The book of Nature is the book of Fate. She turns the gigantic pages,--leaf after leaf,--never returning one. One leaf she lays do...wn, a floor of granite; then a thousand ages, and a bed of slate; a thousand ages, and a measure of coal; a thousand ages, and a layer of marl and mud; vegetable forms appear; her first misshapen animals, zoophyte, trilobium, fish; then, saurians,--rude forms, in which she has only blocked her future statue, concealing under these unwieldy monsters the fine type of her coming king. The face of the planet cools and dries, the races meliorate, and man is born. But when a race has lived its term, it comes no more again.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is only for a little while, only occasionally, methinks, that we want a garden. Surely a good man need not be at the labor to l...evel a hill for the sake of a prospect, or raise fruits and flowers, and construct floating islands, for the sake of a paradise. He enjoys better prospects than lie behind any hill. Where an angel travels it will be paradise all the way, but where Satan travels it will be burning marl and cinders.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »