There will come a time, too, looking forward into the future, when what we see now will be seen no more. As we go backward into the past, the earth in all of its aspects rapidly changes; the continents dwindle, the mountains melt, and existing races and species disappear one after another. The farther we penetrate into the past, the stranger and the more different from the present does everything become, until finally we come to a world of molten rocks and vapourised seas without a creeping thing upon it. As it has been in the past so will it be in time to come. The present is not everlasting. The minds that perceive upon this planet a thousand centuries in the future will perceive a very different world from that which the minds of this day perceive—different arts, animals, events, ideals, geographies, sciences, and civilisations. The earth seems fixed and changeless because we are so fleeting. We see it but a moment, and are gone. The tossing forest in the wrath of the storm is motionless when looked at by a flash of lightning. The same tendencies that have worked past changes are at work to-day as tirelessly as in the past. By invisible chisels the mountains are being sculptured, ocean floors are lifting, and continents are sinking into the seas. Species, systems, and civilisations are changing, some crumbling and passing away, others rising out of the ruins of the departed. Mighty astronomical tendencies are secretly but relentlessly at work, and immense vicissitudes are in store for this clod of our nativity. The earth is doomed to be frozen to death. In a few million years, according to astronomers, the sun will have shrunken to a fraction of his present size, and will have become correspondingly reduced in heat-giving powers. It is estimated that in twelve or fifteen million years the sun, upon whose mighty dispensations all life and activity on the earth are absolutely dependent, will become so enfeebled that no form of life on the earth will be possible. The partially-cooled earth itself is giving up its internal warmth, and will continue to give it up until it is the same temperature as the surrounding abysms, which is the frightful negative of something like 270 centigrade degrees. These are not very cheerful facts for those who inhabit the earth to contemplate. But they that seek the things that cheer must seek another sphere. No power can stay the emaciation of suns or the thievery of enveloping immensities. Old age is inevitable. It is far off, but it is as certain as human decay, and as mournful. In that dreadful but inevitable time no living being will be left in this world; there will be no cities nor states nor vanities nor creeping things, no flowers, no twilights, no love, only a frozen sphere. The oceans that now rave against the rocky flanks of the continents will be locked in eternal immobility; the atmospheres, which to-day drive their fleecy flocks over the azure meads of heaven and float sweet