Pos] AND SYMBOLS. 279 



persistent men, it is marvellous to observe with what rapidity 

 they spread, and with what tenacity they cling to life, despite 

 all the efforts made to eradicate them by the people who hate 

 them as being worse than vassals grass. JO. 



Posthumous Influence. 



Some stars are so distant that their beams may have occupied 

 thousands of years in journeying to the earth, and yet these 

 bodies, if suddenly annihilated, would still continue to shine 

 upon us for thousands of years to come. So, too, there are 

 great men whose existence has long since terminated, but 'the 

 influence of whose spirit still irradiates our world. Milton, 

 Shakespeare, and Christ, though gone from our sphere, still 

 shine upon it as spiritual stars of the first magnitude. PO. 



Posthumous Space. 



The space occupied on the surface of our planet by the 

 different families of animals and their remains is inversely as 

 the size of the individual. The smaller the animal the greater, 

 as a general rule, is the space occupied by his remains. Take 

 the elephant and his remains, or a microscopic animal and his, 

 and compare them. The contrast as to space occupied is as 

 striking as that of the coral reef or island with the dimensions 

 of the whale. The graveyard that would hold the corallines is 

 much larger than the graveyard that would hold the elephants. 

 And what about the posthumous space occupied by the con- 

 ventionally great men and the conventionally small men ? 

 Why, the big elphantine personages of courts and levees, the 

 colossal grandees who are able to sustain without being crushed 

 a gorgeous world of honours and decorations, when they die 

 occupy scarcely any space on our bookshelves : all their 

 "remains" are in a very small compass. Whereas the men 

 who were conventionally considered quite small creatures are 

 not so easily disposed of. Their remains in poetry, literature, 

 and art, are the abiding things ; and, long after they them- 

 selves have departed, that which they have left occupies im- 

 portant space in the public mind. Look on your book-shelves. 



