the whole heap of this disastrous lore would have tumbled at once
upon Adam's head. There would have been nothing left for him but to
take up the already abortive experiment of life where he had dropped
it, and toil onward with it a little farther.

But, blessed in his ignorance, he may still enjoy a new world in our
worn-out one. Should he fall short of good, even as far as we did,
he has at least the freedom--no worthless one--to make errors for
himself. And his literature, when the progress of centuries shall
create it, will be no interminably repeated echo of our own poetry
and reproduction of the images that were moulded by our great
fathers of song and fiction, but a melody never yet heard on earth,
and intellectual forms unbreathed upon by our conceptions.
Therefore let the dust of ages gather upon the volumes of the
library, and in due season the roof of the edifice crumble down upon
the whole. When the second Adam's descendants shall have collected
as much rubbish of their own, it will be time enough to dig into our
ruins and compare the literary advancement of two independent races.

But we are looking forward too far. It seems to be the vice of
those who have a long past behind them. We will return to the new
Adam and Eve, who, having no reminiscences save dim and fleeting
visions of a pre-existence, are content to live and be happy in the
present.

The day is near its close when these pilgrims, who derive their
being from no dead progenitors, reach the cemetery of Mount Auburn.
With light hearts--for earth and sky now gladden each other with
beauty--they tread along the winding paths, among marble pillars,
mimic temples, urns, obelisks, and sarcophagi, sometimes pausing to