MARY. That is really very much like our work. But what do the
mountains use to sew with?
L. Quartz, whenever they can get it: pure limestones are obliged
to be content with carbonate of lime; but most mixed rocks can
find some quartz for themselves. Here is a piece of black slate
from the Buet: it looks merely like dry dark mud; you could not
think there was any quartz in it; but, you see, its rents are all
stitched together with beautiful white thread, which is the purest
quartz, so close drawn that you can break it like flint, in the
mass; but, where it has been exposed to the weather, the fine
fibrous structure is shown: and, more than that, you see the
threads have been all twisted and pulled aside, this way and the
other, by the warpings and shifting of the sides of the vein as it
widened.
MARY. It is wonderful! But is that going on still? Are the
mountains being torn and sewn together again at this moment?
L. Yes, certainly, my dear: but I think, just as certainly (though
geologists differ on this matter), not with the violence, or on
the scale, of their ancient ruin and renewal. All things seem to
be tending towards a condition of at least temporary rest; and
that groaning and travailing of the creation, as, assuredly, not
wholly in pain, is not, in the full sense, "until now.
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