FRAGMENT
Of such redundant natures can it be possible that any can at last be narrowed down to the bier? Yes, die, and in a sense, intestate, too, as leaving no intellectual estate? Nothing indeed but an imperfect memory that ages avow, and is gone? Is this the end of that splendour? But why not? According to authoritative interpreters, the evanescence, the nothingness of things glorious, redounds to the glory of Omnipotence. And with what other aim in view, the theologians would like to know, did the Magnanimous call out the worlds? Two or three hundred years ago, to the amazement of the telescopes, a strange star appeared in the constellation of Cassiopeia, and shining there like a planet for a brief term, abruptly disappeared, and was seen no more. Nor was any star-dust left to tell of the fleet passage. True, out of the same Unknown or Nothing, and back into it again, millions of small meteors come and go; but extinction is signalised in the instance of stars of magnitude; and in corresponding degree the glory of God is magnified, who can work such wonders, to whom the planets are of even less consideration than to the Grand Mogul his golden buttons.