124 _ GLAUCUS ; OR, 
here and there alive in the deep water of Scilly and 
the west coast of Ireland, possessor of a pedigree 
which dates, perhaps, from ages before the day in 
which it was said, “ Let us make man in our image, 
after our likeness.” To think that the whole human 
race, its joys and its sorrows, its virtues and its sins, 
its aspirations and its failures, has been rushing out 
of eternity and into eternity again, as Arjoon in the 
Bhagavad Gita beheld the race of men issuing from 
Kreeshna’s flaming mouth, and swallowed up in it 
again, “as the crowds of insects swarm into the 
flame, as the homeless streams leap down into the 
ocean bed,” in an everlasting heart-pulse whose blood 
is living souls—and all that while, and ages before 
that mystery began, that humble coral, unnoticed on 
the dark sea-floor, has been “ continuing as it was at 
the beginning,” and fulfilling “the law which cannot 
be broken,” while races and dynasties and genera- 
tions have been 
‘* Playing such fantastic tricks before high heaven, 
As make the angels weep.” 
Yes; it is this vision of the awful permanence and 
