Ragnarok : the age of fire and gravel

THE SCENE OF MAN'S SURVIVAL. 369

country.” On this land is “the palace of the sun, raised high on stately columns, bright with radiant gold, and carbuncle that rivals the flames ; polished ivory crests its highest top, and double folding doors shine with the brightness of silver.”

In other words, the legend refers to the island-home of a civilized race, over which was a palace which reminds one of the great temple of Poseidon in Plato’s story.

The Atlantic was sometimes called “the sea of ivory,” in allusion, probably, to this ivory-covered temple of Ovid. Hence Croly sang:

“Now on her hills of ivory Lie giant-weed and ocean-slime,

Hiding from man and angel’s eye The land of crime.”

And, again, Ovid says, after enumerating the different rivers and mountains and tracts of country that were on fire in the great conflagration, and once more distinguishing the pre-eminent earth from the rest of the world :

“However, the genial Earth, as she was surrounded with sea, amid the waters of the main,” (the ocean,) “and the springs dried up on every side, lifted up her ad/-productive face,” ete.

She cries out to the sovereign of the gods for mercy. She refers to the burdens of the crops she annually bears ; the wounds of the crooked plow and the harrow, which she yoluntarily endures ; and she calls on mighty Jove to put an end to the conflagration. And he does so. The rest of the world has been scarred and seared with the fire, but he spares and sayes this island-land, this agricultural, civilized land, this land of the Tritons and Atlas ; this “island of the innocent” of Job.

And when the terrible convulsion was over, and the