be spent; our hearts die within us before the glozing
demons intent to howl “ lo triumphe” over the lost
Islands and shining Shores of a conquered world.
From the now bleak and unapproachable Poles, to the
navel of our Parent Earth ; from the snows and swamps
of Ladoga, to the fervid Sands of Bengal, everywhere,
every Zone, continue unauswerabie Memories of this
happy, this Golden Age. The harmless Pachydermata,
Dinothérium, and his kindred Giants, for which out
impoverislied and curse-stricken Planet can now find no
cradle warm enough, then ranged the wliole world. The
tliermal Earth and Ocean, batlied in light, sustained a
thousand Genera of vast Animals and Vegetables, which
retreated before the coming Cold to the Equator, and
even there, eventually witliered and died out in an un-
genial and freezing Clime. The fires of our little Sun
sufficed them not, the dank Shadows of approaching
Doom paralysed, and the leaden Hand of transformed
Time speedily swept them into dust and oblivion. The
iceberg of Thule, and the Patagonian Wastes, Irak,
Arabia Petræa, and the illimitable Savannahs and Prairies
of the New World, grave their manifold bones.
2. Prlmæval Earth, rejoicing in the Benison of God,
pales in the pmna! fire about to wrap her in ruin, and
which shall finally rase her utterly out. “ Adam,"
the Lucifer and Protagonist of Antiquity, doing misprision
against Sovereignty, turns the weapons of Loyalty
upon liis Liege, and plunges them into the Bowels
of his Mother Earth. Forsaken of Angels, groaning,
she brlngeth forth grim Monsters, which ravage her
Garden, the Locusts that consume it away. The angry
and horrent waters too, loosened, swell into a frightful
roar, leap upon a thousand Plains, and greedily swallow
them up.
Man, panic stricken, abandons the vast antique Defences
and Outworks of Creation to the ruthless Surge,
and Leviathan, flying to Himmala the High, the Battlements
of the Moon ; His Seed overflow The Mountains,
and spread over ail the Tableland of the World : and the
giant Nephilim, born to the Sons of Jehovah, of the
Daughters of Eve, haunted by Terror, traverse the menaced
Globe, building Stupendous Towers and Citadels
whereunto to retreat, when sorely pressed by the anticipated,
the inevitable Flood. Atalantis, and Europa, and
arid Afric, then made one wide Asian Continent, over
the Girdle of which, to this hour, remain the mighty
Works of these most mighty men: Sepulchral looking
abodes, fit for the gloomy gods, whether in wondering
Peruvia, Tuscan Italy, or Araby the Swart. Unhappy
Giants ! the mountainous Piles are cast prone down, and
the Winds there howl the dies iræ to your dolorous
ghosts.
And, lo ! somnambulist Geology, seizing our trembling
arm, and pointing to the dim skull but yesterday brought
in a half fossil state from the Caucasian Sewalik, reveals
the ashes of an antediluvian, once dipped in the Sin-baptismal
Flood. And, at our feet, behold the Carcasses of
the cruel Carnivora, that afflicted the impious Adamites;
gathered, whether from Austral, or Borean Regions, or
the hot wastes of Barbary, or the Pampas of Texas, and
Ecuador; no feline of our Time can compare with these
Elephantine Tigers, these huge and spectral Bears : there
they lie, unconscious of the dædal curse which pounced
upon their savage Brood, and blotted the brute Amalek
from under Heaven,
And reverend History,—“ Quk quo propius aberat ab
ortu et divina progenie hoc melius ea fortasse, qu® erant
vera, cernebat,”—offers at the Altar of the Temple, the
consanguineous Faith of Jew and Gentile, Scythian, and
Indian, in the Immutable Creed. And shuddering Nature
leads us to that remote Period of violence and
Wrong, where, in Company again with speculative
Geology, we muse over the Wrecks of Eden, torn, defiled,
trampled upon by these once vital things. The
all-enjoying denizens of the erst brimful World, invaded
by the soundless and sinuous Serpent, flee, they melt
away before the Lepon of insatiate Fiends that follow in
his Train, and are at lengtli in peril of total extirpation :
Only here and there, in tlie most Modern depo.sits of
the Epoch, we detect their fainting trace; whilst the
bleached bones of vengeance, strown plentifully to the
last, indicate the fulfilment of the Ends for which it was
ordained, by an outraged and Retributive Providence,
And now the sad and majestical Drama, Men and
Gods battling upon the Theatre of a darkening World, ,
;hes to its third and final scene—Death and Perdition
evermore.
Tbe Scomer, compelled by the most indubitable evidence,
grants the fact of The Deluge, but refers it to
Ages infinitely removed from that in which alone the
ired Historian will have it to be. He also despises
the facts of the simultaneous destruction of Man, and the
entire submergence of the Earth, insisted upon by all the
written and oral Scriptures of every nation under the
Sun. Glancing the enormous rocks and boulders of
Granite, and other debris, outspread over the actual continents
in a given certain direction, he charges them to
existing Causes, in defiance of the most positive mathematical
deduction; and still further, requires an Eternity
of Time to place tliem where they are found. The
Noachic Ark he laugheth at, and boldly questions the
device thereof, with a^sneer at its living contents; He
travesties all men,-all things, even Jupiter; quenching
all light, all glory in his benighted Spirit, dancing inebriate
over the Volcanic Abyss of expectant Hades.
Nevertheless, The Word, Reader! The Word abideth
re. The Backbone of the World is broken, and immense
fractures running in diveig;eat lines from tlie Poles
to the Equator, verify the Seat of Dislocation. Whether
the stiffening Atlas broke down of his own gravity, or
sliddered, it matters little, he Fell, the Fountains of the
Great Deep were broken up, and he was stifled in the
S e a : “ Quia ipse super maria fundavit eum: et super
imina prmparavit eum.” For the subsidence of a mass
fficient to shatter in its descent the Body of the whole
Earth, must inevitably have displaced an equivalent
measure of Water, and driven it over the rest of tlie
whole Land. Then the dsdal Wave leaping from tlie
yelling Abysm, rushed upon the Polar Zones, rending
asunder the hardest rocks, and hurling them like sand
the drowning World: And onward rolling with a
proportionably diminishing force, at last subdued the far
Countree of our lost Forefathers’ Home,
“ Omne cum Proteus pecus efit altos
Viscere Montes;
Piscium et summa genus hmsit ulmo."
Nor wonder we that a vessel of wood did safely ride the
Tamed Element which had just extinguished the Globe;
for the destructive Forces, seated in the Axes, the farther
proceed from that centre, the less their effect, until
arriving at the extreme limit tlie waters quietly prevailing
the Ark thereupon did float in Halcyon peace. And all
History and Tradition harmoniously agree in settling tlie
Heaven-protected Argonaut in precisely that part o f the
Earth, which first rose from the retreating Ruin. Thus
again Nature, and Philosophy, and Fact, and Revelation
are at one, so that “ he which runnetli may read, and a
fool therein can hardly err.”
Some weak and inconsiderate persons, neglecting the
context of the Sacred Word, conjuring around them tlie
many terrestrial Families of our own Earth, take pains
to picture a Ship large enow to save their autochthon
progenitors: No such thing was ever contemplated except
by tlieir own inexcusable folly, it being distinctly
implied that Noah took with him those Creatures only
which had been domesticated by Man. It was a most
gracious condition of the Covenant made with Noah, that
his posterity should continue the services of the several
beasts which had been subjected to their use by the Antediluvians
: Jehovah covenanted upon the Exodus from
the Ark with Than through all Generations, and the
terms of that Covenant plainly infer tlie existence of
other beasts besides, whether in fact or in the Omniscient
Intention it imports not.— “ Ecce Ego (Deus) statuam
pactum meum vobiscum, et cum semine vestro post vos:
et ad omnem animam viventem, qua est vobiscutn, tarn in
volucribus quam in jumentis, et pecudibus terr® cunctis,
qua egi-essa sunt de area, et universis bestiis terr®.”
And which one of ail the Tribes friendly unto Man is
departed from us? But those with no Covenant, even
the pure, unmixed Carnivora, their end cometh :—and
then the Millennium.
Thus, beloved, in liumble service with Faith and Religion,
have we endeavoured to trace the gorgeous and
awful Destinies of the Ante-diluvian Earth.
“ In the Beginning,” chaotic, void, nascent, shadowy,
nerveless, negative; such in the Primary, non-fossil-
iferous, and purely mechanical Granite, is the interpretation
of Nature, and Science, and Reason, and History,
and Revelation.
In the instant Coal-Measures, behold, a Vision of the
torpid Deep, and the New-born Earth unconscious with
Floral Robes.
Then a Vision of Abysmal Waters, swarming witli all
wondrous creatures of Life, and gelid Swamps with amphibious
things, and Dragon Ptérodactyles flitting in the
hot air with Vampire Wing.
Then Mammoth, and Sivatlieria, and a great Company
of docile Giants, roaming tlie Universal Land, cruncliing
the succulent limb of tlie Forest Tree, or banqueting
upon his juicy root: a Vision of peace and rest, pachydermata,
and other huge herbivorous animals having with
Man undivided dominion over tbe Euthanasian Earth.
Then a Vision of brute Savt^es haunting Eldritch
Caves : of gaunt Lords of wassail, war, blood, and perdition
: Blasted Continents, and withering pines, and briars
and thorns ; Rebellion, Violence, horrors manifold : Prometheus
chained, the Vulture, the Liver; The World at
the brink - ^ Death.
Apollo transfixing Python, The booming Flood, driving,
rolling, roaring, wrencbing, wrecking, whelming the accursed
Titans in endless destruction.
Righteous Noah saved.
There is our Gage. Blessed are they, O Reader, whicli
keep an Eye fixed upon the Polar Star of God.
A D D E N D A .
The Creation o f the World.— O f Light.—Terre.Hrial vegetables the most ancient o f all organisms Proofs. O f
Radiation, and the first Conditions o f animal Life.— Solar Time only a relative quantity.— The first land animals
and birds all herbivorous— Imputed e.vceptions, remains of an Owl, the Stonesfield Opossum, and Ornithicknitcs,
rejected.— Evil— Carnivorous beasts one o f its products—Objection derived from remains o f preceding marine
carnivora anstcered by negative and Traditional proofs.— The story o f the Titans true.— The Book o f Genesis true
literally—Jehovah created matter first, then light, and then vernal life, fishes, beasts, and lastly man. Revolution
upon the Earth—Its Cause— Its termination in the Flood, and the desti'uction o f the primal beasts o f prey.—
The Scriptures the foundation o f true Philosophy, and the Cypher both o f the abstract and dependant Universe.—
The dangerous mechanical propaisilics o f the Age shall be effaced, leaving the Scheme o f the Universe in all its
massive and enduring grandeur.
“ IN principio creavit Deus ccelum, et terram. Terra
autem erat inanis et vacua, et tenebr® erant super faciem
abyssi.” Tlie most ancient of Histories which have come
down to our time opens with this sublime attestation of
the omnipotence of Jehovah, to question wliicli most manifest
fact, the atheistical and licentious Greek was, perhaps,
the first amongst men. It were profitless to pursue the
Heresy tlirough all the disguises in which tlic later Epicureans
and Gnostics cherished it, and also through the
absurd predicates which some of the Continentals liave
put them in, since we have traced an Epoch in which
tliere was no animal life whatever upon this globe, demonstrating
an Act of Power infinitely more stupendous
than that which Mosos avers, tlius reducing his assertion
to a point comparatively so small that it may reasonably
be granted in the Presence of an admitted Argument of
the same Class, so much more astonishing.
Tlie statement derives, moreover, additional force from
the descriptive context, for it is impossible correctly to
represent mere Matter in any other shape than a unique^
entire, dead, amorphous, and shapeless one; and after ali
the Revolutions by Chemical and Electro-magnetic Agents,
to which our Earth has been subjected, the Primary
Granites have ail these features in tlieir face.
The Creation of Light too—“ Dixitque Deus, fiat lux,
et facta est lux”—may be assumed and proved as inevitable,
and in the order in whicli Moses actually announces
it.— “ Factumque est vospere, et mane, dies unus.”
C