can
have no end. It cannot be multiplied, it cannot be divided, it cannot
be added unto--you may attempt to subtract from it, but it is useless.
Take millions and millions of years from it, take all the time that can
enter into the compass of your imagination, it is still whole and
undiminished as before--all calculation is lost. Think on--the brain
becomes heated, and oppressed with a sensation of weight too powerful
for it to bear; reason totters in her seat, and you rise with the
conviction of the impossibility of the creature attempting to fathom the
Creator--humiliated with the sense of your own nothingness, and
impressed with the tremendous majesty of the Deity.

Time is Man--Eternity is God!

CHAPTER FIFTY FIVE.

Thou art perfect, then, that our ship hath touched upon the deserts of
Bohemia?

Ay, my lord and fear we have landed in ill time.

WINTER'S TALE.

About midnight the moon burst through the clouds, which gradually rolled
away to the western horizon, as if they had been furled by some
invisible spirits in the air. The wind, after several feeble gusts,
like the last breathings of some expiring creature unwilling to loosen
the "silver cord," subsided to a calm. It then shifted round to the
eastward. The waves relaxed in their force until they did little more
than play upon the side of the wreck, so lately the object of their
fury. The dark shadows of the rocks were no longer relieved by the
white foam of the surf, which had raged among them with such violence.
Before morning all was calm, and the survivors, as they shrunk and
shivered in their wet garments, encouraged each other with the prospect
of a speedy termination to their sufferings on the reappearance of
daylight. The sun rose in splendour, and seemed, as he darted his
searching rays through the cloudless expanse, to exclaim in his pride,
"Behold how I bring light and heat, joy and salvation, to you, late
despairing creatures!" The rocks of the reef above water, which had
previously been a source of horror, and had been contemplated as the
sure engines of their destruction, were now joyfully reckoned as so many
resting-spots for those who were about to attempt to reach the land.

The most daring and expert swimmers launched themselves into the water,
and made for the nearest cluster of rocks, with difficulty gaining a
footing on them, after clinging by the dark and slippery sea-weed which
covered their tops, like shaggy h