Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven!
If in your bright leaves we would read the fate
Of men and empires--'t is to be forgiven
That in our aspirations to be great,
Our destinies o'erleap their mortal state
And claim a kindred with you....[[354]]
Our grave astronomers are no longer astrologers, but they still call certain constellations by the names given them in Babylonia. Every time we look at our watches we are reminded of the ancient mathematicians who counted on their fingers and multiplied 10 by 6, to give us minutes and seconds, and divided the day and the night into twelve hours by multiplying six by the two leaden feet of Time. The past lives in the present.
[[302]] "It may be worth while to note again", says Beddoe, "how often finely developed skulls are discovered in the graveyards of old monasteries, and how likely seems Galton's conjecture, that progress was arrested in the Middle Ages, because the celibacy of the clergy brought about the extinction of the best strains of blood." The Anthropological History of Europe, p. 161 (1912).
[[303]] Census of India, vol. I, part i, pp. 352 et seq.
[[304]] Hibbert Lectures, Professor Sayce, p. 328.
[[305]] The Story of Nala, Monier Williams, pp. 68-9 and 77.
[[306]] "In Ymer's flesh (the earth) the dwarfs were engendered and began to move and live.... The dwarfs had been bred in the mould of the earth, just as worms are in a dead body." The Prose Edda. "The gods ... took counsel whom they should make the lord of dwarfs out of Ymer's blood (the sea) and his swarthy limbs (the earth)." The Elder Edda (Voluspa, stanza 9).
[[307]] The Story of Nala, Monier Williams, p. 67.
[[308]] Egyptian Myth and Legend, pp. 168 it seq.