410 



SKETCHES OF C RE ATI OX. 



the silver coin which bore the image and superscription of 

 Alexander, and wondered why I had called it venerable. 

 Why ? since twenty populations had possessed the earth, 

 since the relics of those bucklered fishes had been animate, 

 and this coin — why, it had been stamped in the last part 

 of the lifetime of the twentieth population ; and there were 

 nineteen before it which had become extinct. 



And so my feet were lifted up from earth ; I was pil 

 lowed upon a bright cloud, and floated in eternity. And I 

 saw the long history of the world I had left stretching 

 backward from the spot where I had left it, till it vanished 

 from view, like the track of a railroad on the boundless 

 prairie. With the flash of a thought, I pursued it over 

 millions of ages, till I saw it dissolved in fire — till luminous 

 vapors rolled up and rested upon the bosom of infinite 

 space. In this cloud of fire the track of terrestrial history 

 lost itself, and I dared not plunge through the flame in 

 search of a beginning. 



Then I thought, here at length is the dwelling^lace of 

 antiquity. What is this which men call ancient and ven- 

 erable? Would that the scales could be removed from 

 our eyes ! Would that the fog would lift, and men could 

 once look out upon the magnitude of the universe — the 

 majestic span even of terrestrial history — the might, the 

 greatness, the wisdom, the glory of that Intelligence which, 

 at a glance, takes in all space, all time past, and all time to 

 come ! 



