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Show 56 WERNER. · t' 11d richly stored with miscellaneous knowledge • • He gma 1ve a . · · d · h' associated everything with his favounte science, ~n m IS excursi·v e 1e c tures he pointed out a.l l. the eco.n omiCal uses of • 1 and their application to med1cme ; the mfluence of the mmera s, . d f h . mineral composition of rocks upon the soil, an o t e rsml upon the resources, wealth, and civilization of man. fhe vast sandy plains of Tartary and Africa he ~ould say retained their inhabitants in the shape of wandermg shepherds; the aranitic mountains and the low calcareous and alluvial plains ;ave rise to different manners, degrees ~f wealth ~nd ~ntelligence. The history even of languages, ~nd the m1gra~10n~ of tribes had, according to him, been determmed by the dtrectwn of particular strata. ;r'he qualities of certain ~tones used .in buildina would lead lum to descant on the architecture of different a0aes and nations, and the physical geography of a country freq~1ently invited him to treat of military tactics. The charm of his manners and his eloquence kindled enthusiasm in the minds of all his pupils, many of whom only intended at first to acquire a slight knowledge of mineralogy; but, when they had once heard him, they devoted themselves to it as tl1e business of their lives. In a few years a small school of mines, before unheard of in Europe, was raised to the rank of a great university, and men already distinguished in science studied the German language, and came from the most distant countries to hear the great oracle of geology *. Werner had a great antipathy to the mechanical labour of writing, and he could never be persuaded to pen more than a few brief memoirs, and those containing no development of his general views. Although the natural modesty of his disposi· tion was excessive, approaching even to timidity, he indulged in the most bold and sweeping generalizations, and he inspired all his scholars with a most implicit faith in his doctrines. Their admiration of his genius, and the feelings of gratitude and friendship which they all felt for him, were not undeserved; but the supreme authority usurped by him over the opinions of his contemporaries, was eventually prejudicial to the pro· gress of the science, so much so, as greatly to counterbalance the advantages which it derived from his exertions. If it be true that delivery be the first, second, and third requisite in a I • Cuvicr, Eloge do W crnor. WERNER. 57 popular orator, it is no less certain that to travel is of threefold importance to those who desire to originate just and comprehensive views concerning the structure of our globe, and Werner had never travelled to distant countries. He had. merely explored a small portion of Germany, and conceived, and persuaded others to believe, that the whole surface of our planet, and all the mountain chains in the world, were made afte~ ~he ~nodel o~ his ow? prov.ince. It was a ruling object of amb1t~on m the mmds of h1s pupils to confirm the generalizations of their great master, and to discover in the most distant parts of the globe ~is '' uni.vers~l formations," which he supposed had been each m successiOn simultaneously precipitated over the whole earth from a common menstruum, or "chaotic fluid." Unfortunately, the limited district examined by the Saxon professor was no type of the world, nor even of Europe· and what was still more deplorable, when the ingenuity of hi; scho~ lars had tortured the phenomena of distant countdes and even of another hemisphere, into conformity with his ;heoretical standard, it was discovered that '' the master" had misinterpreted many of the appearances in the immediate neighbourhood of Freyberg. Thus, for example, within a day's journey of his school, the porphyry, called by him primitive, has been found not only to send forth veins or dikes through strata of the coal formation, but to overlie them in mass. The granite of the Hartz mountains, on the other hand, which he supposed to be the nucleus of the chain, is now well known to traverse and breach the other beds, penetrating even into the plain (as near Goslar) ; and nearer Freyberg, in the Erzgebirge, the mica slate does not mantle round the granite, as the professor supposed, but abuts abruptly against it. But it is still more remarkable, that in the Hartz mountains all his flotz rocks which he represented as horizontal, are highly inclined, and often nearly vertical, as the chalk at Goslar, and the green sand near Blanken berg. The principal merit of W crner~s system of instruction consisted in steadily directing the attention of his scholars to the constant relation~ ?f certain mineral groups, and their regular order of superposition. But he had been anticipated, as we have shewn in the last chapter, in the discovery of this general law, |
