A profane writer once suggested that the same Creator could hardly have brought into existence this arid, barren and inhospitable region and the fertile plains and beautiful mountains which surrounded it on all sides.

7 The retreat of the Germans to the Marne, when those columns of men turned their backs on Paris and trudged back along many roads down which they had come with songs of victory and across stony fields strewn already with the débris of fighting, on through villages where they burned arid looted as they passed, left a trail of muck and blood and ruin.

Such is the German account of the matter; but my opinion isthat the murderer was an amateur, who felt how little would be gained to the cause of good taste by murdering an old, arid, and adust metaphysician; there was no room for display, as the man could not possibly look more like a mummy when dead, than he had done alive.

A number of buildings is always a cheering sight to a settler on his first arrival, and gives him encouragement to exertion; whereas, if the country wears its natural arid, desolate, uninviting appearance, dejection and despondency ensue.