detest the constant going down to the sea in ships hardly more than the occasional going down with them, can take a crumb of comfort in the thought. Unfortunately it partakes of a somewhat far-off realization in our distant descendants, coming a little too late to be of material advantage to ourselves.
But let me not leave the reader wholly disconsolate. For another thought we can take with us in closing our sketch of so much of the Earth's life as brings it well down to to-day,—the thought that it has grown for us a steadily better place to contemplate from the earliest eras to the present time. Indeed, with innate prescience we forbore to appear till the prospect did prove pleasing. Finally, we may palliate prognostication by considering that if its future seem a thought less attractive, we, at least, shall not be there to see.
