1-06 EEVIEWS — THE TESTIMONY OF THE BOCKS. 



Who loved, who suffered countless ills, 



Who battled for the True, the Just, — 



Be blown about the desert dust, 

 Or sealed within the iron hills ? 

 No more ! — a monster, then, a dream, 



A discord. Dragons of the prime, 



That tore each other in their slime, 

 Were mellow music matched with him. 

 O, life, as futile then as frail, — 



O for thy voice to soothe and bless ! 



What hope of answer or redress : 

 Behind the veil, behind the veil !" 



The sagacity of the poet here, — that strange sagacity which seems so nearly 

 akin to the prophetic spirit, — suggests in this noble passage the true reading of the 

 enigma. The appearance of man upon the scene of being constitutes a new era in 

 creation ; the operations of a new instinct come into play, — that instinct which 

 anticipates a life after the gtave, and reposes in implicit faith upon a God alike 

 just and good, who is the pledged " rewarder of all who diligently seek Him." 

 And in looking along the long line of being, — ever rising in the scale from higher 

 to yet higher manifestations, or abroad on the lower animals, whom instinct 

 never deceives, — can we hold that man, immeasurably higher in his place 

 and infinitely higher in his hopes and aspirations, than all that ever went 

 before him, should be, notwithstanding, the one grand error in creation, 

 — the one painful worker, in the midst of present trouble, for a state 

 into which he is never to enter, — the befooled expectant of a happy 

 future, which he is never to see ? Assuredly no. He who keeps faith with all 

 his humbler creatures, — who gives to even the bee and the dormouse the winter 

 for which they prepare, — will to a certainty not break faith with man, — with 

 man, alike the deputed lord of the present creation, and the chosen heir of all the 

 future. We have been looking abroad on the old geologic burying-grounds, and 

 deciphering the strange inscriptions on their tombs ; but there are other burying- 

 grounds, and other tombs, — solitary church-yards among the hills, where the dust 

 of the martyrs lies, and tombs that rise over the ashes of the wise and good ; nor 

 are there awanting. on even the monuments of the perished races, frequent hiero- 

 glyphics, and symbols of high meaning, which darkly intimate to us, that while 

 their burial-yards contain but the debris of the past, we are to regard the others 

 as charged with the sown seed of the future-" 



In conclusion, it should be stated that the value of the explanatory- 

 portions of the present work is much increased by the addition of 

 numerous, well-executed engravings. Most of these, however, greet 

 us with a strangely familiar aspect. The greater number appeared 

 originally in a little elementary work in French by Beudant, and in 

 the " Cours de Paleontologie," of Alcide d'Orbigny ; but they have 

 done duty since the epoch of their first appearance, in several Eng- 

 lish and German works ; amongst others, oddly enough — when con- 

 sidered iu connexion with the present book — in that work of very 



