Narrative and Miscellaneous Papers, vol 2 | Page 3

seems to be-- not the
translation of mutton, which would certainly find its way into human
mouths even if riding boys were not,--but the improved geometry of
transcendental curves. They ought to be numbered, ought these boys,
and to wear badges--X 10, &c. And exactly the same evil, asking
therefore by implication for exactly the same remedy, affects the
Comets. A respectable planet is known everywhere, and responsible for
any mischief that he does. But if a cry should arise, 'Stop that wretch,
who was rude to the Earth: who is he?' twenty voices will answer,
perhaps, 'It's Encke's Comet; he is always doing mischief;' well, what
can you say? it may be Encke's, it may be some other man's Comet;
there are so many abroad and on so many roads, that you might as well
ask upon a night of fog, such fog as may be opened with an oyster knife,
whose cab that was (whose, viz., out of 27,000 in London) that floored
you into the kennel.
These are constructive ideas upon the Earth's stage of evolution, which
Kant was aware of, and which will always find toleration, even where
they do not find patronage. But others there are, a class whom I

perfectly abominate, that place our Earth in the category of decaying
women, nay of decayed women, going, going, and all but gone. 'Hair
like arctic snows, failure of vital heat, palsy that shakes the head as in
the porcelain toys on our mantel-pieces, asthma that shakes the whole
fabric--these they absolutely fancy themselves to see. They absolutely
hear the tellurian lungs wheezing, panting, crying, 'Bellows to mend!'
periodically as the Earth approaches her aphelion.
But suddenly at this point a demur arises upon the total question. Kant's
very problem explodes, bursts, as poison in Venetian wine-glass of old
shivered the glass into fragments. For is there, after all, any stationary
meaning in the question? Perhaps in reality the Earth is both young and
old. Young? If she is not young at present, perhaps she will be so in
future. Old? if she is not old at this moment, perhaps she has been old,
and has a fair chance of becoming so again. In fact, she is a Phoenix
that is known to have secret processes for rebuilding herself out of her
own ashes. Little doubt there is but she has seen many a birthday, many
a funeral night, and many a morning of resurrection. Where now the
mightiest of oceans rolls in pacific beauty, once were anchored
continents and boundless forests. Where the south pole now shuts her
frozen gates inhospitably against the intrusions of flesh, once were
probably accumulated the ribs of empires; man's imperial forehead,
woman's roseate lips, gleamed upon ten thousand hills; and there were
innumerable contributions to antarctic journals almost as good (but not
quite) as our own. Even within our domestic limits, even where little
England, in her south- eastern quarter now devolves so quietly to the
sea her sweet pastoral rivulets, once came roaring down, in pomp of
waters, a regal Ganges [Footnote: _'Ganges:'_--Dr. Nichol calls it by
this name for the purpose of expressing its grandeur; and certainly in
breadth, in diffusion at all times, but especially in the rainy season, the
Ganges is the cock of the walk in our British orient. Else, as regards the
body of water discharged, the absolute payments made into the sea's
exchequer, and the majesty of column riding downwards from the
Himalaya, I believe that, since Sir Alexander Burnes's measurements,
the Indus ranks foremost by a long chalk.], that drained some
hyperbolical continent, some Quinbus Flestrin of Asiatic proportions,
long since gone to the dogs. All things pass away. Generations wax old
as does a garment: but eternally God says:--'Come again, ye children of

men.' Wildernesses of fruit, and worlds of flowers, are annually
gathered in solitary South America to ancestral graves: yet still the
Pomona of Earth, yet still the Flora of Earth, does not become
superannuated, but blossoms in everlasting youth. Not otherwise by
secular periods, known to us geologically as facts, though obscure as
durations, Tellus herself, the planet, as a whole, is for ever working by
golden balances of change and compensation, of ruin and restoration.
She recasts her glorious habitations in decomposing them; she lies
down for death, which perhaps a thousand times she has suffered; she
rises for a new birth, which perhaps for the thousandth time has
glorified her disc. Hers is the wedding garment, hers is the shroud, that
eternally is being woven in the loom. And God imposes upon her the
awful necessity of working for ever at her own grave, yet of listening
for ever to his far-off trumpet of palingenesis.
If this account of the matter be just, and were it not