636 THE DISEASES AND DISORDERS OF THE OX. 



toss and tear onwards towards us on the sand-covered beach, is 

 indeed a thrilling experience. The grand tones ring through the 

 ears like deafening peals of resounding bells, the myriad stars 

 supply the heavens with minute specks of twinkling light, 

 insignificant enough when compared with that shed upon the 

 glistening sea and sand and sand-hills with silvery effulgence 

 by the calm and majestic luminary, queen of the splendid night, 

 sovereign of the sky and of the broad expanse of the tempestuous 

 ocean, as far as where the eye can discern the darkened limit of 

 the horizon. Heavy black clouds, too, speed hurriedly across 

 the sky, now and again hanging overhead, and blocking out the 

 soft and silvery light falling down from the moon. In the 

 glimmering distance rocky crags, symbols of destruction, stand 

 out in the background, ready to devour the unmanageable ships, 

 threatening to drive back the trusting mariners to sudden death. 

 Truly the sight is well suited to the powerful chorus sung by the 

 broken surface of the sea, lashed as it is into the fury of mad- 

 ness by the uproarious and frantic turbulence of the groaning 

 winds. 



And we who see and hear in silence and in wonder are merely 

 mechanisms manifesting vitality and evolved by chance ! 

 Human beings, here to day ; alas ! to-morrow in the grave ; 

 transient and ephemeral links in the chain leading upwards to a 

 hollow mockery of perfection on this earth, which is, and always 

 has been, and always will be, coming, and yet is always afar off 

 in the dark distance. No ! the powers of the most ordinary 

 intelligence should, we think, be keen enough to probe more 

 deeply beneath the surface of the world around us, and to let us 

 know assuredly that there are things far higher than we can ever 

 realise, so long as we remain on this, the hither side of the 

 great gulf which yawns as yet betwixt us and eternity. 



If we admit this, and recognise how surely our bodies must 

 ere long be turned into the lifeless clay, from which men first did 

 spring, even as ashes are committed to ashes and dust unto dust, 

 how much less would all our little troubles seem, and how little 

 should we forget that the links which bind even the strongest of 

 us here are, after all, only weak and slender threads. If, then, 

 this insolvable problem of life at times thus presents itself to our 

 minds in all its weird intensity, we shall be the more ready 

 carefully to consider the conditions which underlie the beginnings 



