“The third part of the song,” he continued, “begins with the fifteenth verse, and describes the usual effect of prosperity upon a thoughtless and ungrateful people. ‘But Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked.’ This figure of speech is probably taken from a pampered horse, who becomes unmanageable and vicious; and you will find it repeated in Hosea[4]. ‘According to their pasture they were filled, and their heart was exalted; therefore they have forgotten me.’ Jeshurun is derived from a word signifying upright, and is put here, as well as in Isaiah, for Israel. It would not be very difficult to apply the whole of this passage to more modern nations, who have far less excuse than even the Israelites for ‘forsaking God, and lightly esteeming the rock of their salvation;’ but, as individuals, at least, we may take a useful lesson from it; let us beware of the seductions of prosperity, lest our hearts become too much engrossed by the happiness that we enjoy, or too much depressed by the salutary disappointments that we sometimes undergo.
“The fourth part, from the nineteenth verse to the end of the twenty-fifth, expresses the indignation of the Lord, and his threats of rejecting apostate Israel, and of adopting in their room the believing Gentiles. It is quoted by St. Paul, as having that interpretation; and I will only further remark, that it is written with the most awful strength that language can supply; and that all its denunciations have been literally accomplished.
“The fifth division, to the end of verse 35, states the wise and gracious reasons of the dispersion of the Jews into all lands, both for their ultimate preservation, and to prevent their enemies from vainly ascribing to themselves their destruction. It was not indeed from any merit of their own that those enemies were allowed to triumph, they were only employed as the instruments of punishment; and God declares in the sequel that they will have to answer for their own corruptions and idolatries in the day of vengeance.
“‘For their rock is not as our Rock; even our enemies themselves being judges.’ This remarkable passage was evidently introduced by Moses in a parenthesis. He prophetically knew that their conquerors would often have to confess the superiority of the God of Israel over their own deities; and accordingly many examples of it may be collected in Scripture. I need scarcely remind you of Nebuchadnezzar’s decree, when he perceived the three faithful Jews escaping unhurt from his fiery furnace[5]; nor of his touching acknowledgment of the one true God when he regained his reason[6]; and in profane history you no doubt recollect the declaration of the Roman emperor Titus, after the conquest of Jerusalem,—That he was only an instrument in the hand of God, whose wrath had been so signally manifested against the Jews.
“The last part of this celebrated song is called the consolation of Israel: it holds out a gracious promise of future reconciliation when they should have repented of their obstinacy, and abjured the vain idols in whom they had trusted for protection; it gives an awful warning to their oppressors, that the day of account and of vengeance for them also will come; and the words in the concluding verse, ‘Rejoice, O ye nations with his people,’ seem to have been cited by St. Paul,[7] to prove the future conversion of both Jews and Gentiles to Christ, and their mutual exultation in his then undivided kingdom.”
15th.—I seized an opportunity of asking my uncle some questions about the beds of coal in the forest of Dean, and I learned that the coal formation there, is an irregular elliptical basin, occupying nearly the whole of the forest tract. It is ten miles long, and six broad; and all the strata dip uniformly to the centre of the basin. He shewed me the extent of it on a geological map, which he has made of this county; and which marks in the prettiest manner all the principal strata. Each kind of rock has a particular colour, so that its extent is seen at a glance; and by a section at the bottom of the map, the dip or inclination of the strata, and the manner in which they lie on each other, are very distinctly shewn. He made Caroline and me observe that we could trace on it the mountain-lime and old red-sandstone (which enclose the coal-field) across the river Wye into South-Wales: there, he says, they contain another coal district, of much greater extent; and he showed it to us in Mr. Greenough’s beautiful geological map of all England. I should never have been tired of looking at these maps, if Caroline, who knew how little time my uncle could spare, had not asked him something about the origin of coal.
“Before I answer that question,” said he, “we must have a little discussion on the nature of peat; a substance which seems to be very closely allied to coal, and which, there is no doubt, has been produced by the decay and decomposition of vegetable matter. There are different kinds of peat, therefore, according to the different kinds of plants of which it is composed, and the different situations in which the process has been carried on; such as marsh, forest, and marine peat. Some extensive bogs have been caused within the memory of man, by the decay and natural fall of forests, over which the sphagnum palustre and other mosses rapidly spread; agricultural implements and various domestic utensils have been found under them; and we may therefore assume, that as peat appears to be in the act of progressive increase, it belongs to an order of causes still in action. When examined, peat appears to be an entire mass of vegetable fibres: towards the surface they are nearly in an unchanged state, but in the middle the peat becomes more compact; and at the bottom of a very deep and ancient bog, they are almost obliterated, the substance being dense and black, and having all the chemical characters of jet. In some instances beds of peat alternate with beds of mud or sand, which must have been deposited in the bottom of lakes, and in these cases they appear something like an incomplete coal formation.
“In a short time,” continued my uncle, “we shall have a better opportunity of studying this curious substance, if your interest in it continues, when we are in Ireland, as that island contains a greater proportion of bog than any country with which we are acquainted.”
“My interest in it, my dear uncle, I replied, is not very likely to fail while I have your kind assistance; but as we are as yet in a coal country, perhaps you will tell us something of the formation or origin of that mineral.”
“There is no possible doubt,” he said, “that the general origin of coal must be referred to the vegetable kingdom; and I began with peat, to show you how masses of vegetable matter may be collected in thick and very extensive beds, ready for whatever process nature may afterwards employ in converting them into coal. Some species of coal are merely fossil wood (or lignite) impregnated with bitumen: the branches, trunks, and roots, though closely pressed together, are scarcely altered in texture, in some places; while in others they gradually lose every vegetable feature, and the substance in colour, lustre, and fracture, resembles pitch. Of this nature is the Bovey coal of Devonshire, and the Surturbrand of Iceland; and I have some specimens of the former, in which the fibres were flexible when I took them out of the pit, though now hard and brittle. From the disposition of those Bovey lignites, which lie in alternate strata with clay and gravel, it has been reasonably inferred that the trees and vegetables of the adjacent mountains were washed down at different periods into a lake; the clay and gravel, of course, sank first to the bottom, and formed the floor; but in time the trees saturated with moisture, and pressed down by an accumulation of other trees, sank also; and were again, perhaps in succeeding ages, covered by successive depositions.