has provided for the separate maintenance of these wretched
objects, nearly on the plan suggested.

On leaving this poor-house, I crossed Barnes Common in a north-eastern
direction, with a view to visit at Barnes-Elms the former residence of
Jacob Tonson, the bookseller, and once the place of meeting of the
famous Kit-Cat Club.

On this Common, nature still appeared to be in a primeval and
unfinished state. The entire Flat from the high ground to the Thames,
is evidently a mere freshwater formation, of comparatively modern
date, created out of the rocky ruins which the rains, in a series of
ages, have washed from the high grounds, and further augmented by the
decay of local vegetation. The adjacent high lands, being elevated
above the action of the fresh water, were no doubt marine formations,
created by the flowing of the sea during the four thousand years when
the earth was last in its perihelion during our summer months; which
was between twelve and seven thousand years since. The Flat or
fresh-water formation, on which I was walking, still only approaches
its completion; and the desiccated soil has not yet fully defined the
boundaries of the river. At spring-tides, particularly when the line
of the moon's apsides coincides with the syzygies, or when the
ascending node is in the vernal equinox, or after heavy rains, the
river still overflows its banks, and indicates its originally extended
scite under ordinary circumstances.

The state of transition also appears in marshes, bogs, and ponds,
which, but for the interference of man, would many ages ago have been
filled up with decayed forests and the remains of undisturbed
vegetation. Rivers thus become agents of the #NEVER-CEASING CREATION#,
and a means of giving greater equality to the face of the land. The
sea, as it retired, either abruptly from some situations, or gradually
from others, left dry land, consisting of downs and swelling hills,
disposed in all the variety which would be consequential on a
succession of floods and ebbs during several thousand years. These
downs, acted upon by rain, were mechanically, or in solution, carried
off by the water to the lowest levels, the elevations being thereby
depressed, and the valleys proportionally raised. The low lands became
of course the channels through which the rains returned to the sea,
and the successive deposits on their sides, hardened by the wind and
sun, have in five or six thousand year