434 THE MOUNTAIN. 



Now it has come, that 



Maury's head and Brooke's lead 



Have changed the "isle" and "amber bed" 



To doleful caverns of the dead ; 



"cemeteries for families of living creatures that outnumber 

 the sands of the sea-shore for multitude," and have arranged 

 it that the " physical geography of the sea" is almost as 

 familiar as the physical geography of the land. 



So, once, men spoke of the mysteries of the air- ocean 

 above, and beheld with awe the wondrous meteor of the 

 storm, and the motions of the winds were secrets of the 

 heavens ; for " the wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou 

 hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh 

 and whither it goeth;"* and "the wind goeth toward the 

 south, and turneth about unto the north ; it whirleth about 

 continually, and the wind returneth again according to his 

 circuits." A special Providence was supposed to hold the 

 wings of the whirlwind in his fingers, and man bowed to an 

 inexorable death as to the wrath of an avenging Deity. It 

 was a natural instinct of the barbarous man to personify the 

 winds, and endow them with attributes profoundly allied, 

 either in friendly attachment to him, or with anarchic and 

 destructive force, against him. The air-currents of the 

 spring hours were supposed to inspire hope, and carry with 

 them the promises of the coming world of life ; having to 



* What follows is not meant as an impiety, or a fling even at John, 

 because he was not a meteorologist, for undoubtedly he has expressed 

 and fixed, in the above beautiful words, the limitation of his knowl- 

 edge in that department of physics, but merely an intimation that 

 the science of meteorology was not cultivated much in those days. 

 Neither is ignorance by any means imputed to the more ancient and 

 venerable author of Ecclesiastes, for in the next verse to the one 

 above quoted, (viz., verse 7 of chap. i. Eccles.,) we have recorded 

 what is now a familiar stereotyped formula of science. Thus, "All 

 the rivers run into the sea ; yet the sea is not full ; unto the place 

 from whence the rivers come, thither they return again." The face of na- 

 ture is veiled until science lifts that veil, and beholds her eye to eye. 



