d created
the heavens and the earth, and which preceded the first day. To a human
eye stationed within the cloud, all, as I have said, must have been
thick darkness: to eyes Divine, that could have looked through the
enveloping haze, the appearance would have been that described by
Milton, as seen by angel and archangel at the beginning of creation,
when from the gates of heaven they looked down upon chaos:--

"On heavenly ground they stood, and from the shore
They viewed the vast immeasurable abyss,
Outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild,
Up from the bottom turned by furious _heat_
And surging waves, as mountains to assault
Heaven's height, and with the centre mix the pole."

At length, however, as the earth's surface gradually cooled down, and
the enveloping waters sunk to a lower temperature,--let us suppose,
during the latter times of the mica schist, and the earlier times of the
clay slate,--the steam atmosphere would become less dense and thick, and
at length the rays of the sun would struggle through, at first
doubtfully and diffused, forming a faint twilight, but gradually
strengthening as the latter ages of the slate formation passed away,
until, at the close of the great primary period, day and night,--the one
still dim and gray, the other wrapped in a pall of thickest
darkness,--would succeed each other as now, as the earth revolved on its
axis, and the unseen luminary rose high over the cloud in the east, or
sunk in the west beneath the undefined and murky horizon. And here again
the _optical_ appearance would be exactly that described by Milton:--

"'Let there be light,' said God, and forthwith light
Ethereal, first of things, quintessence pure,
Sprung from the deep, and from her native east
To journey through the airy gloom began,
Sphered in a radiant cloud, for yet the sun
Was not: she in a cloudy tabernacle
Sojourned the while. God saw the light was good,
And light from darkness by the hemisphere
Divided: light the day, and darkness night,
He named. This was the first day, even and morn."

The second day's work has been interpreted variously, according to the
generally received science of the times of the various commentators who
have dealt with it. Even in Milton, though the great poet rejected the
earlier idea of a solid firmament, we find prominence given to that of a
vast hollow sphere of "circumfluous waters," which, by encircling the
atmosphere, kept aloof the "fierce ext