■i l " .
ICHTHYOSAURUS CHIROPARAMEKOSTINUS.
In the year 18301 made acquaintance with one George Moon, a labourer at the quanyofMr. Somers
of the village of Walton.
jch of a boy at that time—that had r t Moon r 1 sbrewdness
than the generality of his class, tho iiistory of Ichtiiyosauri and Plesiosauii would have had another
chronicler:—George Moon, the fiist quarry-man that I could persuade into my views, discovered the
Chiroparamekostinus—the radicle of my Collection.
Diogenes had more liope of finding an honest man when he went abroad with his lantern in the day-
glarc, than I had of conquering the brute ignorance whicti so long prevented a hundred men seeing an
inch beyond tlieir noses. I wasted years in the apparently Utopian pursuit of “ tlie philosopher’s stone,"
and submitted every description of mind save the right one to ray crucible, but no art could conquer the
iiitractible principle of prejudice and I was about to abandon my visions and dreams to the light air of
which tlicy seemed but an illusive incarnation.
But the Musselman is right, fate—mysterious power—disposes all things. Man is the fly caught in
the strong meshes of destiny—to weal or woe—good or evil—he is fore-doomed, and his struggles
to avoid fate are futile. Ask the lover—his soul withered for ever by tlie word of one frailer even than
himself—ah, he lives but to curse his destiny for 'tis bitter as woiTDWood and he must fulfil it. Enquire
of Che aged—the ruined lover and the rueful old are the only persons that can answer thee “all is
vanity and vexation; the day of death is better than the day of one’s birtli.” Verily, as Solomon says
“ the lot is cast into the lap but the disposing thereof is of the Lord.”
I was a rock at the brink of a precipice ;—I looked down into an abyss without a bottom and in the
dizziness of my brain longed to sound it though an eternity would barely suffice it : my eyes wandered in
search of some hand to tumble me over the edge—but tiiey looked in vain. Again I looked into that gulf
and again my brain twirled at tlie bare thought of tlic descent—yet no one drew near and I had almost
relapsed into that lethargy which lulls the spirit of general mankint! throughout all generations, when
fate—directing a poor man to a wreck of the wrecked old world, that she liad stored for tliis end myriads
of ages before the appearance of our race—liurled me over the giddy lieight; then commenced the cycle
of my real existence.
Deep after deep—darker and darkei'—meets my gaze:—faint sickly shadows that the everlasting
future casts across the gulf— the Pierian stream and Avcrnus sacred to the infernal deities —are
the only figures that confront me; behind I see nothing but a gigantic image of fate whose inexorable
visage fills me with dismay, for every glance that I steal thereof consummates another weft of my •
chequered incomprehensible destiny and ushers me into a new sign of that moral zodiac which I am
destined to accomplish.
I sometimes muse on the seeming accident—the chance—that cast me upon the irreversible
thence—the moon—tlio limbo wliero matter and mind incessantly clasli— the, in fact, literary world
where tlie living famisli upon the scant marrow of the bleached carcases of the dead and scoop out with
Mephistopliilian claws tlic very souls of one another for want of bettor garbage upon whicli to prey.
As the circumstance specially belongs to the science we discuss perhaps the reader will liave patience
wliilo we relate it.
'Twas July—the day liad been sultry hot—cool the delicious eve; and in a retired cottage that may
be well called Virgilian—so agreeable its situation on the woody hills that overlook the wide moors of
Glaston—discoursing many pleasant things with my schoolmaster of old I sat. And our ranging thoughts
alight upon geology—the new science—and I loll of the more than Arabian wonders of the neighbouring
villages. And elevated with my story wc agree to ramble the landscape that Icaiis towards them.
Adown But-Close into Chureh-Laiic—through tho Lower Town of Glastonbury and the road lo
Wcary-all-I-Iill we saunter;—that hill wlierc the fainting .losopli of Arimathca stuck his staff eighteen
hundred winters ago, which Monkish legend affirms to be the original of the “ Holy thorn,” that to this
day braves tlie severest winter and puts fortli its pale blossoms in the chilly snow and hoary frost
And our ravished eyes behold an expanse fairer than tho fair plains of Arcady—brown moors and
corn-fields unnumbered, and the Mcndips far-strctched to the North and East, Burnham and the
Bnstol Channel burnished with light and tbc blue coasts of Wales. And to the South—across the
rich Black-moor— Butleigh and Kington and the spires of many churches upon the elm-clad hills.
And Saint Michael’s Tower on the cloud-aspiring Tor, with the indescribably beautiful town of
Glastonbury reposing a t its feet in the slant beams of the sinking sun.
And the sweet-smelling new-made hay and the happy peasant; the sunny maiden returning from
the Icme with pail brimful of milk. And floating the ambient air—gossamer-like came tho bleating of
sheep, the drone of the blind-beetle and the mellow tones of a distant fife.
Why seek we upon other shores, in the clime of the stranger, that nature whicli our own fatlicr-
land offers us in so charming a guise: besides, England has her Thermopylae and Pliaisalia, her
Eternal City, and the tombs of her Homer and the Thespian, and a long line of heroes—Brutus and
Caesar—and of monarchs, potent as a Julius, imperial as Augustus.
Through Street and by many a green liedgc-row we wend our way, exclianging Iciiid words with tho
kindly rustics : and by the black-smith’s sounding forgo, where the lime-trees overshadow the briar-girt
tiii-f which sanctifies tlie ashes of tiie forefathers of the hamlet, wc pause
humble abode of George Moon.
George’s wife—for Moon had not returned from liis work—!>i ings
Chiropararaekostmus, which her husband had found the day licfore,
woman,"
-that white-washed cot is the
i the caudal extremity of the
I must see Moon my good
Wo meet him on our road to the quarry.
“ Show mo whence you got those pieces of marl. Moon.’’
In a quarry of the lias limestones, in the wall of it. twelve feet from tho surface, I saw the section of
a rib and just by it tliat of a vertebra.
“ Wo must dig it out to night, hearties.”
“ We can’t zir, ’tis too leate." “ We will.”
Hark to the sledp-liammer as it falls upon the car of drowsy Eve, disturbing tlie birds that arc at
roost thereabout. List to that jocund laugh—'tis at my expense, tliose happy fellows tliink me
half-witted.
My friend—appreliensivc of the dews that begin to rise—ad<lresscs his steps home-ward, alone.
Soon Night, quenching the last beam of day, wraps us in her sable shroud;—are those dancing
tilings Wills o’ the Wisp? No—candles. But the heart of tho workmen—worn by a long day’s labour-^
begins to fail them,
“ George, you will stay licrc all night to see that no mischief is done.” for I feared the rude curiosity
of the simple villagers.
“ Good-night boys—good-niglit.”
“ Good-niglit zir." Oh that sincere good-night, what palace over echoed a likc-oiie.
Give me the country in summer, country folk both summer and winter and all the rest of the year:
yea, and of those folk let me have for my friends—my bosom friends—those who liavc never travelled ten
miles from the place of their nativity:—of all men lliey arc the least sophisticated and tlicso of whom I
M'ritc especially so—they are tlio Tom Jones’ and Joseph Andrews' of Fielding, wlio has walked many
a morn fram his liousc at Sliavptiam Park to that village of Walton before breakfast.
II- Tlic solemn bat beat the air with membranous wing as I journeyed lazily to Glastonbury so—
meditating—racthought I glided adown the stream of time into the oblivious profoiiiKl where flit tho
unreal shadows of oxtingiiished generations. And amid the horrible darkness I bclicid monstrous and
dire skeletons that came from nature’s untutored hand ere tho Divinity called order from chaos forth.
And shapes big as leviathan and more terrible, and ghosts of unfinished oxistoncies. Of Saturn and liis
moon’s icy phantasies—and of the planets strange beings tliat have no name nor shall they have.
And of distant suns mighty monuments—gaunt—unutterable wore they. And 1 come to the quiet