" Fixed as the everlasting
hills, their bounds and their habitation have been unchanged. The same
lights were in the heavens when Abraham looked up from the plains of
Mamre, as now when the Arab and the Ishmaelite are in the desert. The
bands of Orion are not loosed, nor the sweet influences of the Pleiades
unbound. The same glittering groups which the patriarch beheld beam
nightly on our tabernacles. They have shone upon the world's heroes and
the world's demigods--bright links in the oblivion of ages. And the
numerous hosts we gaze upon will present the same glowing and immutable
forms to cheer and gladden the eyes and hearts of coming generations.
Some feeling of this nature was probably rising in the Doctor's bosom as
they once more took the open path to Aldport, and he looked on the wide
hemisphere about him--the heavens, with their glowing constellations,
all spread out without an obscurity or an obstruction. He felt for one
moment the folly and futility of earthly things, and his heart seemed to
wither in the immensity into which it was plunged.
It was like a faint glimpse of eternity, and he shrunk back from the
abyss, all his own vast world of thought, feeling, and desire, lost in
that immeasurable space.
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