Under the fringes of Paradise,
The crystal brim of the River lies.

There are banks of Peace, whose lilies pure
Paint on the wave their portraiture;
And many a holy influence,
That climbs to God like the breath of prayer,
Creeps quivering into the glass of sense,
To bless the immortals mirrored there.

Through realms of Poesy, whose white cliffs
Cloud its deeps with their hieroglyphs,
Alpine fantasies heaped and wrought
At will by the frolicsome winds of Thought,--
By shores of Beauty, whose colors pass
Faintly into the misty glass,--
By hills of Truth, whose glories show
Distorted, broken, and dimmed, as we know,--
Kissed by the tremulous long green tress
Of the glistening tree of Happiness,
Which ever our aching grasp eludes
With sweet illusive similitudes,--
All pictured over in shade and gleam,
For ever and ever runs the Stream.

The orb that burns in the rifts of space
Is the adumbration of God's Face.
My Soul leans over the murmuring flow,
And I am the image it sees below.

* * * * *

THE GROWTH OF CONTINENTS.

Before entering upon a sketch of the growth of the European Continent from
the earliest times until it reached its present dimensions and outlines, I
will say something of the growth of continents in general, connecting
these remarks with a few words of explanation respecting some geological
terms, which, although in constant use, are nevertheless not clearly
defined. I will explain, at the outset, the meaning I attach to them and
the sense in which I use them, that there may be no misunderstanding
between me and my readers on this point. The words Age, Epoch, Period,
Formation, may be found on almost every page of any modern work on
geology; but if we sift the matter carefully, we shall find that there is
a great uncertainty as to the significance of these terms, and that
scarcely any two geologists use them in the same sense. Indeed, I shall
not be held blameless in this respect myself; for, on looking over
preceding articles, I find that I have, from old habit, used somewhat
indiscriminately names which should have a perfectly definite and
invariable meaning.

As long as zooelogical nomenclature was uncontrolled by any principle, the
same vagueness and indecision prevailed here also. The words Genus, Order,
Class, as well as those applied to the m