In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

— GENESIS I., I.

Who made the land of England? Who made it, this respectable English land, wheat-growing, metalliferous, carboniferous, which will let readily hand over head for seventy millions or upwards, as it here lies; who did make it? “We!” answer the much-consuming aristocracy.

— THOMAS CARLYLE, Past and Present, Book III., Chap. 8.