illustrations; but they remind me a little of some of the ideas of our
friend Philalethes in his remarkable vision, and with which we may at
some time amuse you in return for your geology should we be honoured with
more of your company. You are obliged to have recourse to creations for
all the living beings in your philosophical romance. I do not see why
you should not suppose creations or arrangements of dead matter by the
same laws of infinite wisdom, and why our globe should not rise at once a
divine work fitted for all the objects of living and intelligent natures.

The stranger replied: "I have merely attempted a philosophical history
founded upon the facts known respecting rocks and strata and the remains
they contain. I begin with what may be considered a creation, a fluid
globe supplied with an immense atmosphere, and the series of phenomena
which I imagine consequent to the creation, I supposed produced by powers
impressed upon matter by Omnipotence."

Ambrosio said: "There is this verisimility in your history, that it is
not contradictory to the little we are informed by Revelation as to the
origin of the globe, the order produced in the chaotic state, and the
succession of living forms generated in the days of creation, which may
be what philosophers call the 'epochas of nature,' for a day with
Omnipotence is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day."

"I must object," Onuphrio said, "to your interpretation of the scientific
view of our new acquaintance, and to your disposition to blend them with
the cosmogony of Moses. Allowing the divine origin of the Book of
Genesis, you must admit that it was not intended to teach the Jews
systems of philosophy, but the laws of life and morals; and a great man
and an exalted Christian raised his voice two centuries ago against this
mode of applying and of often wresting the sense of the Scriptures to