earth, fringed with life, built up through countless ages by life on the
remains of life that has passed away. And now, with wings of fancy,
join Ianthe in the magic car of Shelley, pass the eternal gates of the
flaming ramparts of the world and see his vision:

Below lay stretched the boundless Universe!
There, far as the remotest line
That limits swift imagination's flight,
Unending orbs mingled in mazy motion,
Immutably fulfilling
Eternal Nature's law.
Above, below, around,
The circling systems formed
A wilderness of harmony.
(Daemon of the World, Pt. I.)

And somewhere, "as fast and far the chariot flew," amid the mighty
globes would be seen a tiny speck, "earth's distant orb," one of "the
smallest lights that twinkle in the heavens." Alighting, Ianthe
would find something she had probably not seen elsewhere in her magic
flight--life, everywhere encircling the sphere. And as the little coral
reef out of a vast depth had been built up by generations of polyzoa,
so she would see that on the earth, through illimitable ages, successive
generations of animals and plants had left in stone their imperishable
records: and at the top of the series she would meet the thinking,
breathing creature known as man. Infinitely little as is the architect
of the atoll in proportion to the earth on which it rests, the polyzoon,
I doubt not, is much larger relatively than is man in proportion to
the vast systems of the Universe, in which he represents an
ultra-microscopic atom less ten thousand times than the tiniest of the