think there was some foundation for that opinion, since, by the apparent
motion of the great luminary that gives life to all nature, and which in
my time has evidently declined considerably towards the ocean at the end
of our earth, it must then finish its course, be extinguished in the
waters that surround us, and leave the world in cold and darkness,
necessarily producing universal death and destruction. I have lived
seven of those hours--a great age, being no less than four hundred and
twenty minutes of time. How very few of us continue so long! I have seen
generations born, flourish, and expire ... And I must soon follow them;
for, by the course of nature, though still in health, I cannot expect to
live above seven or eight minutes longer. What now avail all my toil
and labor in amassing honey-dew on this leaf, which I cannot live to
enjoy!--what the political struggles I have been engaged in for the good
of my compatriot inhabitants of this bush, or my philosophical studies
for the benefit of our race in general! for in politics what can laws
do without morals? Our present race of ephemera will, in a course of
minutes, become corrupt, like those of other and older bushes, and
consequently as wretched. And in philosophy how small our progress!
Alas! art is long, and life is short. My friends would comfort me with
the idea of a name they say I shall leave behind me.... But what will
fame be to an ephemeron who no longer exists? and what will become of
all history, in the eighteenth hour, when the world itself, even the
whole Moulin Joly, shall come to its end, and be buried in universal
ruin?"

* * * * *



LATER RELIGIOUS WRITERS AND DIVINES.