THE AVOXDKRS OF THE SHORE. 93 



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 dynas- 

 ties and generations have been 



" Playing such fantastic tricks before high Heaven, 

 As make the angels weep." 



Yes ; it is this vision of the awful permanence 

 and perfection of the natural world, beside the 

 wild flux and confusion, the mad struggles, the 

 despairing cries, of that world of spirits which 



