The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 53, March, 1862 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 319 pages of information about The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 53, March, 1862.

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 53, March, 1862 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 319 pages of information about The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 53, March, 1862.
in their order of succession in time; and therefore, if this kind of evidence proves that the later animals are the descendants of the earlier in any genealogical sense, it should also prove that the animals living in one part of the earth at present grow out of animals living in another part, and that the higher animals of one class as it exists now are developed out of the lower ones.  The first of these propositions needs no refutation; and with regard to the second, all our investigations go to show that every being born into the world to-day adheres to its individual law of life, and though it passes through transient phases of growth that resemble other beings of its own kind, never pauses at a lower stage of development, or passes on to a higher condition than the one it is bound to fill.  If, then, this connection is not a material one, what is it?—­for that such a connection does exist throughout the Animal Kingdom, as intimate, as continuous, as complex as any series which the development theorists have ever contended for, is not to be denied.  What can it be but an intellectual one?  These correspondences are correspondences of thought,—­of a thought that is always the same, whether it is expressed in the history of the type through all time, or in the life of the individuals that represent the type at the present moment, or in the growth of the germ of every being born into that type to-day.  In other words, the same thought that spans the whole succession of geological ages controls the structural relations of all living beings as well as their distribution over the surface of the earth, and is repeated within the narrow compass of the smallest egg in which any being undergoes its growth.

* * * * *

THE SOUTHERN CROSS.

  Deem not the ravished glory thine;
    Nor think the flag shall scathless wave
  Whereon thou bidd’st its presage shine,—­
    Land of the traitor and the slave!

  God never set that holy sign
    In deathless light among His stars
  To make its blazonry divine
    A scutcheon for thine impious wars!

  And surely as the Wrong must fail
    Before the everlasting Right,
  So surely thy device shall pale
    And shrivel in the Northern Light!

  Look, where its coming splendors stream! 
    The red and white athwart the blue,—­
  While far above, the unconquered gleam
    Of Freedom’s stars is blazing through!

  Hark to the rustle and the sweep,
    Like sound of mighty wings unfurled,
  And bearing down the sapphire steep
    Heaven’s hosts to help the imperilled world!

  Light in the North!  Each bristling lance
    Of steely sheen a promise bears;
  And all the midnight where they glance
    A rosy flush of morning wears!

  Yon symbol of your Southern sky
    Shall surely mean but grief and loss;
  Then tremble, as ye raise on high,
    In sacrilege, the Southern Cross!

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 53, March, 1862 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.