When Adam disobeyed God in Eden, this cataract was already thousands of years old, and for ages had done God's bidding, calm as eternity, regular as the course of the planets. Robert pondered on this sublime obedience of all strong things to the law of the Creator, while man, the weakest of creation, thought it a shame to follow any will but his own. But even as he stood thinking, the earth seemed to tremble beneath him, and he sank gently into its heaving bosom. A darkness that bred more awe than terror encompassed him, and he felt that he was in the presence of one of God's most dreaded ministers. Strange thunders echoed around him, and a bewildered consciousness of some mysterious agency being about him came to his wondering spirit. Out of the darkness grew a twilight, in which objects began to be distinguishable; precious ore glistened on the face of the rocks; metals and jewels, heaped in confusion, met his eye; silver daggers hung within reach of his hand, like bosses from a Gothic roof; columns of sparkling minerals shot up like enchanted trees by his side; while the plashing of fountains, the rushing of lava-rivers, and the dull, perpetual thunder of ascending flames reached his ear—a dusky kingdom, awful in the force it suggested, but hushed and chained by a power greater still; a silent kingdom, the workshop of nature, where our dreamer feared but to tread, lest a volcano might be set in motion on the earth, or an earthquake overwhelm a score of cities. But not before hearing the credo of this mighty world could he leave its regions; it smote upon him from out the roar of a furnace, whence a stream of blinding light ran slowly into a rocky channel. Molten iron flowed at his feet, and a voice sang in his ear:
"The earth is the Lord's; the compass of the world, and all that dwell therein."
Like hammer-blows came the dread words; no spirit in living shape was near, yet a living presence seemed to glow in each fiery stream or glittering rock: the guidance of a will that, millions of ages ago, spoke one creative word, was enough to lead the revolutions and point the unerring road of this grim realm till time should be no more.
Slowly the walls of darkness dissolved, and the hard floor of metals turned to a fine white powder, soft yet firm; trees grew up, but they were white as with hoar-frost; and a marvellous vegetation sprang into being, the mosses swaying to and fro, the flowers moving from rock to rock, the fields of greenest grass swaying as if with animal life. Jewels hung from the fairy rocks, but they closed a strong grip on the finger that touched them; pearls lay scattered on the sandy floor, and back and forth fled swift creatures all lace and film, like animated cobwebs. Robert felt, by instinct, that as he had visited the bowels of the earth, so now he was roaming the garden of the ocean. In reverent wonder he paused, looking upward as if to the sky; and in the liquid firmament wandering stars of fitful radiance shone out upon him. They came now singly, now in strings like the milky way, or again in fields, as if a flag had been studded with glow-worms. As he could not tell why in the heart of volcanic fires he had been neither stifled nor consumed, so now he knew not why he was not drowned; but with the water veiling everything around, dripping in the coral caves, beating against the rocks, stirring the living petals of millions of sea-flowers, he stood upright, waiting for the voice that must swell the everlasting song. It rose at first, as though muffled by the water, grew stronger and clearer, till, in a tone of triumph, it gave forth its glad pæan:
"Bless the Lord, all ye seas and floods; ... all that move in the waters; ... ye dragons of the deep."
"Is man, then, the only rebel in creation," Robert thought sadly, "the only ungrateful one, who thinks it a loss of time to sing the praises of God?" And an answer seemed to knock at his heart, saying:
"Work is prayer, work is song."
Again the sea-walls broke, the jewel-flowers disappeared, and a change came over the dreamer. Snowy mountains; fleecy peaks, purple-shadowed where the sunset light caught their sides; level horizons of gold, suggesting far lands of miraculous radiance; banks of crimson by dun oceans, seeming the grave of a thousand worlds; a solitude oppressive and sublime; a silence which not even the riving asunder of the gray mountain or dissolving of the tawny shore into the ocean of blue can break—such was the new scene on which Robert gazed. Entranced with its beauty, he told himself that this was lovelier than even the ice-cathedral amid the soundless world of snow; and here would he fain build him a home, and wander out his pilgrimage; for "this is the threshold of heaven." Now the sun came from behind the translucent masses, and left streaks of opal and amethyst where his footprints had pressed the fleecy snow; and the dreamer started as the device of this world of amazing beauty and absolute obedience flashed into his eyes from out the great, golden heart of the sun. Here there was no voice, as elsewhere; but the words were burned into Robert's mind as he gazed at the mighty orb:
"He has set his tabernacle in the sun; hereafter ye shall see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of the power of God, and coming in the clouds of heaven."
No sooner had the dreamer gathered this new verse of the world-song into his memory, than the mountains and plains, the valleys and the sea, began to dissolve in mist. He stretched out his hands imploringly, as if to stay the wondrous vision in its flight; but he struck at empty air, and sank gently towards the earth. An echo from afar wafted him an answer, which seemed a promise that the cloud-land would receive him once more at some distant day, but the words were rather a command than an encouragement: