Dora.  That does not seem much to depend upon.

L. Pardon me, puss.  When once we gain some real notion of the extent and unconquerableness of our ignorance, it is a very broad and restful thing to depend upon:  you can throw yourself upon it at ease, as on a cloud, to feast with the gods.  You do not thenceforward trouble yourself,—­nor any one else,—­with theories, or the contradiction of theories; you neither get headache nor heart-burning and you nevermore waste your poor little store of strength or allowance of time.

However, there are certain facts, about this agate-making, which I can tell you; and then you may look at it in a pleasant wonder as long as you like, pleasant wonder is no loss of time.

First, then, it is not broken freely by a blow; it is slowly wrung, or ground, to pieces.  You can only with extreme dimness conceive the force exerted on mountains in transitional states of movement.  You have all read a little geology; and you know how coolly geologists talk of mountains being raised or depressed.  They talk coolly of it, because they are accustomed to the fact; but the very universality of the fact prevents us from ever conceiving distinctly the conditions of force involved.  You know I was living last year in Savoy; my house was on the back of a sloping mountain, which rose gradually for two miles behind it; and then fell at once in a great precipice toward Geneva, going down three thousand feet in four or five cliffs, or steps.  Now that whole group of cliffs had simply been torn away by sheer strength from the rocks below, as if the whole mass had been as soft as biscuit.  Put four or five captains’ biscuits on the floor, on the top of one another; and try to break them all in half, not by bending, but by holding one half down, and tearing the other halves straight up;—­of course you will not be able to do it, but you will feel and comprehend the sort of force needed.  Then, fancy each captains’ biscuit a bed of rock, six or seven hundred feet thick; and the whole mass torn straight through; and one half heaved up three thousand feet, grinding against the other as it rose,—­and you will have some idea of the making of the Mont Saleve.

May.  But it must crush the rocks all to dust!

L. No; for there is no room for dust.  The pressure is too great; probably the heat developed also so great that the rock is made partly ductile; but the worst of it is, that we never can see these parts of mountains in the state they were left in at the time of their elevation; for it is precisely in these rents and dislocations that the crystalline power principally exerts itself.  It is essentially a styptic power, and wherever the earth is torn, it heals and binds; nay, the torture and grieving of the earth seem necessary to bring out its full energy; for you only find the crystalline living power fully in action, where the rents and faults are deep and many.