were many apt things
which might be said, if I could come at them, as it were, sideways. In
order that I might take them at this advantage, I snatched a letter from
my pocket, and began to read. My eye was soon caught by the impression
of a seal that I had once given my wife. It was a good [woman's] motto,
I jestingly told her; and now it was returned to me at my sorest need.
Six little words of the good Pascal,--

"_Le plus sur est de croire_."

Something compelled me to write them, and a new freedom was with me when
I had done so.

"Make haste, make haste, for the prayer-bell is ringing!" cried the
President "See, here is a copy of Plato's 'Phaedrus,'--a work which our
vapory brethren are fond of quoting, generally at second-hand; perhaps
you may pick out a sentence that will prophesy with sufficient
ambiguity."

But it was not Plato or his "Phaedrus" that then claimed my thoughts.
There loomed a Rock graven with more august instruction than the sage of
the Academy was privileged to communicate,--a Rock against which the
heaving surface of human opinion had chafed and broken in vain. Tossed
to and fro upon the tide of life, who has not sometimes listened to the
wrangling voices which shouted, "Mystical Interpretation," "Absolute
Fiction," "Huge Conglomerate of Myths"? Whose eye has never been caught
by the sparkling tinsel of modern philosophies, with their Seers,
Heroes, Missions, Developments, Insights, Principles of Nature,
Clairvoyance, and Magnetic Currents? Happy those who are able to return
to that one channel through which magnetic currents have indeed
descended from an unseen sphere, and touched the noblest hearts! For
there _is_ a certain mediation between the necessities and aspirations
of man,--an assured deliverance from the gross and sordid surroundings
of his earthly life. There came before me one simple period from a
familiar Book. Most direct and confident is the solemn statement. I
wrote it as the final motto.

"NOW THE SERPENT WAS MORE SUBTILE THAN ANY BEAST OF THE FIELD WHICH
THE LORD GOD HAD MADE."

THE TERTIARY AGE, AND ITS CHARACTERISTIC ANIMALS.

In entering upon the Tertiaries, we reach that geological age which,
next to his own, has the deepest interest for man. The more striking
scenes of animal life, hitherto confined chiefly to the ocean, are now
on land; the extensive sheets of fresh water are filled with fishes of a
comparatively modern character,--with Whitefis