The eyes of the oldest
fossil remains, they tell us, indicate that the same laws of
light prevailed then as now. Always the laws of light are the
same, but the modes and degrees of seeing vary. The gods are
partial to no era, but steadily shines their light in the
heavens, while the eye of the beholder is turned to stone. There
was but the sun and the eye from the first. The ages have not
added a new ray to the one, nor altered a fibre of the other.
If we will admit time into our thoughts at all, the mythologies,
those vestiges of ancient poems, wrecks of poems, so to speak,
the world's inheritance, still reflecting some of their original
splendor, like the fragments of clouds tinted by the rays of the
departed sun; reaching into the latest summer day, and allying
this hour to the morning of creation; as the poet sings:--
"Fragments of the lofty strain
Float down the tide of years,
As buoyant on the stormy main
A parted wreck appears."
These are the materials and hints for a history of the rise and
progress of the race; how, from the condition of ants, it arrived
at the condition of men, and arts were gradually invented.
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