly recorded in the annals of almost every nation upon the face of the globe. Barbarism then is not a state of nature, but a state of degeneracy. The East preserved, what the primeval emigrants from the East lost by the labours and difficulties attendant upon their locomotion and the East gradually communicated the sacred deposit to those, who had forfeited it. Egypt and Phenicia borrowed from Chaldea and Assyria: Greece derived her civilization from Egypt and Phenicia : Rome and Italy were largely indebted to Greece: the Gothic conquerors of the West received the torch of knowledge from the vanquished Empire of Rome: and now, by navigation and colonization and an almost perpetual intercourse with the most widely separated nations, their descendants are rapidly carrying it in every possible direction.

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