ems to me," said Cortlandt, "that no paradise or heaven described
in anything but the Bible compares with this. According to Virgil's
description, the joys on the banks of his river Lethe must have been
most sad and dreary, the general idleness and monotony apparently being
broken only by wrestling matches between the children, while the rest
strolled about with laurel wreaths or rested in the shade. The pilot
Palinurus, who had been drowned by falling overboard while asleep, but
who before that had presumably done his duty, did not seem especially
happy; while the harsh, resentful disposition evidently remained
unsoftened, for Dido became like a cliff of Marpesian marble when
AEneas asked to be forgiven, though he had doubtless considered himself
in duty bound to leave her, having been twice commanded to do so by
Mercury, the messenger of Jove. She, like the rest, seems to have had
no occupation, while the consciences of few appear to have been
sufficiently clear to enable them to enjoy unbroken rest."

"The idleness in the spirit-land of all profane writers," added
Bearwarden, "has often surprised me too. Though I have always
recommended a certain amount of recreation for my staff--in fact, more
than I have generally had myself--an excess of it becomes a bore. I
think that all real progress comes through thorough work. Why should
we assume that progress ceases at death? I believe in the verse that
says, 'We learn here on earth those things the knowledge of which is
perfected in heaven.'"

"According to that," said Cortlandt, "you will some day be setting the
axis of heaven right, for in order to do work there must be work to be
done--a necessary corollary to which is that heaven is still imperfect."

"No," said Bearwarden, bristling up at the way Cortlandt sometimes
received his speeches, "it means simply that its development, though
perfect so far as it goes, may not be finished, and that we may be the
means, as on earth, of helping it along."

"The conditions constituting heaven," said Ayrault, "may be as fixed as
the laws of Nature, though the products of those conditions might, it
seems to me, still be forming and subject to modification thereby. The
reductio ad absurdu would of course apply if we supposed the work of
creation absolutely finished."

CHAPTER XIII.

NORTH-POLAR DISCOVERIES.

Two days later, on the western horizon, they beheld the ocean