41G SKETCHES OF CREATION. 



the silver coin which bore the image and superscription of 

 Alexander, and wondered why I had called it venerable. 

 Why? since twenty populations had possessed the earth, 

 since the relics of those bucklered fishes had been animate, 

 and this coin why, it had been stamped in the last part 

 of the lifetime of the twentieth population ; and there were 

 nineteen before it which had become extinct. 



And so my feet were lifted up from earth ; I was pil 

 lowed upon a bright cloud, and floated in eternity. And I 

 saw the long history of the world I had left stretching 

 backward from the spot where I had left it, till it vanished 

 from view, like the track of a railroad on the boundless 

 prairie. With the flash of a thought, I pursued it over 

 millions of ages, till I saw it dissolved in fire till luminous 

 vapors rolled up and rested upon the bosom of infinite 

 space. In this cloud of fire the track of terrestrial history 

 lost itself, and I dared not plunge through the flame in 

 search of a beginning. 



Then I thought, here at length is the dwelling-place of 

 antiquity. What is this which men call ancient and ven 

 erable? Would that the scales could be removed from 

 our eyes ! Would that the fog would lift, and men could 

 once look out upon the magnitude of the universe the 

 majestic span even of terrestrial history the might, the 

 greatness, the wisdom, the glory of that Intelligence which, 

 at a glance, takes in all space, all time past, and all time to 

 come ! 



