northward through Lancashire;
reappearing again, north of the Lake mountains, about Carlisle and
the Scotch side of the Solway Frith, stretches the New Red sandstone
plain, from under which everywhere the coal-bearing rocks rise as
from a sea. It contains, in many places, excellent quarries of
building-stone; the most famous of which, perhaps, are the well-known
Runcorn quarries, near Liverpool, from which the old Romans brought
the material for the walls and temples of ancient Chester, and from
which the stone for the restoration of Chester Cathedral is being
taken at this day. In some quarters, especially in the north-west of
England, its soil is poor, because it is masked by that very boulder-
clay of which I spoke in my last paper. But its rich red marls,
wherever they come to the surface, are one of God's most precious
gifts to this favoured land. On them, one finds oneself at once in a
garden; amid the noblest of timber, wheat, roots, grass which is
green through the driest summers, and, in the western counties,
cider-orchards laden with red and golden fruit. I know, throughout
northern Europe, no such charming scenery, for quiet beauty and solid
wealth, as that of the New Red marls; and if I wished to show a
foreigner what England was, I should take him along them, from
Yorkshire to South Devon, and say--There. Is not that a country
worth living for,--and worth dying for if need be?

Another reason which I have for dealing with the New Red sandstone is
this--that (as I said just now) over great tracts of England,
especially about the manufacturing districts, the town-geologist will
find it covered immediately by the boulder clay.

The townsman, finding this, would have a fair right to suppose that
the clay was laid down immediately, or at least soon after, the
sandstones or marls on which it lies; that as soon as the one had
settled at the bottom of some old sea, the other settled on the top
of it, in the same sea.

A fair and reasonable guess, which would in many cases, indeed in
most, be quite true. But in this case it would be a mistake. The
sandstone and marls are immensely older than the boulder-clay. They
are, humanly speaking, some four or five worlds older.

What do I mean? This--that between the time when the one, and the
time when the other, was made, the British Islands, and probably the
whole continent of Europe, have changed four or five times; in shape;