Chapter IV: Time and Change. (131)

Sir Humphry Davy, 1778-1829, was an eminent chemist of England. He made many important chemical discoveries, and was the inventor of the miner's safety lamp. ###

Time is almost a human word, and Change entirely a human idea; in the system of nature, we should rather say progress than change. The sun appears to sink in the ocean in darkness, but it rises in another hemisphere; the ruins of a city fall, but they are often used to form more magnificent structures: even when they are destroyed so as to produce only dust, Nature asserts her empire over them; and the vegetable world rises in constant youth, in a period of annual successions, by the labors of man--providing food, vitality, and beauty--upon the wrecks of monuments which were raised for the purposes of glory, but which are now applied to objects of utility.