plunge herself headlong into precipitate destruction. But this strange
lady is ever reappearing with her awful alternative: they who cannot
solve her riddle must die. It is no trifling account, reader, which we
have with this lady. For now her riddle has grown to fearful
proportions, connecting itself with the rise and fall of empires, with
the dim realm of superstition, with vast systems of philosophy and
faith. And the answer is always the same: "That which hath been is that
which shall be; and that which hath been is named already,--and it is
known that it is Man."

What is it that shall explain the difference between our map of the
world and that of Sesostris or Anaximander? Geological deposits, the
washing away of mountains, and the change of river-courses are certainly
but trifling in such an account. But an Argonautic expedition, a Trojan
siege, a Jewish exodus, Nomadic invasions, and the names of Hanno,
Cæsar, William the Conqueror, and Columbus, suggest an explanation. It
is the flux of human life which must account for the flowing outline of
the earth's geography. As with the terrestrial, so with the celestial.
The heavens change by a subtiler movement than the precession of the
equinoxes. In Job, "Behold the height of the stars, how high they are!"
but to Homer they bathe in the Western seas; while to us, they are again
removed to an incalculable distance,--but at the same time so near,
that, in our hopes, they are the many mansions of our Father's house,
the stepping-stones to our everlasting rest.

But there is also another map, reader, more shadowy in its outline, of
an invisible region, neither of the heavens nor of the earth,--but
having vague relations to each, with a secret history of its own, of
which now and then strange tales and traditions are softly whispered in
our ear,--where each of us has been, though no two ever tell the same