], that drained some
hyperbolical continent, some Quinbus Flestrin of Asiatic proportions,
long since gone to the dogs. All things pass away. Generations wax old
as does a garment: but eternally God says:--'Come again, ye children of
men.' Wildernesses of fruit, and worlds of flowers, are annually
gathered in solitary South America to ancestral graves: yet still the
Pomona of Earth, yet still the Flora of Earth, does not become
superannuated, but blossoms in everlasting youth. Not otherwise by
secular periods, known to us geologically as facts, though obscure as
durations, _Tellus_ herself, the planet, as a whole, is for ever
working by golden balances of change and compensation, of ruin and
restoration. She recasts her glorious habitations in decomposing them;
she lies down for death, which perhaps a thousand times she has
suffered; she rises for a new birth, which perhaps for the thousandth
time has glorified her disc. Hers is the wedding garment, hers is the
shroud, that eternally is being woven in the loom. And God imposes upon
her the awful necessity of working for ever at her own grave, yet of
listening for ever to his far-off trumpet of _palingenesis_.
If this account of the matter be just, and were it not treasonable to
insinuate the possibility of an error against so great a swell as
Immanuel Kant, one would be inclined to fancy that Mr.
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