tbe cranial Caverns in which their brutal appetites lurked,
and liandle and expatiate on teeth nursed from the cradle
in blood: But the Tlieme demands a loftiertone; of ante-
human Time, from Nox and Erebus, and of our mighty
mother Earth, the fell Autochthones, these Taninim
Gedolim invoke the lowermost diapason of the Spheres:
Over the eternal infinitude-floating, that mortal which
haply listens the music of the tremendous Soul of Time,
joins involuntary in the mighty Chorus: Alp on Alp
uprising, the “ unknown Tongue” cometh intuitively upon
him, in the which we can alone pronounce and communicate
with the Powers of that Universe of which we were
born co-gods.
Thus, pondering the long Cycle^n the vast backward
of Ages, in which coursed these fierce sea-beasts malignant,
over whose innumerous Populations a black god
pitiless reigned, the Gliost of Chaos guiding us through
the ancient Ossuary of the world, strown thick with the
skeletons of these huge Dragons,—we realize an Intellectual
Image immeasurably grand and terrible.
From tlie busy Seas of our own Time, adventurously
sailing forth into the Ocean of the Past, out upon the
lines of universal waters, stretching into dead Infinitude, no
Continent, nor Isle to break the awful expanse, we look.
The Niagaras of Time too, falling each a tremendous
Ocean from one System to another, over tlie Universe
from the Lap of hoary Eternity,—we hear them Roar.
Maleficent wings, leathery, carefully glazed and strung
in Hell, overshadowing the ugly Aborigines of the watery
world, Serpents ail,—we behold.
And over them all, and above all, inaccessible to the
loftiest flight of the Halcyon Soul, in far immensity,
alone, Jehovah, blessed be His Holy Name, whom we
worship and adore.
C O N C L U S I O N .
Th e Current of our Argument gliding past more
than one “ pons asinonmi” of the modern School,
as contradistinguished from tlie Ancient Academus, we
have ventured to assume the roundness of the primitive
Earth, and a universal Climatal Law over its entire
circumference, during the greater part of the Epocli to
which the Primary and Secondary Rocks belong.
We have also insisted upon the Succession of organized
matter, from Vegetables to molluscous Fish through
all tlieir kinds, to Reptiles marine, mrial, and aquatic,
and appropriated the superior Transitionary and the Secondary
Rocks for themselves, to the exclusion of any
real terrestrial animals whatever.
To prove the roundness of the Globe, in its original
chaotic State, requires only the simplest figures and processes
of reason, matter being the numerator and denominator
both. The generic organic remains too of any
given rock on one side of the Earth, are repeated at its
antipodes. Mr, Darwin found at the Pass of Puquena,
South America, not only Lias, but the gryphites, ostrse,
turritell», ammonites, and terebratul® which belong to
the Lias under our feet. Commodore Sir. C. Bullen
collected at Fernando Po, Accra, and Sierra Leone, fossil
oigaiiic remains congenerous with those of Lyme Regis.
A series of Secondary Limestones Covers a vast Area in
South Europe and Asia, the organic Creatures of which
existed in the cotemporaneous Ocean which then covered
America. The Mosasaurus.of Maestricht, have been found
thousands of miles apart, while the petrified Vegetables
of Melville's Island, in the Frozen Zone, as triumphantly
show that one general thermal temperature pervaded tJie
whole globe.
Tbe conflicting Elements of our own time result in anything
but harmonies like these. No causes after the
fashion now in operation could produce these universal
Formations, nor sustain the creatures which we find everywhere
entombed in their bowels. The old Populations
of tbe Globe were as foreign to those of the present day,
as are those, probably, of Saturn, aud the conditions of
tlie Earth they occupied were necessarily no less different
from our own.
And with respect to the creative order of Living Things,
the priority of Vegetable life is a self-demonstrated fact,
no creature being able to exist without vegetables, either
by instant assiimlation, or through a subsidiary person.
The numerous Species too into which the imstratified
Rocks are metamorphosed, prove them to have been fused
by heat, each one Stratum arranging itself in proportion
to the length of its liquidity; and as these constitute the
very Foundations of the Globe, it is certain that a degree
of heat formerly invested it whicli no Salamander could
breathe. The highest temperature in which any creature
on this Earth is known to exist is about 150°, in which
some fishes live in the hot springs of the Manillas, while
Sonnerat mentions several plants flourishing in a thermal
rivulet 174°.
We have paused upon the “ Footmarks,” in the Red
Sandstone, the Stonesfield “ Opossum,” and the alledged
discovery of the bones of terrestrials in secondary Rocks,
upon which subjects geologists altogether differ. And
since many fervently abet these allegations, which they
are, nevertheless, quite unable to maintain, we have no
hesitation in repeating that they carry with them no proof
of any value wliatever, and utterly reject and defy them
all,
Tliat Strange Saurus, both bird and reptile, the Ptérodactyle,
with his long neck, tooth-armed beak, dun
membraneous wings phalangal tipped witli nails, claims
the Sea. His short Coccygis and the peculiar mechanism
of tlie wings, spread by one long digit, while all the other
fingers are stunted; his head too so heavy that it must
have confined his flights in the air to the merest distance ;
all these and many other singularities prove tbe Ptérodactyle
to have lived chiefly in the sea. Squatting his lean
haunches upon rocks outjutting over the black Abysses,
ver or under the waters, this monster dragon lived
througli many weary ages, a sooty Fiend dolorous and
Lord of the dead wastes of the briny Sea.
Moreover, it was impossible to avoid the much disputed
question of Time and duration, a rock upon which
no one has hitherto steered without foundering; and for
which the Holy Scriptures have been perverted by the
unclean of liand in a way to make us regret their translation
into our motlier tongue. The incapacity of mankind
to comprehend more than one of the thousand angles of
Time, viz. that which he faces always in the fear and peril
of Death, should, metliink, have made us careful how we
approached them. The Asiatics generally, and the Hebrews
in particular have a much more philosophical Dictionary
of Time than the Europeans, who measure Cycles
and Epicycles correctly, but dignifying them as Elements
in the resolution of Time, they entirely overlook the moral
quantities by wliicli the former reach their grand conclusions.
The short Circle we run around the Sun is adapted
to our limits, but what is that compared to the Cycle of
all the worlds. The Seer, standing in the Presence of Jehovah,
Chaos and the Beginning of things out-battling
before liim, penetrated Systems beyond our imagination,
and Equations to us unknown. His Periods of Time were
reckoned by them, and not the fleeting ones in common
use, so that all our Essays after the Chronology of Moses
must end in disappointment until we obtain the measures
by which he framed it. In distant Ages, when the telescopic
Instruments of men's minds shall he better used and
known, the centre of Relation to which the Earth really
belongs may be found, and the Scriptures understood in a
matter about which we can now hardly speculate without
impiety.
Natural Religion being confessedly insufficient, at the
same time it carries us onward to the last stage but one
towards the solution of the grand Argument of pre-human
Time and things, we have invoked the Sphynx in the
name of God, and decyphered riddles by Revelation. Tin
fashionable doctrine that Evil is infinitely overbalanced
by good, and even made to subserve and multiply that
good, so that it may be doubted if there be such a thing
as Evil after all, is a Sophism which failed the Stoics two
thousand years ago, and calculated for an infidel nieridi
alone. The argument for an eternal succession of Speci
having been disposed of, we cannot resist the innumerable
tendencies which point to the first man as the most perfect
of all the works of Jehovah ; and History testifies of renowned
Sages, Lawgivers, and Mechanicians, the sound of
whose wisdom and skill puts that of the moderns to shame;
nature herself, sympathizing with mind, then brought forth
animals as much larger than their descendants as tlie
Intellect of co-temporary man was nobler than our own.
The Banks of Rio Plata have skeletons of an armadillo,
Patagonia of a Llama and Rodent, thrice tlie size of their
sui-viving congeners, and the remains of Pacliydermata
colossal by the side even of our modern giants, are dispersed
over all the world. The huge carnivorous Races
found in Caverns and gravel-beds have a second moral
from whence it is impossible to escape, and tlie Eartli is
filled with uncounted Ruin, hut ill-concealed witli flowers.
Man too, exiled from the great Contincntof tbe Universe,
shackled wiili ancestral irons, pitiful and naked, exposed
to every Tempest, on the brink of Eternity, splashing
frequent to Suicides Immortal.—
Or wandering over the Prison-Earth contemplative of
a distant and strange Country, our final home, banished
thence so long for no treason of our own, ever and anon
glimpsing terrible Spectres of Might, our evil Genii,—
Or fleeing from Them in terror, forgetful of the dismal
Times, looking back retrospective far over the wintry
Ocean, into Pre-adamic Shades, we encounter execrable
and dreary things in the abounding Chaos. Through
briny clouds incumbent impetuous Monsters gleam phre-
nitic, livid, or green, or swarthy snakes, quadrupedal and
deadly. Wide over the desolate Seas warring Dragons
innumerable and hideous, enacting Perdition.—
Whichever Sign of the Vasty Zodiac girdling the
World, menacing Images gloomy and alien to the Nature
of Man, dare and confront him.
And the Animal, also the Spiritual type of Horror and
Woe, from natal Time downward to these our Days, and
throughout the Eternal Perspective To come, is Draconic
and Reptile.
The mortal Dragon, which first troubled the primal
Earth, lurking in the bowels of tbe Earth, the far Centre,
turned from Light instinctive, antici)iative.
The Emperor of Dragon Spirits, Orcus, ruleth tlie
nether Depths, coped with black adamant.
Tbe carcases of the Sea-Dragons are strown over the
whole Earth; and thus shall dire thunderbolts which
shattered life out of them, fall upon and overthrow the
Kindred Legions of Sathanus.
Onward then, to the End of Time, when the Rival
Gods shall come to their last Battle, in the other Armageddon,
our World being sacked and its asbes scattered
to the Winds of Space.
Thy Spirit, 0 Reader, and mine own shall be there, in
that same Battle-field: In Coat of Mail impenetrable by
rare inductions from these same Sea-Dragons, and with
Weapons of Spoil taken from the Enemy in the Tourney
of Earth, there will we muster Host.
The Deluge of Wrath once loosened upon the Earth,
shall be let slip again in an Ocean of Fire inextinguishable,
and roar responsive to the agonized Legions of the
Old Dragon, overwhelmed ia His turn.
The baneful Dragons, 0 Seas, are gone: Fiends, 0
Earth, have filled thee with the bones of Defeat and
Death. Future Angels to whom the Wars and Destructions
of Time are unknown, shall seek tliroughout the
limitless Empires of Space their ghastly remains, and
finding amongst them the self-same Weapons of which
we speak, be curious in remote centenaries to hear anew
the Tale of the Dragons.