every respect beside ; Lord Cole’s also having six tarsal
joiiiis. We have often shuddered upon the precipice of our
Genei'ic Hypothesis, but this one fact of comparison places
us entirely out of danger from the cervix, as ere now we
have escaped the no less trying test of the teeth.
The Sternum remains in all its entirety, composed of
three bones, a body and alæ at its side: Plate XXVI
contains the drawing of a large Sternal bone, in which
the connexion of the two wings with the centre is most
carefully shown. Anatomists who value more than metaphysical
relations, tlie coincidences of natural forms, will
study the breast and scapular bones of Ichthyosauri and
Plesiosauri side by side ; the scapul®, clavicles, and Sternum
ofboth having the same style of mechanism.
It is impossible, hidden as they are under the ribs, the
Sternum, and the pelvis, to count decisively the dorsal
vertebræ, only four of which, just anterior to tbe pelvis,
discover themselves. The true and the floating ribs maintain
their order, while the ventral ones have been slightly
displaced, by the explosion, probably, of Animal gases.
Oryctolc^ists have so much exa^erated the length of
the neck, at the expense of the carcase and tail of Plesiosauri,
that the equipoise of the first and last Is a fact
they will unwillingly learn, although it certainly may have
been assumed from the very first. In Plate XXIV the neck
apparently is ratlier longer than the tail, but such is not
tbe truth, seeing that the latter is imperfect. The cau-
dum of the superb skeleton Plate XXVII is the only entire
one extant, the tliree terminal bones being thrown back
upon the preceding vertebræ. And it is difficult to ascertain
even here, the exact point where the tail commences,
the ischia projecting backward over tlie bones
so as effectually to conceal the vertebra, which succeeded
those with which the ilia articulated. The manner of
that articulation is fully shown in Plate XXV ; so that
we can approximate to a correct measure, and prove the
neck and tail nearly alike in length. Moreover, the tail,
arming its squared solidified vertebræ with heavy spines,
reaches the balance of the head and neck together, so that
the Creature oscillated upon a fulcrum fixed in his navel.
The paddles elongating, or downward, backward, or before,
fixed the pivot upon which Plesiosauri swung for-
ivard in heat for prey, or wanton flight, or prone down to
the nether deeps, their den.
The longest phalangal series of the anterior extremity
amounts to nine, the longest posterior one to ten joints ;
thus reversing the fact in Lord Cole’s specimen, and exceeding,
by two joints, the longest toe in the Plesiosaurus
of Plate XXIV.
The long, lank, skinny hands, the deatby paddles of
Plesiosaurus, or spotted, or livid yellow and pale, upon
them fiend-like he fled : his hide, or black or freckled,
or russet, his eyes blood-shot fiery, or green, lizard-like ;
his teeth, his fangs whetted sharp, gloating upon and
crunching the gristles of his dying prey : or fleeting
through the Expanse of Ocean, or tempting the Profound,
or cresting the Upper Waves, preying, or at watch
for prey, or lulling himself upon the wide, the universal
deep : coming from the Abysm of Ages, the Gog, or the
Magog of Pre-Adamite Earth, Giant of Wrath and Battle,
behold ! the Great Sea-Dragon, tbe Emperor of Past
Worlds, maleficent, terrible, direct, and sublime.
C H A P T E R V II.
Genus H ex a tabsostinos. EJat, Tofo-oj, ct oareoy. (Sex ossibus in talis.) Animalium lacertiformium in pago Street, oi
et operc Auctoris, in lucem prolatorum genus. J’u6. XXVIII.
Th e Manes of tbe Primal Earth, melancbolical and
extremely tenuous, haunting the solitary wastes and
ruins of the World, stalks away alone from the fickle Generations
of Man, through the labyrinthian Chambers
and oppressive Mists of Ages.
Tlie Antique Spirit of Earth, wrinkled with Time, and
of visage, ploughed by Grief and Despair, plunging into
abstracted parte, sits for ever upon the centres of things,
remote from Vulgar gaze. The mortalities, certes, are
sometimes found in the tomb of uncounted Ages, exuvial
bones protrude ghastly through the worn out Pall of
Matter, or are cast up of the sickening Grave in earthquake
pangs, but the stern and terrible Ghost of the Dead
worlds is abstraction all, shapeless, and infinitely strange.
The awful Golgotha of Time, we explore, 0 reader, in
no rude mind, and the skeletons of traditionary monsters
value for no materialism, but for the moralities they
induct, and the secret passages they conceal of the ancient
of Days, mysterious nature. We rate the Taninim
not for their perfect parts anatomical, so much as for the
Ideas they subscribe, the Language they perpetuate, and
the sublimity which is the text thereof; the gross, the
palpable skeletons may satiate the eye and fulfil the
desire of a common curiosity, but the last elevate the
Soul of Man over the Profound Past, and the endless
perspective To Come.
The grand Plesiosaurus of Plate XXVIII lies in a ponderous
grave, built up with irregular lamell® of Lias
stone: the carcase seems to have passed through the
several stages of corruption unbroken, but the unquiet
waters finally sported with and scattered the osseous
monster, which erst ruled them, and reluctantly gave him
burial. His was a hasty and begrudged obsequy, so tlie
capricious Seas first wrecking him, heaped up the Pall of
Cold Matter about his bones with no ceremony nor care.
How long and through what vasty Cycles did tho Seas
career over him, silent and forgotten quite : what agonies
of joy and rage, what mighty throes of being have been,
and how often felt throughout the Realm of Seas, since
first the Dragon Lorded there, and also since the time of
his final death-struggle therein. How many Revolutions
of the Universe have passed since this Monster dread ; how
many Races have or tramped, or fleeted with wing, or
witli fin, over his desolate bones.
Dead these illimitable years, and oblivious are the
Dragons, they are come to a certain finis, and realize the
fact of a machine, contrived for none imaginable End
worthy ofa god, and cast away by the Inventor, or abandoned
for an unknown reason. Generated soon after
the ad vent of Time, and extinguished long before the birth
of any Creature cognate of Time, these old Sea-Dragons
afford the most comprehensive Index of Eternity known
by sheer negations and emblems, so abstract, that the natural
Eye of Man entirely fails them, as it also fails him
in the solution of the distances of telescopic Suns.
Tlie Works of Jehovah being liable to no such an imputation
and a like fate, these Dragons verify the action
of some other Power in the remotest ages of our Earth.
With this silken thread of Truth we may enter the
Caverns of Time, speculate with propriety upon the Moral
Mysteries therein concealed, and anatomize them all.
Reverently bowing our faces to the ground we trace
llie Shadow of Jehovah, the serpent Hanahash, through
Sinuous Gulfs of Machiavellian depth. If, indeed, that
Fallen Angel did spawn forth the kindred but mortal
Dragons, in the bent of his malignant temper. Creative,
and lighting up the uncouth animal Frame thereof with a
sparkle of that dismal fire which constitutes his very
essence, and no less his tearless woe, sent it upon the
bloody mission to kill and yet kill on, until the Generations
being fulfilled, and the last murderer murdered
by Time in his righteous turn, the hellish animus expelled
thence, reverted to the Father of its accursed being. Or,
if handling inanimate clay, and fashioning it into the
hideous shape we recover in these Sea-Dragon bones,
Evil then did himself enter therein to possess it, to propagate
like monstrosities wherewith to dog, and terrify,
and aggrieve the Earthly Dominions; and conceiving
other monsters, horrid Cancer, cramped Urchin, or Polyp
with enormous tentacles, or the Dragon with wing glazed
skinny for air or for sea, ferocious all, did imbue them
with his Legionary Angels, gloating upon one another
furies, instant for universal Wa r; when lo I the Times
being ripe, the Armies gathered together, they fell at one
fell swoop of the Incarnate Fiend himself, which, crowning
the numberless heap of abhorred bodies at Armageddon,
with liis own giant one, left Futurity those vast
Reservoirs of pitch, and magazines of sulphur and other
poisonous salts, fermenting the carcases of these Anakim
cast off.
Or, journeying from black Tartarus, tliat Old Serpent
coming into the light of the blessed Sun, ambushed awhile
from fear in the unfurnished and silent chambers of the
Ocean-Earth, whilom Jehovah, leaving matter to an inevitable
process, omniscient, well knowing the End at the
wliich He ovcrruleth tlie Prince of darkness, suffered it to
pass. I say that Old Serpent ambushing did attract the
night of things, the antipodes out of which sprang tills
savage brood, inspirited with the drunken fumes, the saturnine
aura of his abhorrent being.
Python, his Battles in Heaven ended hopelessly, the
Battlements of Heaven so guarded that attempt them
when or wherever he may yet still in vain; Python,
banished the Universe he aimed at in Evil day, abandoned
to himself throughout Eternity ia the Antipodal fiery, or
frozen, and blasted One, driven in his frantic course upon
the verge of this new world of matter, caught all the
antithesis thereof upon the instant.
Through the, to us, long and dreary Revolutions of an
Embryo Planet, exposed to all imaginable comefary extremes
of drought and deluge, tlirough Earth, Air, Fire,
and Water, and all the other numberless anarchical conditions
unimaginable, Hanahash rioted. The tragic Colossus,
next once to Jehovah, to whom once bowed all but One,
rioted through all the interstices of atoms, disguising the
dark sides thereof at his will, and ruling them in the mind
of a god : Over the chaotic Earth he sent light obliquous,
through the Deeps turbulence, so that the Elements,
wrested to his purpose, nourished the animal spirits of his
Sea-Dragons, over-populating the whole world. War and
Death reigning over tbem all without end : The molecular
bodies caught in his fatal vortice, arranging themselves in
obedience to an imperative Law of mind, resulting in the
Taninim we set forth, and other carnivorous automata
long since ceased from the Book of life.
The great work of Creation progressing to a point, the
Ailmighty Ruler could but observe these foreign and aspic
things, and the merest comment of the Creator sufficed
for their utter evanishment from the Earth: the mere
atoms themselves, rejected by Jehovah, remaining alone
from the neighboring parts, kept apart from God’s Earth
evermore.
And here in the latter days, now when the mental
powers of the post-diluvians are, perhaps, at the very
lowest ebb, at their very aphelion relatively to tlie Father
of Lights, now when all intuition of Truth, either foregone
or to Come, all the Faculties of that wisdom prophetical
so esteemed by the earlier nations, the decay of which was
parallel with Their gradual atrophy, now, when all these
Faculties lie torpid in the bosom of our general Race, do
these Skeletons of desecrated matter, these Hordes of the
Spiritual Attila which ruled in the dark Ages before
Adam over the circumfluent Earth, protrude upon our
sight, invoking memories which even the dire Conflagration
of accomplished Earth shall fail to quench, eternal ever.
As though Evil himself, foreseeing the tragical History
of Man, essayed these monsters, anticipating other Furies
to be loosened upon us, when subjected to Demons, so
that he might the more certainly know how to deform,
animalize, and convert mind itself into a capacity of
HoiTor unimaginable and infinite. Upon a Verge so awful
we stand aghast: at the feet of the Precipice roar the
Black Waters of revolted Times, urging to the Heavens.
The Panorama of Ages stretching out into waste and
Desolation, nourishing monsters alien both to the Constitution
and the Soul of man. Blast shrieking to blast
continuous, Providence laughed to scorn, the Fortunes of
man abandoned to Fiends.
These Sea-dragons, of them we may treat learnedly by
what a wondrous appliance of Libbed joints they compressed
air into the lung, by which to sustain themselves a
long while when driven to the nether depths. With what
a cunning machine of eye they trapped and made use of
God’s blessed light, with what incarnate guile they accomplished
a life abhorred of Jehovah : we may trace the
channels of poison which distilled from their livid gums,