Water, and nothing else, has sawn out such a chasm as that through which the ships run up to Bristol, between Leigh Wood and St. Vincent’s Rocks. Water, and nothing else, has shaped those peaks of the Matterhorn, or the Weisshorn, or the Pic du Midi of the Pyrenees, of which you have seen sketches and photographs. Just so water might saw out Hartford Bridge Flat, if it had time enough, into a labyrinth of valleys, and hills, and peaks standing alone; as it has done already by Ambarrow, and Edgbarrow, and the Folly Hill on the other side of the vale.
I see you are astonished at the notion that water can make Alps. But it was just because I knew you would be astonished at Madam How’s doing so great a thing with so simple a tool, that I began by showing you how she was doing the same thing in a small way here upon these flats. For the safest way to learn Madam How’s methods is to watch her at work in little corners at commonplace business, which will not astonish or frighten us, nor put huge hasty guesses and dreams into our heads. Sir Isaac Newton, some will tell you, found out the great law of gravitation, which holds true of all the suns and stars in heaven, by watching an apple fall: and even if he did not find it out so, he found it out, we know, by careful thinking over the plain and commonplace fact, that things have weight. So do you be humble and patient, and watch Madam How at work on little things. For that is the way to see her at work upon all space and time.
What? you have a question more to ask?
Oh! I talked about Madam How lifting up Hartford Bridge Flat. How could she do that? My dear child, that is a long story, and I must tell it you some other time. Meanwhile, did you ever see the lid of a kettle rise up and shake when the water inside boiled? Of course; and of course, too, remember that Madam How must have done it. Then think over between this and our next talk, what that can possibly have to do with her lifting up Hartford Bridge Flat. But you have been longing, perhaps, all this time to hear more about Lady Why, and why she set Madam How to make Bracknell’s Bottom.
My dear child, the only answer I dare give to that is: Whatever other purposes she may have made it for, she made it at least for this—that you and I should come to it this day, and look at, and talk over it, and become thereby wiser and more earnest, and we will hope more humble and better people. Whatever else Lady Why may wish or not wish, this she wishes always, to make all men wise and all men good. For what is written of her whom, as in a parable, I have called Lady Why?
“The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His way, before His works of old.
“I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was.
“When there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no fountains abounding with water.
“Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth:
“While as yet He had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world.