The portrait now hangs in his bedroom, with
the print and the two sketches by the side, and
written beneath is: "C. L., 13th September,
1858, aged 22."

THE TERRESTRIAL PARADISE.

"I WOULD examine the true seat of that
Terrestrial Paradise," says Burton, in his
Anatomy of Melancholy. The desire was not
peculiar to him; for the subject has employed the
wits of countless scholars, and has drawn
hundreds of travellers in old times to the distant
lands of Asia, where, if they did not discover
what they sought, they at least found a goodly
store of strange facts and stranger fancies, the
bright Aurora of that more certain geographical
knowledge which we now possess. Not satisfied
that the Bible should leave the exact place of
Paradise undefined, the various explorers made
a very science of guesswork, and quarrelled
with one another as to the relative value of their
guesses. For it is one of the noteworthy
characteristics of the human mind that it will needs
hanker after reducing to the most precise and
mechanical form that which is really more
impressive by reason of its vagueness. Enthusiasts
have been known to ascend Mount Ararat that
they might see whether there were any remains
of Noah's Ark on the top; and the schoolmen of
former ages consumed their lives in disputing
as to the shape and elemental composition of
angels and of devils, the exact locality and
dimensions of hell, the nature of the fire burning
there, the number of spirits who could
dance on the point of a needle, the character of
the earth's centre, the quarter of the world
where Ophir was, the precise day of the month
on which Adam was born, the language he
spoke, the genus and species of the Tree of
Knowledge, the name which Satan bore before
his fall, the delicate question whether that
potentate be adorned with a tail or not, and the
like exquisite refinements of curiosity. What
wonder, then, that the site of Paradise should be
eagerly sought for and fiercely argued over?

Sir Walter Raleigh, in his History of the
World (a wonderful production of human
industry and learning, written in noble English),
devotes the whole of chapter iii., consisting of
fifteen sections, to a discourse on Paradise, its
situation, geographical features, soil, climate,
&c. Sir Walter is very strong in denouncing the
opinion that there was never any real, physical
Paradise at all, and that the description given by
Moses is entirely mystical and allegorical; though
this view was maintained by no less authorities
than Origen, Philo, Franciscus Georgius,
St. Ambrose, and some others. The first three
of these writers contended that the four rivers
of Paradise meant the four cardinal virtues
(viz. justice, temperance, fortitude, and
prudence), or else the four chief luxuries of life—
oil, wine, milk, and honey. St. Ambrose set
Paradise in the virtues of the mind, declaring
that by the Garden of Eden was signified the
Soul; by Adam, Understanding; by Eve, the
Senses; by the Serpent, Delectation; by the
Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil,
Sapience; and by the rest of the trees the
virtues of the mind.

Augustin Chrysamensis was of opinion that
Paradise was not merely defaced after the
expulsion of Adam, but absolutely and utterly
destroyed, so that the seekers after it look for
that which has now no existence whatever; and
to this conception Luther was thought to
incline. The Manichæans and some modern authors
affirm that, when man was created, the whole
earth was an Eden, though, according to certain
writers, there was one special part more
exquisite than the rest, wherein Adam and Eve
resided. Goropius Becanus places Paradise near
the river Acesines, on the confines of India;
Tertullian, Bonaventura, and Durandus affirm
that it was under the Equinoctial; while another
authority contends that it was situated in a
region which we now associate with anything
but paradisiacal ideas—viz. beneath the North
Pole. It is worthy of remark that the Arctic
regions were long associated with ideas of
enchantment and beauty—mainly, no doubt,
because of their remoteness and mystery. The
ancients believed that in the extreme North the
sound of the sun might be heard as he issued
out of the ocean, and that the gods might be seen
walking, in awful majesty, about the lonely
shores of the world's end. Virgil places the
happy land of the ever-joyous Hyperboreans
under the North Pole; and in more modern
times it was thought by some of the great
navigators that behind the farthest circles of "thick-
ribbed ice," there was a country of surpassing
and supernatural loveliness. Peter Comestor, in
describing the site of Paradise, seems to
suggest the neighbourhood of the North Pole.
Paradise, says he, "is a most pleasant place,
severed from our habitable zone by a long tract
of land and sea, and elevated so that it reaches
to the globe of the moon." A similar opinion is
expressed by Moses Barcephas, who says that
"Paradise is set in a region far raised above the
part which we inhabit; whereby it comes to pass
that from thence those rivers" (the four rivers
mentioned in the Bible) "fall down with such a
headlong violence as words cannot express, and,
being impelled by that force, are carried under
the deep ocean, and again rise and boil up in
this, our habitable world." Ephram gives
another account, which has a certain cloudy
vastness and grandeur: "Paradise," he writes,
"encompasses or embraces the whole earth, and
is so set beyond the ocean-sea as to environ the
orb of the earth on every side, as the orb of the
moon embraces the moon itself."

The number of guesses as to the situation of
Paradise are, indeed, almost countless. Besides
the localities already indicated, it has been
placed on Mount Ararat; in a plain on the
summit of Mount Taurus; in the island of
Ceylon (where there is a mountain called the
Peak of Adam, underneath which the natives
tell you that the first man lies buried, and
whereon they show the gigantic impress of his