i^l!
vaded; liappy indeed tliey tliat the Iconoclast no longer
deals with the works of Men’s hands, but trifles with the
adamantine Monuments of a Divine Power.
The Fashion will come shortly to an end. Then
more shall we stumble over cyphers at every step, i
shall the ear start at unwelcome sounds, nor the wit be
insulted by contemptible things, but the Groves of Aca-
demus, and the Gymnasia murmur to the converse, or
exhibit the athlete of Philosophy, in naked dignity, antique
and noble all.
Plate XXIII. In presenting the fourth Species of a
Genus we have chanced to find, we therefore make none
other boast. It has been seen that Miss Anning previously
discovered three several Genera, and was content with the
simple fact. America is called not after the finder, and
these Taninim have been appropriated in the same way:
but Miss Anning nevertheless found them, and the Author,
spare the egotism, O Reader, discovered their longitude,
and added another Province to the Realm.
Many a Tome, a Language, an Idea, a Sum has he
pursued to their last decimal, in quest of that Terra Incognita
of Dead Times, that Ultima Thule of the wise
Babylonians, Egyptians, Assyrians, and Indians, in the
Ocean pre-Adamite; Many Lands traversed, and monsters
handled, but to find them strange. The traditionary
pictures of the Temple Bel and the actual ones of Mis-
raim, and Ganges, are accounted fabulous because their
Cipher is unknown. We have lost the ante-diluvial
measure of Time, about which Usher has led us into so
many lamentable follies, tlic Secrets of the Heavens, and
the Science of the Inner Man. ¡
But a Star arises out of Jacob, by whose blessed light
we cross the Silent Seas of Time, and explore the Solitary
Countries of the Past. It is possible even to the
Initiated in the Greater Mysteries, to re-vivify the whole
Universe that is gone. I f it were not a proplianity we
could tell thee, beloved reader, of this terrestrial Ball,
a startling tale, and of the shining Spheres. Often at
midnight, quenching animal Life, we listen to the din of
Chaos, the rustle of the living Wind over the Primæval
Deep, the whisperings of many Spirits. The Red Man
and his Dominions pass, the Vasty Wings of Jupiter
upon the Globe Earth quiver, the Dread Anavk one
enters the Scene, and the Universe darkens. Cowing
Visions of mingled Heaven and Hell close with a rainy
shroud palling the departed Earth; the “ Abomination
of Desolation” is revealed, the Grey Mountains bowing
down their dripping heads, and the Stars falling to the
ground out of Heaven.
Dost thou require proof, behold it here ! tliese Sea-
Dragons come from the wonderful Countries we have
found, to wliich the Adamites pointed Heber by the
mouth of Noah, and Posterity by the consent of Nations.
.e are the Great Sea-Dragons, the Gedolim Taninim
of Moses, the once gory Monsters of the Primal Seas. If
silence, if height and depth illimitable, if Space and
Eternity thou canst meet as an Eagle gazes unblanched
upon the Sun, unfurl the Pinions of tliy Spirit, give it to
the Winds of Heaven, and realize an intact, self-sufficient
and satiated a Being, fulfilling that Destiny for which our
godlike Race was bom.
END OF THE BOOK OF THE DRAGONS ICHTHYOSAURI.
C H A P T E R VI.
E GREAT SEA-DRAGONS—PLESIOSAURI
WERE it possible to abstract mankind from the
habits and artificial conventions of ages, and refer
them back to the original Constitution of Man, it is
highly probable that we should find notliing positively
abhorrent to our feelings throughout all Creation: unless,
indeed, some Great Principle, antagonist to the one hy
whom we are made, had introduced therein objects evoked
from an Element hostile and injurious to our own.
For it is impossible to conceive that the Almighty
would sow the seeds of Death in a Garden planted for
His Pleasure, or deform the Palaces thereof by additions
damnatory of the Work itself, and fill them with unclean
Races for ever at strife with the Favorite for whom it was
especially built. And if we admit the inhabitation of the
Seas, long before Adam, by baleful Monsters, and in
them a manifest Power allied to Pain and his attendant
Horrors, it is easy, nay, reasonable to suppose that the
Lord of the Earth himself was to be endowed with a sense
of so much Greatness, that he would stand in the midst of
them all, inviolate of strength, and unmindful of them os
a god.
We may pursue the problem farther, and imagine with
a Phidias, an Apollo, and Python destroyed in the passionless
Spirit immortalized in his Statue; or with
Rafael, Michml the Archangel treading down Satan,
with a brow serene and a mind unruffled as the waters of
the River of Life.
The perfection of a Creature cannot be predicated if
he be conscious of fear. For this, Milton describes Ab-
diel repelling the contumelious assaults of the Rebel
Armies of Heaven, and passing calm and undaunted
through them all. It was the Essence of things, through
all tbe Works of Jehovah downward from the loftiest
Angels, the only question being where those Works do
end.
On the other hand, were it not foreign to our Text, we
might speculate upon the intolerable pangs which seize
a fallen and lost, or an originally vicious Creature, when
placed in apposition with Elements of Good subversive of
his very being.
The Ideas then, and tlie terms used to denote them of
things repugnant, are by no means indigenous to the
human understanding, but forced upon us by the hapless
circumstances in whicli we are found. Aud, presuming
with the Ancients and the Easterns even of our own day,
that besides Jehovah, another Being has been engaged in
peopling this Planet, surely no one can object to our
calling bitter not sweet, and monsters of surpassing ugliness
tlie hardest Names.
Tlio Mythic Serpents graven of old upon idolatrous
altars and Temples, and introduced in tlie commonest
occasions and uses of Life, extorted a Sentiment from
Pagan Nations, grateful only to the Cruel Demon they
represented, and by the frequency of this personal manifestation,
the Great Enemy of our Race hoped utterly
to deaden and kill tbe Instinctive Love of Beauty which
survived the Fall, and finally brutalize the whole Earth.
In the earlier Campaigns, Anak had the advantage, the
Adamites deserted their Standard, signalized themselves
in his wars, and paid, too, the penalty of Treason in those
Waters, which the Earth invoked wherewith to cleanse
away the impurities with which they had filled her: but
a Deluge were insufficient for the renewal of the once
spotless Constitution of Man, the post-diluvians were, in
their turn, beguiled, if not to so great enormity, into
frailties of the above fatal kind, and tlieir dispositions
became Evil Continually,
The Life and Immortality which in due Season spring
to light, open an entirely new Scene for the Energies of
Man: Now laying hold upon Heaven, he fearlessly
handleth aspic things, combatting Evil with his own
weapons, in that World so well-nigh conquered for bis
own. Here too he often stumbles upon the wrecks of
Victories won over Evil in Times anterior to the Fortunes
of Mankind, which it has been tbe policy of the Old
Dragon to conceal from our knowledge to tbe last; for
not alone since Adam have the Two Dread Principles,
Osiris and Typhon, battled for Dominion over the Earth ;
it has been the theatre of many another War, and the
bones of these great Sea-dragons, Plesiosauri, are the
remains of but one of the vile Colonies from Tophet,
which Jehovah visited with Wrath, and swept out of the
World in a whirlwind of Fury and Indignation for ever.
Each and every of the Kingdoms accursed shall be destroyed
in like manner, and the arch-Ruier thereof driven
at last to his remaining Citadel in the human heart, be
cast out even thence into Perdition everlasting.
The mere ordinary common-places, then, which invest
alike ail animate and inanimate things, of size, of color, of
kind, we again declare our total indifference to them ali ;
when Science bestows more than a passing glance upon
tliera, slie foi^ets tlie dignity which alone makes her truly
worshipful. A hair in a telescope obscures a Star, and
in this way the whole Universe may shrink into a Span,
and the Past and Future vanish before tlie momentless
Present, while tbe observer, unconscious of his situation,
dreams away, comatous and useless quite, contemplating
Effects apart from the latent Principles out of which they
These Taninim! we seize them as with a divine furor;
more intelligible than the Rosetta Stone, they constitute
the only Key to Tongues pregnant with Facts of the most
astonishing kind concerning the gods. These Sea-Dragons
shall be esteemed for more than bodily Images and Stone :