n the _noblest_
chamber of Ceylon, he has ever been; and with the new hopes that will now
blossom amidst the ancient beauties of this lovely island, Ceylon will but
too deeply fulfill the functions of a paradise. Too subtly she will lay
fascinations upon man; and it will need all the anguish of disease, and
the stings of death, to unloose the ties which, in coming ages, must bind
the hearts of her children to this Eden of the terraqueous globe.

Yet if, apart from all bravuras of rhetoric, Mr Bennett seriously presses
the question regarding Paradise as a question in geography, we are sorry
that we must vote against Ceylon, for the reason that heretofore we have
pledged ourselves in print to vote in favour of Cashmeer; which beautiful
vale, by the way, is omitted in Mr Bennett's list of the candidates for
that distinction already entered upon the roll. Supposing the Paradise of
Scripture to have had a local settlement upon our earth, and not in some
extra-terrene orb, even in that case we cannot imagine that any thing
could now survive, even so much as an angle or a curve, of its original
outline. All rivers have altered their channels; many are altering them
for ever.[16] Longitude and latitude might be assigned, at the most, if
even those are not substantially defeated by the Miltonic "pushing askance"
of the poles with regard to the equinoctial. But, finally, we remark, that
whereas human nature has ever been prone to the superstition of local
consecrations and personal idolatries, by means of memorial relics,
apparently it is the usage of God to hallow such remembrances by removing,
abolishing, and confounding all traces of their punctual identities.
_That_ raises them to shadowy powers. By that process such remembrances
pass from the state of base sensual signs, ministering only to a sensual
servitude, into the state of great ideas--mysterious as spirituality is
mysterious, and permanent as truth is permanent. Thus it is, and therefore
it is, that Paradise has vanished; Luz is gone; Jacob's ladder is found
only as an apparition in the clouds; the true cross survives no more among
the Roman Catholics than the true ark is mouldering upon Ararat; no
scholar can lay his hand upon Gethsemane; and for the grave of Moses the
son of Amram, mightiest of lawgivers, though it is somewhere near Mount
Nebo, and in a valley of Moab, yet eye has not been suffered to behold it,
and "no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day."[17]