Page:Headlong Hall - Peacock (1816).djvu/103

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HEADLONG HALL.
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ments of stone. The pass was bordered on both sides by perpendicular rocks, broken into the wildest forms of fantastic magnificence.

"These are indeed," said Mr. Escot, "confracti mundi rudera[1]: yet they must be feeble images of the valleys of the Andes, where the philosophic eye may contemplate, in their utmost extent, the effects of that tremendous convulsion which destroyed the perpendicularity of the poles, and inundated this globe with that torrent of physical evil, from which the greater torrent of moral evil has issued, that will continue to roll on with an expansive power and an accelerated impetus, till the whole human race shall be swept away in its vortex."

"The precession of the equinoxes," said Mr. Foster, "will gradually ameliorate the


  1. Fragments of a demolished world.