LABTEISTTHirOEM FHARYNO-EALS. 235 



greater, whilst in others again the list of findings is very 

 considerable. Monte Bolca, in the Veronese territory, 

 is a real Potosi for this kind of wealth; and from its 

 teeming flanks naturalists continue to draw apparently 

 exhaustless supplies of fishy deposits placed in these ' old 

 established banks' (which have never stopped payment) 

 who knows how many centuries ago ? This, unlike some 

 other parturient mountains, in place of producing its 

 mouse, contains in one vast promiscuous womb more 

 than forty varieties of fish, very dissimilar in habit, form, 

 size, and physiology.. Here in strange jumble lie the 

 relics of creatures the most pacific and the most turbu- 

 lent in disposition ; the several osteologies of inofiensive 

 gurnards, perch, mackerel, balloon fish, mugils and dorys, 

 commingled with those of the implacable shark and fierce 

 colossal skate : here, long since, bone laid to bone, and 

 tusk to tusk, the wicked have ceased to trouble, and the 

 weary been at rest. Thus the vast interior of some old 

 monkish mausoleum of a library often presents to view 

 an equally strange collection of iU-assorting ' corpuses ;' 

 the literary ' remains^ of twice defunct divines, formed 

 now into a stratified mass of many thousand fossihzed 

 folios, extending tier above tier, ' all up to the ceUing, 

 qtdte down to the ground,' and stretching away far as 

 the eye can penetrate the gloom, in long receding rows 

 of mummified calf. Here the fierc'est sharks that ever 

 stirred the bitter waters of polemic divinity, though 

 separated all life through by hatred, malice, and all 

 uncharitableness, or only brought together to wrangle ; 

 having fought their fight and maintained their faith to 

 the last, are united under the universal reign of death, by 

 the labours of the spider, in one common vault ; 



And now, on dusty shelf, for ever laid, 

 Those graceless bigots slumber in their ire ; 



Whose bauds the ' rod of controversy' sway'd. 

 Or fann'd with ecstasy the penal fire. 



