At the conclusion of the Wealden period, the crust of our globe underwent another great change. The fresh-water rocks we have just been studying were probably submerged by some violent subterranean or subaquean agency, and upon a great part of them a new deposit was gradually formed. Foot by foot, and inch by inch, slowly accumulated those cretaceous particles (Lat. creta, chalk) which now constitute the chalk hills and cliffs of our own country, to say nothing of the extent of territory in Europe occupied by this well-known mineral. To those who like ourselves live in a chalk district, this formation possesses special interest, simply because the “bounds of our habitation” are fixed there; and though we miss here all traces of the Ichthyosaurus and Iguanodon, although no Deinotherium nor Mastodon as yet make their appearance on the stage of being, yet with a very little knowledge of geology, coupled with a desire not to walk through the world with “eyes and no eyes,” it is in our power to invest many an otherwise motiveless walk with pleasurable interest. A cutting in the hills may reveal some unthought-of geological curiosity; a heap of flints may disclose some “rich and rare” fossils; and even a walk over the Downs, those breezy “downs” or “heaths” of southern England, covered with their short herbage, and dotted with their browsing sheep—those downs that undulate in such well-known forms of beauty, may be fruitful of suggestions concerning their origin, character and antiquity, that may be of healthful power in the development of an intellectual life.
We live—that is, we aforesaid—not on a fresh-water deposit, like the people of Purbeck, Hastings, and so on, but upon an old marine deposit. The huge cliffs of chalk that gave the name of Albion, the “white isle,” to our country, with all these downs, which rest upon chalk, having a depth or thickness of often more than two thousand feet, were once formed at the bottom of pre-Adamite oceans; and in process of time, as the secondary period drew near to its destined close, and other and higher types of life were to make their appearance, were upheaved by Him, “whose hands thus formed the dry land,” to serve the future purposes and contribute to the comforts of the coming lord of all.
Of this Albion we may well be proud, as the home of religion, the birth-place of true freedom, and the sanctuary of the oppressed. With Coleridge we exclaim:—
“Not yet enslaved, nor wholly vile,
O Albion, O my mother isle!
Thy valleys fair, as Eden’s bowers,
Glitter green with sunny showers;
Thy grassy upland’s gentle swells
Echo to the bleat of flocks;
Those grassy hills, those glittering dells,