Sometimes
the stalactite roofs are lofty, sometimes we have to bend our heads in
order to pass from one vaulted chamber to another; here we have a superb
column supporting an arch; here a pillar in course of formation,
everywhere the strangest, most fantastic architecture, an architecture
moreover that is the work of ages; one petrifying drop after another
doing its apportioned work, column, arch, and roof being formed by a
process so slow that the life-time of a human being hardly counts in the
calculation. There is something sublime in the contemplation of this
steady persistence of Nature, this undeviating march to a goal; and as
we gaze upon the embryo stages of the petrifaction, stalagmite patiently
lifting itself upward, stalactite as patiently bending down to the
remote but inevitable union, we might almost fancy them sentient agents
in the marvellous transformation. The stamens of a passion-flower do not
more eagerly, as it seems, coil upwards to embrace the pistil; the
beautiful stamina flower of the _Vallisneria spiralis_ does not more
determinately seek its mate than these crystal pendants covet union with
their fellows below. Their perpetual bridals are accomplished after
countless cycles of time, whilst meantime in the sunlit world outside,
the faces of whole continents are being changed, and entire
civilizations are formed and overthrown.
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